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John Muir the conservation movement
John muir's relationship with nature
John Muir the conservation movement
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Dame in Yosemite State Park
In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, a heated debate ensued over the building of a dam in the Hetchy Hetchy Valley in Yosemite State Park. The debate was between the naturalists of the area and the city engineers. I shall explore not only the debate prior to the building of the dam but also its affects on the population since its completion. Being a nature lover myself, I can easily sympathize with the people who wanted to preserve the natural beauty Yosemite, but in light of the facts, I feel that the dam was not only necessary but an overall benefit to the citizens of the surrounding area.
It was after the earthquake of 1906 that the city of San Francisco thought it necessary to build a dam to meet the water and electricity needs of the people. The earthquake was devastating. Firefighters drastically lowered the existing water supply to the area putting out fires the earthquake caused. It was a long drug-out battle that ended in a court of law. The dam was finished in 1923. They later decided to build the dam bigger so that it could produce more water and power to San Francisco. The completion of the final addition to the dam occurred in 1938. (Schaffer). High granite walls form the narrow canyon. The base of the dam is less than 1,000 feet long that creates a reservoir eight miles long and covers 1,861 acres. It measures nearly 370 feet in depth (Boldrick).
John Muir was a naturalist and a strong advocate for leaving untouched the natural beauty of Yosemite. He did not want his beloved park tampered with. He believed the dam would close off the area to the public and restrict access for nature lovers like him who used the area for camping, hiking, and staying in touch with nature. (Muir). The Yosemite Valley had already been closed for three and a half months for the purpose of keeping Tuolumne Meadows clean. It had been proposed that the watershed to the dam also be closed for the same reason. Arguments against building the dam included the problem of inaccessibility to the watershed. However, this argument did not seem a valid one, as the watershed would only need to be closed for three and a half months out of the year.
The primary purpose of Friend dam is to help regulate the flow of San Joaquin into available uses of its environmental, wildlife, and farmer’s impacts. The dam controls the flow of water delivery where it needs authorization first before the schedule can release any delivery waters into canals, steam, and wild life habitats. There will be agreements and many protocols to do with it first to avoid unnecessary spilling. There are 5 release schedules which include quantity of water available, time water, flood control requirements, release schedules from storage reservoir above Millerton Lake, and water user requirements. These benefits of flood control, storage management, modification into Madera and Friant-Kern Canals, to stop salty water from abolishing thousands of lands in Sacramento and throughout San Joaquin Delta, as well as deliver masses of water into agricultural lands in 5other counties in the San Joaquin Valley.
The negative aspects of Glen Canyon Dam greatly exceed the positive aspects. The dam’s hydroelectric power supply is only three percent of the total power used by the six states that are served by the facility. There is a surplus of power on the Colorado Plateau and with more and more power-plants being created in the western hemisphere, Glen Canyon Dam’s power is not needed (Living Rivers: What about the hydroelectric loss). Although the ‘lake’ contains twenty seven million acre feet of water, one and a half million acre feet of water are lost yearly due to evaporation and seepage into the sandstone banks surrounding the ‘lake’ (Living Rivers: What about the water supply?). The loss of that much “water represents millions, even billions of dollars” (Farmer 183). If the government were to employ more water efficient irrigation practices, as much as five million acre feet of water per year could be saved.
Imagine a scenic, wild landscape with animals that roam freely, cascading waterfalls, and mountains that seem to scrape the pale blue sky. This is what one thinks when first hearing the name Yosemite National Park. Unfortunately, the reality is completely opposite. Yosemite is now under a federally regulated Class 1 area under the Clean Air Act, which is equivalent to the pollution of Los Angeles (“National Parks Service”). It is a sad comparison to the past John Muir, who first documented Yosemite Valley, to today’s reality. The condition of Yosemite National Park should be introduced to the American public in order to protect its historic beauty and significance, eliminate current pollution, and prevent future repercussions.
Not many people know of the used-to-be 150-mile excursion that the Glen Canyon had to offer. Not many people know how to sail a raft down a river for a week. Not many people know how to interact with nature and the animals that come with it. We seem to come from a world that is dependent on time and consumed in money. Edward Abbey is what you would call an extreme environmentalist. He talks about how it was an environmental disaster to place a dam in which to create Lake Powell, a reservoir formed on the border of Utah and Arizona. He is one of the few that have actually seen the way Glen Canyon was before they changed it into a reservoir. Today, that lake is used by over a million people, and is one of the biggest recreation hot spots in the western United States.
Since the rise of the American environmental romanticism the idea of preservation and conservation have been seen as competing ideologies. Literary scholars such as Thoreau and Muir have all spoke to the defense of our natural lands in a pristine, untouched form. These pro-preservation thinkers believed in the protecting of American lands to not only ensure that future generations will get to experiences these lands, but to protect the heavily rooted early American nationalism in our natural expanses. Muir was one of the most outspoken supports of the preservation ideology, yet his stylistic writing style and rhetoric resulted in conservation being an adopted practice in the early 20th century
Alliances were a key contributor to the war. Europe was generally divided into two groups of nations. One on one side was Triple Alliance which consisted of Germany, Austria-Hungary and for a short time Italy. On the other side was the Triple Entente which also consisted of France, England and Russia. When Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist, Austria logically pointed the finger of blame to the Serbian government. Because of the ethnic ties, Russia quickly sided with Serbia. G...
...es And Affirmative Action In Making Admission Decisions At A Predominantly White University.” College Student Journal 39.4 (2005): 734-748. Academic Search Premier. Web. 27 Feb. 2014
Alliances were the reason that so many countries were involved in the war, and why it escalated into a global event. For instance, one of the key events that sparked the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Gavrilo Princip, a member of the group called The Black Hand, killed Ferdinand and his wife in hopes to make Serbia independent from Austria-Hungary. Basically, Austria-Hungary wanted Serbia to punish the people responsible for the assassination and Serbia refused, so Austria-Hungary declared war on them. Since Serbia was an ally to Allied powers and Austria-Hungary was an ally to the Central Powers, this single event set off a chain reaction that resulted in all the countries associated with these major powers being involved in the conflict. A single country going into battle can drag the rest of its allies with it, and with so many alliances a small event can spread into a full scale fight, such as the World Wars.
Minority groups are given different criteria to meet when applying to college. This is an attempt to compensate for the hardships many minority groups had to face in history. As examined by Hoover Institution’s Thomas Sowell this advantage benefits minority applicants from middle and upper class backgrounds. As a result of admissions using a zero sum game, which is where one person’s gain is another person’s loss, these preferences hurt some applicants who meet admission standards in unequal numbers (Sacks and Thiel). If this predilection were genuinely meant to redress disadvantages, it would not be given on the basis of ethnicity. Supporters of affirmative action claim that affirmative action advocates diversity. But if diversity were the goal, then
Affirmative action has been a controversial topic ever since it was established in the 1960s to right past wrongs against minority groups, such as African Americans, Hispanics, and women. The goal of affirmative action is to integrate minorities into public institutions, like universities, who have historically been discriminated against in such environments. Proponents claim that it is necessary in order to give minorities representation in these institutions, while opponents say that it is reverse discrimination. Newsweek has a story on this same debate which has hit the nation spotlight once more with a case being brought against the University of Michigan by some white students who claimed that the University’s admissions policies accepted minority students over them, even though they had better grades than the minority students. William Symonds of Business Week, however, thinks that it does not really matter. He claims that minority status is more or less irrelevant in college admissions and that class is the determining factor.
The beginning of the journey towards forming the first national park begins with a battalion in California, charged with the task of bringing the Native Americans onto reservations. During this trek, they came across a valley of immense beauty, and named it in what they believed was the Indian tribe’s name. They named it “Yosemite”, which later on was found to actually translate to “they are killers” (pbs.org, 2009) in the Native’s language. After a period of nine years, a photographer visited the park, accompanied by a land developer by the name of James Mason Hutching’s. His photos slowly made their way around the country, amazing people with the beauty of this piece of land. They called for its protection, even as the nation was slowly being torn apart by the civil war between the Union and Confederacy. With the Natives being pulled off of their land, the movement to save the lands they previously occupied was in danger. Niagara Falls in New York had already been nearly devastated, and Yosemite might be soon to follow in a short period of time, if Hutchings had his way. People gave back to the goal of protecting the land and towards building the national park system, but the man who truly brought this movement forward to create this first park was John Muir a naturalist who had studied “geology and botany at the University of Wisconsin” (pbs.org, 2009),
World War I is easily one of the deadliest wars the world has ever seen. Millions of military associates and civilians were left injured, and even more, dead. The war took place within the four years of 1914 to 1918. In 1914, when a Serbian nationalist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, tensions had triggered in Europ. Austro-Hungary had then invaded Serbia; which then set of the start of a major world conflict. The war ended with an armistice on 11:11 on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the signing of the Versailles Treaty in 1918 and an Allied victory. Although it still remains a mystery to what the initial cause for WWI was, three important factors were definitely the alliance systems, imperialism and militarism.
In conclusion, World War I was a global disaster that disrupted the peace in many different areas. Along with nationalism, imperialism, militarism, and the alliance system, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was a cause that sparked the horrific event of World War I. With the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente were two opposing groups, and two specific clashing forces were Germany and Russia. Although an attempt to spread harmony throughout Europe was made, all it did was cause a much greater threat to the peace around the world.
Initially, the government wanted to build the dam in order to supply electrical power to California. In 1921, Herbert Hoover who was the Secretary of Commerce at time first proposed building a dam on the Colorado River. In 1928, Congress then authorized the dam to be built. In the 1930’s there were not many jobs due to the Depression and most people didn’t have a lot of money. The government figured building the dam would bring people out to that area of the country by giving them jobs. In order to get people to work on the dam the government posted letters throughout the country advertising jobs to work on the dam. Because jobs were hard to find people came from all over the country to work on the dam. With people working and getting paid a good salary the area became populated and people were able to buy things which helped the economy and the country.
Once the process of recruiting has developed a pool of job seekers, the next step in the process of human resource management is to decide who is the best qualified for the position. Processing an applicant for a position needs a series of steps and divergent firms will have different processes for selection. Most organizations will judge the applicant through a series of devices, such as app...