Environmentalism Essays - Energy Development, Energy Economics

Environmentalism In the last thirty years, America has witnessed an environmental revolution. New laws like the 1963 Clean Air Act and the 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act forged new ground in political environmentalism. Social phenomena like Earth Day, organized by Dennis Hayes in 1970, and the beginning of large-scale recycling, marked by Oregon's 1972 Bottle Bill, have help change the way Americans think about the environment. As we approach the third millennium, however, we must reconsider our place on the planet and reflect on our efforts and progress towards a sustainable society. As global warming becomes a scientific reality, natural disasters make monthly appearances in the headlines, and communities continue to find their ground-water contaminated by industrial and nuclear waste, we must ask ourselves: are we doing enough? The environmental movement in the past has largely been a social and political phenomenon. While many of us recycle (yet still only 35 percent of us) and take dead batteries to our town's Hazardous Waste Day, most Americans have not made the environment a personal issue. Very few of us have taken the kind of personal life-changing steps that are necessary to create an environmentally sustainable society. It is simply naive to believe that America's present rates of consumption, waste production, and environmental contamination are sustainable. The kind of social change required can only happen when we as individuals embrace the effort in our everyday lives. Only then will corporate America and the government realize that they too must change to maintain their customer base and public support. This kind of personal commitment to change would also create a new social ethic based on the environment under which people and companies who do not care for the earth would be held socially and financially responsible. In six parts, this article will re-examine our place in the environmental movement and investigate exactly what changes we can make in our personal lives to bring about positive change. These areas are transportation, energy, recycling and waste management, toxins and pollution, food, and water. Some of the changes discussed will require sacrifice. But, more important, these changes will often simplify our lives, bring our families and communities closer together, and help us to better understand, revere, and coexist with the world upon which each of us is directly dependent. Transportation The invention of the automobile is one of history's greatest environmental disasters. The automobile decentralized our society. People with cars moved out of the city and drove to work from their suburban homes. Before the automobile, agriculture was local. Food was grown by farmers living in what was soon to be the suburbs, and delivered fresh to markets in the cities. Because of the short distance food had to travel, farmers didn't need to add preservatives or other additives to maintain freshness. Clearly, the automobile, like other harmful inventions, makes our lives easier in many ways, but how often do we consider the environment when weighing these benefits? Fossil fuels account for the automobile's most significant effect on the environment. Not only are the emissions from cars and trucks toxic to every air-breathing organism, but every step of the fossil fuel process, from extraction to disposal, is bad for the environment. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), millions of gallons of untreated water contaminated by the drilling processes are dumped into waterways and oceans annually. Once extracted, fossil fuels are frequently refined on site, burying 179 million tons of toxic waste annually. During transport, an average of 1 million gallons of oil is spilled into the ocean each month. Upon arrival, fossil fuels are usually burned in automobiles or power plants. The average coal-burning power plant burns about 10,000 tons of coal in a single day. With even a low estimate of five per cent waste, that leaves 500 tons of toxic waste produced each day by a single power plant. If used in cars, oil must be refined further, wasting more energy and creating more toxic waste before drivers purchase it. The combustion engines used in cars and trucks emit toxic gases that contribute to the greenhouse effect and acid rain, deplete the ozone layer, and create more than 50% of the smog producing toxins that city-dwellers breathe every day. Even if we disregard the environmental damage caused by fossil fuels, we should recognize that, as a non-renewable energy source, the earth's reserves will eventually run out. Hundreds of millions of years of organic decomposition will be wiped out in a single century. Conservative estimates say we have 30 to 50 years left of oil use.

Free Essays on Apocalypse

Final Synthetic Essay Interdisciplinary Thinking or Synthetic The definition of synthetic is â€Å"not natural or genuine artificial or contrived.†(Webster’s Dict.) It is anything that is prepared or made artificially. In this class Dr Holm would give us a topic to discuss and as a group we express our thoughts about the topic. This is what is known as interdisciplinary thinking which means that I can draw my own ideas about the information in this course. Working in groups has really helped me to learn a lot, from working with others. The combination of our ideas into a complex whole helped us to get a better understanding of the material. Our views on the topics that we discuss were a lot easier to grasp after we discussed them. Because of these class discussions I understood the information presented in this class. This was a great help to me in understanding the pre- apocalyptic information in the beginning of the class. Apocalypse as a Jewish and Christian Lit genre 250bce-250ce Apocalyptic means the revealing or unveiling of what is to come. It is a narrative story in which other worldly beings give revelation from God to a human. The revelation involves God’s secrets of time and space. Prophetic eschatology envisions God achieving divine plans within the framework of human history by the means of human agents. Apocalyptic eschatology finds hope mainly in the future. This hope is possibly because God is wishing to bring to an end this evil world. Apocalyptic eschatology might not even be concerned with the destruction of world rather than the retribution after death. This is where the apocalyptic eschatology talks about the righteous being rewarded and the wicked being punished. (Reddish pg20) The first thing that happens in an apocalypse is revelatory literature, this where the author states that he had a divine revelation. The next thing that happens is the human receiver of the revelation is normally presented as a... Free Essays on Apocalypse Free Essays on Apocalypse Final Synthetic Essay Interdisciplinary Thinking or Synthetic The definition of synthetic is â€Å"not natural or genuine artificial or contrived.†(Webster’s Dict.) It is anything that is prepared or made artificially. In this class Dr Holm would give us a topic to discuss and as a group we express our thoughts about the topic. This is what is known as interdisciplinary thinking which means that I can draw my own ideas about the information in this course. Working in groups has really helped me to learn a lot, from working with others. The combination of our ideas into a complex whole helped us to get a better understanding of the material. Our views on the topics that we discuss were a lot easier to grasp after we discussed them. Because of these class discussions I understood the information presented in this class. This was a great help to me in understanding the pre- apocalyptic information in the beginning of the class. Apocalypse as a Jewish and Christian Lit genre 250bce-250ce Apocalyptic means the revealing or unveiling of what is to come. It is a narrative story in which other worldly beings give revelation from God to a human. The revelation involves God’s secrets of time and space. Prophetic eschatology envisions God achieving divine plans within the framework of human history by the means of human agents. Apocalyptic eschatology finds hope mainly in the future. This hope is possibly because God is wishing to bring to an end this evil world. Apocalyptic eschatology might not even be concerned with the destruction of world rather than the retribution after death. This is where the apocalyptic eschatology talks about the righteous being rewarded and the wicked being punished. (Reddish pg20) The first thing that happens in an apocalypse is revelatory literature, this where the author states that he had a divine revelation. The next thing that happens is the human receiver of the revelation is normally presented as a...