Soapbox Project

Bethel and I worked on our project together. Our presentation is titled "Accessibility and Usage of Alternative Energies" and we looked at the differences between alternative energies used in developed and developing countries. Here is the link:

http://prezi.com/p75t5flduzux/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

Four Degrees

In this chapter of Six Degrees, Mark Lynas talks about what our world will look like under four degrees of warming. There are many different topics discussed in this chapter including rising sea levels from melting glaciers which will effect people living on the coast, droughts and heatwaves resulting in decreased crop production and extra carbon being released into the air from melting permafrost draining into rivers and lakes.


I think that the five main points of this chapter are the following.

1. The Antarctic and Arctic ice caps and glaciers are melting. The more the ice starts to melt on the edges the faster it will completely melt all the way to the center. As the ice melts it raises the sea level which makes it more and more likely for cities in coastal regions to be under water. Once the sea level rises past a certain level it is almost always guaranteed to stay that way. There is no going back, at least until another ice age comes along.

2. Increased drought almost world wide. There will be many climate changes around the world, but the one with the most impact is droughts. For example, southern Europe will become more like the desert-like climate of northern Africa or the Middle East. The decreased rainfall and snowfall in winter, means even drier summers, getting more extreme as the years go on. Adding to this the extreme heatwaves coming to the world, gives the impression of a major climate change for Europe.

3. A huge impact comes from "worldwide agricultural drought" as Lynas puts it. As climate change impacts the world population growth is becoming a problem that is growing to almost the same point. With more people in the world and more countries becoming developed the world needs to be able to provide more food. However, with the droughts and soil loss there is less and less areas for farmland. One of the things Lynas said that stuck with me was "if every Chinese were to live like an American, it would double the human environmental impact on the planet" (pg.194).

The countries that are mostly impacted by the drought are also the countries that produce most of the world's food

4. Erosion of soil from rain. In a world with four degrees of warming, there will be change in rainfall (a general decrease), and the rain that does fall, will come down hard and fast, not giving the ground time to absorb it. The rainfall that comes brings large storms along with it. Even in places where the soil is still fit for growing crops after the heatwaves have come through, they will not last long because the increased ferocious rainfall will wash out the good soil and leave desert-like soil behind.

5. Melting permafrost in the northern half of the world will cause a major increase in carbon being put into the atmosphere. As the temperatures rise in northern countries the areas that are normally frozen year round are melting. These areas of permafrost are holding areas of carbon in them. As they melt the run-off created contains large quantities of CO2 that is then carried to from rivers into lakes and oceans. This creates a type of positive feedback loop where the CO2 put back into the atmosphere creates another rise in temperature, which results in more melting and more CO2 in the run-off.

Lynas ends the chapter by talking about this feedback loop and how if the world makes it to three degrees of warming it will lead to four, and eventually to five, and so on. He seems to think if the world makes it past three degrees of warming, then the world really doesn't have much hope.

The Race to Renewable Energy

I read an article called "Race to renewable; five developing countries ditching fossil fuels". This article (which can be found here) shows how five developing countries are successfully making the switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy. The five countries talked about in the article are Costa Rica, Afghanistan, China, India and Albania. As of 2015 Costa Rica is the first developing country to have 100% of their energy come from renewable sources like hydro, wind and geothermal sources.

This is a view of solar panels on the roofs of greenhouses in China.

Even though Albania is a small country they are making big leaps in renewable energy. In 2013 they passed a law that promotes renewable energy growth. For such a small country I think that they are making big progress that some other countries, like ours, are not.

This article really brings up a lot of good points about why certain countries do or do not have renewable energy sources being used. I think that this article shows the difficulties of switching to renewable energy right along with the benefits, which is very important because other similar articles tend to gloss over the difficulties that countries might face if they were to switch over.

Environmental Film

I chose to watch the documentary Trashed, which was released in 2007, so it is a little outdated, but I think it's still relevant. The documentary describes how the garbage business works in America. I learned so many things from this documentary that I never knew. For example, many states import garbage from other places to make money on the landfills that they are creating. There have been many incidents where the public has protested because the state is creating more landfills in places that the citizens find appalling in order to take on the garbage from other states.

This is the site of a proposed landfill in Indiana in 2005. The school that is near it is barely far enough away to fulfill the requirements and the public is very opposed to building another landfill here, especially so close to the school.

Another big point that the film makes is how much waste Americans produce and the ways we dispose of it. In many places there is no recycling or reusing allowed. There is only garbage trucks and if someone wanted to recycle they would have to drive quite a distance to find a place where that is available. It also talked about how certain landfills don't allow people to search in them for things that can be reused. To me this is just ridiculous. Why would the company not want to let people find things that they could reuse. If it is a matter of money, then they still wouldn't have an argument because these people would be making more room in the landfill for more trash anyway. This means that the companies are just against reusing, which is utterly insane.

One thing that the film brought up that I found intriguing and made me wonder why it's not very popular is the use of methane gas, created by landfills, for energy. If we took the methane from these landfills and used it in a way that didn't harm the environment, in fact it would be helping it by not using other (more harmful) methods of providing energy, and making money in the long run it would help everyone. Using the methane that the landfills create while the land is unusable because of the waiting time after the garbage is buried is a great idea. I think that if more people knew about this that it would be more popular and probably another form of alternative energy, at least until the landfill problem is fixed, and it will help the environment along the way.

Overall, I think that this film is very educational and I got a lot of good information from it. If anyone is curious and would like to watch it it is available on YouTube.

Alternative Energy

I read an article from The Independent online by Ian Johnston who is an environment correspondent. It is titled: "Developing world invests more in renewable energy than rich countries for first time, new study says".

I found this article very interesting especially because one of the things that Bethel and I were talking about when we chose this topic is why developing nations are so much farther ahead in using alternative energy sources than developed nations. According to this article many developing nations are spending more money on renewable energy sources while developed countries, such as the UK, are spending more money on things like fossil fuels. Renewable energies are not just environmentally friendly, they are also the cheapest. It is interesting to note that many developed countries are finding it shameful to be outspent by the developing countries.

Here is the APA citation for the article:

Johnstone, I., (2016, May 31). Developing world invests more in renewable energy than rich countries for first time, new study says. The Independent. Retrieved from: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/renewable-energy-investment-developed-world-developing-world-ren21-report-a7058436.html

The End of Ishmael

As I began reading these chapters I thought there was no way that the story could be wrapped up efficiently in such a short amount of writing. However, I discovered that I was wrong and I was pleasantly surprised.

At the beginning of chapter 10 the narrator ends up with many distractions in his life that prevent him from visiting Ishmael. In a way I think that Quinn is trying to show how many things can get in the way of humans trying to find a way to "fix" our situation without being fully devoted to the search. If the narrator really wanted to he could have gone and seen Ishmael many times and instead he put it off to do something else that was "more important" at the time.

Once the narrator finally finds Ishmael at the carnival, Ishmael doesn't want to leave and the narrator wants to find out the rest of the story. So, in order to complete the learning the narrator visits Ishmael when there are no people around. They end up talking about the Leavers' story of how they came to be. Eventually, the narrator comes to the conclusion that the Leavers are "those who live in the hands of the gods" and that they "belong to the world", while the Takers think that "the world belongs to man" and that's how it should be. This is why they are constantly trying to change the Leavers into Takers like themselves.

One of my favorite things from these chapters is when the narrator finally comes to the idea that if humans take on the Takers way of living than eventually the world will come to disaster, but if we take on the Leavers way of living "then creation will go on forever". To me this seems to be the point of the whole book. It is the light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. The idea that Daniel Quinn is trying to get all of the readers to see and understand. I think that the way that he builds up the story to this point is really effective because the reader is waiting for him to tell us how we can fix things, how can we make a change in our world and he puts this information in so effortlessly that it seems to work very well.

At the end of the book, before Ishmael dies, he tells the narrator that the next step is to tell other people the story, teaching them the lessons that he learned from Ishmael. He says that this is the only way to "save the world". He suggests that the narrator teach a hundred people and then they, in turn, will teach a hundred more. Ishmael points out that with the technology in the world today that this isn't a hard feat to accomplish. He says that we can't just try to go back in time to the way things used to be, we can't just abandon our lives (like the Hohokam), but we have to invent a new way to live.

Ishmael Chapter 9

I have to say that this was, in my opinion, one of the most interesting chapter so far. It really makes me think about things that have never even crossed my mind before.

The beginning of the chapter Ishmael makes a drastic change. He is no longer on the other side of the glass, now when they meet he is near the narrator. At first this startles the narrator, but I think that he gets used to it after a short while. I wonder why he picked this exact day to 'uncage' himself. Maybe he felt that the narrator was ready to be challenged with the ideas that they have been speaking about. Ishmael shows the narrator his timeline for the takers and leavers.

He goes on to tell the story of how the Takers began by demolishing everything in their paths, including the Leavers. He says that the story of Cain and Abel from the Bible isn't really supposed to be a story teaching morals and showing people what not to do. Instead, he says that it is the story told by the Leavers about how the Takers took over the land.

Abel represents the Leavers and Cain represents the Takers. Cain began killing Abel and watering his fields with Leaver blood. They started out with a small amount of land and after a short period of time, at least speaking evolutionary, they had spread throughout most of the land.

To me this was a very interesting idea. I had never thought about this story this way. I grew up in church and I had heard the story so many times I could probably recite it in my sleep. Now that I have seen it this way I see the connection to the history of man. I understand the narrator's confusion at first and his reaction to Ishmael telling him the story because I too reacted the same way.