Write about a specific, broad-reaching "system" that you learned about in this class (either you had never heard of before, had heard of but never contemplated, or knew a little bit about). In whichever case, choose something that stood out and has some relevance to your personal life/interests.
1.) Choose a complicated, far reaching topic (i.e. the carbon cycle, the agro industry, consumerism, biodiversity, Haber Bosh process, evolution, CAFOs, GMOs,... really anything from the class that most profoundly affected your way of looking at the world).
2.) Explain your topic, (give it's history, definition/description, why and if it's controversial, etc.). Then explore what other systems it affects, including your relationship to it.
So if you talk about logging, you might start by talking about a general historical overview, explain what logging is (what's the process), why it's done, pros and cons, and importantly, what are the farther reaching ramifications (or indirect effects) of the logging industry? (erosion/ loss of bio diversity/ reduction in land's capacity to absorb melting ice/ the watertable lowers/ more CO2 in the atmosphere because fewer trees/ on the other hand, it provides jobs, timber, cleared land ready for agriculture or development, etc. Then you can talk about how this may affect your particular community/ family/ self.
Good luck and it's been a pleasure getting to know all of you!
Reed
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Response #13
ReplyDeleteOf all the topics we’ve discussed in class, I found consumerism to be the most interesting. It was something I have heard of but never really thought about it or considered its implications. Reading Culture Jam really allowed me to look at myself as a consumer and realize how I fallen victim consumerism. I feel that most people if not all fall victim to consumerism. There is a difference between buying things for survival and living with the bare minimum and buying material possessions that may not be as necessary. I have been greatly affected by consumerism for most of things I consume are either for enjoyment or to better myself and the way people judge me. When I think about it, most of my personal possessions are based on consumerism. For instance, I chose my phone because I thought it was better than all its competition. Or I even bought my backpack based on how nice it looked and whether it looked good on my back.
There are many pros and cons to consumerism. Through consumerism there is more competition, which calls for better products. The more industries out there also increases employment and causes there to be an array of different options to choose from. Consumerism also improves the quality of lives of those who can afford it. For instance, the influx of cellphones has improved communication. However consumerism has a lot of negative aspects. Overconsumption has caused our society to become wasteful. Our wastefulness and increasing landfills is not the only environmental problem caused by consumerism. The industries that work so hard to produce these products are hurting the environment through all their practices. But most importantly, consumerism is changing our society and is essentially telling people what or how much to buy in order to achieve the American Dream. While consumerism can be good in a number of ways, it can also be detrimental for we base our happiness on it and instead of constantly thinking of things we should consume, we should start taking advantage of the natural world around us and what it has to offer.
Rebecca Tulis
The topic that I am choosing is the effects of deforestation. I have always heard of deforestation, but I never really understood the affects that it can cause from both the perspective of the environment as well as people. I have never grown up in a heavily wooded area, and thus I have never really understood the significance of trees to its fullest until now. Deforestation is a current issue that our society as well as the rest of the world faces. In some places, such as Montana, logging is one of the main sources of income. Without the income that is brought to the state through logging, Montana will sustain an economic downfall because their will be a lose of jobs, further development in the area such as housing, and agriculture. Humans have relied on logging to build homes as well as other resources like paper. However, deforestation impacts the environment in a negative manner. Roots of the trees helps keep the top soil in place as well as it is a source of oxygen. However, when tree are pulled out, the top soil no longer has a place holder, and thus, when the wind blows, it causes the top soil to blow away, resulting in the nutrients of that top soil to disappear with the wind also, thus affecting agriculture as well. Another aspect that logging affects the environment negatively is that the machines that are used to cut down the trees may emit harmful gasses into the atmosphere, further polluting the air as well as the trees not having enough time to re-grow to produce more oxygen. In other words, the speed in which trees are cut down will be faster than the time it takes for a tree to grow and provide oxygen. The biodiversity of the deforested area will also be a negative affect as a result of the species that lived in that area to be forced to move to another location. This continuous of biodiversity can also result in eventual extinction of many species as well. I believe that there is a cycle in which if one component of the environment is affected negatively because of the influence of the humans, it follows a cycle in which it ends up affecting other components of the environment such as erosion, human agriculture, economy, air and water quality, loss of biodiversity, and etc. For instance, in the Lorax by Dr. Seuss, intergenerational remote tyranny is seen, in which we are leaving problems that we have created to future generations not born, which results in affecting their lives as well as ending up as their responsibility to fix the problems that we created in the first place. Deforestation, I think, will affect the whole world because we are cutting off our own oxygen source. Particularly, in forested areas, if humans continue to clear forests for agriculture, nutrients may be lost as well as causing more erosion to the air and water.
ReplyDeleteThe Haber Bosch process is the chemical creation of nitrogen. Nitrogen is very important for two things, agriculture and explosives. Haber Bosch was created pre World War One and this process allowed the creation of large amounts of high explosives. However, once the war was over and countries had large stockpiles of nitrogen from ramped up war production, focus shifted from explosives to synthetic fertilizers. Synthetic fertilizers allowed for the rapid expansion of agriculture and increased crop yields in the post World War setting. Synthetic fertilizers allowed crops to grow more abundantly and in conditions where they would normally fail. One crop particularly to benefit from this was corn. Corn is really the basis of our contemporary food system. Corn is grown so abundantly and cheaply through fertilizers and federal government subsidies that is used for feed for animal (namely cows) that would not normally consume corn in a natural grazing situation. Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO’s) are set up to fatten animals, who subsequently need large amounts of antibiotics, to quickly ready them for slaughter and market. This entire system is based on a surplus of cheap corn made possible by nitrogen based synthetic fertilizers. Corn is also used in a very wide variety of modern, heavily processed foods because of its abundance and low cost.
ReplyDeleteHaber Bosch has allowed the human race to expand at the very rapid rates originally started into motion by the industrial revolution in the late 1800’s. Call it the nitrogen revolution. Because of synthetic fertilizers we can at least attempt to feed our growing populations, we may not be able to spread this food around evenly, but because of the Haber Bosch process we have been able to grow and sustain our population in ways the pre Haber Bosch world could never even attempt.
Of course, this total reliance and eventual overuse of synthetic fertilizers has presented its own unique set of issues; namely for our environments. We use so much fertilizer that we poison our water sources through concentrated fertilizer run off and irrevocably harm local ecosystems. It’s all a case of too much concentrated nitrogen (after all, it is used in explosives). The CAFO’s that our modern food system demands create immense amounts of sewage all heavily nitrogen based and in high concentrations. Only adding to the problem, the antibiotics we feed these animals has helped in the creation of new super bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. Haber Bosch has helped our society to become what it is today in scale and stature but not without it’s own set of detriments.
Evolution is the natural selection of heritable mutated genetic traits in species that eventually change the genetic materials that makes up that species until it changes to the point where it can be classified as a different species. The debate for and against evolution begins with the acceptance of the fossil record and the discovery of the actual age of the earth. In the 1600’s one of the first to try and date the earth was Archbishop James Ussher who came up with “the sunset of October 22, 4004 BC” which was based purely on biblical record. From then until around Darwin (mid 1880’s) the estimated age of the earth got longer and longer based on the acceptance and denial that the fossil record as a source for evidence of extinct animals. Once the idea of extinction was somewhat accepted there was something missing. There were all of these animals that had gone extinct but many of the fossils looked like slight variations of animals that were around today. Darwin finally added some evidence to this argument showing that finches from the Galapagos Islands were almost identical except for slight variations, such as their beaks. This was directly related to what types of environments they lived in, specifically what types of food was available to them. Ever since, the discovery of more and more specimens to at to the fossil record has helped back up this theory, along with potassium-argon dating, which allows us to get a very close estimation of when an animal died (based on the fossil).
ReplyDeleteI personally find the fossil record, and the attempt to link its vast amount of information together, extremely fascinating. Although, what we have of the true record is a very small percentage of what was actually around during the last 2.5 billion years, mostly everything we pull from it has many assumptions tied to it, such as the trends we see in the miniscule percentage in the fossil record must stand for all organisms to ever exist. Well, these trends are very convincing and have lots of tangible data to back them up, which is why many say grasping the concept of evolution is key to understanding science as a whole.
As scientists have found patterns of evolution in the fossil record they have intuitively found patterns of past extinctions. Today they are using this data in comparison to the contemporary patterns in extinction and many are saying humans are the cause. However true this may be, it is important to remember that the data being compared to today’s, almost complete record, is one of only unlucky animals who were caught in mud, tar, or were sheltered from weathering or scavengers (thus were fossilized). This isn’t to say humans don’t cause natural and unnaturally forced extinctions, it’s just a point to say we don’t know everything, but what we can do is play it safe and try not to destroy other species. In addition we can continue to build our fossil record and learn from past patterns to improve the patterns we will leave behind.
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ReplyDeleteOne thing that frightened me in the class was learning about the usage of GMOs regularly in today’s society. A GMO is a genetically modified organism. The process involves introducing a non-native gene into an organism. The result is an engineered organism, usually a food source. It was mainly introduced into cash crops to further their resistance to the elements. However, in the 1990’s it was discovered that the gene can mutate the plant, making it resistant to other forms of natural events. However, scientists were able to find during that time GEM (fungi with the same criteria) that could break down our wastes.
This affects all consumers who get their food from other sources. Almost all vegetables that are found in the market place are made with these procedures. Even though most food now is packed with artificial agents, the idea of mutating organisms seems like it will backfire down the line.