David Suzuki's A Planet for the Taking
In the essay "A Planet for the Taking," David Suzuki describes
Canadians' odd appreciation for this great natural bounty we call our own. He is an internationally acclaimed scientist who is concerned about the welfare of
Canada. Suzuki's intended audience is the Canadian population that does not realize the grave danger they are instilling upon themselves by haphazardly taking our resources without looking at the subsequent repercussions of their actions. The essay is persuasive and informative. He compares various facets of science and gives reasons why none of these fields can explain why we are destroying nature.
The organization of the essay supports the author's views well. It begins with general opinions about the Canadian population and is followed by more detailed explanations. The general opinions in the beginning are well- chosen considering the audience. Suzuki's tone is evident when he states "We have both a sense of the importance of the wilderness and space in our culture and an attitude that it is limitless and therefore we needn't worry." These words suggest that we are willing to reap the rewards of our vast resources but we fail to see the harm that we are doing, and will continue to do if we do not stop these actions.
Although his approach for explaining his beliefs changes, Suzuki's tone of great concern remains consistent throughout the essay. After his views are presented, Suzuki begins to tell us what we have done to our country and how we are destroying it. Present day Canadians are compared to native Canadians which successfully serves its purpose in illustrating how, for centuries, people lived off the natural resources in Canada. With the development of science and technology, we have developed better ways of mass harvesting resources but these methods are taking at a faster rate than nature can sustain. Science suggests means of replacing these resources we are taking but there is no quick replacement for ecosystems that have taken thousands of years to evolve.
Following his explanations of how we have destroyed nature, Suzuki discusses science and how society deals with it, "I believe that in large part our problems rest on our faith in the power of science and technology." This statement and the following sentences are used to describe how people deal with great developments in science and technology. Because there have been so many great advances in these fields in the past century, people are comfortable placing their faith in science though scientists are still far from discovering all of the secrets to the universe. Scientists interfere with nature without
Cronon, William “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature” ed., Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1995, 69-90
the idea of the wild and its importance and necessity of human interaction with the wild.
... destroying others to preserve ourselves as Miss Emily did. We also must not isolate ourselves by becoming drawn into behavior that is self destructive. It does not matter if its an effort to find the ultimate truth or become the perfect society. Once we start believing that wrong is right or up is down, we will find that we are isolating ourselves to our own delusions and on the path to destruction as the protagonist in “The Yellow Wallpaper” did.
The wild is a place to push yourself to the limit and take a look at who you truly are inside. “Wilderness areas have value as symbols of unselfishness” (Nash). Roderick Nash’s philosophy states that the wilderness gives people an opportunity to learn humility but they fight this because they do not have a true desire to be humble. Human-kind wants to give out the illusion that they are nature lovers when in reality, they are far from it. “When we go to designated wilderness we are, as the 1964 act says, "visitors" in someone else's home” (Nash). People do not like what they cannot control and nature is uncontrollable. Ecocentrism, the belief that nature is the most important element of life, is not widely accepted. The novel Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer depicts a young boy who goes on an exploration to teach himself the true concept of humility. Chris McCandless, the protagonist, does not place confidence in the universal ideology that human beings are the most significant species on the planet, anthropocentrism.
At one point in our lives as human beings we began to draw mental lines between ourselves and nature. This is something that has gradually been increasing throughout their years. Most people do not seem to notice all of these constant changes simply because we are used to the type of world we live in now. I believe that in order for somebody to understand what's happening these negative changes need to affect us as individuals. For example, many people don't realize cutting down trees to build businesses will eventually cause the world to be unsustainable. Nature is something very necessary. "Wilderness" in old English was something that had its own will, just like you mentioned in paragraph three. The Wild is a place where wild undomesticated animals should be allowed to roam
From the lone hiker on the Appalachian Trail to the environmental lobby groups in Washington D.C., nature evokes strong feelings in each and every one of us. We often struggle with and are ultimately shaped by our relationship with nature. The relationship we forge with nature reflects our fundamental beliefs about ourselves and the world around us. The works of timeless authors, including Henry David Thoreau and Annie Dillard, are centered around their relationship to nature.
[23] Diagnosis may be simple, but remedy is never easy. Awareness is the key. As more people become more aware of the half-truths, distortions, injustices, and outright oppressions occurring in the world today, the future will become less of a variable. Americans can gain conscious control of their future, making choices that will allow for freedom and equality, for spiritual growth and renewal. A nation cannot learn from its own mistakes unless and until those mistakes are admitted and reconciled. That process must start now.
In Wallace Stegner’s “Wilderness Letter,” he is arguing that the countries wilderness and forests need to be saved. For a person to become whole, Stegner argues that the mere idea of the wild and the forests are to thank. The wilderness needs to be saved for the sake of the idea. He insinuates that anyone in America can just think of Old faithful, Mt. Rainier, or any other spectacular landform, even if they have not visited there, and brought to a calm. These thoughts he argues are what makes us as people whole.
Muir’s wilderness is rooted in the idea of an aesthetically pleasing natural scape given they fit into certain criteria such as, “ none of Nature’s landscape’s are ugly so long as they are wild” (Muir). The attachment of this emphasis on an aesthetically pleasing landscape was partial truth, which drove people out the national parks. While these places where indeed wild and beautiful, Muir sold the masses on this idea of all nature being pristine and pure, when in reality that was not the
Many years ago, people saw the wilderness as a savage wasteland, but today, it is viewed as “the last remaining place where civilization, that all too human disease, has not fully infected the earth.” (Cronon) He discusses this changed point of view by stating the difficulties that society will have rectifying environmental ailments if it stops viewing wilderness as “a dualistic picture in which the human is completely outside the nature.” (Cronon) This is understandable because humans rely on others to create opinions, and they do not know how to form their own thoughts and solutions to issues such as environmental ones. Therefore, it is with great importance that humans begin to learn how to formulate their own thoughts and share those personal thoughts with others, such as sharing solutions about environmental
As the twenty-first century continues to move forward, humanity finds itself in a predicament unlike any other. Cities are overcrowded, impoverished peoples go hungry regularly, natural resources are depleting from overuse, and the degradation of the environment are daily occurrences on this planet. With so much taking place, how do we reach the point where our planet flourishes and prospers efficiently? Seemingly so, we have reached a point of no return. Yet according to Jeffrey D. Sachs, we can still maintain a flourishing, prosperous planet and the ideas that lie within this document review the main conclusions in the book Common Wealth by Jeffrey D. Sachs.
Many people act foolishly, some based on common sense and past experience and some based on impulse and reckless idealism. In “The A&P” by John Updike, the cashier quit while acting unwarranted, he acted on intangible reasons, assumptions, while not thinking of the consequences. Many who act unwarranted end up hurting themselves and occasionally others because they do not think of the backlash that could occur based off their rash and uninformed decisions. Many awful events in history were due to unwarranted acts, the Iraq War for instance, the US decided to act militarily without tangible fact and wasted billions of dollars and killed many innocent people. Now this act is in no comparison to a war, it is just that when
Who we are and what we do are factors that are beyond our control and through this, will limit our moral responsibility.
The results of committing evil acts have such a powerful effect on the human mind, that it is eventually destroyed by it.
Several authors have based some of their writings on their spirituality. Some of these writings are as intricate as the Bible or as basic as an article in a local newspaper, but the meaning and passion behind them should never be doubted. In Leslie Marmon Silko's "Landscape, History, and the Pueblo Imagination", she expresses how her people have a very different meaning of "landscape". To Silko's people, the popular definition of landscape as being "a portion of territory the eye can comprehend in a single view" makes it seem as though the viewer is on the outside looking in. To them, the term landscape is much more than that. One cannot leave their surroundings, the earth and nature are always around us and we are always interconnected. The ancie...