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.

Ishmael Chapters 5-8

Going back to reading Ishmael, after taking a break for Thoreau, makes me enjoy Quinn's writing style even more. It is drastically different than Thoreau's. These chapters are mostly about Ishmael showing the narrator that he really does know more about the 'story' that he realizes or is willing to admit. 

He begins by asking the narrator why there are things wrong with the world. The narrator's answer is that humans are bound to screw things up because they don't know how to live the right way. Then they go on discussing how to find the law that humans think doesn't apply to them, as it applies to all other creatures, and why they believe that. Ishmael makes a good point when he asks about why humans don't have a law that states how we ought to live. He questions why we go to prophets for answers instead of figuring out the law on our own. 

Ishmael goes on to compare would-be aeronauts learning how to fly to the way humans figure out laws and how they work. There is a lot of trial and error until we finally find something that works. The first aeronauts had to figure out how to overcome the law of aerodynamics and the law of gravity in order to fly instead of fall. They didn't necessarily know that was what they were doing but eventually they figured it out. The narrator says the same goes for humans. We don't know what law we are trying to overcome, just that if we do it we will have succeeded.

After a while of Ishmael trying to get the narrator to figure things out on his own, he seems to get frustrated that there is no progress. So, he sends the narrator home and tells him to figure out the laws on his own before he can come back. It takes the narrator a while to get an idea about what the laws are, but when he thinks that he has it he meets with Ishmael again. 

One of the main laws that they talk about is about agriculture. The way farmers kill off any animal, insect or plant that gets in the way of producing 'our food' is a large problem. It will eventually lead to disaster. Once we kill off all of our competition (and eventually, their food) our population will expand in a huge amount. Eventually there will not be enough food to support the population and there will be nothing left to kill off. What do we do then?

We are already experiencing this problem on an extremely small scale. We try to grow food to feed the starving people around the world and ship it to them or help them grow it where they live. However, if this continues and the population keeps growing, one day there will be no where else to grow and harvest food and there will be so many more starving people than there are today. We need to find a way to fix this problem before it escalates out of proportion.

Walden Excerpts Part 2

After some of the things that we talked about Thoreau during our last class I have noticed more and more how he has two drastically different writing styles. One is very methodical and science-based. I can tell that he is a very educated person and that he wants to share what he sees with the reader. For example during The Pond in Winter Thoreau shares the different temperature readings that he has recorded from the ponds in the neighboring areas and tells how that effects the rate of ice melt. However, Thoreau also has a very poetic side to his writing. One of my favorite examples of this is from The Ponds:

"A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. The fluviatile trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around are its overhanging brows."

~Thoreau, Walden

Thoreau compares the landscape of the lake and its surroundings to human characteristics which I find very interesting. It seems almost as if he is trying to make nature seem more like a person and less like a thing. I decided to look for artists who try to show the link between humanity and nature and came across Kate Macdowell who has a very interesting take on this. Some of her creations are interesting while others just look creepy.

Overall I really enjoyed reading Walden and I learned more about who Thoreau was and what motivated his writing by reading these excerpts. I think that next time I read his works I will be better equipped to hear his message as well as understand the reading and enjoy it.

Walden Excerpts Part 1

At first I wasn't sure that I would enjoy these excerpts from Walden, but after I finished reading I realized that I actually enjoyed it. I liked the way that Thoreau writes. He spends a lot of time in his writing describing the things that he observed. He tries to engage all of the readers senses when he writes so that they are able to see the big picture. He does a great job in Sounds with describing the nature around him, what he can hear and see. 

Map of Walden Pond

I also enjoyed reading Thoreau's portrayal of the other people in the village. He makes it sound as if the only things that they care about are gossip and the news. The way he talks about the villagers makes the reader think he enjoys going to town almost as a sport, to watch and listen to the gossiping townspeople. He says that the "vitals of the village" are the places where most of the gossiping takes place. I also found it interesting the way he talks about the newspaper. He makes a good point about how people only want to hear about things in the news once and then it gets boring because it is old news, especially if it is news from another country.

 "Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations." This is one of the lines from The Village that really caught my attention. When many people think of Thoreau they think about the man who spent years living alone in nature, just observing his surroundings. Even if this is not extremely accurate, I feel that people can learn from Thoreau from this quote because we can't learn how to find ourselves until we become truly lost in nature.

One of the things that I found while researching Walden is the Walden Woods Project which is trying to keep Thoreau's legacy alive by preserving the land, literature and legacy.

Ishmael Chapters 3 & 4

After finishing chapters 3 and 4 I found it very interesting that the narrator took so long to understand what Ishmael was getting at about the myths. It seemed to me that any time Ishmael asked him a question he kind of brushed it off saying that he didn't understand and then had Ishmael answer the question for him. I found this really interesting especially because in the beginning the narrator talks about how for a long time he looked for a teacher and now that he has one, he isn't participating the way I thought he would be. If he was so desperate for a teacher, why does he now act as if he doesn't care about what Ishmael is trying to show him.

This makes me think of what the room in the
office building looks like from Ishmael's perspective

After the narrator relates his story of how things came to be and Ishmael tries to tell him that it is a myth he gets extremely frustrated with him. So to prove his point Ishmael tells him the story about jellyfish. I found this entertaining because many people today think the same way that the narrator does. We believe that the world is here for man and that man is here to take charge of it. However, many times we don't bother to look past what we see as the "end" of the story. We don't think 'what comes next?' Like when Ishmael asks the narrator to imagine a world without man and he describes it as this awful place where the jungle has taken over.

In our world today many people see the world as something that we are in charge of. We control the plants and the animals, we control who is allowed to live where, we even (in some ways) control who can eat what. Humans see the Earth as ours and "take charge" over it, although it may not be in ways that are beneficial. Sometimes when you have complete control over something it loses its value. For example if you borrow something from someone you tend to take better care of it than if it were your own. I feel that humans do the same thing with the world. We see it as ours to do what we please and if we don't stop soon and do something else one day there will be greater consequences.

Eaarth Chapter 4

As I finished Eaarth I realized that McKibben really wrapped this up neatly. During this last chapter he seems to bring up some ideas to get us started looking for ways to slow down our impact on climate change. The three things that he talks the most about are agriculture, alternate energy sources and the impact of the internet.

One of the things that McKibben said that really stuck out to me was:

"I'm not arguing for local food because it tastes better, or because it's better for you. (It does, and it is. There's really not much debate.) I'm arguing that we have no choice - that the new Eaarth has much less margin than the planet we grew up on, and hence we're going to need to take advantage of opportunities we've passed by before. In a world more prone to drought and flood, we need the resilience that comes with three dozen different crops in one field, not a vast ocean of corn or soybeans." (pg.179)

The farmer's market in Otsego

Local food is a very important thing. McKibben makes a good point when he talks about local food (and food grown in variety, not just one type of crop grown in a field going on for miles) being heartier and more resilient. The more important local food becomes the larger farmer's markets will become and the more they will be used.

In my town we have a small farmer's market, but it is only open once a week through the summer and fall. However, the town just down the road has a slightly larger one that is open a couple times a week and has an indoor option in case of bad weather.

"Taking advantage of opportunities we've passed by before," means that we need to start relying more on locally grown food. This means that there needs to be more food grown locally. We need to start doing things like planting town gardens that are there to benefit everyone in the surrounding areas. Another thing that could be done is people planting their own gardens in their yards and supplying their own produce.

After completing Eaarth I really enjoyed it. I think that McKibben does a really good job of getting all of the important information across in a way that catches everyone's attention. He presents the information in a way that no matter who reads it there will be something in there to catch their attention. There is no way that anyone can read it and not see that climate change is affecting everyone. They can't say "Oh, climate change is only affecting people in Australia or Africa," because they can clearly see that climate change is a global problem.

Ishmael Chapters 1 & 2

I have never read Ishmael before and so I wasn't really sure what to expect. I was a little confused at first because the 'narrator' of the story doesn't really give us any background. However, I believe that the was this story is written it works in his favor because it keeps the reader interested. After the narrator paints a picture of what he thinks the teacher from the advertisement would look like I was very surprised to learn that the teacher is a gorilla.

The way that Ishmael tells his story to the narrator without much emotion, it seems like he is just presenting the facts and leaving the emotions up to the listener, in this case the narrator and in turn the reader.  Then he asks the narrator to tell his story, which at first seems to stump the narrator because he feels as though he doesn't know where to start.

When Ishmael brings up the topic of captivity that seems to catch the attention of the narrator which I find interesting because I thought that since he knew how intelligent Ishmael was that he should have thought that Ishmael knew about these types of things especially since he lived in captivity for so many years of his life. I also found it interesting that Ishmael compares captivity to the way we live in the world. He compares it to how we may want to do something to change the world, but nobody knows how or where or when it could happen.

When Ishmael asks the narrator what our story of how things came to be is I tried to think about it the same way that the narrator does until I realized that there were many stories that not everyone agrees with. Then, like the narrator, I was confused until Ishmael says that we are supposed to be looking for our culture's creation myth. That made me think about all of the different ideas people have about how things came to be. I am looking forward to reading the rest of this book and I think it will be an interesting read and hopefully give me some more things to think about.

Eaarth Chapter 3

One of the first things that McKibben talks about in this chapter is our vocabulary, or lack thereof, and metaphors that we use to describe our world. He talks about us needing to exchange the word growth for something more like sustainable, durable, sturdy, stable, hardy, or robust. One of the metaphors he uses for the economy is a racehorse. It is showy and not meant for trudging through mud or running down a stony or uneven path. McKibben says that we need to "transform our racehorse into a workhorse" because workhorses are "dependable, even-tempered, long-lasting [and] uncomplaining" (pg. 103).

To me this paints a pretty clear picture, especially since I work with horses on a weekly basis. I have worked with both types of horses and they are very different from each other. Another thing that McKibben brings up with the horse metaphor that kind of travels through the rest of the chapter is slowing down. Not just slowing down our spending but slowing down our growing. Growth is one of the most used words, in my opinion anyway, when talking about the economy. He brings up the concept of thinking smaller. Using words like shrinking or recession is becoming more real than growth and inflation.

One of the questions that McKibben asked his readers was why does bigness spell trouble? That got me to thinking about how as a country we have this constant want, or maybe need is a better word, to grow our economy as big as we can as fast as we can. It made me wonder why no one ever questions this. How come nobody is willing to look back and ask why do we do what we do? One of McKibben's suggestions for fixing our growth problem is becoming more community-minded. He tells about some of Vermont's history and how their whole state is very community-minded and he tells some stories that show how Vermont uses their sense of community to fight against the nation's idea of growth.

The view from the Green Mountains where the parkway was meant to be.

Eaarth Chapter 2

After completing the second chapter of Eaarth I was feeling a little overwhelmed and like there was no hope at all for our world. McKibben brought up so many different topics in this chapter that I feel like I don't really know where to start.

One of the things that he talked about that really caught my eye was raising gas prices. I know that in past years prices for gasoline were at record highs. However, since then they have dropped considerably. He talked about raising the prices of gas again in order to force people to drive less in order to not pay as much money on gas. This started me thinking about how much I drive my car. I am a commuter which means that I probably drive more than most people at WMU. Since I  also don'e live in the Kalamazoo area it means that I don't use the buses very often if ever and I feel like there should be a way that I can do more. I already try to drive as little as possible, but when I have to drive for a half an hour to school every day and then the same distance home when classes are done I can't really do much to change it.

One of the other things that McKibben talked a lot about was the increase of disease around the world, especially those that are transported by insects. One of the things McKibben says is that not only do "warmer temperatures extend the geographic range of the mosquito" but they also increase the size of the larva, which then increases the size of the adults (pg. 73). Now I don't know about anyone else, but hearing about increasing size and spread of mosquitoes sounds like a big deal to me. In Michigan we don't have to deal with mosquitoes spreading disease by us. We like to think that it is a problem for people in other parts of the world, and for the moment that is the case, but it may not last forever and I think that is scary to think about.

I am hoping that in the next few chapters McKibben starts to get away from all of the statistics that he is using to create this feeling of impending doom and gets into ways that we can help make a difference. I think that looking at all of the problems we are facing is a great way to get our attention, but it won't do any good in the long run if he doesn't bring up any solutions.

Eaarth Chapter 1

After beginning to read Eaarth by Bill McKibben I realized that what I was reading about was playing out in front of me this weekend. Having almost 60 degree weather in the middle of January is no where near normal. Not once in my life can I remember going outside in the middle of January without my winter gear on, let alone going for a walk outside in a t-shirt, jeans and sandals and not being even a little chilly. This really made me realize that what I was reading about it true. We are closer to having a major problem with global warming that we think we are.

One of the things that really caught my attention in chapter one was how incorrect the predictions of global warming were. I didn't realize how wrong people were about how long it would take for global warming to have a big impact on the world. Something McKibben said on page 13 really caught my attention. He said that "global warming is an experiment. We've never watched it happen before, so we didn't know how it would proceed." This is a very valid point because this has never happened before so we don't know how to respond. Our response will be more of guess and check than using a formula to get the correct balance in our lives to slow down, and maybe one day stop, global warming's impact on our planet.

Changes in Glacier National Park

There was a lot of statistics in this chapter and at first I was a bit overwhelmed. However, when I went back and reread them I realized that they were important to include in order to get the severity of the problem we are facing across to the readers. Some of the main problems that will impact the most people are glaciers and ice caps melting, oceans becoming more acidic, rain forests drying up and water levels rising which impacts smaller island countries causing them to prepare to relocate. To me these are the biggest problems talked about in this chapter and I believe that the information presented needs to become more common knowledge so that people around the world know what is happening around them and can be prepared as well as offer help.

"Walking"

When I learned that we were going to be reading some writing by Thoreau I didn't really know what to think. I have heard of Thoreau, of course, but I didn't really know much about him or his style of writing. Starting the reading I didn't know what to expect, I went in thinking it was going to be boring, especially once I saw how long the reading was. However, I was pleasantly surprised once I started reading. I really enjoyed "Walking" and I feel that it brings up many good topics to talk about that relate to this class.

View from the top of Arch Rock in Tennessee

Thoreau talks a lot about walking, but not just walking as in taking a stroll. He speaks of walking as a mind and body experience. One of the lines that really spoke to me was when he said he was alarmed because he had "walked into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit." I do understand what he is talking about in this manner. Sometimes when I go for a walk, it is not for the health benefits, it is to help me clear my mind. I like to walk and just observe nature. Instead of using the walking time to think about all of the things going on in my life, I like to use it to look around me and just observe things.

I truly enjoyed reading "Walking" and I feel that it made me more aware of the way I think about walking and how much thought I put into it. I think that learning how to walk the way Thoreau talks about is important for everyone to learn.

"The Audit"

The story "The Audit" by Rachel May is very intriguing and I feel that it brings up many interesting topics. One of the main topics brought up in the story is the idea of reducing our carbon footprints. A carbon footprint is basically everything that you use on a daily basis that will leave some sort of effect on the environment. There are many ways that our carbon footprints can be reduced and there are many people that live different lifestyles in order to leave an extremely small footprint.

There are many people in the US that I know of that have started living a different lifestyle. They call it living off the grid. Living off the grid can include using solar panels, wind turbines, and hydroelectric energy. By living in this way they are able to have some of the same comforts that other people have, but with a well reduced carbon footprint.

During the story Bill, the main character, makes a trip to a cabin in the Adirondack mountains to visit a friend of his brother's in hopes that he will get him to sign off on a paper so that he can continue to live in his comfortable lifestyle. He isn't sure if his plan will work, but he is willing to try it, even though it seems far fetched, to help keep his family in the comfort they have always known. After he meets with Goodwin and spends time at his house, he seems to learn what he is 'missing' at his house with his family. On his way home, after spending the night with Goodwin, Bill sees his surroundings in a different light. He actually sees the plants and animals around him where before he just overlooked them as a sort of background. After his visit with Goodwin, Bill sees a lot of his lifestyle as extravagant and he isn't looking forward to going back to the world he knows.

Beautiful view of the Adirondack mountains

Introduction

Hello, my name is Tayler Dendel. I am a sophomore at WMU majoring in Occupational Therapy. I am from a small town north of Kalamazoo called Otsego. I love working outdoors and with animals. I work at a horse farm teaching kids how to ride. I also have two dogs, Reci and Chewy, at home that love to play outside!

This is the first class I am taking that has to do with environmental issues, but I am glad I am taking it. I have a few friends that have taken environmental classes and have told me how much they enjoyed it. Where I am from the surrounding area is made up of many farms. Because I see all of the issues that the farmers have faced when dealing with the environment I became interested in getting involved in ways that we can help make a difference.