These Blogs O' Mine (If They Coud See Me Now)

Within the course of writing the blog I discovered that I was really attempting at the beginning to write a series of journal entries. I simply disregarded the audience as a whole and was merely trying to write what I felt would be reflective of my attitude to a particular piece or idea. It was almost like I was using the blog as a way for me to look in the mirror of my consciousness and attack or challenge the ideas that I had about environmental affairs. Especially in the first post, I was acting as a skeptic towards the severity of environmental issues and attempted not to buy into the “bleeding heart” pathos of certain environmental groups.

However, I discovered that as the writing progressed and I began to get feedback from readers, that, lo and behold, I was not alone on the Internets. The suggestions and ideas that I received from people, even if they were not inspired to reflect on what I had written and simply regarded my post as a place to fulfill a part of the assignment, began to encourage me to open up a little and start a dialogue. Instead of merely writing down diary-like entries, I wanted to write in a way that would force the reader to think just a little bit. My reflection on the conclusion of Lost Mountain became one of my strongest pieces because I stopped merely putting up and challenging conventional environmental attitudes and started to really see nature in more of a symbiotic light.

My weaknesses, however, are reflected in my stubborn hardheadedness towards certain that do not jive with me. My inability to understand the significance of what strip-mining does to the wilderness still evades, even though I have such sympathy for the people who lived at the foot of those mountains. George Carlin said, I paraphrase, “Mother Nature will kill us long before we kill Her” and that is a sentiment I live by day to day. I believe I could have been more open to protecting the environment for its own sake, but to be honest, I did not and still do not have the time. I found that the post that were the most uninspiring were the ones in which I did not dwell to deeply on the readings that we read, but instead I merely read them with the same glossed-over preconceived mind of a person who is bored. Not to say that I did not read every single one and attempt to reflect hard on them, but sometimes I just could not relate to what any of the writings were saying to me.

A strength and weakness that I also had was my inability to ever choose a side outright. Throughout this process, I simply told myself to be torn between both sides and not try to come out supporting one or the other, which unfortunately serve to alienate the audience I was attempting to capture. If I really think about it, as my writing progressed and I began to think of attracting an audience, such as either Dr. Rouzie or my peers or another outside interest, I realized that middle-of-road was only going to bore and frustrate readers who enjoyed some of my blogs, but had to disagree with others. This became my Achilles' Heel that I never really got over because I could not bring myself to fully support the environmental movement or completely go against it. I feel a failing that I had was not being radical enough in my thinking and playing it conservative in order to keep down passionate debate.

Which is funny in its own right because I think that I attempted to challenge the other bloggers in much more prolific way. This was best reflected in the comments that I made to other bloggers because I do not believe I ever simply wrote a “Hey great post! Loved It!” I tried as hard as I could to play Devil's Advocate and challenge their conventional wisdom about the issues we investigated. In a way, I was doing what I had been doing to myself in the earlier posts and that was trying to create polemics in which the other blogger would have to rationalize their worldview in more succinct and comprehensible way. It really helped me challenge my thoughts about things because playing the side I did not agree with started making me think in that way. Sometimes the logic train would take me to places I never imagined I could go and overall, that was beneficial to my learning.

All in all the blog postings helped me to synthesize and reflect on the readings that we had, however, they sometimes only brought out the more emotional side and less of the rational side of myself. Which has its ups and downs, depending on how you look at it. Being emotionally charged leads to great rhetoric and philosophical musing, but it cannot ever be good starting place for rational discourse on very serious issues. As soon as the emotions make their way into a debate, then all sides stop listening and begin yelling, “I can't hear you!” However, at the end of the day, the blogs served as nice cathartic place where I could lay down my thoughts and opinions for all the world to see and hope that someone somewhere could appreciate the ideas that I was having at the moment.

Issues concerning abusive groundwater use

Thesis: Groundwater pollution and contamination of our vast groundwater resources are quickly being depleted. In addition, abusive agricultural systems, such as irrigation in the American Southwest, have vastly exacerbated the problem. In this essay, I will address these issues in the public sector, personal life and business practices. To conclude, I will present some solutions that can be used to stop these abusive methods.


I. Intro

II. Groundwater Abuse

A. Irrigation

i. Use leads to lowering of water table and unsustainable agriculture production
ii. Done in areas when safer and practical uses for land can be made

B. Home and Personal use

i. People deplete groundwater by leaving on taps, etc.

III. Groundwater Contamination

A. Personal

i. Pollutants from household chemicals and motor oil leaches into aquifer
ii. Trash disposal in landfills leads to toxic chemicals leaching into the groundwater system.

B. Business/City

i. Industry routinely dumps pollutants in rivers, which absorb into the system
ii. Overuse of aquifer near the coast leads to saltwater intrusion.
iii. Desert cities lower water levels to dangerous areas; can exacerbate drought and sinkhole in arid regions

IV. Solutions

A. Responsible groundwater use

i. Bills like the CWA support responsible and comprehensive control

B. Effective use of irrigation in agriculture

C. Personal Responsibility

i. Cutting down on water use in general

V. Conclusion

FI 183-213

Joel Salatin's essay arguing for the ability to opt-out was an eloquent and well-written article. Since seeing him in the film, I've been impressed with Salatin's ideas and the way that he can make them accessible to almost anyone. This article really focused heavily on making everyone believe that they could simply opt out of the massive agro-industrial culture and begin cultivating plants and animals in a safe and sustainable way.

One my favorite parts was a brief passage when he is addressing safety issues with cultivating and slaughtering animals outside. His analogy that he draws to the hunter who "gut-shoots a deer" and then proceeds to drag the carcass through squirrel shit, hang it up in his back yard for a week and then feed it to his children. This man is revered as a patriot and so to Salatin this means that safety is not a problem. He goes further to argue that you have a better chance of contracting a disease from CAFOs then you could by having an animal slaughtered outside underneath the warm sunshine.

Marion Nestle's article on eating made simple explains the world of food science through the eyes of a scientist and not an activist. I appreciate this worldview because the book and film are bogged with journalists and farmers/activists whose opinions will be skewed because they are coming from an inherently biased side. Nestle, however, argues for safer and healthier eating, i.e. organic, because she is concerned mainly with the health of people and their eating habits.

I think her argument can appeal to anyone who is automatically turned by the images of cows being slaughtered and the "unethical" treatment of chickens and pigs, but who still want to engage in healthy eating. My mom would hate the movie because the images are graphic in areas and she doesn't have the strongest constitution, but she would love Nestle's article because it's not primarily arguing for the animal's health, but for our own. I think a small but striking fact about the article was a little fact she threw in to the mix. She said that the cardiologist Ancel Keys promoted the balanced diet of fruits, veggies and whole grains as a way to garner a healthier life. In addition, according to Nestle, Dr. Keys died in 2004 at the ripe old age of 100. If that's not incentive to eat healthy, I don't know what is.

FI: 91-122 ; 169-177

I really enjoyed Robert Bryce's article ("The Ethanol Scam") because it answered a question that I had been asking my internally during the whole viewing of Food Inc. It seemed to me that ethanol didn't sound like a very good idea, rationally, because it took something that could be consumed by starving humans and converting it into something that runs our Hummers and SUVs. It doesn't solve the problem, but only absolves those who abuse the ecosystem by being able to say, "I drive a vehicle that gets 5 mpg, but it uses ethanol. Therefore, I must be environmentally conscious."

Then to top it all off, Bryce indicates that it actually causes more environmental issues than just plain ol' run-of-the-mill Saudi oil. I think can think back to that naive age when I thought, "Gee, making fuel into something that should actually be eaten by starving children sounds like a bad deal, but the government subsidizes it, so ethanol must be good, right?" Oh, how the university makes cynics out of us all.

To be honest, I kind of blew past Lappe's (imagine an accent over that e) article because I'm frankly fatigued on conversations dealing with global warming and all the things that lead to global warming. It's kind of like when a news story comes out that explains how there's a strong link between oxygen and cancer, you just resign yourself to the idea that anything you do will eventually lead to cancer. It's the same with global warming. I could lessen my carbon footprint, but some contrarian notion inside me wants to burn coal in my front yard for kicks and giggles and leave my kids to clean up the mess.

However, "Why Bother" by Michael Pollan made me want to grow my own vegetables. I don't know if its the way he writes or... yeah, it's the way he writes that speaks to "sympathetic Pat." He captured my attention with the cynical "We're all doomed" talk that always gets me excited. But somehow, he seamlessly segued from doom and gloom to hope and change. He did kind of what a negotiator does when dealing with a person who's about to jump of a building. He sympathized with my cynical notion and then all of sudden, he made me not so cynical about environmental efforts and for the rest of the day I was hopeful, thinking "Be the change you want to see in the world."

And then I woke this morning. Good day everyone!

Argument Essay- The Problem with Irrigation

In the research essay, I discussed the problems with the depletion of groundwater within the United States. Along with researching these problems, I discovered that the United States and a lot of other are becoming enamored with the idea of water irrigation in areas that are not able to grow agriculture normally, such as deserts. The idea of idea of irrigation says that one can bring sustainable agricultural growth to a region by artificially watering crops through use of sprinklers and other methods of extracting water from the ground.

This essay will focus mainly upon why this is ultimately not a sustainable technique and why, in fact, irrigation leads many communities in arid regions to dry up and die more quickly than when they never adopt it as a farming technique. I will suggest alternatives to irrigation in these regions and also suggest, utilizing information from my previous essay, where and how to cultivate the best crop without damaging the ecosystem too badly.

Food, Inc and Whatnot

I think the part that struck me was when Barbara, the mother of the infant who died from an outbreak of E. coli, was recounting the story of her son's death. This shows the human side of something that we typically relegate to the radical fringes of animal-lovers like PETA. I mean that, for me, I don't really care how my food was made or what it was, or for that matter how it was treated, before it became my hot dog. However, showing that people do have to deal with disease and death that could have easily be prevented by a few simple laws and regulations is powerful.

The thing I found most persuasive and tear-jerking about that segment was that it was a very toned-down part of the movie. It, purposefully and respectfully, showed Kevin playing in a lake with his parents and sister, while his mother is recounting this truly horrific incident and then showing him in the hospital after the E. coli had broken out in his system. This section of the film starkly contrasted some of the more glitzy parts of the film (i.e. the computer graphic of the cows on conveyor belts being herded into a big, monolithic slaughterhouse) and put forth a simple message that everyone understands universally, "Death is bad. Children dying is worse. And children dying from the food they eat is evil."

Ultimately, this section of the movie, and the film as a whole, has made me become more aware of the problems that are inherent in the agro-industrial complex. To me, if we're going to regulate an industry heavily, we should probably regulate in favor of those who are consuming the product and against who are only making a profit. (Ick, that's a very anti-capitalist statement for me, but c'est vrai as the French say)

The interview with Eric Schlosser in the first chapter of the book works as a great supplement to the film with regards to the more philosophical side of the conversation. After watching the film, Schlosser points in the direction of how to answer the big question on how we came to live this way and what to do from here on in. He and Hirshberg both challenge the idea that unhealthy is more affordable. And like with Lost Mountain, the idea that something is cheaper presently is terribly myopic fallacy. To think of the three-course dollar-menu diet is to short-terms economy, but failing to recognize that this food actually so many more long-term consequences is a failure of our society as a whole. The film shows this, but the interview with Schlosser really brings it home.

Paraphrasia

Large groups of farm animals, such as pigs or chickens, are confined in close quarters and as a result are subject to dying from communicable diseases unless antibiotics are given to them. However, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, well over half of antibiotics produced in this country are given to animals raised on factory farms. While animals will grow more rapidly using antibiotics, an ever-present issue is whether or not the agricultural industry could survive without the full-scale use of pharmaceuticals on their livestock. (Pollan) http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/01/22/tenure