Selection 10 - Life and Death of the Salt Marsh

The Marshes are such a beautiful thing, they are a ribbon of green, and dancing river of water. It creeps as far inland as the tides can go and as far as the eye can see. It has wonderful, clean, fresh smells of Spartina which is a fairly strong odor mixed from the elements of the sea and the grasses.  But as the truth comes out the marshes have been bothered, dug up, poisoned and polluted, and can have a smell of hydrogen sulfide which smells like rotten egg odor. 
The dangerous ways of marshes are from human activity not the natural processes, we destroy the wetlands and shallow waters by interrupting it.  We build things on it, dig it up, and we indirectly pollute it.  We need to do alot of planning and working to keep these wetlands healthy and clean. We do not need more pollution and destroying of the ecosystems than we already have done.

Selection 34 - Environmental Justice for All

People all over for years now have watched their neighboring communties as well as their own become dumping grounds for the waste we do not have room for.  Citizens were quiet for a little while but not for long, it states that there were local activists that had been organizing something under the mantle of environmental justice since 1968.  In the early 90's there was a new better group of activists that brought attention to pollution problems threatening the low-income and minority communties.
Birth of a Movement:  around 3 decade ago environmental justice didn't quite reach the radar for many environmental or civil rights groups, but shortly did after.
It's about Winning, Not Whining: environmental justice groups are making their voices heard very loud, there are alot of laws passed for cleaner environments.  There is a Clean Air Act that focuses on helping the poorer people and everyone around them.
I hope this keeps up, and I hope things get better, and environmental justice is served!

Selection 32 - Our Stolen Future

Alot of damage we see in lab animals and in wildlife has been unfortunately forewarning us of the symptoms that have been increasing in human population. Humans and animals share alot in common, sometimes we forget but most things we have, first came from the natural resources we have. We use animals for testing and alot of people argue with that but the scientists do know what they are doing, and if the hurt the animals, they are obviously going to hurt us.  In 1991, in Wisconsin, scientists explored hormone distrupters that lead to harmful chemicals being exposed to the population.  They had to let everyone know that these distrupters were out in the open and to be very careful of their use.  Although people again disagree with animal testing, the animal studies provide us with knowledge of what is harmful or not, and we should always take that into consideration. We need to start really looking at what is harmful for both animals and humans and maybe start trying to figure out a better way than animal testing. We want a bright future, not a stolen one.

Selection 31 - Living Downstream : An Ecologist looks at Cancer and the Environment

An interesting fact is that "Deaths of adoptive parents from cancer before the age of 50 increased the rate of mortality from cancer fivefold among the adoptees. . . Deaths of biological parents from cancer had no detectable effect on the rate of mortality from cancer among the adoptees" (Sandra Steingraber). There was on article called "Scientists identify Gene Responsible for Human Bladder Cancer" the article tells us about how they "located the segment of DNA responsible for the transformation. And by comparing this segment to its unmutated form in noncancerous human cells, they were able to pinpoint the exact alteration that had caused a respectable gene to go bad" (Sandra Steingraber).  But they also found this segment in other cancers as well.  The rate of bladder cancer increased 10% between 1973 and 1991.  It was attributed among women who smoked cigarrettes.  On the other hand, we need to start imagining our alternative future and so we begin with a retrospective view for two reasons.  First, we carry many carcinogens in our that are not being used but kept domestically, and second we need to find out what pesticides were sprayed in neighbourhoods and what sorts of chemicals they contain.  Overall, cancer is in peoples genes and cannot as of right now be fully cured, we need to look into our future and see what we can do to help stop the spread of it and do our best to find a way to help ourselves to be more prepared.

Selection 12 - Ecosystems and Human Well-being

People all over depend on earth's ecosystems. They provide food, water, disease mangement, climate, and much more. Over the past 50 years humans have changed these ecosystems not always for the better.  There are 3 major problems with out ecosystems.  First, approximately 60% of ecosystem services examined by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment group were being degraded or used in an unstainable way. Second, there was evidence that changes to the ecosystem were not for the well being of humans, and third, the degradation of the ecosystem are being layed on the poor and its not fair. There is no simple fix for these problems. The most significant changes have been due to our needs for food and water, these changes have helped for the better and reduced malnourished people and ahve improved human health. There are some aspects of the ecosystem that we are trying to organize so they are better looked after, for example agriculture, fisheries aquaculture and also water and forestry.
Overall the ecosystems have alot of problems we are trying to fix, but also alot of those problems come in handy sometimes, and help us feed the hungry. We are trying to figure out how to make plans and keep things growing and safe, and hopefully we accomplish that.

Activity - Jeremy Jackson

Jeremy Jackson is a coral reef ecologist, in his lecture he talked about how we wrecked our oceans.  There is overfishing, pollution and overheating.  Overfishing is a very big problem in the world, he talked about how in the 50's they did the same thing we do now, they paid good money to go fishing and catch the biggest fish and the difference between than and now for the size of fish is tremendous.  He also showed a picture of coral reef, and there was no fish around, quite odd, when fish are supposed to be swimming all over the place. The reefs are the fishes homes. Pollution and overheating are also very big issues. With pollution he talked about two biological pollutants, they are introduced species and things that come from nutrients. An example for the introduced species would be the killer algae, and an example for what comes from the nutrients would be nitrogen fertilizers. There is also climate change with overheated and climate change isn't always the best thing for environments like the coral reefs and the ocean.  I feel we need to actually do something about how we treat our ocean, its very sad to hear all these horrible things that are happening. Put some more research in to it, and actually come up with a plan to minimize the pollutants going into the ocean, the overfishing we do, and somehow figure out our climate change.

Reflection # 4 - Core Values

My core values would have to be honesty, caring for things/people, being loyal, and always stick up for things you believe in.  I've always been taught to always tell the truth, and I feel that this is a good core value because people want to hear the truth, not lies.  I follow this core value very closely.  Also caring for the things around you is also a good core value to have, if you do not care for the things around you, it means you most likely do not care overall.  Being loyal and always sticking up for the things you believe and the people you believe in come hand in hand I think.  They are also very good things to live by. These are the 4 core values I feel I live up to already and there is always room for improvement, and I tend to keep pushing myself more towards these values as a person.