Environmental Impact of People - Essay Example

ENVIRONMENT Do you believe the world ultimately knowable? What values or evidence share views on this question? why might some people have an attitude different from your own? The world is so various a place that it is not possible to know everything about it. It has so many different kinds of creatures, ecosystems, and physical features. Human minds are limited and much smaller than the world; they have also evolved out of the world and are a product and part of the natural world. It therefore follows that their perspective is limited and not objective. Although we can deduce some things from the evidence in front of us, it isn’t possible to know everything. Some religious people believe the human mind did not come out of nature but was placed in nature by God and is therefore more powerful than the natural world. I don’t think there is any evidence to support this idea. Does the world have decent, secure, happy, fulfilling lives? What do those terms mean to you? Try to imagine what they mean to you? Try to imagine what they mean to others in our global village. There are certainly people in the world who lead decent, secure, happy lives. But there are also many who do not. In order to have a good life it is important to have your material considerations taken care of—shelter, food, clothing. It is also important to have a sense of dignity and purpose. A happy person is one who sets goals that can be achieved; not impossible pipe dreams that will always disappoint. Sadly, many people in the world do not have the opportunities we have in the West. Suppose you want to study environmental impact of a rich versus a poor county. What factor would you examine and how would you compare them? One of the biggest factors in examining environmental impacts is heavy industry. I would look at how many factories a rich country has versus a poor country. Countries that do a lot of manufacturing, especially products like chemicals, often pollute more than countries that have an economy based on financial services, for example. Another important factor would be environmental legislation to prevent companies from easily polluting. Usually rich countries have better, stronger laws that have developed over time. Rich countries are usually democratic countries that listen to lobby groups like environmentalists. Many poor countries are dictatorships where the ideas and opinions of only one man rule. Ecosystem are often defined as a matter of convenience because we cant study everything at once. How would you describe the characteristics and boundaries of the ecosystem in which you live. In what respect is your ecosystem an open one? I would say the ecosystem I live in is an urban one made up mostly of people plus some rats and pigeons and bacteria. It is a distinct ecosystem with clear boundaries—aka the city limits—but it is not closed. Food and animals and people enter it everyday, some for their jobs, other because of trade. Birds fly in and worms cross through the earth to enter. Also waste products are constantly being pumped out of cities in the form of sewage and also in the form of garbage. There is a constant exchange going on just like in more traditional ecosystems. Understanding storage compartment is essential to understand material cycle, such as the carbon cycle. If you look around your backyard, how much carbon storage compartment are there? which ones are the biggest? which ones are the longest? There is a pasture in my backyard that can store carbon below ground in the form of organic matter. It is probably about 2 km by 2 kms. Pastures can store 90% of their own carbon below ground. This is by far the longest and biggest storage object in my backyard. What is the difference between saying that a duck has webbed feet because it needs them to swim and saying that a duck is able to swim because it has webbed feet? The important question is how did the duck come to have webbed feet. In the first case natural selection allowed the duck to have webs to swim; the duck didn’t look down, see it had webs, and decide to start swimming. This is a bit of a “duck and egg” questions: which came first. According to evolutionary scientists it is likely that a duck-like creature with unwebbed feet was living near water. It slowly began to eat more and more food from the water and eventually the duck’s with more web-like feet began to survive more because they were better able to eat. The concept of natural selection and evolution are central to how most biologist understand and interpret the world, yet the theory of evolution appears to question the beliefs of many religious groups? Does it necessarily question religious beliefs? Yes, evolution is in direct conflict with most religions. Evolution says that nature changes in a random way and that nothing is being progressed towards. Each step of evolution happens because of various circumstances none of which are planned. Animals might grow in a certain way because a forest fire has occurred or because it has been very cold for 50 years. These are random event that influence biology. There is not a shred of scientific evidence to say there is a plan behind it. The human mind always looks for patterns, even where there are none. Religion says that “God has a plan”; evolution says “There is no plan.” The concept of keystone species is controversial among ecologist because most organisms are highly independent. If each trophic level in a community depends on all the others, how can we say that one is most important? Choose a familiar ecosystem and decide whether it has a keystone species or keystone set. In an ecosystem it is possible there is a high level of dependence, but a keystone species might be one that all other species depend on. An example might be a human city where all the pets, farm animals, pigeons, etc, are all dependent on human beings. Read More