Journal Assignment Six: Deanne M Johnson

Journal Assignment Six
Deanne M Johnson
PHI216
As a child my mother would say I was born in the wrong era. She used to call me her revolutionist, others would call me hippie and my sisters just called me weird. There have been many influences in my life that cleared the path to environmentalism. The first book and cartoon that I can clearly remember as a small child which opened my eyes to how we humans impact the world was The Lorax by Dr Seuss, and as an adult The 11th Hour, The Inconvenient Truth and several other documentaries. But it was Dr Seuss who got into my subconscious and forever changed how I looked at the world. It seems just as books or documentaries about the environment begin to take hold on society you have scientists publishing reports that say humans have no effect on the Greenhouse effect. So even though The Lorax, The 11th Hour and The Inconvenient Truth impact me greatly, it does nothing for anyone else. I am drawn back to the recent report by the NASA scientist a few weeks ago that said it appears there is no heat trapping gases. The green movement has been moving along at a snails pace since its conception in the early 1960s. With people in powerful positions such as politicians making statements they do not believe humans have anything to do with the Greenhouse Effect and Drill Baby Drill add that to the NASA report it takes the green movement back a few decades. Now we environmentalists have to get scientists to debunk the NASA report and debunk uninformed politicians so that the green movement does not lose what little steam it has on society. How can we get the world to agree on global warming when we cannot get our scientific community to agree on The Greenhouse Effect and/or global warming? Global warming is just that, it is global. It is not just the United States issue or Chinas issue it is an effect compounded by all of us. We have to take the holistic approach to global warming that we all are a part of the environment and what one does in China impacts one in Iran. Therefore, it is imperative that at least on a scientific level we all agree because we will never agree on a political level. If we cannot get the scientific community on the
same page with each other then we cannot get the global community on the same page. It reminds me of when eggs were considered bad for you and now they are considered an essential component to your diet. The science community needs to get it together. However I will say I am a natural born skeptic so any report that comes out in publication no matter the subject matter I follow the money. I look at who funded the research because that will skew the end result because the researcher is working for a particular source not for the greater good. If we as in the global community continue the path we are on there will be more nations facing famine, drought, toxic waters, toxic air and tainted food. We are our own worst enemy. We cannot see past our own desire for more consumption to see we have fallen out of our holistic relationship with the environment. The future for global warming has a heart pounding effect on me because I see so much waste in my own community I cannot help to times that waste by the 1000s of other communities just like mine. I believe nature has a way of correcting what is wrong, what is destroying it. I think of plants, animals and other organisms that once walked or lived on this planet is no longer around. Call it Darwinism; call it survival of the fittest whatever name you wish to call it only the strong and resourceful will survive. Society will either adapt or change their current over-consumption ways or come to the realization the future holds a bleak forecast. There will be massive extinction in organisms and massive loss of human life. Our planet can only sustain so much of human destruction before deciding to right the wrongs, to clean itself, to repair the damage. The global community will need to seriously look at using petroleum, natural gas, and coal as resources of the past. Not just as a political slogan to gain some vote or to be independent from some foreign country but to save and restore the planet before there is no turning back our steady incline to severe long term heat indexes for longer periods of time and severe
colder temperatures for longer periods of time as well. I believe this will be natures way of trying to correct itself, fix it somehow. The planet is losing biodiversity in regions, plants and animals. We consume every living thing as if it will just be replaced, grown or birthed tomorrow. I personally have chosen a plant based diet, which currently is the most difficult thing because a plant based diet is extremely expensive. As I have stated before being at or below poverty level makes getting proper healthy unprocessed foods at price that is comparable to highly processed foods like McDonalds is currently impossible. Unless of course you grow your own as I am attempting to do. The solutions are out there to resolve many of our global issues but are people willing to sacrifice eating less meat, eating less period, walking more, buying goods that are only made from recycle products and that can be recycled as well as not using petroleum, natural gas or coal as a resource. This is not a new question or debate, this has been going on since the 1960s and didnt end with the installation of solar panels on the white house by Jimmy Carter only to be removed by Ronald Reagan. Getting the human race to step out of its desire for greedy consumption and see that living things are not just on this planet to feed our bellies but have value to the eco-system we call Earth. We keep tampering with nature by genetically altering food, genetically altering human and animal life without holistically thinking of the consequences. Humans must live within nature not outside nature controlling who or what lives or dies. Predators in nature do not wipe out an entire species they only take what they need to live and only take the weak, the strong survive to live another day. Humans prey on everything only to wipe out something completely without thought of how it impacts the survival of the eco-system with which we all live. To resolve global warming we must make sacrifices. We must subsidize organic farmers, tax and fine companies that do not provide green resources. We must have cities and towns that people can
walk or ride bikes to work, mass transit to connect one city to another to prevent cars usage. There must be regulations on construction of residential or commercial property that prevents construction waste, and does not allow non green building standards. Society has to commit to living and working differently which clearly is a challenge because anything that requires change is difficult. Then having multiple nations try to commit to doing things differently than what they are used to will be a challenge. Our greatest solution will be willingness to think, act, live, and work differently. To sacrifice ones norm for the sake of the greater good is currently not within societys thinking.

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