Reflection: Weeks 5& 6

Week 5
One thing we did this week was the CSPI eye opener. I toured the food supply for this eye opener. The website I visited had a lot of interesting and hard to think about facts. Another thing we did this week was watch the Documentary "Diet for a new America". After hearing all of the facts from the documentaries and activities, it's really making me think a lot more about what I eat. I have even been trying to eat a little healthier and eat fast food less.

Week 6
This week we watched the documentary "Future of Food". this video showed some of the effects that farming can have on the environment and our health. This video was especialy interesting to me because I come from a small farm town. It made me mad to see the people from Monsanto sueing farmers for having thier seeds in their fields when they couldn't do anything to stop it from happening. I was also very surprised to learn that there is no law requiring products to be labled that contain genetically modified crops. I really think that more people need to have their eyes opened to this information.

Eye Opener: Review of Reading 28 "A Forest Path out of Poverty"

Summary

The reading started out talking about a man named David Andi. He is a man from Equador who was having a hard time making a living. To make money, he could either log the rainforest or trade with Columbia. He knew that logging was bad for the rainforest, but if he traded with Columbia, it would spread the Columbian civil war into Equador.

The reading then talked about a project taking place to stop deforestation. The project is called the Callari Project. It was started by a woman named Judy Logback. While she was visiting Equador, she tried to persuade some of the communities to stop cutting down the rainforest. one of the local teachers told her, "If you want to save the rainforest, help us find a way to make a living without destroying it."

She saw some of the things that the villagers were making and started selling them to tourists. the villagers were used to getting only about $1 per item from intermediaries, were surprised when they received the full amount of what is was sold for from Logback. within two years there were products being shipped to 10 different countries.

The Callari Project has received many grants because of its reputation for doing the most with the least. It has the highest results per dollar spent.

Just How Much Is A Rainforest Worth?

Eye Opener: CSPI

For this post, we were supposed to pick an activity from the calander. I choose to tour the food supply. This website had a bunch of facts about food. I told where it came from, how it was made, and even had other health facts. It was actually very interesting.

After "Touring the Food Supply", I should probably be one of the least healthy people in the world. All of my meals consist mainly of meat because I really don't like vegtables. I have recently been trying to squeeze more vegtables into my diet, but I still don't enjoy them.



One thing that shocked me the most is the amount of animals being slaughtered. Where is all of this meat going? I'm preatty sure I don't eat half of an entire cow every year. Who is making up the differance?



One thing I not sure about is that vegitarians are less sick, and get sick less often. All I eat is meat, and I am almost never sick. I think what they were saying is that it's more long term types of illnesses. I can believe that with all of the fat in the meat and eating everything deepfried.



I have already been trying to eat healthier, but reading this makes me really want to cut back on the amount of meat that I eat. If I keep up the diet that I have now, I don't think it be too good for me.

Review: "An Inconvenient Truth"

For the 3 past class periods, we have been watching the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth". I wasn't sure what I would think about this movie. I had heard that it was just Al Gore preaching about how we're killing the planet. After watching the movie, I was way wrong. One of the first things discussed in the movie was Roger Revelle. Revelle was the first person to propose measuring the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Starting in 1958, he found that as time went on the carbon dioxide levels would rise. One of the things I found most interesting was that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere depends on the season. This is because in the fall, the trees loose their leaves and absorb less of the carbon dioxide. In the spring, the trees start to get their leaves back and absorb more carbon dioxide.

Another thing Mr. Gore discussed was why the poles are being affected faster than other regions. He explained that the ice caps at the poles act as mirrors. The caps reflect most of the incoming solor radiation and keep the earth cool. As the ocean gets warmer, the caps get smaller and reflect less radiation. This speeds up the melting process. Something I found interesting was that a warmer ocean creates larger storms. I think that this is quite evident with storms like Hurricane Katrina.

The warming of the earth also create even more problems. One thing that has happened from this is structural damage. Some structures that had been constructed on the permafrost are now collapsing because of the melting permafrost. Global warming also causes drought in some areas. Another problem is that the precipitation that is no longer falling in some areas is being relocated to other areas. There was even a place in India that had 37 inches of rain in a 24hour period.



For the people who still don't believe in global warming, there was a study done in which a sample of 928 peer reviewed journals, and none of them disagree with the FACT that global warming does exsist. When they looked at the public press, they found that about 53% of the articles stated that global warming hasn't been proven.



In my opinion, I think that everyone should see this documentary. It has truley opened my eyes.

Reflection: Weeks 3& 4

The last two weeks have been getting better. I think I finally have a better handle on the blogging. We have done a few reviews, with some good discusions. The class is now a lot more fun and more interesting now that we're covering more of the book content and not just playing on the computers. I also really like the Eye Opener post that we did. It really put into perspective the amount of resources we all use. In weeks 3& 4, we watched the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth". I thought this was a very good video. I think that the weeks to come will be even better.

Eye Opener: Ecological Footprint

The ecological footprint is the measure of the amount of land and sea needed to regenerate what we consume. Currently it would take about 1.3 earths to keep sustaining life.

I used the Earth Day Network Footprint Calculator, and found that it would take 4.1 Earths to sustain a lifestyle like mine. This is quite surprising to me. I had an environmental health class when I was in high school, and since then I have tried to conserve more resources. In other ways this doesn't surprise me. Although I drive a motorcycle that gets about 50mpg, I can only drive that for half of the year. The rest of the year, I drive a 1992 Buick Century. I don't think that any of the exhaust even makes it through the catalitic converter. I have also tried to recycle, but it is very hard to do when none of the people I live with will do the same. The quiz did have some helpful tips to reduce waste. One of the tips was to buy Energy Star rated appliances. This is actualy something I try to do. The quiz also told what would happen if everybody followed these tips.

I did a few other quizes and didn't really like them as much as the Earth Day Network footprint calculator. I found some of them confusing to read and understand.

Review of Reading 1: The Challenges We Face

The first reading was like an introduction to some of the problems we face on this planet. Some of the topics that were discussed include: food, water, energy, and climate.
In this chapter I learned that the population of the world is currently on the decline from what it was 50 years ago. I also read that it is predicted to peak at about 11 billion people. I was also shocked to learn that AIDS is as huge of a problem as it is. "Worldwide at least 68 million people are expected to die of AIDS by 2020" (McKinney, 4). Which as I read may also help to reduce overpopulation. This reading had interesting and unknown facts all over in it.

Although many people may see genetic engineering of crops to be only a detriment to the human species, this reading points out that doing so would actually produce more food and produce more food more efficiently; this would be beneficial to the many people in the world who can not obtain food because of costs and it would help them obtain food with a real nutritional value. These crops are also beneficial because they use less water for the same amount of output. Using these types of crops with more efficient irrigation would allow humans to have more water for themselves to use for drinking and bathing.

Energy sources and pollution also rank among the top of many of the challenges we face in today's world. In the world, nearly 42% of the world's population has no access to modern energy. Today much is being done to curb the use of energy and also to replace more hazardous ways of producing energy with new, cost effective and renewable sources. Such examples are windmills, hydroelectricity, even using flourescent light bulbs is a good way to conserve and produce more energy with less of an impact on our environment. I, personally, would like to see much more development and usage of the solar panel in our world. I think that this renewable source seems to go overlooked far too often.