The World Burns : 50 Simple Things You Can Do

Americans, as a whole, do not care about the environment anymore. When we watch the news or simply talk about our day, there are always more pressing topics that come up. However, as a nation, the threat of a failing environment seems to be forgotten because the effects are not as obvious as other threats. Bill McKibben’s “Waste Not, Want Not” discusses how much time, money, resources, and people America has actually wasted and how little effort has been made to try to change. McKibben causes readers to think it is too late to save the environment from our wastefulness because we put our efforts into systems that do not help the environment, spend more money and resources than necessary, and refuse to acknowledge how much were wasting.

These days, we have a serious problem along with the population growth. Overpopulation causes lots of different impacts on earth. One major problem is pollution that people make. I feel very sorry for our planet since I was more likely to participate in the works that might cause the earth sick. However, I am now concerned about our climate changes which are the result of our human activities. Also, I decided to change my lifestyle as an eco-friendly person after reading articles from two different authors. The articles, “I am the Population Problem” by Lisa Hymas and “Meet my Kid, an Adorable Environmental Disaster” by Jeff Feldman, share some similar basic ideas while they have some key differences. Both Hymas and Feldman

The environment is important to protect considering that people live and breathe in the atmosphere it provides. Investing time in activities that protect the environment hasn’t always been a priority, but as greenhouse gas emissions, the use of energy, and other harmful impacts on the environment increased, individuals began to speak up on what should be done. As the world’s population continues to grow exponentially, the impacts society produces will in turn continue to increase unless something is done about it. Although the idea of an environmentally sustainable community has remained on the minds of the concerned public throughout the past decade, as companies and universities became more invested in the idea, new ways of taking action and implementing policies were developed and pursued.

Regardless of what one thinks about American consumerism or our high levels of production, it is a fact that we live in a throw-away society. What that means is that we produce a lot, throw away a lot, and most things are planned to become obsolete within a few years. Recently, there has been an unprecedented effort to correct these negatives habits of our society, seeing as they can’t last forever. This effort, aptly called sustainability, is one of the most grandiose undertakings in American society today. Universities, corporations, households, and everything in-between, are all striving towards sustainability, but what actually is it? According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, “To pursue sustainability is to create and maintain the conditions under which humans and nature can exist in productive harmony to support present and future generations” (EPA). With such a broad definition, there are plenty of critics and skeptics that say that such a proposition is too idealistic and therefore impossible. In fact, I agree with that faction and acknowledge that with such a loose definition, it will never be truly possible to be sustainable. However, my rebuttal, as it seems natural to say, is that nearly everything we do or strive for in America is, in a way, too idealistic. From that, I assert that we need to make a deliberate effort, as both consumers and producers, to work towards sustainability to move away from our throw-away tendencies.

Modernism represents an optimistic view of human impact on the environment that has been the dominant viewpoint for the last 200 years. The knowledge that mankind holds the ability to control the environment heavily stresses why climate change is not such a problem to worry about. One of the core beliefs of the modernistic perspective is that people have no need to fear future environmental disaster because the next technological advancement that will prevent it is right around the corner. Furthermore, those who share this view do not include themselves in their image of the ecosystem, believing they are detached from it. Lastly, a laissez-faire approach is taken to environmental problems, focusing on progression through technology, stressing that as long as progress is made in this area all problems will be fixed. For a modernist, climate change is nothing to worry about. This may be a real situation, but it will be solved with advancements in technology before one’s way of life is changed. What people should be worrying about is ensuring a laissez faire approach to the market with sponsorship to new technologies. As a result of reusable energy technology already existing, modernists believe that the problem of climate change has been solved and without disrupting free market system these technologies will be further implemented. As long as there are people given the opportunity to innovate, some will focus on and ultimately solve the concern of climate change. The issue of

The first challenge in this essay is to shift the way people think about some of the biggest environmental problems that are affecting humanity in a global level, rather to see them as independent and isolated problems to view them as a whole, as a part of a system and as a consequence of other different problems that are being faced in other parts of the world.

Global warming, or– the more accurate term presently– climate change, is increasing wielded as an ill-suited weapon to discourage companies and everyday people from living in ways that are most convenient to them. It is no surprise, consequently, most Canadians do not conform to the notion of sustainability. Thinking of one’s carbon footprint may cross one’s mind for a moment or two, before the thought is chased away by more relevant concepts such as eliminating effort, saving time, having convenience and of course, gaining profit in a society that encourages consumerism. In other words, people in our modern society like to “live in the moment” as many of the older generation may say; we apparently give no thought to the future. But is the

Green living is one of the hottest topics in the 21h century since we are facing the shortage of resources and the degradation of the environment. Waste sorting, recycling, light saving and so forth, we regard them as basic steps of environment protection. However, in “As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Stay in Denial”, by Derrick Jensen, Stephanie McMillan, 2007, authors use visual arts illustrates this way of protection is not on the right track. They pointed out that the earth will burn out before we die out, and those simple steps we do to protect environment only reduce the urgency but do not solving the problems. In "The Politics of the Natural in U.S. History and Popular Culture”, by Noёl Sturgeon, 2009, the author discussed that advertising of popular culture would affect negatively on the environment in future concern. Both readings use visual rhetoric to demonstrate the current environment situation and its problem.

The book I chose to read for this project was Eaarth; Making a Life on a Tough New Planet written by Bill McKibben. He is an American environmental writer who has written several books about the environment. His biggest book was “The End of Nature” written in the late 1980’s which talked about climate change and how it has affected our planet. Bill McKibben is a renowned author known as a leading environmentalist and green activist. Eaarth places emphasis on the wrong doings the human race has already caused our planet and how it is time we ultimately address these issues. These problems we have neglected for some time now to a point where we have to finally change our habits

Usually when you read dystopian novels they take place far into the future or on a different planet, something Orwellian. We as a society, like to think this is what will happen if we continue to behave a certain way. Since the projections in these novels and pieces are so farfetched, nobody ever stops to compare it to the world today. However, Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth, states the harsh realities of the world’s current condition and the devious schemes of wealthy corporations. Global warming is perhaps the most frequent issue televised about the world today. It’s known that this ‘climate change’ is a product of greenhouse gases and the burning of fossil fuels; something of which is done by humans. Solutions and conservation strategies have been

All of these factors have significant effects on the environment globally, and will lead to many issues not only environmentally but also in the way we live and how countries interact. Although some readers may object, saying that we can prevent these things if we start taking actions now. Many scientists who have studied the environment have stated that the results of our actions are irreversible, and we can only maintain the level of environmental disparity. With this knowledge in mind, I call everyone to take actions to limit the amount of greenhouse we emit and try to reduce waste by recycling. While most people have been told this countless times by a countless number people, now is the time to act. Because while we can’t reverse these actions we can prevent the world from becoming an even worse place than it will already become. Because in 100 years due to environmental issues we have created the arctic and the world will be a worse place than it is

This changes everything is a powerful yet unsettling novel about the fact that our war on carbon emissions is nowhere near as destructive or as threating as our world-wide war against capitalism and globalization. Naomi Klein, the author of this intriguing novel discusses how the economic systems are in fact waging us against our own lives on earth. Not only does Klein discuss the science behind what is occurring in our world, but she comments on past decisions that humans have made thought-out history that have led us to where we are now, living in our unsustainable ways. This Changes everything, covers more than just the problems we as North Americans see. The novel brings insight on how the rest of the world survives during our environmental

Yesterday morning, I drove my father’s car to go to a store. Last night, I forgot to turn off our batahroom light. Moisés Naím’s article opened up my eyes. We really need to make an effort to reduce climate change. Its effect is costing people’s lives. According to the article, this year is the hottest on record. We felt this effect in Hawaii. Last summer was the hottest temperature I’ve experienced since coming to Hawaii. A lot of people from other countries suffered stroke due to the hot weather. In order to counteract climate change, we need a

Elizabeth Kolbert’s Field Notes from a Catastrophe was my first in-depth look into climate change, global warming, and the contribution of humans to these things. Global warming was something I vaguely knew about before reading this book, but it never really caught my attention or seemed like a major issue in the world. After reading Field Notes from a Catastrophe, I realized that it is in fact a major issue that must be addressed by every community. In this essay I will argue that it is our job as the human race to do all that we can to take care of our planet and reduce the amount of global warming that humans are responsible for. This essay is significant because this is our world.

Instead, it is to get the message across that climate change is harming our planet and we need to limit the amount of resources we are now recklessly throwing away by constructing a more sustainable and environment-friendly society. Climate change is a message, Klein claims, that “is telling us that many of our culture’s most cherished ideas are no longer viable”, instead they are “revelations for all of us [who are] raised on Enlightenment ideals of progress [and are] unaccustomed to having our ambitions confined by natural boundaries” (p.8). Climate change is a step for us to progress into something better. Although, climate change requires eliminating certain ‘free-market ideology’, such as less government intervention or lower taxes, it is still better than having the planet get worse as we develop more