Nov 19 update

My topic for Essay 4 is whether or not the knowledge of where one's food comes from changes one's consumption of food and maybe how they eat. So far most people only pay lip-service to wanting to eat conscious of how their food got to them while actually doing little to no research on the matter.  link to survey below


http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/XG3Y6F

My topic for Essay 4 is whether or not the knowledge of where one's food comes from changes one's consumption of food and maybe how they eat. link to survey below


http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/XG3Y6F

Status on Essay 4

My survey has just recently been published on surveymonkey, and I am awaiting an adequate number of replies to begin formulating a conclusion. The survey itself has been shared on Facebook and other social media.

The Coastal Salvish People

The Coastal Salvish people of Washington state and British Columbia have been fighting the same battles many Native American tribes have been fighting since colonization brought Europeans to North America. Facing prejudice and blatant racism the Coastal Salvish people have been attempting to retain and revive the unique aspects of their culture. Unfortunately even basic public education has proven to be a great foe to their beliefs as well as international boarders that separate villages which people belong to many of. Public schools in Washington and B.C. have been known to teach lessons that directly conflict with Coastal Salvish beliefs, so to hold on to their ideals and to ensure they are passed down the indigenous Coastal Salvish send their children to boarding schools that support their beliefs. It is a shame that public schooling is at a point where such a large group is feeling targeted and it is in no way ok that things have to be that way.

Food & Sustainability Issues in NC

The coastal plains and waters of North Carolina have seen extensive use since settlers came over in the 17^th century. The rich agricultural lands and climate were perfect for growing cash crops like tobacco and the coasts were wonderful for fishing with its outer banks protecting any vessels or fish.

                One big problem the agricultural areas have pertaining to North Carolina’s coastal plain is the waste produced by the large swine industry. Just the odors from these farms have been shown to increase people in the surrounding areas fatigue, they are less vigorous, and they are easily angered or confused. This is not to mention the damage the waste does to the environment as it seeps into the groundwater, infects the surface water and spills into human and natural water resources.

Also we have the by-catch of juvenile finfish caught in otter trawls used to harvest shrimp in North Carolina inshore waters is excessive and potentially harmful to the life cycles of some of the important finfish that are being killed and discarded. Recent studies show numbers of juvenile finfish in the by-catch of otter trawls with estimates in the range of a combined 300,000,000 young spot, croaker, and weakfish taken each year. This is excessive given that the annual harvest of shrimp (6 million pounds valued at about $11,000,000.) Studies have also shown that the value of inshore waters is greater when they are used as recreational fisheries than for harvesting shrimp. Finfish, like spot croaker and weakfish, have seen a big decrease in their own reproduction because of problems caused by otter trawlers.

These are just some of the environmental problems the coasts of North Carolina have and must be attended to if we ever wish to be sustainable.

Early Environmentalist "Artifacts"

http://129.237.201.53/books/malthus/population/malthus.pdf

Though Thomas Malthus' papers may be more of a statement on population one can reach to the idea that an increased population has detrimental side-effects on not just the standard of living but the availability of resources. environmentalism is all about the preservation of our natural resources and now one of our big problems is the population digging into our resources and damaging the environment.

McKibben's "Challenge to Environmentalism"

http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed.2008.137.2.5

                

McKibben opens his article about the degree of which we have impacted the environment with an analogy. The invisible line in war such as the nuclear bomb draws a whole new hand with which chaos can be wrought upon the land. The invisible line in environmentalism was crossed once people found out that our actions have changed weather patterns, dried forests, melted ice that has existed for centuries, and killed off or endangered hundreds of species. Attempts in the past have been made to fix this but have ultimately done very little in the grand scheme of things. Humanity’s search for wealth, resources, and power has crippled its ability to see the damage being done to their very home and it is almost too late. Even with McKibben’s suggested shift to an environment-based economy it would be tough to save the Earth, and that’s only if we could somehow convince everyone to do this. McKibben also blames the United States by saying, “(they’ve) eaten all of the world’s cake, and are now making it hard to put even bread on the table.” This highlights the problems that America’s consumer population has given to the world. But McKibben also points out that local farmers markets are a fast growing sector of the U.S. economy and believes that a shift back towards local and regional awareness will help to grow the environmentalist movement as well.

New Education to Save the Old World

Richard Kahn states: “Just as there is now a socio-ecological crisis of serious proportions, there is also a crisis in environmental education over what must be done about it”(Kahn 5). In his intense manifesto titled “Toward Ecopedagogy” Kahn argues for the reeducation of the world because of humanity’s current incompetence to the Earth that they live on. The fact that 45 million Americans are confused as to what a source of freshwater is should be a telling statistic if any. Obviously there is not enough being done in the area of environmental education or at least it is not being done effectively. So the question must be asked: How do we properly teach later generations respect for the environment?

                It would begin at the basic most encapsulating of levels. Families need to be behind this teaching their children a basic respect for nature as they go through this entire process of education in a more traditional sense. This means courses for adults teaching the basic tenants of an ideal that protects the environment. Without good examples back home these later generations won’t have a reason to hold on to this new education. When these children start going to school they need to be given information from the very beginning on how the world around them works. And they don’t just need mindless repetition of facts they need to experience nature itself, in its purest of forms. Frequent camping trips to local areas like a river or a mountain will help to establish a connection to an area. The camping or day trips need to be chiefly for enjoyment because if the children can’t enjoy nature they will never feel an affinity towards it. Children should be taught in-class how aspects of nature work and given a task to complete that incorporates this knowledge on these trips as an exercise on how nature can be helpful.

                The content of these lessons should lean more towards the natural environment and how different professional disciplines interact with the earth opposed to the education of the politics and policies on nature that just see children remain in a more secluded thought on how nature works. Besides, government hasn’t really provided a good example of how to deal with nature up to this point anyway. But overall this sort of educational overhaul is what is necessary to perhaps save our plant from turning into a wasteland. 

a few more from gary snyder

In his poem “Front Lines” Gary Snyder describes the coming of industry to America and the damage it has wrought on the Earth. Words like “cancer,” “rot,” and “sick” describe how Snyder sees industrialization. The imagery created in to poem is to show how the land is raped and pillaged by humanity. And it closes with a group of people, drawing the line to protect parts of the earth so that they may survive. Attempts at bioregionalist communities for the betterment of nature.

                In “Magpie’s Song” a bird sit in the midst of humanity and longs for a clear blue sky that’s not interrupted by the buildings of humanity. Snyder uses the song as a warning that man’s current growth and resource depletion is not sustainable and that humanity might one day die off because of it. But there might also be a bright spot to the song that man might once again join with nature so that humanity and nature might be in harmony again.

                “Ethnobotany” opens with a comparison between a tree dying of natural causes and another being chopped down to be used as paper in a book to teach people. This is done to show the impact of a tree falling naturally as opposed to falling because of man. In nature all of the animals help to recycle the tree as it lay there rotting but when it is turned into paper only humans are able to use it and will probably never be able to reuse it as knowledge becomes outdated. 

Independence

Through much of Gary Snyder’s poetry I am beginning to see a trend or overall theme. The Earth, and nature, are fairly independent and would easily go on living without humanity as a part of it; whereas humanity is very dependent on the Earth and needs it to continue to survive, yet humanity ignores the needs and spirit of nature itself. “As for Poets” (pg 87) speaks to the beauty of the Earth that human poets attempt to grasp at with words that cannot be translated into such a crude medium. Nature does a perfectly good job of creating beautiful poetry independent of any human. “One Should Not Talk to a Skilled Hunter About What is Forbidden by the Buddha” (pg 66) brings to mind old Native American hunters who have just killed a fox and are gutting it. They take in every detail of the fox as to give proper respect for the spirit of the animal and recognize all of its minor characteristics. This reminds me of the knowledge and reverence the Native Americans had of every creature they ate, and how the world got along just fine when humans were hunter-gatherers. But this poem never revealed how this animal died until the very end. The secret of a piece of aluminum foil stuck inside this animal, poisoning it. Easily a metaphor for what the humans have done to the earth since they’ve begun to ignore nature. And finally “The Dazzle” (pg 65) gives us a sneak peek inside how nature works. How years of evolution have structured the symbiotic relationship between a plant and its pollinators, independent of human tampering. And this process would continue for forever and work smoothly until then without the tampering of human needs.

A Few Poems from Gary Snyder

Anasazi pg 3

It Pleases pg 44

Mother Earth: Her Whales pg 47

For nothing p34

                Just taking a brief first glance of a handful of Gary Snyder’s poems some themes jump out immediately. His overwhelming reverence for nature prevails through all of these examples. Snyder also talks about human’s interaction with nature in its varying degrees, as a part of nature or as its enemy or how much human things really matter in the end.                

                In his poem “Anasazi” he creates imagery that wraps you in nature. Pollen gets into your eyes as you wade through fields of grains up to your hips. He describes them as “Gods” to convey his respect and give the reader the feel of being in awe of this place called Anasazi tucked into “hidden canyons.” Snyder is trying to say that life will still go on with women still giving birth if a certain reverence is held for nature and humanity remains humble in the face of nature.

                “It Pleases” put you in the perspective of a bird flying high above the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., a place of power and respect throughout the world. However, this different perspective shows this place of power as a collection of white brick and blue suits. Snyder is doing this to bring awareness of how little some of our smallest problems are to nature. Snyder is setting up is argument that people need to worry more about something that matters (the Earth) than about silly ideas that create problems themselves.

                “Mother Earth: Her Whales” is Gary Snyder’s attack on how the world is treated by its “robotic” inhabitants. He contests that these hypocrites who used to have reverence, or pretend to have it, towards the earth are harming it to the point of no return as Brazil’s treasures are stripped from the land, Buddhist Japan goes down the path of harm for the environment and the sea. Snyder laments the many loses of nature through ignorance and greed throughout China and North America. Snyder also asks who should be the ones to represent the Earth and her problems because all of the representatives thus far have been false and not truly giving themselves for the environment.

                Lastly Snyder gives his warning of what is to come in “For Nothing” if current attitudes of the environment are not changed. Life is called a flower that is offered to this rock and if the flower is not taken care of this rock will again be dead and lifeless. Just this small series of poems taken from Turtle Island gives a stark picture of what has been given to this Earth and how humanity has quickly begun to spoil it. Gary Snyder calls for swift action by those who are in tune with nature to attempt to mend the wounds wrought by humanity. 

Thoughts on McKibben's new "Eaarth"

McKibben’s interview on his book titled Eaarth pointed out some very interesting facts and ideas about how we live our lives on this planet. Humans care more for “the economy”, which is an idea that humans invented, than the earth, which is a very real and solid thing that lives are truly based on. Just knowing five edible plants native to a bioregion as well as where the waste of a community goes is a real question that most people do not know the answer to. Humans have begun to focus more and more on things that don’t matter and McKibben is trying to fight against that tide. McKibben wants to switch the entire axis of how humanity deals with its energy. Instead of taking a focused source and distributing energy from it to the people McKibben wishes to take diffused sources of energy like wind and sunlight and have each individual input contribute to humanity’s needs. McKibben wants to take the growing number of poor and put them to work for saving the planet by using low impact farming methods that can be easily taught. The growth that humanity has used to fix all of its problems has become a problem as well. Subsidies that foster this growth have babied industries that have meanwhile intertwined together so that if one industry fails so does everyone else. An evolutionary tool that has grown into our economy so that no drastic changes can be easily made anymore. 

A Plus to Nash's "Island Civilization"

One of the great problems that would be solved by a creation of an “island civilization” is the habitat fragmentation caused by the paving of roads and highways in the world. As humanity drives from location to location many forget the place they are driving through is, or was, the home of dozens of species that would interact with each other but cannot because a highway full of cars threatens to kill them.  Sure this might be bearable to individual animals initially but over decades the species as a whole begins to falter because of food depletion, the lack of genetic diversity may leave them susceptible to disease, and further encroachment. Many migrating animals that follow their prey will find themselves trapped (either with their food or without) and can’t move to new feeding grounds, essentially starving themselves. Also the problem for animals with an adequate food supply in the long run will be genetic variation, or in this case a lack thereof. Because no genetically different animals will be entering the closed off ecosystem the species within will be forced to mate with genetically similar individuals which can lead to weakened immune systems and mutations that are detrimental to the species. And finally all humans, as Nash said, are in a war against the wilderness and with rising populations they will expand further into the habitat they’ve cut off putting an even greater strain on the environment there as a result. America as a country, with its vast urban sprawl and individual’s desire for land ownership, has become one of the worst violators in this issue and it can be tracked by municipality. Cities and towns usually place taxes upon those within their jurisdiction, and no one likes taxes. To avoid these taxes many choose to live outside of the city and town’s jurisdiction (my family included). Since the U.S. doesn’t have many restrictions that require people to live in concentrated areas, like Germany, we subject our environment to municipalities that wish to forever increase to gain more revenues, pushing people farther away. You may say, “So What?” to all of this but just think. The further we expand the more roads we build to make our lives easier. The more roads we build the more segregated the ecosystem becomes. The more roads we build the more people are tempted to move and take away from our ecosystem’s resources. Nash’s “island” system would forever solve this problem and protect all of the species and their various niches in the environment.

An Additional Source: http://www.eoearth.org/article/Habitat_fragmentation?topic=58074

A Response to Island Civilizations

                Which came first, humans or the Earth? Now it’s quite obvious to anyone with a day’s worth of schooling that the Earth came first. Humans and their selfish ways evolved after years of coddling by their ancient mother and have grown to be the big-shots on the planet. We have bullied all of Earth’s other species into doing what we want them to do. And as with all bullies we can either stand up to them and save all of the good of the planet or irreparably scar the Earth for the rest of her life. In his essay Island Civilizations Professor Nash reflects upon human’s treatment of the Earth in the past and presents some sobering possibilities for our future.

                As Nash reflects upon humanity’s advancements in the last few millennia he shares how we as a species have grown over that time span, bending nature to our will with little regard for the ramifications. We created this idea of “wilderness” because as we found things we could control there were also things humans could not. And of course seeing no greater challenge our species sought to conquer it all to use its finite resources to fuel our infinite appetite. Soon however, as the frontier vanished and imperialism had spread it furthest, humans slowly began to realize that the Earth is only so big and has only so much to offer. The wasting of its resources may leave lasting damage if it is not soon checked. Nash points out the early warnings of many writers and it is not until the end of the second millennium that they are heeded and anything serious is done about it.  Nash equates humanity to a cancer that is eating away at the earth and it is not until the 1960’s that the threatening wilderness becomes less of a “liability” and more of an “asset” to be protected.

                Thankfully Nash does not just use a condescending tone and avid finger-pointing but he also lays out a goal for change, because “goals are the first steps in solving problems.” He first scares us with the popular “wasteland” scenario that has the Earth a thousand years from now as a desolate skeleton from what it is today as a result of our thoughtless poisoning and waste. Then he goes to a somewhat better outlook where humans control every aspect of the ecosystem but there is a gross lack of diversity within. There is a very unappealing idea of abandoning technology and life as we know it by reverting back to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle but Nash supports his own idea of “Island Civilizations” where humans focus their impact on the earth in pocket sized areas across the globe. Nash provides that we can grow technologically as much as we want within these islands, putting them wherever we wish and even using certain locations as recreational facilities. Nash also wishes that environmentalism become a chief concern and be included in every child’s growth as a human.

                Altogether Nash gives a very valid argument that, as he says, sets a goal for humanity over the next couple of hundred years. These small islands of civilization remind me of the islands of A Brave New World where the questioning or enlightened are banished to protect the balance and order of the new world. The idea of mankind living in harmony is a wonderful one but I find it hard to believe all of humanity would change their lifestyle so drastically, even if we could somehow survive the ramifications of eliminating five million people from our population. But even with all of the difficulties associated with the islands Nash gave us plenty of time to realize his dream, and we have at least taken baby steps in this direction. Boy Scouts are well versed in taking care of nature as they camp in it, learn from it, and enjoy it. Scouts have helped to spread the Leave No Trace principles of camping that make a point of leaving any aspects of nature the way you found them. This may not seem very important but if any sort of goal is wished to be reached someone has to take the first baby steps.