The Earth Charter

 "Behold how good and how pleasant it is, for brethren to dwell together in Unity."

The Earth Charter talks about the necessity for us to become one working together to preserve the diversity of life. The first rule is “Respect Earth in all its diversity. Recognize that all beings are interdependent and every life form has value regardless of its worth to human beings.” I find this to be the root of all changes that need to be taken. Without an understanding of life and caring for this world, then we cannot begin to start caring about preserving it and any of the rules that follow. When it comes to our Ecological integrity the Earth Charter suggests that we internalize the full environmental and social cost of goods, and should reflect that in its price. I agree with this, maybe if things such as water were more expensive reflecting its scarcity then maybe we wouldn’t use as much so frivolously. Another crucial rule is “to empower every human being with the education and resources to secure a sustainable livelihood.” I believe that this fundamental, and crucial to fill in the gap that exists between the rich and the poor.  Many countries are without food and water while others are sitting on an excess use of it. There is no reason that this should be so, and every human life deserves the access to these same resources. Currently we view the human species in segmented parts, labeled by the country that we live in. However, if we viewed the world in its entirety then we would care about every living person and supply them with what they need. We need to “recognize the ignored, protect the vulnerable, serve those who suffer, and enable them to develop their capacities and to pursue their aspirations.” If we do this, then it can increase the efficiency of the entire world. Some people can be really good at something but lack the necessary resources to accomplish it. If we helped those that cannot help themselves then we can add another person that can function in societies to help allow it to flourish. I really like how the Earth Charter ends with “We must find ways to harmonize diversity with unity, the exercise of freedom with the common good, short term objectives with long term goals.” Just because we are all different does not mean we cannot be in unity, and I believe that understanding is the beginning to this change. It’s not easy to understand things that are different from you, and it requires a drop in the ego and pride to be able to do so. But if we all were a little more understanding then maybe we wouldn’t be so separate but unified as one world. Then we could work together to enact all of the guidelines that are discussed in the Earth Charter, and make this world a better place for all.

Why Save Endangered Species?: By Jane Goodall

http://www.cbd.int/2010/partners/

Jane Goodall writes about saving endangered species, and the restoring of natural habitats that humans have helped to destroy.  I like how she doesn’t just mention environmentalists that have helped on the missions to restore habitats, but also mentions businessmen that decided to clean up their mess that they themselves have made.  I noted in each of her examples of miraculous restorations that the destruction of wildlife and plant life, was mostly due to humans. Some were unintentional, and some cases were due to more indirect actions. “The extreme environmental degradation of the Loess Plateau came about because the people sank ever deeper into poverty and hopelessness.” Here Goodall links poverty to the destruction of the environment. I found this to interesting because I myself have never linked the two. Usually people link monopolies and big businesses, which are out to make a profit. She explains that overpopulation and poverty go hand in hand, and people will tend to care less about the land when they are struggling to survive.  I really like how she saw that overpopulation was also a part of why destruction to the environment happens, and sought to show the importance of having small families. How she did this was by focusing on the importance on increasing education to women.  “It has been shown that as a women’s education improves, family size tends to drop-and after all it was the growth of populations which led to the grim conditions groups were trying to address.”

                Just like animals that are close to extinction need our help, so do the plant life that are close to extinction. “For most people, mention of endangered species brings to mind giant pandas, tigers, mountain gorillas, and other such charismatic members of the animal kingdom. Seldom do we think of trees and plants in the same category.” While working to restore habitats she says that “time and time again we find that it is plants that start the process…Slowly they build up soil and clean the water, paving the way for other life forms to follow.” We need plants to survive, and I think that few truly recognize the importance of that. Yeah we understand that plants give off oxygen, but we don’t understand the other ways that plants enable life. Jane Goodall gives a good example of herbivores that eat plants directly, and then carnivores eat those animals. Without plants, the animals that we eat would go extinct, leaving us with no food.

Some people will never truly understand the importance or reasons for preserving ecosystems, but Jane Goodall gives many good reasons beyond scientific data. One was on the need for nature to nurture our souls. She describes it as a spiritual experience “It is these experiences that fill my heart and mind with peace-being, even for a short time, part of the forest, connected once more with the mystery, feeding my soul.” I understand this experience all too well, and Its often experiences in nature that help to finding my purpose in life. In nature you are reminded of the “real” world versus the man-made structures that surround us daily.  Nature gives me hope, it is there that I am aware of the beauty of life and that there away from the hustle and bustle of human life, natural life blooms and grows. This brings me to the last quote that I really enjoyed. “Without hope nothing will change. That is why we feel it is so desperately important to share our own, irrepressible hope for the animals of the world.”

The Obligation to Endure: by Rachel Carson

"No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life  in a stricken world. The people had done it to themselves." We've contaminated the air we breath, earth, rivers, and sea with some of the most dangerous chemicals. We've become a world of cloning, gene modifications, and continuous inventions of new chemicals. "Almost 500(chemicals) annually find their way into actual use in the U.S. alone." That's a huge number of chemicals to have to adapt to yearly, and even if you are not digesting the chemicals directly, these chemicals still get into your body. Carson talks mainly about pesticides, which were made to kill insects, weeds, rodents etc. "These non-selective chemicals have the power to kill every insect, the "good" and the "bad." It's something I've never actually thought about with pesticides. It doesn't just kill one specific insect, it kills them all. This is what we spray over our crops and that is seeping into the soil,  eventually landing in  our own bodies. A non-selective killing agent. "We are told that the enormous and expanding use of pesticides is necessary to maintain farm production. Yet is our real problem not one of overproduction?" It's an undeniable truth, we are a wasteful country. I'm sure the amount of food thrown away in the U.S daily could feed most of the hungry in this world. If we are just throwing out the extra food, what do we need to maintain? Why do we need to use this chemical in efforts to make even more that we will throw out too? Carson says that the insect problem only arose with the intensification of agriculture, the devotion of immense acreages to a single crop. Nature usually has a great deal of variety, and certain plants are suitable for certain insects. When they are spaced out the amount of each insect can not grow to a great amount. But take out the variety and insert one crop and the insect that feeds of that plant now has that much more room to grow it's populations. We wouldn't of needed these pesticides if we didn't take out the variety that nature gave us and replace it with a simplified single crop farms. As Albert Schweitzer said, "Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation." And instead of trying to understand crops and their native habitats so that we can come up with efficient and natural ways to fixing a problem, we continue to come up with more and more toxic chemicals and technologies that have dire consequences for the Earth and ourselves. "We allow the chemical death rain to fall as though there was no alternative...Have we fallen into a mesmerized state that makes us accept as inevitable that which is inferior or detrimental, as though having lost the will or vision to demand that which is good?"

What is Biodiversity and why is it Important?: By Vandana Shiva

What is Biodiversity and why is it Important? According to Shiva biodiversity means the diversity of life. There are 3.6 million-100 million species that are in existence, and out of that 3.6 Million around1.7 million have been described by scientists. Bacteria makes up 3,058 recognized Species, 70,000 fungi, 500,000 viruses, and 950,000 insects. When you add those up you get close to 1.5. That's the majority of known species, making Animals and Humans outnumbered by far. These Microbes may be a lot smaller then us, but in numbers we can't even compete. "Humankind is among millions of other species. It does not have the right to push other species to extinction, or to manipulate them for greed, profit, and power." I love this, because it shows how humans believe that they have a higher importance over other life forms. But the smallest life forms are just important as you and I, and without them we would not survive. But yet "Microbes have no conservation movements or campaigns for "Microbe rights" for their protection"

One of the things Shiva blames for the decreasing amount of biodiversity, is Globalization. "Global Market Integration converts millions of acres of farms and forests into industrialized monocultures displacing and destroying the diversity and cultural diversity of local communities."Many animals and plants that once thrived, are now extinct, even some in the last few years. The Second cause, is what Shiva calls "the monoculture of the mind; the idea that the world is or should be uniform and one dimensional, that diversity is either disease or deficiency, and monocultures are necessary for mass production of more food and economic benefits. This hits home with the exact mentality of the world today. While uniformity can be good in certain situations, it takes away everything that makes each and every part of life unique and special.

A Tale of Two Farms: by Jared Diamond

Why do some societies thrive and others fail? What has happened to the civilizations that just randomly abandoned their city? Did they die off or migrate to somewhere else? Jared Diamond addresses the collapse of societies in the book titled Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Diamond says that collapse is partly triggered by ecological problems. “People inadvertently destroying the environmental resources on which their societies depend.” I noted the use of the word “inadvertently” destroying, which suggests that the harm inflicted was not intentional. That may have been true for past civilizations but can we really say that about our society today? We are much more aware of what we use and what its impact is on our future. Diamond suggests that we may be closer to our collapse then we think. “The environmental problems facing us today include the same 8 that undermined past societies plus four new ones.” Seeing as we face the same problems and then some of collapsed civilizations, you would think we would be a little more cautious with the ways that we survive as a society.  But just because the past yielded one result does not necessarily mean that it will yield the same result for us, our problems are similar but not the same. However, it is important to understand the reasons behind the failure of societies so as not to repeat the same mistakes.  But in the efforts to understand the past collapses Diamond says there is one major controversy. “The controversy involves resistance to the idea that past peoples( Some of them known to be ancestral to people currently alive and vocal) did things that contributed to their own decline.  Because of the fact that they are conscious of the environment, then their ancestors must have been too. But there is more knowledge about the world today, and perhaps that’s why it’s seen as bad when we harm the environment, because it’s not inadvertent anymore. People don’t like to think that their ancestors were evil and flakey with the land.  A New Guinea hunter once told Diamond; “Only those evil modern First World inhabitants are ignorant of Nature, don’t respect the environment, and destroy it.” This I highly take offense in, as it puts the problem only on one specific population of peoples. We are all human and we all take a part in living on this earth, so the responsibility is all of ours. One of the things that Diamond talks about, which first world countries have in common, is big businesses. These corporations are not seen as good for the environment, and many are seen as greedy, power hungry people. So when Diamond studies these corporations, environmentalists say he has sold out to them. He rationalizes his actions by saying “My view is that, if environmentalists aren’t willing to engage with big businesses, which are among the most powerful forces in the modern world, it won’t be possible to solve the world’s environmental problems.” Many people when they don’t like something they stay far enough away, using an emotional reasoning for it. But Diamond uses logical reasoning, and I couldn’t agree more. It’s not possible to change the world on your own, you always need a following and who larger then these corporations. Who is more likely to have power, the greedy power hungry, or the civilians? The answer is obvious that these corporations have more power than I do in swaying or creating change.  I can sit here all day long and complain about how the monetary system seems to rule everything, and the top CEO’s of these companies have more money then 1/3 of the U.S, but that won’t do anything. It is what it is, and getting these businesses to be more aware is definitely the key to environmental change. 

The Picture at the top depicts what is known as "The Venus Project." 

  

The Venus Project proposes an alternative vision of what the future can be if we apply what we already know in order to achieve a sustainable new world civilization. It calls for a straightforward redesign of our culture in which the age-old inadequacies of war, poverty, hunger, debt and unnecessary human suffering are viewed not only as avoidable, but as totally unacceptable. Anything less will result in a continuation of the same catalogue of problems inherent in today's world. Today many people believe what is needed is a higher sense of ethical standards and the enactment of international laws to assure a sustainable global society.

a link to the website can be found here http://www.thevenusproject.com/

PLAN B 4.0: by Lester R. Brown

This book goes into many different areas for sustainability. I decided to focus on a specific topic that caught my eye. It’s the growing concern of being able to feed 8 billion people well on our continuously depleting resources. This involves raising land and water productivity, and  producing protein more efficiently.

                “Gains in land productivity have come primarily from three sources; the growing use of fertilizer, the spread of irrigation, and the development of higher yielding varieties.” Fertilizer started being used in the effort to remove the nutrient constraints on crops, but its use has started to go down in some countries. One of those countries is the United States, this makes me wonder what we have in place of the fertilizer and how well it works. Another source of gain is in irrigation. Irrigation is used to remove soil moisture limits on crop yields, and this is beneficial for places that don’t get enough rainfall and dry areas. The amount of irrigated areas, according to the book hasn’t really increased since 2000. However, he states that “Future gains in irrigation will likely come more from raising irrigation efficiency than from expanding water supplies.” I like this take on it as this chapter focuses on reducing demand, and building more systems requires the use of resources. Further it is important that the irrigation systems the world already has in place are working to their maximum potential before expanding more.  The last gain comes from higher yielding varieties. I didn’t like this part very much because it can involve the use of genetically modified crops and I am not a fan of that. Although it’s able to produce a higher yield on crops, the health benefits of such things are probably not so great. One suggestion in raising land productivity was “Expand the area of land that produces more than one crop per year.”  I think that this  is an awesome idea, it’s a logical and efficient way to increase multiple crops instead of just one. Many crops can only grow in certain places, and if you increase land on one crop then other crops that may be able to be grown there can’t. When it comes to raising water efficiency, it talks mainly about efficiency of irrigation systems and gives alternatives to furrow irrigation.

Lastly, this chapter talks about producing protein more efficiently, which I believe is most important because it has to do with the food itself. Initially when you think of protein you think of beef, however “both health concerns and price differences are shifting consumer demand from pork and beef to poultry and fish, sources that convert grain into protein most efficiently.” I like how this focuses on what animals eat and convert into energy most efficiently rather than focusing on just more efficient farming systems. Cattle 7 kilos of grain for output of 1 kilo gain, pork uses 3, and poultry uses 2 while some fish use less than 2. Since the poultry and fish clearly need less grain, this can decrease the need for wheat crops, and the extra land can be available for the growth of another crop. “As the market shifts production to the more grain efficient products, it raises the productivity of both land and water.”

                Clearly being able to feed 8 billion people involves a lot of different changes in the way we farm, what we demand, and the attention to the systems we have in place for the growth and production of animals and crops. 

 http://myuctv.tv/category/monthly-highlights/

The Nature of The Everglades: By Marjory Stoneman Douglas

Marjory Douglas describes The Everglades, and discusses just how unique this land is as there is no other one like it in the world. I find it incredible myself how the weather, soil, water all work in balance to create it. Marjory begins discussing the everglades by describing the plant life. “The truth of the river is the grass.” The grass is called Cladium Jamaicensis, or otherwise known as saw grass. This plant does exists in other places in the world but what makes it unique  for the Everglades is that there is the greatest concentration of it than anywhere else. This tells me that the weather and climate must be perfect for it here, and that it is truly native to Florida. But there is more to the everglades that makes it so interesting. Florida it seems, doesn’t follow the natural pattern of what science would predict to happen. “This land by the maps is in the temperate zone. But the laws of the rain and of the seasons here are tropic laws…men who draw maps draw lines across deserts, mountains, and equatorial rainforests to show where the Temperate Zone is cut off sharply from the middle equatorial belt.” By nature we should be a desert, but the rain and the Gulf Stream allow Florida to flourish and enabled the growing of the Everglades. But “It is clear that rainfall alone could not have maintained the persistent fine balance between wet and dry that has created and kept the Everglades the long heart of this long land. If Lake Okeechobee and the lakes and marshes north that contribute to it, if rivers and swamps and ponds did not exist to hoard all the excess water in a great series of reservoirs by which the flow was checked and regulated, there would have been no Everglades.” This right here makes me realize how intricate and special the land I live on is. I find it crazy to comprehend just how perfect timing and the weather were to create it, and how if one thing was different then so would my home.