Selection 11

Will Hurricane Katrina Impact Shoreline Management?

Orrin H. Pilkey and Robert S. Young

They discuss hurricane Camille in 1969 and how its destruction was very similar to Katrina which happened in 2005. They talk about Dauphin Island, Alabama and how it has repeatedly been hit with hurricanes and that each time the island can get washed northward creating more land on the north side and ocean water receding over the south side. In the past storms have also created inlets cutting across the island. It has been rebuilt a number of times because it is in a high hurricane area and it should have never been developed. In the American barrier island there is constantly new development happening and along with it is a rise in coastal population. Out of these lessons comes two views. One is that the U.S. should retreat from developing the oceanfront. The second view is that hurricanes demand that we increase our efforts and government spending on beach nourishment and continue to develop on the coasts. The followers of the second view believe that the primary goal would be to save lives and property. But really beach replenishment is a desperate attempt to hold off the natural response of the shorelines to a rising sea level. The authors believe that if you remove the coastal development then the beach will replenish itself and there would be no need for a replenishment program. They then give some problems of beach replenishment such as a constructed shoreline may look safe but might not be. And even though it may have storm protections it wouldn't matter when dealing with large hurricanes like Katrina. When pumping sand on a beach results in ecological impacts that effect a wide variety of biological life. And the costs for replenishment comes from all tax payers whether living by a beach or not.

Pilkey and Young believe that the government should stop funding development on all vulnerable coastal areas which are prone to hurricanes. They then list several obstacles to prevent rebuilding such as the hard ache that citizens go through when mass amounts of people die because they live in these at risk areas. Some think that not rebuilding where you live is seen as fleeing and unpatriotic but it's really insanity if you continue to live there. Even some think that coastal development is good for our economy but really it's not because so much is destroyed after a hurricane and so much aid and support is needed from the government. And some believe that the benefits out way the risk but then they should pay for all the damage that happens when a destructive force hits because they receive all the benefits when living there.

They believe that there should be a committee that determines which coastal areas the government will pull federal support from because they are considered a high risk area. It would consist of scientists and environmentalists and would use data and knowledge to determine which areas would be pulled. They believe that it will only be a matter of time until we are forced to do this because our federal deficit will reach a boiling point with the national economy.

They then talk about Louisiana's wetlands problems and high costs associated with helping the loss of wetlands. They then discuss concerns with this such as fixing the problems caused by engineering, water extraction, and rising sea levels. They think that if the U.S. is going to spend billions on this wetland then they should not forget about all the other wetlands.

Bottom line is that they believe the impact of Katrina on the coast could be used to help support a different national coast policy. Scientific knowledge along with social responsibility should be used and we should not rush into any immediate decisions.

Online Activity

Andy Goldsworthy's Artwork

After reviewing some of Andy's art I believe that he does his art more for himself than for any one else. He said that he really feels himself when he can just go into the forest and make a piece of art. I think his style of art is very original in that everything used is from the earth in the form it was originally made. But also the way he can take things and use them to create masterpieces. What I also like is the fact that everything he makes will eventually become apart of the ecosystem once again and you would never know if that stick for example used to be a piece of art. I especially liked in the River and Tides exhibit the use of icicles to create that curved back and forth design and how he stacked rocks in an egg shape by the shore and then the tide would eventually wash them all away. He is definitely very creative and draws attention to the ecosystem letting people know that man and nature can live together without damage or destruction of our environment.

Selection 7

The Tragedy of the Commons

Garrett Hardin


Hardin first discusses that the population problem cannot have a technical solution. Tragedy in a commons exists because each man pursues his best interest. But in a limited world with everyman only thinking for himself and a society that believes in freedom, it is the freedom in a commons that will always end in tragedy. We have known about this idea of tragedy of freedom in a commons for a long time and it has constantly been refreshed with new examples in our societies. What Hardin is trying to say is that anything that is free to all people but is limited will ultimately result in an over use of resources and end in a tragedy.

Tragedy of the commons also appears in the problems of pollution. Since we are all using a resource and getting something out of it we are also putting things into it. Since everyone thinks what they are doing on an individual level we believe that costs of the waste we discharge is smaller than the costs of purifying them before they go in. But when thinking about it on a global scale it results in mass pollution and more cost. The concept of private property also causes more harm than good because people see it as their right to harm the environment that they legally own but they will ultimately damage our entire ecosystem which no one owns. The pollution problem is a consequence of an ever growing population which requires us to constantly redefine our rules.

If our world went by "only the strongest survive" then the world wouldn't be concerned with controlling human breeding because if you couldn't support your children then they wouldn't survive and you would be less likely to breed. But since our societies are concerned with the welfare of others, more people are breeding and more support is being given to those that cannot support families on their own. This has resulted in over population and family size limit controversies. The breeding problem is hereditary and a conscience effort must be made to help reduce it, but it will be difficult to become fully reduced.

He then talks about mutual coercion and the things in society that we do not necessarily enjoy but that we all mutually agree to do in order to escape the horror of the commons. He also discusses how we do not forbid citizens to do some things but doing them with become increasingly risky and/or costly with time, which prevents them from being done. He gives examples of how our legal system of private property and inheritance is unjust, but everybody puts up with it because there is no better system.

He comes to a conclusion that the commons is only justifiable under conditions of a low population. As the human population rises the commons has had to be abandoned one aspect after another. Starting with food gathering and the shared resources they come from. The tragedy is then waste disposal becoming an increasingly large issue. Our aspects of pleasure and convenience have also changed the way we live. He then discusses the old and newly proposed thoughts of rights and freedoms and how they have changed. But what does freedom actually mean, some say "freedom is the recognition of necessity." The most important aspect is the recognition of the impact of breeding. He states that we must stop the freedom to breed in order to end the tragedy of the commons and that all of these tragedies are a result of over population.

Selection 6

The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis

Lynn White, Jr.


This article basically states that Christianity in the western world, is responsible for the influence that has resulted in environmental damage. This attitude along with the development of science and technology has produced ecological crises. It begins to discuss for as long as humans have been around we have been affecting our environment. As our society thrives we continue to do more damage to our ecosystem and most of the time we don't know what damage we're doing until its to late. But just recently we have started trying to integrate technology and science together for the better of the environment. But we are still not sure on what exactly we must do to help our ecosystem and what things will create more damaging backlashes and create a more serious situation then what we are already in.

Lynn then discusses how western technology and scientific movements originated in the middle ages so we must examine the assumptions and developments of the middle ages in order to know their ecological impacts. Since the medieval age, man has been increasing his technology to produce more efficiently from the earth. But with every advancement in technology his relationship with the earth changes. What people think about the earth determines how they will effect their ecosystem. Mans relationship with nature has always been that man is dominant over nature. Even in Christianity where God made both nature and man but allowed man to name all the plants and animals, man assumed dominance over nature. Until the 8th century most scientist would make hypothesis's of God in their theories but recently man has become dominant over everything.

Both science and technology have been used separately for many years and the ecological effects are out of control with some blaming Christianity. But recently man has begun to believe that we are not part of the natural process and that we are superior to nature. Even though we are starting to use science with technology to help our ecosystem we are not going to get rid of our problems unless we reject the Christian view of natures relationship with man. It then discusses the spiritual revolution of Saint Francis and his alternate view of nature and mans relationship to it. Since the roots of our problems are religious the solution must have some religious component. A good start could be to re-consider Saint Francis' ecological ideals and see what they could do for nature and our society.

Selection 36

The Population Explosion: Why We Should Care and What we Should Do About It.

Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich

This article discusses the earths population boom, the problems it has caused, and what could be done to try and stop the environmental damage. We all know some problems associated with population growth like starvation and over crowding but it is rarely linked with environmental problems. Most societies use of energy causes environmental damage, some countries cause less than others but with an increasing population the rate of damage will increase. Developed countries use way more energy than developing countries and I think that most people take having instant power for granted. They are not concerned about their countries growing population and energy consumption and what it means for future generations.

What we need to do is move to an optimal sustainable population size (about one third of our current population experts say). Energy expert Holdren thinks that we must also rapidly increase developing countries technology to become more efficient and developed nations must immediately reduce their consumption of both energy and resources. I think that this is a good idea but it would take a while for people to get used to not driving everywhere and I think some people just won't adapt. Some people claim that we are not running out of resources and that our technology is efficient enough. But we are creating un-fixable damage to our ecosystem and its biological components and we do not have enough resources and energy to support the increasing amount of people on earth.

In order to save the planet the most important thing we must do is control the birth rate. Some societies have had success by adopting cultural norms for family sizes, having good health care, education, and reducing poverty. Population control is helped when there is governmental and political support. I know that abortion is a controversial issue but it has been increasingly accepted over the past years. I don't agree with having a limit on family sizes because I think that some people want large families and that if you can support a large family then you should be able to have one. This doesn't go along with my support on reducing population growth but I think that we must try and reduce the amount of un-planned births by using the solutions I said earlier.

Together we must reduce the population through controlled birth strategies, reduce energy use, and resource consumption. Recent efficient technologies must be adopted and environmental damaging technologies must be stopped. And most importantly we must try and do these things and not just say we will.

Selection 32

Our Stolen Future

Theo, Colborn, Dianne Dumanoski, and John Peterson Myers

It talks about how years ago the toxicity of synthetic industrial chemicals were ignored because they are not thought to be commonly exposed to humans and a large exposure is needed to cause harm. In the 1980's Theo Colborn discovered serious and lethal physiological problems particularly involving the abnormal estrogenic activity. They identified the causing agents to be synthetic chemical compounds.

The article talks in more detail about how humans have been effecting animals around the globe through our use of chemicals in products and that we all have persistent synthetic chemicals stored in our body fat. Animals have been effected by these chemicals and have shown symptoms such as diseases, cancer, and deformities. Humans are beginning to show similar symptoms as the animals. Research has been done that is very controversial and some argue that animals, like mice, are not good predictors of humans during lab tests. Some testing has been done with the synthetic hormone drug diethylstilbestrol (DES) which showed a similar result in laboratory tests as well as in women who have taken the drug to prevent miscarriages. Testing is not always accurate and scientists have shown that sometimes higher doses test negative, resulting in a U shaped dose response curve. Even though not enough tests have been done to come to a complete conclusion it is estimated that humans are at risk. After meeting in July of 1991 with scientists and specialists from a wide range of disciplines they pieced together that the chemicals effecting the animals hormones are an increasing concern for the human population. This alerted everyone that in parts of the world humans are being exposed to dangerous chemicals that must be immediately controlled. What was most concerning is that humans could already be suffering damage from these chemicals for being exposed to them for so long without knowing. I think that this was a big shock to people and that if health officials would have taken an interest sooner it could have been avoided. Many scientists believe that some humans are already suffering especially people sensitive to chemicals. The exposure is hard to document because it is a broad impact across a large population, we do not know exactly were the contamination takes place but it can be in drinking water or even organic foods, it has effects that you cannot notice until it's too late, and the damage caused can be invisible. Because animals experience the symptoms quicker than humans we can try to predict the sources of pollution and the symptoms by studying them. We share our environment with other biological beings and what effects one of us will effect the other. We must learn from our mistakes in the past to make a better future. Since this article was published action has been taken to protect future generations by screening pesticides and developing procedures for detecting contaminants in drinking water. Unless we continue to monitor what we do chemicals like these will effect our hormone levels, fertility, and eventually our future populations.

Selection 42

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Jared Diamond

Diamond talks about how environmental and climate problems caused by growing populations have always been around but they are just recently becoming larger and recognized as global issues. Past societies have survived and been destroyed because of the choices they made. Today we must make these same choices which can be difficult and go against the norm of what we have been doing for centuries, but they are essential if we want a good life for future generations.

He goes into more detail about societies that have collapsed and vanished with no one knowing what has exactly happened. Climate change can contribute to a society collapsing, however it is not always a major contributor. Recent discoveries has led to these abandoned ruins being related to "unintended ecological suicide-ecocide." What they believe to have happened is that with over population and a shortage of food, societies must expand, develop, and increase their production. This leads to pollution and unsustainable practices which can drastically change climate creating droughts or freezing temperatures. With these problems coming from population growth the risk of collapse today is evident in third world countries and with the same problems plus new ones it is possible in the future for well-developed societies. But are these predictions accurate with today's technology and what we're doing now to prevent a global collapse? Is more needed?

I think that these predictions are accurate, even though we have good technology and knowledge of what we are doing to our environment, I believe not enough is being done for the amount we are over populated by. More people need to help out and there should be more incentives out there to help people contribute.

What Diamond talks about further is that it is hard to understand past societies collapses and what exactly made some collapse and others survive. And did those societies know what they were doing to their environment and did they do anything about it? This could be the difference to whether a society died or thrived. He then discuses four factors that can help lead to a collapse: environmental damage caused by the people, climate change which would effect the people, hostile neighbors which can help in causing the collapse, and friendly trade partners; which if they weaken then their partners who they supply weaken. A fifth factor that always helps prevent a collapse is the societies response to its environmental problems. Diamond then talks about himself and the different jobs he has had and how they have helped the environment and the environmental community. An interesting point he talks about is how he has worked for big businesses like oil companies and how some have said that "he has sold out to them," but his reply is that he only reports what he sees. He believes that if environmentalists are not willing to work with big businesses it won't be possible to solve the worlds environmental problems.

I totally agree with this because it is better and easier to solve a problem if you work with the company and not against it. This way you can convince them from the inside and you don't look like an outsider that's trying to stop their business entirely.

Barcelona Spain-Case Study

In class we discussed Barcelona's water crisis in 2007. Out of the four options I thought that a water pipeline was the least feasible. It's just not practical because it uses a lot of other resources and energy to get water and Barcelona had a rare problem that didn't occur every year. If they did continue to use a pipeline to get water then the reservoir where the water was coming from would eventually run out. The next option that was unlikely of happening was getting the needed water from desalinization plants. I'm sure there are some of these built to help but from what I know about them they require a lot of energy and resources to built and produce fresh water. So you just don't get enough out of them from what you put in. I think that this technology has a lot of room for improvement and that one day it could be an excellent resource, but then we would have to worry about our salt water levels more. Another option that they had was water conservation. I think that they didn't have a choice in using this option and that it should always be used to some degree. What they used it with was the final option bulk water imports. This one made the most sense and I think would require the least energy out of the three, and this is what they did.

Environmental Issues in the World Around Us

For our third class we were asked to find an issue/problem/solution in the news and summarize it in class. I would like to talk about the issue I found on http://www.enn.com/ called "Feedback Accelerates Arctic Ice Melt" which talks about research published in 2009 by Nasa and the National Snow and Ice Data Center. They studied the arctic ice sea melt season from 1970-2009. The season is now 20 days longer, melting earlier and freezing later. The ocean water absorbs more heat than the snow/ice because of the albedo effect, so the water keeps getting warmer and warmer creating thinner and less ice each year. Some people don't realize the amount of impacts this can have on the globe like; warming ocean temperatures, rising sea level, warming atmosphere temperature, arctic animals habitat destruction, arctic tree line receding north, warmer fall temperatures, and others. This problem was related to many that were discussed in class and it is alarming to think about what is happening to our earth. It most definitely has something to do with human pollution and CFC's being released into our atmosphere, but I think that there are other contributing factors. The big question on my mind is because it is a loop and it will continually get worse what can we do other than reducing pollution to try and stop it?

Powerwise-David Suzuki

Whenever I read or watch anything that has something to do with David Suzuki I am reminded of this TV commercial.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=inIufZb5wUk

I checked out the website http://www.powerwise.ca/ and it's awesome! There's so many useful tips for saving power and you can even post your own for others to see. They post the latest news about energy conservation and other resources to help you find out how much energy you could be saving. If everyone were to do little things to help save some energy then that would equal a lot of energy saved. Best of all everything on the website is free and most of the things are simple to do. If you know anyone who hasn't heard of this website pass it on!

David Suzuki's The Sacred Balance

Online Activity

I just finished watching The Sacred Balance and it was very interesting. The main point it is trying to make is that different parts of the world see the earth differently, for some it's sacred, holy, or even industrial. But it's just not good enough for some people to respect the earth, everyone must contribute. Because we live in a global climate different societies of the world can effect other areas so we need a global effort to conserve and stop pollution. Two of my favorite quotes from the video are "We must pay attention to the whole picture" and "The way we imagine the world determines the way we live in it." These are crucial pieces of advice for people living in industrial and economically advanced regions of the world. Some people in a very large populated area like Toronto have forgotten that they are apart of Earth. All they see is concrete and sky scrappers, so if they see their world as a never ending supply of convenient items that they can get anywhere then they are not looking at the entire picture. Their stuff comes from the soil where diversity begins and the world needs everyone to help keep its diversity. We must go back in time to when people all around the globe respected the earth.

Precautionary Principle

Precautionary Principle-If an action has a chance of causing harm, with uncertain scientific proof that it won't, then there are measures that can be taken to intervene.

I think the precautionary principle is a safe theory that can protect the environment and human lives. Even though it could stop some technologies that would help humans thrive, say for example a pesticide so that less crops would get eaten by bugs. We have to take these precautions if there is not enough scientific evidence that these pesticides won't harm humans, animals, or the environment, and potentially do more harm then good. We have to take these precautions because the risk is greater than the reward. I remember from my geography class that they used to use a pesticide called DDT to de-lice people back in the 1950's, this obviously had negative consequences but they didn't know that at the time and it's reminder of what the precautionary principle does for us.

I think that it should be widely applied in environmental regulation because we do not always know what consequences are going to come from our actions. The precautionary principle helps us look at something outside of the box and examine everything it will effect. We need to take precautions when dealing with the environment because somethings can have both positive and negative consequences and sometimes we do not realize the negative outcomes until their damage has been done.

Using the precautionary principle can always have negative consequences. For example you may try and help one particular part of the environment but because you might effect something else you cannot do what you originally wanted to, and that part would suffer. When widely applying this principle for the environment I believe that less would be done because more precautions would be taken and this would be a serious negative consequence. We will have to find ways to better the environment without being selfish of a particular aspect, and it is hard to please everyone at once.

Critical Thinking and the Media

How well does the media do in each of the 7 areas of the criteria for critical thinking?

Clarity-I think that the media always makes sure that they are precise and clear. It is beneficial for their reputation to make sure that they are free from obscurity. It also widens their audience if what their talking about is easy to understand.

Accuracy- I believe that most respectable media writers try to get as close to the truth as they can. But I understand that you cannot always know the entire truth unless you have a first hand source.

Precision- I think that the media is specific enough and does include adequate detail in most cases. In the cases where it is a popular subject that mostly everyone has heard about they sometimes only provide minimal details to tell you what they are talking about so they can discuss it in detail further.

Relevance- The media is usually relevant and they tend to stick with the issue under discussion. They may drift off on a couple points but they always relate to their general topic.

Breadth- I believe that the media rarely has a second opinion and if they do, then it's a very discreet point of view. This is an area that the media has to improve on because there is always someone on the other side of an opinion.

Depth- Depending on the complexity of the issue, Depth in the media is covered well. The media usually foresees things to come in the future and considers solutions from the easy and realistic ones to the nearly impossible.

Logic- I think that the media uses logic well to enforce its statements with facts. When you use good logic to get your opinion across then you have a better chance of persuading people to support you.