Dying Breed

I really felt the need to post a previously written paper for this class due to the issues it stresses as well as possible solutions.

We Are a Dying Breed
Global warming is no joke, neither is our dwindling economy. Ironically, it seems to be followed by a less than impressive imagination for resourceful and commendable methods to undue our destruction to this place we call ‘Home’. We are a dying breed. Not a day goes by when one listens to the daily news and do not hear another headline crying out for our help. There are headlines of pollution, violence, destruction, forests burning down, glaciers melting, and more highways being built.
The Anchorage Daily News has been publishing several various articles on the proposition for a new pipeline in hopes to provide a new source of fuel energy to the United States. Not only would this pipeline provide new sources of employment for Alaskan’s, but would also benefit the country by providing a supply of fuel and decrease the United States need to outsource for critical fuel supplies. Therefore, the United States would be less dependent on other countries, and more stable in an economical disparity. In a recent speech by President Barack Obama, he claimed the proposal of a new pipeline throughout Alaska is a very promising idea.
Sounds promising, right? It turns out that President Obama is attending a conference in Ottawa, Canada next week with Prime Minister Stephen Harper. To my amazement, this idea for the pipeline is one of the topics that will be discussed at this conference. Prime Minister Harper wants to discuss the use of our gas and energy from the proposed pipeline to make gas out of a region in Canada called Tar Sands. Tar Sands is one of the largest hydrocarbon deposits in the world and has about 2/3 of all of the world’s oil reserves (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_sands). However, the Tar Sands deposits are very crude mixtures of sand, water, clay, and a thick viscous oil material. This thick liquid oil is called “bitumen”. In order for the bitumen to be turned into something useable, such as gas and car oil, it has to go through a vigorous process of filtering and cleaning. This process would entail using our gas pipeline to provide the energy needed to run the machines to filter the tar sands. There is a massive amount of energy that would be used and wasted just to turn the bitumen into a useable product. Not to mention, most of the energy used to convert bitumen would be expelled into the atmosphere, increasing the rate of global warming. There have already been recorded claims that Tar sands is polluting water supplies to nearby local neighborhoods. According to the article’s I have read, four hundred million gallons a day of toxic material from tar sands is dumped into massive pools. These pools are leaking and polluting groundwater supplies and are causing mutations to some of the animals living off of that water. The repercussions of this sort of pollution could be tragic to humans living near tar sands.
Tar Sands pollution pools as seen from space by satellites broadcasting for Google Earth. (http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/03/oil-sands-via-google-earth.php)
Nothing is being done to stop this pollution yet. In fact, the conference being held with Prime Minister Harper is primarily focused on whether or not the U.S. would use the pipeline in question to provide energy to the tar sands filtering process. The proposed pipeline would end right outside of Alberta, Canada, which is right next to where tar sand is located. In fact, the U.S. last year received most of its oil supply from Canada alone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_sands). The United States has policies and laws for companies creating large amounts of pollution to strictly adhere to. Some of these policies protect the oceans and limits the amount of pollutants and gas emissions into the air. Canada’s Prime Minister is quite aware of these laws. It is believed he is trying to pull a sneak move and tie the United States economical state and dire need for gas to allow for Canada to go around these laws and keep producing oil.
By instilling fear and need into the mindset of American’s, the Prime Minister could succeed in destroying our clean seas and air. He is quite aware of the United States’ policies being made in Washington D.C. and knows he would need to coincide and agree to our laws in order to use our pipeline to clean tar sands. The Prime Minister is trying to correlate the United States climate regulations to the need for Canada to keep producing oil for the American consumers. This link could be the death of any future promising laws for Canada in correspondence to American laws.
This kind of pollution can cause astronomical and dangerous aftermath to our environment. Pollution is a complete incongruity with a leaver lifestyle. Takers have led up to this process of quickly decaying and destroying ‘our’ world. It seems everyone wants this promise of “clean burning” and “low-carbon” gas from the new proposed gas pipeline. However, neither one of those would be a result of that pipeline. It would produce the opposite result, especially if we used that “clean burning” gas to help filter the bitumen, resulting in excess pollution and green house gasses.
The taker lifestyle is slowly taking its toll. Takers are starting to panic about not having the necessities to keep living the fast pace, SUV driving, non-recycling lifestyle. This panic seems to lead to more destruction. The gas pipeline is a perfect example of this. It is certain that the world’s supply of natural oil deposits will undeniably run out, and takers are just putting off the inevitable. Everything takers rely upon is rooted in power, gas, or money. With this gas and oil running out for our world, it is considerably more resourceful to stop this frenzy of digging for more oil, but rather find an alternative more conscientious method to power.
The United States and its populace spend incongruous amounts of money on a non renewable energy source, oil, every year. It is more logical to invest that money on something that will not run out, solar energy. By harvesting the energy from the sun with various methods, such as solar panels on homes, it is plausible to produce large quantities of energy. Costs for American Citizens, especially us Alaskan’s, are increasing to heat and run a household. It also emphasizes the taker lifestyle. Solar energy has been studied and researched and found to not be harmful to the atmosphere. I do believe it would be difficult for an economy and population to cease power supply altogether. The first step would be to decrease harmful power supply. Gas and oil is quite harmful to the world, causing global warming. A cessation in pollutants and increase in naturalistic methods such as solar energy would be sufficient in a first step to diminish the taker lifestyle.
All of the funding and money coming from our tax dollars to build things such as highways for cars to drive and pollute the air could be used for something more productive. It is destructive to our land, our air, and our world to be investing on something that destroys it. This money could be used for a better more resourceful means to production of solar panels. Alaska sees large quantities of sunlight in the summer days. Sunlight that is just “there” so to speak. Nobody notices it because it is always around. However, that could be the taker lifestyle’s biggest problem. They look for the wrong resources, the wrong answers. Or maybe, they just cannot see the right ones, they are overlooked. As Daniel Quinn commented in Ishmael how locals do not notice the tourist attractions in their hometown because those attractions are always there. Sunlight is always there, but this is beneficial. Oil will not always be there. It’s time to start investing our money in a more permanent solution.
Additionally, vehicles contribute largely to pollution. It is not an uncommon sight to see people driving the highway commuting to and from work all by themselves in a gas guzzling SUV. There are better means to commuting that that method. Public transportation or light rails would be quite a bit more beneficial and less harmful to the environment. Down in the lower contiguous United States, many big cities depend on public transportation and light rails. Seattle, for instance, has a light rail that travels several different destinations downtown. However, it is not quite the right route to take in an Ishmaelian sense. In a true leaver culture, walking, or bicycles would be much more proactive to protecting Mother Nature. A decrease and eventually halt in gas and oil power is the main objective humans need to start considering.
Transportation by electric cars or perhaps even solar power cars would be the epitome of reduction in pollution from gas and oil power. By getting the word out publicly and promoting things such as solar power and electric cars, more people may see its importance in diminishing harmful green house gasses. Not to mention, electric cars are not very prevalent at dealerships. If the community starts embracing and advertising for more electric/solar power cars, the population at large may start to want to buy them. Our society values things that are seen and advertised as wonderful, such as brand name big wig SUV’s and brands such as Bentley and Mercedes. We rate things that other more important people, such as celebrities, have. If rich famous people have these wonderful expensive vehicles, then by our standards, they must be worth buying. If car companies could incorporate and advertisement plan to get the idea and concept of the importance of such solar/electric powered vehicles, many more individuals would be willing to buy them. Additionally, more charging stations in more locations for such cars would need to be proposed. Availability is important. The more available the cars are, and the more available resources are to make it easy to own an electric car, the more people will purchase them.
Many concerns could be raised about the shifting of pollution from gas to power plants to produce electricity to run these cars. However, research has found that electric cars who function on electricity primarily from hydro sources are 98.9%-99 cleaner than corresponding gas powered internal combustion vehicles (Fuhs, 2009). That would result in a huge decrease in pollution to the world.
Households use large quantities in gas and electric for power. Although the ideal circumstances to fix this problem would to live in log built households and use wood fires for energy. This is not very realistic in today’s society. Perhaps a better means to decrease the use of harmful gas would be to capture wind energy with the use of wind power and water power. Wind and water have the ability to produce large magnitudes of energy. If that energy can be harvested and captured with the use of wind mills and dams, the world would be a cleaner place. Hydro power (water) has been used for years to supply the power when milling grain, harvesting logs for construction purposes and even in making fabric. Waterwheels are usually the mechanical device that is used to harvest the power from the flow of water. It is a great alternative method with little to no pollution produced (Kemp, 2005).
The taker lifestyle values growth. More highways, more sky scrapers, and in order to do that, more gas power is needed. The world was not meant to keep growing and keep producing mass quantities of asphalt for highways. Conditions where growth is unstoppable result in destruction. Our society values success of businesses on how big they are, or how many people go to that business from products. Growth, by itself, is valued in our society. This is not logical due to the fact that our world does not have the capacity to keep growing infinitely.
The taker lifestyle is a lifestyle in wich humans are meant to take over and be the rulers. It is obvious that we are not made to rule the world and contain a selfishness that is just concerned about how humans can run the show. Ultimately, there are other creatures on this planet, creatures that whether we like it or not, provide for us. We must respect Mother Culture if we want to last in the long run. Leavers lived on this earth for thousands of years in harmony with the world and other inhabitants. Destruction was not even thought about when the leavers co-existed with the world.
Although the gas pipeline is not built yet, there are better investments for our money that would provide adequate energy in different methods. The pipeline is a temporary fix by using non renewable energy sources for an energy issue that will keep coming up. It is much wiser to invest our money in energy from sources such as the sun, hydroelectricity, wind, and solar energy. Those resources are infinite in this world. However, it may not follow completely in touch with the taker lifestyle. Today’s inhabitants would have a more likely success rate at using those renewable energy sources listed above than going back to walking and horse and buggy.
It is imperative that the word from the civilians of this country and Canada are put out there and politicians who ultimately make the law are aware of alternative methods to energy. If the pipeline was built, those recourses would inevitable run out too, one day. Not to mention the amount of hazardous material that would be put into water systems and the air if that pipeline was used to filter bitumen for Canada. We cannot let the Prime Minister get away with going around United States policies.


Works Cited
1.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_sands.
2.) Fuhs, Allen E. Hybrid vehicles and the future of personal transportation. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2009.
3.) Kemp, William H. The Renewable Energy Handbook: A Guide to Rural Independence, Off-Grid and Sustainable Living. Tamworth, Ontario: Aztec Press, 2005
4.) Price, Matt.” Alaskan’s should look at Where Their Natural Gas May Go.” Anchorage Daily News. 12, February, 2009.
5.) Wizelious, Tore. Developing Wind Power Projects: Theory and Practice. London: Earthscan, 2007.

Indigenous Peoples to Discuss Climate Change.

I came across this article on adn.com today and it stood out to me as a very logical attempt to acknowledge and hopefully come up with solutions to a rising problem. Here is the link if anyone desires to actually read the article, but my plan is to try and explain it the best I can. The confrence that is sponsored by the United nations will include about 400 people from 80 different rural areas from around the world. They are going to discuss the recent changes in climate and ways to potentially prevent further damage and ways to stop what is occuring. Although the United nations is sponsoring the event, it is the Inuit Circumpolar Council that is actually holding it. They are so concerned because as the article stated that people in rural areas, or rather, people that portray and live a leaver lifestyle is the population that is hurting the climate/polution issues of the world the LEAST. It is also these populations and leaver peoples that will be impacted the most by this change in climate. I believe this is so true and that our class has discussed this many times in our conversations of destructive behavior of the Taker lifestyle and the respectable behavior of the leaver lifestyle. The people putting on this confrence are aiming at trying to get government involved and listening to their cause. They want government to be active in stopping the polution that is occuring as well as lawmakers involved because they have a large voice in our society today. Basically, the rural and indigenous people of the world want a larger voice to stand up for what is right and decrease the destructive nature of the Taker lifestyle. Bravo, round of applause! I think this is wonderful and hope they succeed.
-tootles
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New Energy

With all the hustle and bustle of Mt. Redoubt errupting, you think we could turn this eventful occurance into something positive. Mt. Redoubt did remind me of all the possible renewable sources of energy that we could attain from such a huge natural deposit of energy. Geothermal energy could be a potentially huge source of energy to the world if it was harvested. Not to mention it does not contribute a largescale amount of harmful gas emmisions to the atmosphere such as cars, buildings, and factories do. It amazes me that there are so many pollutants dispersed into the world's airstream just because we have no other methods to decrease that dispersion. Or rathere, we are not using those other methods. There are renewable energy sources around us everyday. Wind, water, solar, and geothermal are all types of energy that are not harvested in large quantities and used to their potential. Instead, the people of this world are stuck in a routine of using pollutants to power their cars. It is astronaumical the amount of pollutants and greenhouse gases that get dumped into the atmosphere every day that could be prevented. Just some food for thought.

Children

Recently all of the tabloids, news stations, and magazines have been making a big deal about the lady that had octuplets, not to mention her already 6 children. However, this woman is unemployed due to previous injury and living off of compensation which will not be enough to take care of 14 children. She is also a single woman raising these children. She has been quoted to say that she just wanted a lot of kids and a large family. Our class has discussed the issue of bringing a child into the world and the costs of it. I do not believe individuals should bring children into the world if the person/people cannot support that child. If you cannot even afford a home, food, and bills for yourself you have no right to bring a helpless child into the world. Granted somethings are unplanned. But to plan to have a child under less than adequate financial circumstaces is sad. I do believe this increase in the worlds population may tie into this topic im speaking of. It puts the child in a bad circumstance to begin with and that child may not get adequate nutrition, care, education, or a chance at a bright future. Our world cannot support a continuous expantion of population or anything for that matter. Also, if we want to invent ourselves out of bad situations and the road we are headed down, giving children a fair and sufficient education is highly needed.

Windmills

Upon driving back from Helena, Montana to Seattle, we crossed the Columbia River. I looked up and saw these massive 3 pronged windmills specled over a rolling hill/ small mountain. I have to admit i was more fixated on the windmills and there seemingly huge sturdy white structure , standing out on the mountain, than the massive river flowing under me. It just amazed me that there were these huge structures collecting power from the wind out in the middle of nowhere. But why can't we have these more throughout the U.S. Obviously, it would be a wonderful advancement or rather change from the Taker lifestyle to the Leaver lifestyle. We would conserve energy and be able to harvest it naturally taking the huge amount of power from the wind and use it instead of electrical power. I am a firm believer in using more reliable earthfriendly and completely renewable energy source rather than the wasteful methods for energy used today.

The Lion King- Cirlce of Life

Everytime I attend class and we discuss how we are ruining our world by pollution, damage to the ecosystem, and by the rise of industry in general, i cannot help but think of the movie The Lion King. The conversations the class has about us destroying our world through the Taker lifestyle and hurting the world through pollution and having food under lock and key reminds me of the conversation between Mufasa (i think the dad) and Simba about the circle of life. About how everything that dies just continues the circle by providing for another creature or the grass/water/earth. That story reminds me of how we take take take from the earth and build it up with technology and highly advanced innovations, in turn, destroying the world we live in. If we all just took what we needed, instead of taking everything that we think we need, perhaps there would be enough for everyone to be satiated at the end of the day.

The Lady Who Had Everything.

A funny thing happened the other day. I was getting my nails done for my birthday, haha , don't worry, im not a regular. I was eaves dropping and couldn't help but overhear the woman sitting next to me. She was talking to another lady about a friend of hers who had everything she could of wanted: a wonderful family, nice home, good husband etc. etc. She left this life of everything, her husband, her job, her responsibilities and moved into a little tiny house/shack in the middle of the woods with no electricity. Apparently, this lifestyle made her happier than she has ever been before. Even when her children came to visit, at first they were bored without television and the things society of the takers thinks we need, but they adapted and became more content than in the previous Taker lifestyle. When they were bored, they would spend time together, go out to the garden which provided food to them, or go on a walk and just enjoy the scenery. The lady had never been happier.
While i was hearing this story, I couldn't help but relate it to Ishmael and the leaver lifestyle. Why was she so much happier without her so called "perfect life, job, and family?" She was able to drop all the hustle and bustle of the Taker lifestyle and repetativeness. I believe the Taker lifestyle has the possibility to posses and does incorporate a high stress level with it. You have to worry about having a good paying job so that you can buy gas, pay rent, buy food, and all the daily amenities one needs to survive. With the leaver lifestyle, you have a role. A role in which you provide yourself with only the things you need and nothing is under lock and key. There is a lot less stress because one is not worried about money and everything related. It seems cash rules everything around us every single day. It scares us if we don't have money. It makes us work harder, (which could be a good thing: a hard worker), but not if it requires busting your butt just to make rent. It amazes me some people that work so hard but never get ahead. The leaver lifestyle seems to eliminate this, as well as positions of high athority in society.

Mayans

I can't help but revisit the topic of the Mayans and their decline and eventual dissapearance. It seems amazing to me that they had technological innovations that had to be similar to ours today. When you look at the information and structures of their architecture, they had things such as perfect alignment with stars, could understand and produce mirages from the sun, and a full fledged accurate calendar. Additionally, they were achieving mathamatical calculations, studies on astronomy, producing irrigation systems, and a full fledged literature system and alphabet. How could they have had the ability to do such things so long ago? And why can't we figure out how they did it? Most importantly, what caused their civilization to collapse, and where did they "walk away" to? So many questions that i would love to be answered. If they were capable of having a thriving civilization with impressive technological advancements and collapsed, is this a mirror image of what will happen to us???
I do believe we need to find a middle ground between Takers and Leavers. Invent a middle ground combining and rising above both. Human kind has found ,everytime, ways to dig themselves out of rutts. I have faith that humans can do it again. Additionally, civilization needs to start investing their money in things that are more dependable such as renewable energy sources. I believe once the mindset of civilization as a whole gets a real grasp on the concept of the world being destroyed and comming to an end, then we will reach our best. We will find a way to rise above and invent means to survive. We, unlike the Mayans, have nowhere to "walk away" to. There is not much of this world that has not been taken over by modern day activists and humans. We cannot just give up what we have built and walk away... We must find a new means to survival that is more in sync with mother culture. Maybe the Mayans were telling us something. Perhaps we need to pay more attention to that civilization and we could learn a few things. Just some food for thought.

Predator Control.

There have been recent articles in the newspaper about the new plight to create a means to predator control. There is a plan hoping to set into action to basically kill some of the populace of wolves in order to increase the number of moose. I believe that is a problem with the Taker lifestyle that the book Ishmael touched on. Trying to control things such as agriculture and the amount of animals. There is no real science where you can keep a direct count on amounts of such things so it seems inevitable harmful to the environment. There is no science saying that if you kill so many wolves, more moose will survive. It is not up to humans to control mother nature and it's inhabitants. There are other more important factors in animal population. Climate change has a huge impact on how many moose survive. Also, there are factors such as vehicle accidents which can account for large quantities of death to moose. So in the long run we could just end up killing wolves for no reason. There is no substantial evidence that supports the slaughtering of wolves to increase moose population. It seems risky and very much like a Taker mindset to, as one could say, "take" what is not theirs. Things such as population of animals cannot be controlled by humans. It is not humanities role to be the controller of such things. I see how this ties into Ishmael by the taker mindset being that the world was made for humans so we have the right to do what we want.

The leaver lifestyle only took what they needed and left the rest alone. This mindset could be partially if not completely the reason for their success. It was not until agriculture ,the key to life, started being controlled did things take a drastic change. Wether trying to increase moose supply for food or not, that should not be our decision as humanity.

The Law

Heated discussion broke out last class that left me thinking.
"There are fundamental laws that cannot be broken. Gravity for instance."
"There are other sort of laws, speeding laws, laws on society that society creates to maintain order."

If there is such a fundamental law like gravity , as Quinn describes, that is the law of how we ought to live, then how could we be breaking it? Not until Newton 'discovered' the law of Gravity, nobody knew it existed. It was right in front of our face, yet it was so obvious that we never saw it. You cannot break the law of Gravity. Sure, we try. We go to space, we float around a little bit. But in all actuality, here on earth we cannot break it. If this law on how we ought to live is real, it seems unfathomable that we could be breaking it so miserably that we are destroying the world. There is no doubt in my mind that the world is being destroyed by human actions. But then is there really a law that tells us how to live if we have been breaking it for soo long? Or is it like space travel, we're not really breakin it, but finding a way around it?