Activity

David Suzuki's Nature Challenge:
For the activity I read about dish on dishsoap.  In the 60s and 70s laundry detergent was a great way to make clothes white but a horrible thing for our lakes and rivers.  For the lakes and rivers the detergent which has phosphate in it turned them green. There than was a limit on how much phosphate concentrations could be in the laundry detergents. Canada was one of the first countries to ban phosphate in laundry detergent, just last year they banned it from being used in dishwasher soup. 
I think this is a good idea, because it is helping out the environment and clearing out of water systems.  It would have been better if they had figured this in the 60s and 70s, but hopefully now things will get better, and we wont have so much phosphate in our water systems.   

Selection 42 Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Over the past while alot of societies have disappeared or collapsed, this is due to popuation size, political, economic and social complexity. Alot of the past societies that have gone through this had eight categories that were damaging the to environment, but these days there are more to be aware of. Global warming and climate are big issues as well that we need to be aware of. In Indonesia's Mt. Tambora there was a volcanic eruption that put so much dust in the atmosphere that it left little sunlight for the area, this eruption caused mass famines there and including places North America and Europe.  Another issue that causes societies to collapse or dissapear is people from neighboring societies. The societies can fight off the enemies only for a certain amount of time before they start to decrease and the environment becomes damaged and at that point the military would have to get involved.  Alot of societies on the other hand work together and make bigger and stronger societies but not all have that resource. 

Selection 38 Human Carrying Capacity

Easter Island is one of the most isolated islands on Earth.  Southwest, 3,474 km away from this isolated island is the closest continental place, Chile. The first people to live on Easter Island were the Polynesians around A.D 690.  Tree space was dominant on the island, but around A.D 1400 the "forest pollen" was at its lowest. With this came deforestation and it brought about soil erosion that were noticeable in the soil profiles of the area.  The human population increased around 0.4% per year for about 13 centuries. The human carrying capacity is what the used to estimate how many people were on the island. They used a model to figure this out, which included the people who used it to specify what they were concerned about. Some examples would include technology, domestic and international political insituations. It is more difficult to find human carrying capacity on the island of Easter Island because not all people were well educated back than.

Selection 7 The Tragedy of the Commons

In the beginning of the selection there is a technical solution saying "one that requires a change only in the techniques of the natural sciences, demanding little or nothing in the way of change in human values or ideas of mortality" (Garrett Hardin). For example they use the game tic-tac-toe and say there is no technical solution on winning or losing. Which means you don't really know if your going to win or lose, its a game of chance.  With that said, there is a positive and a negitive effect on the Tragedy of the Commons.  The positive effect would be the addition of one animal, and the negative effect would be the increase of overgrazing done by more than 1 animal.  We also find it easier to pollute our environment than take the extra 2 minutes to pick up the garbage around us.  The last thing I would like to point out, is that eventually if we dont all work together to help the environment the earth could become a diseaster and each family would have to fend for themselves only. We should always be aware of what is going on in the environment so none of this happens.

Reflections

Reflection # 1:
The media has alot of false information, but in end I think what the media writes about is worthy to be written. If it werent important it wouldnt be shared. We should always be up to date with it.  I think the media uses the seven things we talked about quite well minus a few. The few I think they could work on is Accuracy and Relevance.  Sometimes things in the media aren't always true or don't have alot of relevance to the subject they are discussing. Alot of people I know think alot of things in the media are false nonsense, but there is always truth to every story, sometimes you just have to dig deeper to get the full truth.

Reflection # 2:
I think there is a great danger to the disconnect from nature, we need nature to keep the Earth going, if we disconnect from it we could easily put ourselves and all living things in danger.  We need plants and animals to eat, good agriculture, and fresh water to survive. If we disconnect from that we could easily all perish from lack of food and not having enough nutrients. We always need to know what is going on in the environment so we can help ourselves and the other living things on Earth.