The material this week was very interesting, but also scary. I even thought about my own
faults. First of all we need to stop using resources like there is an unlimited supply
forever. I never gave that a thought as far as gasoline for my car. I tend to drive around
with no real purpose other than to just listen to music or something of that nature. Not
to mention emissions that I am putting into the air. I found that to be the most
important thing I could do to make a change. Another problem we are facing is that we
are continuing to populate without decline in resources. As we populate we are going to
require more and more resources. What are we going to do when we have no more land
for livestock? I am always seeing land being converted to more neighborhoods, and I
never see neighborhoods being demolished to turn into free land for forrest, livestock, or
anything of that nature. I didn't do as well as I thought I was going to do on the
proficiency exam. I thought I understood the scientific stuff; however, I realized that I
didn't know much, and I should take more time to understand the process of
experimentation for our environment. Great information this week.
Two major environmental challenges that society faces are overpopulation and pollution.
I live in a rural community so I can safely say that we do not face a big pollution problem
here but when we visit bigger cities it is more of a problem, which always seemed odd to
me because any city I have gone to has had many trash cans available, even recycle
containers so I do not understand why it is still a problem.
Based on my "Build Your Proficiency" I knew little regarding and understanding of these
challenges. New information that I learned in this week's readings was the definition of
non-renewable resources and renewable resources. I had not realized that renewable
resources can be renewed but it is not a guarantee, something that I think most people,
including myself, need to have a better understanding of. It is a unsettling feeling
knowing that renewable resources can become obsolete because of overuse. Another
thing I learned was that highly developed countries like Japan, Canada, most of Europe,
and the United States use the most resources in the world because of population and
affluence. While they only make up 18% of the world these highly developed countries
use 86% of aluminum, 76% of timber, 68% energy, 61% of meat, and 42% fish. That was
astounding for me to read and I needed to read it twice because I couldn't believe the
numbers. This information is essential in order to make a change.
I think that an environmental challenge we face is littering there is a huge problem with
this you see it on the side of the highway and depending where you live you can go out
and just see it on the ground when I went to Vegas the streets were lined with garbage
and no one was cleaning it up I was there for three days and not once did anyone come
and clean it up. Another challenge we face environmentally is the ozone layer with all the
aerosols and the smoke from the factories that constantly run into the air 24 hours a
day 7 days a week that has to be destroying it quickly on a daily basis it is things like this
that I feel will destroy our world a lot quicker then Armageddon I think if we keep at this
rate we will create our own Armageddon and destroy our earth ourselves with the
damage we do everyday so when we have no place to live it will be our own faults
