BLOG REFLECTION#1: the media and the environment.

  it is very known that the mass media is made up of profit-seeking business firm. their main products are spectators who are later sold to advertisers. living in a global age, we live in a world that had become interconnected, interdependent, and communicated in the formations and flows of the media.

yes, global climate and the environmental crisis are being informed and understood by the public; however, the media does also disguise the nature of the threats that face us, and relegate the voices that attempt to mobilize forces to make a radical change to a lower edge.

                                                         ref:  Climate change and the media(book). 2009

BLOG REFLECTION#2: disconnecting from nature.

   disconnecting from nature, in other words, shifting our behavior from instructed playtime outdoors to a more regimented usually indoors play, and mostly with electronics. the result is a complete disconnection from nature and environment, leading children to suffer from hyperactivity, and self discipline problems.  the real problem is that, people have somehow had the idea that the world is limitless and infinite. thus, they have started damaging the planet, to the extend that some areas have become inhabitable. for that matter, disconnecting from nature is sometimes an unavoidable choice that one should make to maintain durability.

activity: John Francis walks the earth (planet walker).

john francis, the planet walker who founded planetwalk. john kept silent while walking and sailing around the world, he ended up not speaking for 17 years. he completed 3 college degrees, was the only person who wrote about oil spills, and wrote regulations for the united state. witnessing an enormous oil spill was a turning point for him to totally change his life and start walking around the world trying to make a difference and see what he would learn from his experience. not using motorized vehicles, relying only on his feet made him realize that in order to make a difference in the world, we have to start now.

section 42. COLLAPSE: how societies choose to fail or succeed.

 EASTERN ISLAND's heads


          
roman ruins of volubilis city in MOROCCO

                          
Norse greenland is only one of the many past societies that passed out of light. collapsing societies have left behind them monuments that have shown how powerful and wealthy their builders were. This sudden decrease in human population or the full fledge collapses in other words, are different from the minor decline that our world encounter nowadays such as one society's captivated by a neighbor, or the economic/social reassembling of an individual  society.

 the question is what could have possibly let a strong society end up collapsing?, is it not just a romantic mystery.  

   in fact, archeologists, climatologists and palyntologists have confirmed that past societies have come to an end by destroying their environmental resources on which they depended on. starting by growing dramatically in size and adopting a certain strategy in agriculture production to meet the needs of people (irrigation, double cropping...). all of that resulted in abandoned marginal lands; therefore, famine, diseases, and food shortage led to wars among people to access these becoming scarce resources they still have.

we are facing today the exact same environmental issues that subverted previous societies, not to mention new issues such as, human-caused climate change, accumulation of toxic chemicals in the environment, energy depletion and full utilization of the earth's photosynthetic capacity. if those problems are not globally viewed and somewhat fixed, the world may not be able to sustain current generation of children living their late years.
all this is not just an illustration of what happened and is expected to be happening to future generations, but there is a point to learn from, considering the fact that not all societies have collapsed. what should be done is to look at the major factors that contributed to the collapse of most past societies and try to make a difference and fix our actions, making them more beneficial rather than detrimental for the environment.
however, we definitely differ from past societies in terms of our advance in different fields such as modern medicine and technology. that, puts us at a lower risk than other past societies. on the other hand, considering the side effects of technology and globalization, that can also put us at a higher risk as well. not to mention that some of the environmental changes that once had a dramatic effect on a population may not be that harmful for other civilizations. taking climate change as an example, it may not always be a problematic issue for all societies. climate has always been constantly changing. thus, as it may be beneficial for a particular human society, it may also be hurting another.

section 36.THE POPULATION EXPLOSION: why we should care and what to do about it.

http://www.eoearth.org/article/human_population_explosion

Since the collision with an extraterrestial object extirpated the dinosaurs as well as the earth's flora and fauna, a serious crisis or a biological catastrophe has seen the light. The latter concerns the disappearance of populations, species of animals, microorganisms and the overpopulation of civilization in human life. Population explosion, a term that only few understand its significant. Why is the population explosion being so important, and how it operates, and what should be done about it are the next three questions to be answered.

First and foremost, the most important consequences of overpopulation are not manifested in, for instance, the flow of the refugees flow from Mexico to California, nor the resultant strain on schools and health budgets even though there is a population component in these issues. Moreover, in some nations, population problems are viewed to the great extent as issues of the reproductive rights of individuals. However, these views fail to meet the main point.

POPULATION IMPACTS ON LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS.



       A strong reason to care about the population explosion is its contribution  to extend the human enterprise scale and as a result to humanity's impact on the environmental systems that support civilization. I=P.A.T ( (P)= the number of people. (A) per capita affluence. (T) index of the environmental damage caused by the technologies applied to serve the consumption). All these component serve to measure the environmental impact (I).

===> TALKING ENERGY.

Most of a society's environmentally damaging activities are linked with the use of Energy at the highest levels. Activities that engage manufacture and powering of vehicles, applied constructing and maintaining infrastructure, lighting and heating. As well as other activities such as converting forests into other kinds of utilities. The formula mentioned before has, indeed, some drawbacks shown in 2 imperfections regarding energy which are underestimating and overestimating environmental impacts at the same time. During the time when per capita energy consumption has increased about five fold globally, the population has grown itself four-fold.it is then obvious that population unchecked growth can be highly regarded to be responsible for 45% of humanity's environmental peril. The impact are as the following: widespread habitat destruction to overcome the urban sprawl, modification of the composition and processes of the atmosphere, groundwater, soil erosion, disruption of the hydro, carbon and Nitrogen cycles...

humanity is “sawing off the limb on which it perches”, and trends such as the loss of half of the planet's forests, the depletion of most of its major fisheries and the alteration of its atmosphere and climate are closely related to the fact that human population expanded from mere millions in prehistoric times to over six billion today.

==> WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT?.

a) move toward an optimum sustainable population size, considering the current conditions, it is appraised that upper bound of an optimum population, that permits for a maximum quality rather than quantity of life in the long run. Which is literary around one third of the current number.

b) to waver the unbalanced energy distribution, using 13 terawatts has came to a point where humanity has developed an unsustainable civilization. In fact, 5.8 billion people today are maintained by this 13(tW), with a billion in extreme deficiency

c) maintaining the soil, fossil groundwater and biodiversity, as soils only generate on a scale of inches per millennium are being eroded at the pace of inches per decade with an annual rate of twenty five billion tons of lost topsoil. Groundwater that accumulated during the ice ages is also being argued to be drawn off. Taking as an example the Ogallala aquifer, which is being pumped at a pace of four to six feet per year to irrigate crop fields and only naturally recharged at a rate of about one hald inch per year.
d) control and manage birth rates and gain awareness of the serious issue of overpopulation by people. 

Seven Myths About Alternate Energies.

1. "We Need to Do Everything Possible to Promote Alternative Energy."
2. "Renewable Fuels Are the Cure for Our Addiction to Oil."
3 "If Today's Biofuels Aren't the Answer, Tomorrow's Biofuels Will Be."
4. "Nuclear Power Is the Cure for Our Addiction to Coal."
5. "There Is No Silver Bullet to the Energy Crisis."
6. "We Need a Technological Revolution to Save the World."
7. "Ultimately, We'll Need to Change Our Behaviors to Save the World."
read more..

                    THE BIG MELT
            
""the gods must be furious!""
         according to a Tibetan farmer surveying the catastrophe unforling above his village in china, it's the only explanation that makes sense to him. "we've upset the natural order", 52- year-old Buddhist says.