Ch 24 part 2

I have never really been a person who was heavily concerned with the environment. I always understood that one day we will find out that we severely damaged our planet and by then it will probably be too late. However, I do understand that it is a very important issue and I found some of the facts in this chapter to be really intriguing and some frightening. The fact that in the past century we have quadrupled the amount of human beings is really a huge number and has really had an impact on the earth. I always wondered why the massive change in the environment has occurred rather recently instead of before. One of the answers is the sheer number of people and the advanced technology that allows us to alter the things around us. Strayer brought up an interesting point when he said that the future generations may not remember the wars, revolutions, and empires of this century, they may remember this time period by the environment that has been left to them. From looking at two of the charts one thing that really stood out was the fact that although the United States only account for a few hundred million of the 7 billion people on the earth, we produce almost a third of carbon dioxide emissions. That’s a huge gap to account for and one can only imagine how other developed countries would think of that. It really does not make sense for so much pollution to be caused by relatively few people. It seems like the United States does not put much effort in trying to save the environment, we just try to help defend forests just so we do not feel too bad whereas other developing countries around the world fight to save the environment because it is their livelihood. They need the land for farming and herding so their struggle is often one for survival while ours is to not feel so guilty. One concept that would be ideal to take up is to move away from materialism and instead of appreciating the things we make, appreciate the fragile web of life in nature that keeps us alive. I think the idea talked about in the Philippines also makes a lot of sense. Sure it makes sense to start a movement for the environment, however if you mix environmental protest with other movements having them overlap, you can create a much larger turn out and eventually change the established structures of power. Instead of just having one group go out and protest you get numerous different groups for different issues all showing up which could create a different end result to the one that may occur if just one group showed up for one specific thing. I guess in the end the environment will become what we let it become, in the same way that our history is what people decided to let it be, the only question is what will we decide to do with it.