People and Resources:Earth: Eye Opener

School has only been in session now for about three weeks and our class has only met about six times. With that being said, I find it amazing how much this class opens up your eyes to the harsh realities of our planet’s health and what that means for us. Even after the first reading assignment, especially The Party’s Over, I became much more self-aware of how temporary our way of life is now and how much it is going to change, whether we like it or not. I’ve never been ignorant to how badly we are treating our planet, over-population, and the oil crisis however after getting some of the facts and numbers; it really puts things into a different perspective for me and forces me to think deeper about these issues and much more often. I know this may sound corny but I feel like my new favorite conversation starter is about Nitrogen based fertilizers, and the funny thing is it actually does make good conversation. For a moment there I said to myself, wow I’m such a nerd why am I bringing up this conversation with people, but I began to realize how interesting and how “in the dark,” so many students and people really are. I feel like by conversing with them about these issues, they too were shocked and have now opened up their eyes up a bit to this harsh reality that so many are simply ignoring until it is too late to do anything. People are very self-centered.

I have one friend that enjoys discussing things like this all the time with me. In fact the weekend before even reading chapter 2 of The Cartoon Guide to the Environment we brought up and discussed how everything humans know is knowledge continually passed on by other humans from our conscious perspective, not a trees or other living organisms that “aren’t able” to communicate or express themselves to us. Everything we know is discovered and perceived using our five senses; however certain animals have the ability to perceive things that humans simply cannot with their own unique senses. Therefore who are we to say that Earth is not a live, conscious being, that holds conversations everyday with other planets. We don’t know this simply because we don’t have the ability to communicate with Earth on that direct of a level. I was surprised to read about the Gaia theory invented in the 1970’s by British chemist James Lovelock and American Biologist Lynn Margulis in The Cartoon Guide to the Environment, something I’ve never heard of until then. Earth just like other organisms strive for homeostasis, “a dynamic steady state, full of flux and change, but ultimately tuned to optimize conditions for life.” My friend took this one direction commenting on how although humans may be facing an upcoming crisis in the near future with over population, pollution, and the oil crisis, humans have always prevailed and have come up with a solution in the past and will again during a time in need with further technological advancement. Perhaps hydrogen cars and more efficient use of solar power. In response I explained to him how this may have paid off if we started more serious use of these methods years ago. Now it is too late for these methods to be very effective because we need so much of our limited resources to actually get these systems successfully working on a nationwide level that we simply don’t have now. As stated by a speaker in the in class movie “The End of Suburbia,” “Before people realize what oil experts hypothesized it’s already in the next era of decline. We are not one step behind but four or five steps behind.” Another speaker states that during the upcoming oil crisis 7 million dollars will be lost out of the stock market, 2 million jobs will be lost, and the middle class will be no more. Food prices will sky rocket and variety of consumer goods will diminish. Violence and political upheaval is imminent. The speaker states that the Infinite War is here.

The other day my friends were watching a History Channel documentary on Nostradamus and his predictions. I know it is a bit far-fetched to take anything a long dead prophet has to say about our future as a fact but one of the things that was said to be predicted is a 27 year war approaching. Perhaps not so far-fetched after all. I certainly believe in war that will not end in our lifetime, nor our kids, and kid’s kids, etc. It only makes sense to me that as people lose their jobs, the diminishing of oil and life as we now know it, that people will once again revert back to their basic nature. Survival of the fittest and complete chaos will slowly take over. First on large scale government level than on smaller group levels we will kill each other off after there is no stable government left. When Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans, without the proper aid of the government, people did everything they could to survive and some even took advantage of the chaotic period of time to loot for their own benefits. Perhaps all of this chaos and self-destruction is simply the Earth’s plan to maintain its homeostasis and preserve its well being completely impartial to human life. Many other species have come and gone extinct before us, what makes us a special exception? What makes us think we won’t be replaced by a more advanced organsim?

This is a funny picture that I found on a forum through google images showing how ignorant people are.