Native Culture and the Environment

It is my opinion that one of the most interesting things that Alex spoke about was how the Natives viewed the land as being a part of themselves, and how this was something that he could not personally understand. Their understanding is something that I can both understand and support, despite the fact that my feelings were not quite as strong. It made me begin to consider what exactly my beliefs could be so different from his while he obviously tried so hard to embrace this mentality. The only thing that I could think of was that it comes from the environments we were raised in. I am not sure of Alex’s background but I am positive that my own experiences are very a-typical. I grew up in a very remote town with a population of less than 1000 people. The nearest neighboring town is a 15-20 minute plane ride away, and we were constantly surrounded by nature. As a child we had no fear of playing in nature and we were constantly outside, there was no need to encourage us to go outside as this was natural. We also spent a great deal of time at cottages or cabins where we had no access to television or radio so that the only source of entertainment was to go outside. I think that being raised so close to nature defiantly affected the ways in which I relate too and view nature. The idea that nature is disappearing and that children do not have to ability to grow up as I did, with the world at their feet, is a sad notion. We can learn a respect for nature as we grow, but without living it in that love and dependence of nature will never be as engrained in our psyche.

Global South

The topic this week of the global south and more specifically the privatization of water is a very difficult one. As we discussed in class there is a fine line to walk between restriction/regulation and privatization. We have a finite amount of pure fresh water left and an almost unlimited amount of water that we can purify. Yet this means nothing if we do not distribute this water equally. To use the quote the ladies brought up in class, ‘people have lived without love… but no one can live without water’. Removing access from this vital resource for millions of people is entirely inhumane. We are not demolishing the quality of life, as we are guilty of doing for centuries, rather we are flat out killing people. Taking away access to water when there are so many solutions such as boiling, UV purification, or purification plants that use the employees in an area to create jobs rather than just to take money out of the area are all viable solutions. Water is a global issue and it is unfair that those of us who are lucky enough to live in North America have unlimited access to these sacred resources at a fingertip while others walk hours and go weeks without safe and clean water. North Americans use clean, safe water to flush our toilets, water our lawns, wash our cars weekly, and countless other tasks that seem necessary and needed to us. While on the other side of the world people are getting sick and dying because thirst and poverty have caused them to drink water that is unsafe. And the solution is at our fingertips.

Climate Change

The presentation on climate change was very well done. The contrast with the video at the end was a brilliant idea to highlight both sides of the controversy. As environmental sociology students we are so much more willing to believe in these issues and to be willing to enact real change against them. The Al Gore video was interesting because it took such huge issues and broke them down to make them understandable to ordinary people. He focused on visually showing the changes associated with the extra emissions of CO2 which is great for understanding. He also gave simple solutions that we could each choose to follow and inspired hope that this is a problem that can be fixed. Of course for all of its very good points there are many points that it glosses over, but overall I thought the film was a great choice and really got to the issue that the text was presenting. As much as the text focused more on social justice issues and our moral responsibility to fix this I believe that Al Gores more personalized approach of speaking about specific issues is more effective. As much as we want to be ‘good people’ who are concerned for the well being of others, it is much easier to mobilize people on an issue that they believe directly effects themselves.

Disaster Vulnerability

Disaster Vulnerability
The presentation this week was on a very interesting topic the vulnerability of the human condition to the extreme forces of nature, but as Katrina proved to us it is not always nature that we need to worry about. For a city like New Orleans that has been hit with several major storms in the past decades to only have the most glossed over protocol for hurricane warnings is unacceptable. As a city that is aware of their likely to face this type of challenge and one that had days of forewarning about the possibility of this hurricane striking it is unbelievable that they did not do more to assist citizens. For example one of the major problems that is always cited is that many of the poorer citizens did not have the ability to evacuate because they did not have their own transportation, well why not pull all of the buses off of their regular routes and have them each go to a lower income area and pick up people to transport them out of the city for free. For hospitals (like the nursing home) that could not be moved make attempts to pack plywood and sandbags around the buildings in an attempt to at least slow the flow of water, and in the future build these building higher off the ground to try and prevent this flooding, use the first two floors for recreation and offices and start putting patients on the 3rd floor and higher so that the likelihood of surviving a flood without moving is increased. Obviously neither of these plans are a perfect solution, but they are improvements that could have easily been made by the government to save thousands of lives in the pre-hurricane stages. The government of New Orleans failed its citizens when it failed to plan for Katrina, they need to learn from this and do more next time.

'Factory' Farming

The presentation that the group did about the treatment of livestock was shocking to me. As much as I was aware that these inhumane treatments did exist I was shocked at the extent at which they could be found. When most of the hog ‘factories’ in the state that provides a major portion of the pork that is consumed in the united states follows these practices they are really a much bigger problem that what I had assumed. I believed we live in a society that, for the most part, insisted on maintaining benevolent care of the animals before their death. I am not a vegetarian, I have personally caught (and subsequently killed and cooked) my own fish and lobster, I was raised to understand where my food came from but I do not support any unnecessary cruelness in this process. The idea of debeaking chickens and cutting off the cow’s tails, are just outrageous to me. But people being cruel to animals so long as it serves them is something almost commonplace in our society. A personal example of this is my kitten. I refused to have either of my cats declawed because the process is unnatural, the risks of surgery are too great and it tends to produce a lot of behavioral problems afterword as the cat doesn’t feel like it can defend itself. Yet almost every time someone finds out that I chose not to have my pets declawed their first reaction is “What about your furniture”, which is ridiculous to me. I would rather have a happy and healthy pet than perfect furniture. To me this is just another example where people put their own desires above the needs of these animals. Overall I felt the girls did an amazing presentation and their video choices were really well selected!