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Impact of climate change on agriculture essay
Climate change impacts on agriculture
Climate change impacts on agriculture
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Victor's creation is similar to one of man's most destructive yet advancing inventions, agriculture. When humans took advantage of agriculture 12,000 years ago, we instantly found a loophole in the Hunter and Gatherer lifestyle. That being said humans were able to permanently live in one area for the first time ever. This allowed for empires to rise, cities to be built, and technology to advance. It also allowed for our population to increase nearly exponentially straining the world's resources. Our human advancement of agriculture had drastically changed the world, mostly negative aspects. Like Victor Frankenstein, we are eager for the sensation of power that technology gave us and we were to egotistic to have the foresight of the ramifications …show more content…
An article from Journal of Anthropological Research 56 by David Kaplan talks about this more “Hunter-gatherers do have to work for a living, and they occasionally encounter periods of want when their efforts yield little, but on the whole it would seem that even the hardest possible life for a hunter-gatherer compares favorably to the most leisured life one can expect in the world’s most wealthy industrialized societies.”(Kaplan) Modern day humans are constantly indoors, working endlessly, and stressed. Similar to the how the creature ruins Frankenstein life after taking everything he loves away, leaving him a lost and unhappy man; agriculture also took away our relative happiness into lives of constant stress and …show more content…
Our monster, agriculture, has spread and advanced much like how Frankenstein describes the event if the creator reproduced “ … a race of devils would be propagated upon the earth who might make the very existence of the species of man a condition precarious and full of terror.”(122 Shelley) Our invention of the agriculture has left the environment endangered and it hurts the ones who supposedly were to benefit from it, humans. Yet we care very little about agriculture today, but it is crucial to our existence, but it also may to our demise. Our monster is so hideous that we the creators don’t even want to look at it, we choose to ignore or are oblivious to the problems of our creation. We foolishly lacked the foresight of imagining what the consequences of our creation could have on the
These changes, from difficult manual labor to chemicals and genetically modified products, are in his opinion a necessary and modern action. When faced with the duty of feeding the world it would be a hard pressed farmer who could be individually responsible for every plant and small field under their care, I agree. Pulling away from nature is not ideal in the least, but with such a large population and so few farmers it feels like we do not really have much of a choice in the matter. These advancements, however, do allow for farmers to made less of an impact on the nature around them, which is a positive since we only have a single world around us to live in. Destroying it is not really a solution to any problem, no matter how large. “…We have to farm ‘industrially’ to feed the world, and by using those ‘industrial’ tools sensibly, we can accomplish that task… while protecting the land, water, and air around us” Hurst explains, pointing out that it is a responsibility that every farmer must undertake to be sensible with these newer and potentially harmful tools and to have some form of forethought of the consequences (The Omnivore’s Delusion,
On the topic of environmental impacts due to “industrial farming”, Bill McKibben and Blake Hurst share completely different perspectives. McKibben believes that industrial farming has simply left an unexcusable bad impact on the environment, saying that it is unethical and that the meat we eat is potentially killing our environment and us as well. McKibben states that “we should simply stop eating factory-farmed meat, and the effects on climate change would be one of the many benefits.” (page 201). McKibben addresses that the techno fixes brought in industrial farming are simply not enough to help our environment.
Jared Diamond Argues that the worst mistake in Human History is the invention and widespread introduction of agriculture, because it has created a plethora of social, economic, and health problems for the word. One example of this is when the article states, “Hunter-Gatherers enjoyed a varied diet, while early farmers obtained most of their food from one or a few starchy crops. The farmers gained cheap calories at the cost of poor nutrition.” This illustrates that the author's main argument is that agriculture was the worst mistake in human history because it shows how agriculture has negatively impacted health of both early farmers and people today by creating mass produced bulk crops that are low in nutrition. Furthermore, another example
The repercussions of treating sentient life as monsters or miscreation’s are disastrous. When non-human conscious life is created, it is easier to treat these creations as outsiders rather than accepting them. There are two stories that show this clearly. The novel Frankenstein, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelly and the film Ex Machina by Alex Garland. When self-conscious life is created, it must be treated as such.
Victor is so engulfed by his work that he is unaware of what is going on around him. He “bore onwards [with his work], like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success” and he wants to “pour a torrent of light into our dark world" (Shelley 55). Blinded by his yearning for making new discoveries, Victor thinks that his knowledge of the sciences will be enough for him to be successful. However, he does not understand that in order to create an auspicious relationship between him and his creation, he needs to have knowledge of society as well. Once his creation is animated, Victor is unable to see that all the creature wants is to be loved and accepted. The creature craves the maternal love that Victor denies him. From the beginning, Victor is unable to realize the significance of his creation. He describes how the creature’s “yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath... [and] his hair was of a lustrous black... [and] his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips” (Shelley 58). He immediately focuses on the negative features of his creation, and does not even attempt to learn the positive qualities. If Victor uses more social skills, rather than his knowledge of the sciences to manage his creation, all of the destruction the creation causes could have been
Even the creation says, "I was benevolent and good; misery made me a friend. Make me happy and I shall again be virtuous" (Shelley 66). In the novel, Victor has two chances to provide this happiness for the creation. In both cases, all the creation desires is a companion, be it Victor or a new creation. And, in both cases, Victor is influenced by his initial reaction of disgust at the sight of his original creation.
The passing of time from when Victor first began his creation and finished it is also significant.
A new species would bless [him] as its creator and source, many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to [him]” (Shelley 55). Life and death are natural things, but Victor thinks that he can “break through” them and create life. He alone would be the person to “pour a torrent of light into their dark world,” as if he was God, ruling over all of the world. This shows Victor’s lack of respect towards life and how he intends to overcome the boundaries set by nature.
Given the deep ties to nature that Mary Shelley explores within Frankenstein, the principles and methodology of ecocriticism can be applied in many different ways. The interaction of humanity and nature is a concept explored throughout the novel, relating directly to a core tenet of ecocriticism, "directly relat[ing] who we are as human beings to the environment" (Bressler 231). Being as there is no "single, dominant methodology" (235) within ecocriticism, the extent to which we can use ecocriticism to interact with Frankenstein contains considerable depth. However, I will look to a few main methodologies of ecocriticism to look at Frankenstein in detail to uncover how the novel deals with the changing attitudes of humanity and nature in early 19th century England.
Jared Diamond makes the argument that when humans decided 10,000 years ago to no longer be hunter-gatherers and made the decision to become sedentary and start domesticating their animals and crops, the result is that the human race has experienced a steady downfall. Diamond makes the point that “with agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism that curse our existence,” (Diamond). While the present system certainly is far from being perfected, Diamond’s various complaints and solutions certainly would not be of much use in the present time either.
The cutting down on the uses of pesticides and fertilizers is one on the next great step we have to make as a society. It will take a long time to implement these changes and there will be Problems along this journey. The sooner we start this long journey. The longer we have to work out the Kinks in sustainable farming. We at least should think about the future generations that will live on earth. This is the one place we all have to call home and it’s our job to take care of it for the next generations. We can’t give them a problem that take a long time to fix because it could be too late to fix the problems in a generations or two. This is why we need to push the world to a sustainable farm
It is a known fact that the world population is increasing without bound; however, there is a debate if this increase is a good thing or if it will prove catastrophic. The article “The Tragedy of the Commons” by Garrett Hardin discusses how the ever-increasing world population will exhaust the world of its natural resources, and eliminate human’s capability for survival. On the other side of the argument is Julian L. Simon who wrote “More People, Greater Wealth, More Resources, Healthier Environment.” This article proposes the theory that with an increase in population, humans’s quality of life is amplified. One particular issue that they both mention and have drastically different views on is the future of agriculture and human’s ability to sustain it.
The culture of hunter/gatherer society was the least damaging to the environment in the long term before humans developed agriculture. There are several reasons for this. First, human population was much smaller in comparison to what it became during the agrarian age. Second, hunter/gatherer societies tended to be largely nomadic, which allowed the environment time to recover and regenerate whatever natural resources were used. Third, humans simply did not have the technologies to further exploit the environment. Human population was much smaller during the time of hunter/gatherer societies due to high rates of infant morality, infectious diseases, and social morality - infanticide, geronticide, and warfare (Southwick 128). Fewer people mean fewer demands on the environment. With growth in human population, the grasses and animal populations humans used for sustenance did not have time to recover, which turned into humans using the earth's natural resources in an unsustainable manner (class discussion 02.14.03). Humans living in agrarian society do not necessarily use the environment's resources in an unsustainable manner, but the greater the population density, the more land will be needed to support that population in a sustainable manner. As resources become more and more scarce, field owners will be less willing to let land lay fallow (class discussion 02.21.03). Humans then found a "tech fix" with the development of agriculture and the domestication of animals. Cipolla calls it the first great economic revolution (Cipolla 18). The development of agriculture lead to the development of communities, city-states, civilizations, and other settlements. The social structure that formed around agriculture brought about the possibility of specialization within a society, since not everyone had to hunt and gather all the time. Instead of living in an ecologically sustainable manner like the hunter/gatherers, people started living in an economic manner (Southwick 128). Specialization enabled the development of social institutions such as religion and government, and agriculture necessitated the development of irrigation.
So overall, Agriculture is playing a very important role in changing the lifestyle of different people. Agriculture might have made everything easy for us but it still has its cons. We see the effects of agriculture and how it affects the lives of other species and the environment.
Agriculture is quite possibly the most important advancement and discovery that humanity has made. It produces the one thing that we need the most: food. It has been around since 9500 BC, and can be the oldest sign of mankind’s acumen and the development and evolving of our minds and creations. Agriculture has been mastered throughout hundreds of years and is one of our most important resources on Earth, along with water and fossil fuels. Although the older farming methods from ancient times seem somewhat mediocre and barbaric, they were very ingenious and advanced for that time period. Over thousands of years, we have improved the way agriculture is used, how land is cultivated, the various techniques of farming and irrigation, and the tools and mechanics used. Numerous things that we see as aboriginal today, such as using a hand plow, were extremely contemporary in ancient times, and played key roles in the development of man and society, since quick labor was not abundant before this time. We are now extremely advanced in agriculture and irrigation and the tools used to farm and grow and harvest crops. We have learned from our past and ancestors how to grow and evolve in our methods and have advanced forward greatly.