While Rachel Carson’s “The Obligation to Endure”, Christopher Kemp’s "Medieval Planet", and Jared Diamond’s “The Ends of the World as We Know Them” all cover subjects relating to environmental issues, each author goes about purveying his or her message in a different manner. Kemp’s New Scientist article explains humanity’s environmental effects by imagining a world in which we never existed and hypothesizing how it would look and function with our absence. Carson’s essay depicts a frightening reality about the current state of humanity and the environment. She warns readers about how we are the only species who possess the capability to disrupt and even destroy Earth’s natural patterns. Diamond articulates his work with an unusual spin, using examples of historical civilizations that have snuffed themselves out by their own progress or poor relationship with the environment. The main message conveyed in Diamond's essay is that we are just as capable of choking ourselves out by our own doing today as were the historical civilizations that suffered the same fate. Despite their differing focuses, each article agrees that humans are outgrowing the finite amount of resources that the Earth can provide. A delicate symbiotic relationship between life and the environment has been maintained throughout time. Life on Earth was shaped by the constantly changing climate and surroundings. However, humans have gained the capacity to transcend this relationship. Through our ingenuity and industrialism, we have separated ourselves from natural restrictions. Because of this progress, we have been destroying the natural cycles of Earth’s environment and continue to do so at an alarming rate. Humanity has become Earth’s infection, ravaging the worl...
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... do as a species. The rise of humanity has become one of the most extreme events in Earth’s history. We have altered nature to fit our desires. However, at this rate, we will ultimately suffocate under our own weight. We are beginning to devour more than the Earth and nature can provide. Unless we scale back our dependencies on Earth’s resources, our way of life is almost certainly doomed. We are the pinnacle of billions of years of evolution. It would be a shame to see us snuff ourselves out this early in our existence.
Works Cited
Carson, Rachel. “The Obligation to Endure” 50 Essays. 3rd Edition. Ed. Samuel Cohen. Boston: Bedford, 2011. 83-90. Print.
Diamond, Jared. “The Ends of the World as We Know Them” 50 Essays. 3rd Edition. Ed. Samuel Cohen. Boston: Bedford, 2011. 98-104. Print.
Kemp, Christopher. "Medieval Planet" New Scientist 16 Nov. 2013: 34-38 Print.
The majority of this piece is dedicated to the author stating his opinion in regards to civilization expanding beyond its sustainable limits. The author makes it clear that he believes that humans have failed the natural environment and are in the process of eliminating all traces of wilderness from the planet. Nash points out facts that strengthen his argument, and quotes famous theologians on their similar views on environmental issues and policies. The combination of these facts and quotes validates the author’s opinion.
“It is a vision, a dream, if you prefer, like Martin Luther King’s, and it means clustering on a planetary scale.” (Nash) In Historian Roderick Nash’s essay entitled “Island Civilization: A vision for Human Occupancy of Earth in the Fourth Millennium,” Nash not only proposes the ideology of Island Civilization but also challenges readers to be informed of the rights of nature. Gaining insight on the options of preservation and nature from masterminds like John Muir, Henry David Thoreau, and Wallace Stegner. Nash devises a plan of action for Earth during the fourth millennium. Realizing the illustrate of our worlds “wilderness” Nash educates on the ways in which the natural world will evolve one thousand years from now.
In the book “Collapse” written and theorized by Jared Diamond, historical societies known for their peril due to environmental and human catastrophes. Jared Diamond analyzes the root causes of failed societies and uses his knowledge to depict today’s warning signs. The main focus of this book is to present clear and undeniable evidence that human activities corrupted the environment. To prove this Diamon used past societies, modern societies, and social business societies as a foundation. The most specific and beneficial theories that Diamond analyzes would be the decline of biodiversity on Easter Island, the deforestation of the Greenland Norse, the mining mismanagements in Australia and big businesses.
8th ed. of the book. Boston: Wadsworth, 2013. 505 - 16. Print.
Paik, Peter Y. From Utopia to Apocalypse: Science Fiction and the Politics of Catastrophe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. Print.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 164. 181. Print. The.
It is easy to deny the reality that the state of the environment plays a large role in the survival of society. People who argue to protect and preserve it are seen as “hippies” or “tree huggers” and discarded by society. On the other hand, those who support deforestation are seen as “killing us all.” This conflict that is often portrayed on modern media is actually one that span all the way back to the beginning of civilization. Jared Diamond, recipient of the Lewis Thomas Prize and physiology professor at UCLA School of Medicine, his essay “Why do Some Societies Make Disastrous Decisions” published by Edge on April 26, 2003, argues exactly how societies can doom themselves. Diamond creates his own roadmap as to how and why problems occur. He shows the various ways of how a problem may arise and be
Tignor, R., Adelman, J., Brown, P., Elman, B. A., Liu, X., Pittman, H., & Shaw, B. D. (2011). Worlds together, worlds apart A history of the world: V. 1 (3rd ed., Vol. 1). New York: WW Norton &.
Edited by Richard Boyer & Geoffrey Spurling. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000.
As time passes, our population continues to increase and multiply; yet, on the other hand, our planet’s resources continue to decrease and deplete. As our population flourishes, human beings also increase their demands and clamor for the Earth’s natural products, yet are unable to sacrifice their surplus of the said resources. Garret Hardin’s work highlighted the reality that humans fail to remember that the Earth is finite and its resources are limited. Hardin’s article revealed that people are unable to fathom that we indeed have a moral obligation to our community and our natural habitat — that we are not our planet’s conquerors but its protectors. We fail to acknowledge and accept that we only have one Earth and that we must protect and treasure it at all costs. Despite all our attempts at annihilating the planet, the Earth will still be unrelenting — it will still continue to be present and powerful. Human beings must recognize that we need this planet more than it needs us and if we persist on being egocentric and covetous, in the end it is us who will
In the poem “The City of the End of Things” by Archibald Lampman, he paints an image of a dystopian and mechanical future. The theme of this poem is a prediction of the natural world's destruction and of the current industrialized future. Humans cannot live without nature, thus with the destruction of the natural world comes the downfall of humanity. Lampman wrote “Its roofs and iron towers have grown / None knoweth how high within the night”(9-10), which provokes a picture of a city that is ever growing, seemingly overnight.
Which leaves us with a challenge: using Thomas Kuhn's model for change in the social sciences, we must endeavor to see if the Ponting/Quinn paradigm for all civilization is merely a shift in attitude or-as would be difficult for Kuhn to imagine-an entirely new realization that carries with it remedies for the penalties it warns of. If this is a shift back in paradigm, to hunter-gatherer or Noble Savage imagery, then the potential for civil disruption is great. With the stakes of annihilation as high as they are presented, such a shift could justify sweeping political/economic reform that-in the absence of the believed-in reality-would only place more of the Earth's population in positions of subsistence and subservience.
In “The Vulnerable Planet ” John Bellamy Foster argues that, All ecological problems faced today and in the past are brought on by humans caused factors, these problems and factors being “overpopulation, destruction of ozone layer, global warming, extinction of species, loss of genetic diversity, acid rain, nuclear contamination, tropical deforestation, the elimination of climax forests, wetland destruction, soil erosion, desertification, floods, famine, and the despoliation of lakes streams and rivers”(pg.11). In addition, In the first chapter, Bellamy discusses the history of our society and how capitalism came to be and evolved over time, starting with European colonization, where Europe began to expand and created an outflow of surplus
The present comes from the past and the two must always be in step. Our activities shape the future of our planet. The earth as we know it today is facing an unprecedented ecological crisis. Its cause is the relentlessly increasing exploitation of the planet’s available resources to make up for the demands of the economy. It has become apparent that these environmental problems are predominantly the repercussions of human activities vis-à-vis nonhuman and nonliving things that co-inhabitate the earth. As pointed out by Lynn White in his article, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis”, the fate of the ecology depends on what humans think about themselves in relation to things in the environment (White Jr 1973). Lynn White brings an important point to our attention. If human beings consider the environment as an important entity of their life, then they will strive to protect and sustain it; in contrast, if they cannot conceive of a connection for the things in environment, the world will continue to degrade. The problem at hand is that, since the beginning of the economic era, people seem to have lost themselves, even more so than before, to wealth and social standing. The economy market triggered people to nurture their selfish desires and alienate from the rest of the world. As a result of that, human nature is often described as self-centered. However, according Mencius – the one who instigated the writings of the Confucian traditions –
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Greenacre, Phyllis. A. M.D. Swift and Carroll. New York: Int. J. University.