Friday, November 18, 2011

The World as a Polder

The focus of Diamond's research is natural resources. He was trying to learn how the patterns of civilization have affected our natural resources. *Humans are destroying or losing natural resources such as: natural habitats, wild food sources, biological diversity, and soil. These resources are all part of a cycle that cannot function properly without one, and we need to be aware of that.*

Natural habitats are very important to human survival. We need the functions of natural habitats to continue and remain healthy if we want to stay healthy ourselves. If we continue polluting our earth we will be polluting to food we eat and the water we drink. We should be conscious of these issues. I believe this is the most important topic Diamond brings to our attention in this entire essay. Without Natural habitats we will not survive.

I thought these paragraphs were important in the essay.

But biodiversity losses of small inedible species often provoke the response, ”Who cares? Do you really care less for humans than for some lousy useless little fish or weed, like the snail darter or Furbish lousewort?” This response misses the point that the entire natural world is made up of wild species providing us for free with services that can be very expensive, and in many cases impossible, for us to supply ourselves.” (pg474 p7)

Thus, because we are rapidly advancing along this non-sustainable course, the world's environmental problems will get resolved, in one way or another, within the lifetimes of the children and young adults alive today. The only question is whether they will become resolved in pleasant ways of our own choice, or in unpleasant ways not of our choice, such as warfare, genocide, starvation, disease epidemics, and collapses of societies. While all of those grim phenomena have been endemic to humanity throughout our history,their frequency increases with environmental degradation, population pressure, and the resulting poverty and political instability.” Wow, frightening! (pg483 p31)

Four definitions for this essay:

Natural resource: a material source of wealth, such as timber, fresh water, or a mineral deposit, that occurs in a natural state and has economic value.

Natural habitat: the environment in which an organism: plant, animal, insect, bacterium or virus lives.

Biological diversity (biodiversity): the number and variety of organisms found within a specific geographic region.

Soil (don't laugh, I'll explain): The top layer of the earth's surface consisting of rock, and mineral particles mixed with organic matter.

Plants only grow in certain types of soil. (there are different types) Some soils cannot support plant life. These are called dead soils. This could potentially happen to our healthy soil if we continue to not pay attention to our natural habitats, for example.

No comments:

Post a Comment