It was a pleasure meeting you today! Welcome to your final Art & Design Perspectives course and our discussion section.
This week and last we have been introduced to various technological and environmental issues, such as our current population, dwindling natural resources, our carbon impact on the environment (rising CO2 levels) and the carbon footprints we leave, lack of sustainability in our current global systems (e.g. "closing the loop" of consumer goods), and the overall North American hyper consumer culture. In addition, a lot of great points were brought up by Derrick Jensen in the article "Beyond Hope" (here)... that being said, what are you still thinking about?
This is an open space for your first weekly statement.
(Image: Man-made "trees" The Getty Museum)
My response this week comes in two parts, first from the Jensen reading, and secondly from our discussion in lecture about our lack of familiarity with the natural world.
ReplyDeleteThe Jensen article brought up a couple of good points, namely that sitting on our butts waiting to be saved from ourselves is the equivalent of putting on blinders and pretending that our small actions have no consequences. I agree with that idea wholeheartedly. However, I think that by blaming the apathy he sees on hope is not only misguided, but an attempt to simply rile people by throwing them off guard. Other places where he seems ready to provoke are where he juxtaposes The Great Mother and Jesus to Santa Claus; either he has a hidden agenda or he thinks mockery is a useful tool for persuasion. He makes hope the emotion of the weak, and the spineless (of course making himself out to be a hardened, rugged fighter). I don’t buy it. For Jensen to dismiss hope makes me think that he has never actually had to endure real hardship or tragedy (despite waxing poetic on the merits of despair). What Jensen fails to account for is the strength that hope gives people in the face of extreme adversity. Jensen links hope to the people who do nothing, while forgetting that it can be a vital emotion for people on the frontlines. I think that hope might be the only thing that forces people to continue on with work that might otherwise seem futile (in regards to environmental advocacy, or really any uphill battle). Without looking at both sides of the coin, Jensen’s hope device seems really rather gimmicky and not at all the call to arms he seems to think he’s crafting.
But enough about Jensen.
Our discussion today during lecture was reminding me of some of my experiences over the summer. I work at a camp in Northern Michigan near Alpena (not that that helped me identify poison ivy in the lecture slide), and our camp gets kids mostly from the suburban areas in Southeastern Michigan. That being the case, there were many, many kids who I know had never seen more than five trees standing together at once. Worst example? During a hike, I had a girl ask me if we had tigers in our woods. I would have laughed but luckily realized she was being dead serious (tigers??). This girl was fourteen years old. I thought of this as Professor Trumpey talked about how due to the focus in our schools, we could rattle off tropical creatures more readily than ones in our backyard. Then you go and read “A Sand County Almanac”, and the author not only knows every species of bird on his property, he can distinguish their individual calls down to the minute they add their voice to the morning chorus. I consider myself an outdoorswoman and I can’t even come within a hundred miles of that. This strikes me as being horribly depressing, that we are so out of sync with our real, natural surroundings. But I suppose that if you live your whole life on asphalt in a cocoon of air-conditioning that that knowledge would seem completely useless. Part of me wonders that despite all our modern “conveniences” we’ve potentially removed ourselves from something that is more vital than we give it credit.
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ReplyDeleteKrista Boyd
ReplyDeleteWeekly Response (#1)
September 18, 2009
In my first weekly response paper, I would like to address a few things from last weeks lecture regarding our roles as artist, and from Derrick Jensen’s article, “ Beyond Hope.” First, I would like to touch briefly on a few things from the past few lectures.
Being an artist for me is not always easy. It’s difficult at times for me to come up with ideas that I’m proud of and it’s even harder to think of ways to change the world, i.e. a good design or concept that can make life easier for those less fortunate than myself. For example, when Professor Trumpey talked about how a group of designers got together to make Hippo Rollers, which helped women in Africa make fewer trips for water and allow them to stay in good health. Those designers accomplished a great deal because they used their skills to make life easier and more efficient for those who needed it (i.e. people in third world countries). And I personally believe that, that is the job of a designer.
I feel that it is every designer’s/artist responsibility to ask themselves the questions that the Professor Trumpey brought up in his lecture. Such as, what should we make, how should we make it, what do we make it out of, and what happens to it? And more importantly, who benefits from it? I know these may seem like common sense questions, but I never thought about asking myself. After that lecture, I make it appoint to do so. It’s vital that I understand how big of role I can play in this ever-changing world and through those questions; I’m constantly reminded that I can make a difference. As artist and designers we can change things.
Hope, we all hold on to it, I know I do. For example, I call on hope when I have an exam, when I get pulled over for speeding, and when I play the lottery. More importantly, hope is what gets me through life. When I’m having a bad, hope is what keeps me going because I hope my day gets better. When I get up everyday at 6:20 a.m. to come school, I hope that all my hard work pays off, so that I may graduate. I hope my parents continue to be proud of the person that I’ve become and I hope God continues to bless me. As you can see, hope is a major part of my life. This brings me to what I want to say about Derrick Jensen’s article, “Beyond Hope.”
Derrick Jensen’s article “Beyond Hope,” was a good read for me. But I must say that I disagree with his theories on hope. I would like to touch on a few topics that bothered me the most. First of all I found it interesting that Derrick Jensen believes if we give up on hope, things will start to get done and hope means that we are essentially powerless. These statements are false. We as society have grown to depend on hope; Hope is what gets things done. Just because we hope for something to happen doesn’t mean that we are powerless. In fact it means the exact opposite. I’ll use myself as an example. If I hope to get an “A” on an exam, it doesn’t mean that I went into that exam based on hope alone. No. It means that I study real hard and I hope my efforts pay off. I believe that hope is the driving force that keeps us going. Without hope, I feel people wouldn’t have the drive to keep going in life. To not have hope, to merely stop hoping in my opinion is a way of giving up.
Shaili Das
ReplyDeleteADP III- First Page Response
In my first weekly response I would like to discuss both the article by Jensen as well as the lecture given by Joe relating to human impact on the environment and our ignorance towards it.
The article by Jensen summarizes the views and beliefs towards the idea of “go green” in our society today. Jensen states, “Hope and fear chase each other’s tails,” not only because hope leads us away from the present, away from who and where we are right now and toward some imaginary future state.” This idea is illustrated through how our society is now responding to our current environmental situation. Before we ignored the decreasing amount of natural resources and the melting of the polar caps because humans refused to believe that it could affect them within their lifetimes. Because people believed it wouldn’t affect them directly they chose to avoid the consequences that began to increase throughout the years. Now because our fears have been brought to our attention we have started to somewhat take action for our mistakes. Our fear is balanced by the hope we put in people within our society to help make the planet better. As Jensen continued to state the chase is what has triggered our environmental movement.
As a designer Jensen’s article helped me understand how being scared has helped push our society in the right direction. From a very young age I decided that I wanted to be a product designer. It was only recently that I decided that I wanted to incorporate the idea of being eco-friendly combined with my passion for designing consumer goods. From Joe’s lectures I came to understand that me just wanting to be an environmental designer wouldn’t help me be one and that there are a lot of things that I have ignored in the past because it didn’t directly affect me. For example, when professor Trumpey told us to list were our sewage system went to or even name 10 types of plants that were part of our ecosystem I was baffled. I feel like these are key facts that a successful eco-friendly product designer should understand before trying to better the world. In addition, I learned that it is a far more complex procedure to be helping preserve the environment. Before I used to only address the question of how to make something? I never really realized that what happens to it after we make it is just as important. I believe that discussing the ideas of production and the methods done to create a product has changed my views of how I see the production business.
By realizing that there are so many aspects to environmental design that still need to be publicized I have come to the understanding that although we are in a time that promotes go green we are still far behind in what we can do to help change the environment. I think that these new concepts that I have been exposed to will personally help fuel my hope to change our world for the future.
I have to say these first few of weeks of ADP have really opened my mind to how very little my generation and I know about the environment in which we live. It was startling for me to realize that, should I encounter poison ivy in the woods near my home, on campus or on some vacation that I would have no idea what I was touching. Yes I was one of those people who said “leaf” when asked to identify the poison ivy plant. But the bigger eye opener for me was not only how little I knew about the nature that surrounds me, but also how much I knew about the technology and artificial environment around me. I could name stores in the mall, several types of cell phones and phone services but didn’t know that corn is literally part of almost everything around us in North America. I am from Lombard, a suburb just outside of Chicago. Being from Illinois I am VERY familiar with corn. Besides the city of Chicago the entire state is filled with miles of corn. My drive from Chicago to Ann Arbor can be summed up in about one word, corn. And yet I had no idea that the floor I stand on in my dorm possibly had corn products in it. Nor did I ever pay attention to the corn in meats or other products that don’t directly say corn in the ingredients or on the label. Now these types of revelations startled me at first, but then I started thinking, it really is not necessary for my survival to know that there are 25% corn products in the supermarket. Nor is it essential for my direct survival to know what poison ivy looks like because I don’t live in a forest. However, my responsibility for being aware of these things does impact my environment, my health and my intellect so in a way being aware of these issues can affect my survival. In particular, while reading “A Sand County Almanac” I realized how much nature and the environment around us has to say. Everything has a story to tell and I found that I enjoyed that book much more than I thought I would. As I said I am from northern Illinois, and my family actually has a small cottage up near the border of Wisconsin in Lake County. We are on a small lake called Duck Lake which connects to the Fox Chain O’ Lakes. The Chain is a busy chain of large lakes used mostly for boating and recreation. The nice thing about our lake is that it is indirectly connected; meaning boats can’t get into our lake from there. So our lake is somewhat private, and you can really connect to the wilderness while there. While reading Aldo Leopold’s book I directly began to relate to each season he talked about and see it as I saw my cottage year to year since I was ten. I love our cottage and the wilderness up there is much the same as the wilderness Leopold describes in his book. My mind boggled at his tree age analysis of February and I could recount all the firewood I have seen, chopped, felt, burned and smelled over the years up there, and wished I could know the history of each one. At times, while up there, I have found myself wondering about the story of things I see up there. Until I read Leopold’s book I thought I just had a really great imagination. In truth I always found it hard to kill anything from fish to insects, because I know they each have a story and who am I really to put an end to it? We tend to blind ourselves to those stories, either out of shame or guilt and not wanting to know about what were destroying, or out of sheer ignorance. I truly hope it’s the former. But I see in Leopold’s book how he tries to allow everyone to understand the stories of nature because, if we become intimate with nature, perhaps we will think twice before destroying it.
ReplyDeleteThe above post (dbattag) was done by me Danielle Battaglia ( I forgot to post my name with my response)
ReplyDeleteI like how this week’s Weekly Statement has been phrased. Maybe it will be phrased this way every week but in particular for Derrick Jensen’s article I’ve been left with a lot of things I’ve still been thinking about. That shouldn’t seem surprising yet a lot of things I’ve been thinking about since reading the article have been conflicting or almost countering if that makes sense. Before discussing these specific countering thoughts and opinions, I might as well start just start with what’s first been on my mind. My thoughts will come out naturally that way.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things in the reading that left an impression on me was Jensen’s quoting of activist John Osborn’s philosophy. To quickly some up what John Osborn said: he believes that if we can help make something last or live longer than its expected to, like the grizzly bear, than who says that thing won’t last longer. In other words doors and opportunities should be left open instead of just shutting them right away or in another word “quitting”. This left an impression on me for a few reasons. Clearly, Jensen is trying to make a point in getting people not to quit on the little things and tips to help the environment; but also I think this grizzly bear example can be turned into a metaphor on things in real life. If we as people don’t try new or uncomfortable things while they are still available than when the opportunity has passed up we will have never known what it would be like. To put it simply, I like this quote Jensen used because it illustrates the idea of “Its better to love than to not have loved at all”. Yes, that’s corny but its better to have tried something and have it fail than never have tried it at all and wonder.
Another thing that I like about this article has been the discussion of the existence of hope. Like Jensen, I don’t believe there is such thing as hope or a God or superior being that will save us all. If there’s hope than there’s dependence on something else. We are making excuses and saying something is out of our control because so-called “hope” will magnificently take care of it. I think Jensen illustrates this point beautifully (to choose a more fluffy word). He says having hope leads to “inaction” which is a great way in saying hope makes us become lazy and not look into the possibilities. I personally don’t like the idea of succumbing to something and making myself powerless. If I want to fit into my Levi skinny jeans, I damn straight will. I’m not going to say, “U of M’s school work just doesn’t give me any time to work out”. I’ll get up off of my butt and run for as little as fifteen minutes and get some sort of physical exercise done. I don’t think we should just let the bad issues of the environmental and technology just pass us by.
Lastly, it is clear that I enjoyed reading this article but there was one little tidbit that definitely bothered me. Jensen mentions going to a Q&A in which a person announced that people only become activists to feel better about themselves. Jensen disagrees. I agree with that person. I think its just bull shit that people do anything they do because it’s for “effectiveness”. We are human beings. Just as we should not rely on the false idea of hope because it can’t solve our problems, we should not rely on the fake idea of “I’m doing something for the helpfulness of others”. We humans are selfish, self-centered individuals (which is not necessarily bad) who do things for ourselves, intrinsically. Yet, that doesn’t say a person doesn’t care about a certain issue. It just says that people know they care about something, they like that they care about that something, and it makes them feel good that they do. So I agree with that man because I feel like people my become activists because it makes them feel adequate, essentially. That’s the little thing that bothered me about Jensen’s article. Regardless, I think Jensen gave a great speech on taking action for all things in our world with this quote: “when you give up on hope, you turn away from fear”.
lagillmo@umich.edu Laura Gillmore
Penn Greene - Jensen does not present any solutions for our horrific environmental issues, but he does convey his approach to causing change. His mentality is that hope is false and evil and the only thing to do is act. True action involves, according to Jensen, changing the way we as a species interact with the world. He mentions a coho salmon, saying that he “will do what ever it takes to make sure the dominant culture doesn’t drive them extinct” but not just ‘hope’ they remain. We need to be an active agent in their survival, and stop our practices that are encroaching on their existence. His message is that we will lose hope when we realize what action is necessary. Losing hope is in fact a good thing. It means we have a plan.
ReplyDeleteMy current thoughts are that our population is out of control. We have too many distractions pulling us away from realizing that our way of life is not sustainable. I have my own silly solutions that last seconds in my head and usually start with “well… if the government were to just force everybody to do x, y or z” but this isn’t the way to look at things, it seems. The “we are fucked” statement from the article seems apt, but only because we don’t have a plan. To be honest, the only thing that I know for sure is we can not continue living as we do.
Annie Hyrila
ReplyDeleteADP Discussion
1st Response
Having read the articles for this week, there seems to be a common-thread between these readings and the lectures; our lives in America are too fast-paced. I feel that so many problems stem from the high-speed that seems to be inherently alive in us as Americans. Beginning with the food we consume, we eat what is fast and easy. In reference to, "This Steer's Life", our meat is raised, not with the concern of a farmer, but with the slickness and anxiousness of a businessman. Everything from crackers to juice boxes are packaged into plastic bags or cardboard containers so that we can quickly pick it up and eat it on our way to class or work. The pace which we live our lives also limits how much of the "natural world" we can truly soak in and become familiar with and closer to. Unless something is directly impacting us by making our lives run faster or smoother, such as cars or any type of technology, we hardly give it the time of day. As much as I find nature breath taking, I don't take the time to immerse myself in it. Sometimes I feel like I am in love with nature, but not living in it. I spend my time in class or at work, on the fast track to employment and success. The food I eat and the unobservant way I live was never really a concern for me until now. I think that as people make a mad dash through life, they aren't even conscious of what they are missing. The processes at which the natural world progresses seem to be in exact opposition to the way humans live. It can take days for animals to find food, months for the seasons to change, and years for trees to grow. For humans, it takes minutes to prepare a meal, just a few hours to travel across the country, and a few days to send packages and mail. Humans live at their own speed, not one that was created by the natural world. We are trying to change the speed, at which the natural world works, and in turn are creating havoc in it and missing its copious beauty.
The first thought that came to mind after reading Jensen’s “Beyond Hope” was that a complete lack of hope wouldn’t be the most practical approach for a more environmentally friendly world. Hope is necessary because it works hand in hand with action. I believe there should be a balance of both in order to produce results. Jensen’s article takes a very cynical approach to ridding hope, but in the end, it’s laziness that really gets to us. And laziness is only one component. There are people out there that really just don’t want to help the environment, whether or not we like to think about that. I don’t think we should dismiss hope altogether because it’s not the only reason we aren’t helping. I felt that the article was a pretty well written piece, and it did bring out good points that we should take action to improve our environment. For example, when he brings up the fact that he isn’t going to hope to eat breakfast the next morning, but he’s just going to. From what I perceived, the overall message is to just make people more actively involved in improving the environment. However, one can be actively helping and still be hopeful for a better future as well.
ReplyDeleteWhen I reached the end of this essay, I actually felt a bit inspired, actually a rush of adrenaline to be more active. I think Jensen was successful in this aspect. My favorite quote from this article would have to be “And when you quit relying on hope, and instead begin to protect the people, things, and places you love, you become very dangerous indeed to those in power.” It’s true, that when you’re reliance isn’t in authority anymore, and when you don’t ‘fear’ those in power, you are a bit of a thorn to them.
After lecture today, when Professor Trumpey discussed the number of ways we use corn, and it was interesting how many different products come from corn. I never realized how corn is used in so many products besides the basic food, corn or corn flour, etc. I was a bit taken back that my toothpaste may even contain corn products in it. It made me think about how versatile a simple food could be so useful in our everyday activities. It reminded of this one music video “Remind Me” by Royksopp. In the music video, the animation brings attention to how everything we use and the resources used in the process. It also shows us what we do on regular day and its affect to the rest of the world. For example, in one scene, the video shows a girl buying a hamburger for lunch, and then the hamburger patty is shown to have come off a cross section of a cow, which also produced the milk in her milkshake. Furthermore, the video displayed the resources to raise the cow, and so on. Also, as an advocate of ethanol fuel, I never quite understood why my parents always made it out so complicated (they both work in the auto industry.) I hadn’t thought about the production cost in resources, and how it outweighs the amount of oil that is saved. Another topic that struck my interest was the evolvement of corn. Today’s class was the first time I realized that corn didn’t look like what it does today. Certainly, everything evolves over time I don’t expect it to look exactly the same, but the change was so drastic, I was a bit surprised.
gengyi@umich.edu (Daisy Geng)
As a follow up to the last post, I have just initiated a challenge with my friend and housemate who is also in ADP 3, Danny “cutthroat” DiGregorio. We are both healthy, exercise in an excess of 90 minutes a day, and eat semi healthy stuff. The difference in our diets is that I have not eaten meat in 12 years and Danny is quite a carnivore. We were discussing what would happen if he increased his meat intake, while I try to eat more organic local stuff. We want to see if the added chemicals to Danny’s meat had any effect on his health. This experiment will tie into our discussion of the carbon footprint and American “meat and potatoes” consumer culture.
ReplyDeleteI found Derrick Jensen’s article really interesting. As I was reading the article I was agreeing with what he was saying but not wanting to at the same time. I guess I felt bad for “hoping” our world would change by itself just like most people. I had sort of the same thoughts when President Obama was elected. Everyone had so much hope in the future of our country and I felt like they were depending so much in one person. I had friends telling me I’m so excited but I just thought you cant depends so much on one person you have to go out and do something with your life if you want change. Things won’t change all of a sudden just because you want them to. Which is basically the message I got from this article. I really like some of the statements Jensen had in his article such as, “hope leads us away from the present, away from who and where we are right now and toward some imaginary future state. I say this because of what hope is.” I guess I haven’t really applied my thoughts on stop hoping and start doing to the state of the world/economy. I have with my studies. But after seeing my carbon footprint I realize I need to start looking around and asking what I can do to make the environment better?
ReplyDeleteAfter reading Sand County Almanac I was astounded by the amount of detail. There was so much I didn’t know. I agree with the author that people only care about things they know about. And I think at this point in time, even if they know about a dying species of a plant most people wouldn’t care. I have a hard time thinking up a solution to this problem. Even if people were educated about botany and animals since they were young, I feel like that interest would quickly fade as they reach their teenage years. People are just too caught up in the material world nowadays.
Throughout my educational career there have been few articles that have moved me to think differently or look at life in an entirely new way. Jensen’s article has done so. It has brought a new meaning to the word “hope” as not a word that brings help but rather distances help away from us. Even though I don’t believe in the extreme that Jensen does, I do believe that at times we lend too much power to the word help. There is a saying that “God helps those who help themselves.” I feel like we have strayed far from that and just began to rely on other people or other forces. Our environmental disaster keeps getting worsened due to people putting faith into other people along the chain of command instead of taking matters into their own hands. As soon as we stop lending our minds to hope and focusing on our task at hand at least to some extent then things can turn out for the better.
ReplyDeleteHowever, in order to take the steps to fixing our environment, we need more information about our environment. The same way that women need to be educated to lead better lives in having and raising children, our world population needs to be educated as well on how our environment works. Once everyone knows their part, they can add to the world and start doing their part to stop its destruction. It is all about education and will. Once those two take hold then we can give more credit to hope.
(For 9/22) (I posted on the wrong blog that week so I deleted it and am reposting it here.)
ReplyDeleteJensen’s Beyond Hope article opened my eyes to something so obvious. He talked about false hope and how action begins when hope dies. He uses environmentalists and activists as an example. When people sit back and simply just hope for the world to be a better, greener place, they aren’t really doing anything substantial or concrete. They’re just hoping. I especially can relate to this article because I, myself, am one of those people who just hope. I do very little to take care of my earth because I think there is a lot already being done when, in fact, this is false. Jensen says that those in power are “hell-bent on destroying the planet” because they abide by legal rules and grant environmentalists minimal legal tools to protect some piece of ground. I am one of those that have the false hope that “suddenly somehow the system may inexplicably change.” Jensen makes a good point when he says, “False hopes bind us to unlivable situations, and blind us to real possibilities.” This essay made me realize that I need to give up on hope. He describes giving up on hope as a wonderful thing because when you cease relying on someone or something else to solve your problems, you begin taking matters in your own hands and do whatever it takes to solve your problems yourself.
Overall, Jensen led me into looking at a new perspective. People in power aren’t those equipped with legal tools to hand out. People in power are those who actually solve their own problems with whatever tools they have.
The first ADP lecture began with a survey that asked us to name 10 different stores at our local shopping mall and 10 different plants around our own house. Most of us could name all 10 stores at our local shopping mall, but only 4 out of approximately 120 students could name 10 legitimate plants around their house. Also, the majority of the class could easily recognize the Mercedes-Benz symbol, but could not recognize a picture of a Poison Ivy leaf. This fact just shows either how ignorant our modern culture is becoming of the environment around us or how much we’ve adapted to consumerism. Our modern culture has become so materialistic and into buying/selling that a McDonalds advertisement is more recognizable to today’s 8-year old child than a peace sign.
What I learned from the lecture and from the article is that instead of hoping things work out, we should make sure that they do.
- Connie In
Shaili Das- #5
ReplyDeleteFor this week’s discussion id like to discuss the reading from collapse regarding the Rwanda genocide. I found it very interesting how the Malthus theory, which states that population is growing exponentially while food growth is only growing arithmetically worked for this particular case.
The continuous power battle between the Hutu and Tutsi’s led Rwanda to the loss of many people however it also impacted their land significantly. Because of the lack of modernization most of the soil was damaged because of wrong method of farming. What I found very interesting was how the government didn’t get involved in helping the Rwandans out in creating a more effect way of farming. I also found it interesting how no outside source came to really help with Rwanda’s environmental issues. This is because by helping fix the flaws in Rwanad's farming technique it would have easily saved hundreds and thousands of people. I also found it very interesting how certain modernization in other aspects of Rwandian lifestyle had a huge impact on Rwanda’s demise. For example, new medication had led to many Rwandians’ living longer; however with the old farming techniques problems became to arise. A question I would like it pose is how did the new medical and social techniques develop in Rwanda while their farming techniques remained the same.
Another morbid idea that came to my mind was that it seemed to me like the author almost inferred that having this type of genocide was a natural way to keep the population under check. Although he did not say it I felt like the way he presented the evidence almost seemed like he was okay with the situation in Rwanda and that it was the best outcome for the country given the state that they were in. what I would like to ask is although the author states that high population density and pressures in these specific areas are a big cause to the genocide, why are other countries dealing with the Malthusian theory better than others. For example, India has the second largest population in the world and there isn’t as much violence going on there. What makes these countries different?
Lastly, a question I would like to pose is, is there a way to increase our food output in certain areas, enough to sustain all the people living in those areas, without causing damage to our land?
Shaili Das
ReplyDeleteResponse #6
For my 6th response I would like to discuss China and its current economic situation today. I found it very interesting how Joe stated how China is repeatedly making the same mistakes as we did during our industrial revolution and that instead of learning from it they are ignoring it. Although I believe Joe does have a good point I feel like too much blame is being placed on China. I understand that although we made the same mistakes as China and that since they are a bigger country the effects on our world will be multiplied significantly; however, I cannot help but think it is not necessarily their fault. When we were in their situation we did the same thing. They are just trying to catch up to us, and are trying to do it in the cheapest way possible, which makes sense. Unless we think of ways that are just as cost effective as well as environmentally sound we cant say that china will be the sole cause to the demise of our planet.
By no means am I saying that what China is doing is right, or that they should continue using the amount of coal they are using today everyday, but all I’m saying is that if we want to live a good life style and made the same exact mistakes as them, who are we to judge them?
What I would like to question is that is there a way to allow china to produce at the same rate they are producing right now using alternative methods?
What I would also like to bring up about China that I found interesting was the idea that was proposed in class regarding the one child policy. We were discussing the idea of how many they shouldn’t have any children what so ever, or have children much later on in their lifestyle. Although this would help with capping the population growth it makes me wonder how much of a double standard our society has. Before we tell other countries to not have any kids I feel like we should probably consider our own human population. Statistics have shown that average human family consists of 2 children. Just because our population is less than China’s doesn’t mean that we can completely ignore our population growth as well.