Cigarette Butt Litter Soapbox!

Hey everyone! Now watch Danielle and me on our soapbox:

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Three Degrees of Warming

In Mark Lynas' novel, Six Degrees, the third chapter is about what would possibly happen if the global climate increased by three degrees. The most influential changes that would occur are extreme weather-related events, movements of citizens to more densely populated areas, and a great loss of biodiversity among plants and animals. All in all, Lynas emphasized that the most civilized peoples are consuming the world and that with three degrees of warming we would be in a life-or-death situation.

I think that the 5 most important things to know from this chapter are:

1. The places that wish for more rain will get less rain. With three degrees, there will be droughts and famine in southern Africa, primarily Botswana. The Kalahari, which supports cattle herding and the growing of staples, will have raging sandstorms. Similar to the Mayan civilization, one of the most advanced societies in the New World, the Central American countries will be extremely vulnerable to drought.
2. Droughts will increase the chances of forest fires. Australia, one of the driest continents, has "crown fires" which suck the oxygen out of the air and can asphyxiate anyone caught underneath. These fires also spread very quickly. In addition, the Amazon ecosystem, which is home to half the world's biodiversity, has no fire resistant trees compared to some in Australia.
3. Three degrees of warming will lead to a loss of biodiversity and a spreading of diseases. The tabletop mountains in Venezuela make a paradise of various plants which would die from warming. By 2050, between a third and a half of all species will join the "living dead" category. Those species will eventually become extinct because of the changing climate. In addition the mosquitoes that carry malaria and dengue fever will prosper and could travel farther north killing thousands of people along the way.
4. The places that wish for less rain will get even more rain. With three degrees, there will be inconsistent extreme flooding from the Asian Summer Monsoon that waters India and Bangladesh. In the book there is a good description of what would happen if there is a super-Hurricane Odessa in future Houston, Texas. The streets would flood from the Buffalo Bayou river and the sound would be like a freight train in the sky. In addition, New York would have more floods and there would be more storm surge events across Europe.
5. Because of the above circumstances, people would vacate areas and would move into highly populated areas. As we discussed in class, the Indus River which arises in India and flows into Pakistan would have less water entirely and those two nuclear nations would clash for supplies.

Lynas states that the places that would experience the worst wipeout will be those where life flourishes. Lastly, global warming is the result of accumulated greenhouse gases which means that we have to decrease emissions now - It takes time for the world to reach thermal equilibrium.

Greenbutts Article Summary

For the Soapbox Project, my original idea is to find a solution to cigarette butt litter:

For the past centuries, people would always smoke indoors until second-hand smoking was discovered and legislation decided to force people to smoke outside. The problem is that tobacco products comprise 38% of all U.S. roadway litter. And that's not all! Cigarette butt litter decreases the appeal of public spaces, adds toxic chemicals to water supplies, and can be a fire hazard to local wildlife. On top of all that, cigarette butts aren't biodegradable. They will not completely disappear if they are thrown into the environment instead of an ashtray, and can take years to break apart. I've recently researched more about any possible solutions already being tested and found one.

Greenbutts, LLC has come up with biodegradable cigarette butts that can even plant seeds if they are thrown on the ground. But...they've been doing 5 years of research and development and only have a patent in the United Kingdom. Nonetheless, in this article (link) Timothy Donahue describes the creation of the company and how Greenbutts can provide the same smoking experience without the waste of cigarette butts. The article also describes the challenges that the company is going through and how the biodegradable filters will hit the market in the future.

Since I'm collaborating with Danielle,

Write to you soon...probably next Monday morning... XD

Joe

Ishmael - Chapters 5-8

Through chapters 5 to 8, Ishmael first discusses how the Takers have to keep conquering the world but are bound to screw it up because they don't know how to live. As civilized people we tend to look to the prophets to tell us how we ought to live. But in chapters 7 and 8 we learn that there is one fundamental law in the world that keeps the world as it should be. Ishmael points out that as Takers we are attacking diversity and we are destroying the world because we are at war with it. We aren't fundamentally wrong. We are physically destroying the world because we are breaking the fundamental law that states - "You may compete but you may not wage war on the world. The world was not made for any one species."

This law describes how people must live, yet as Takers we don't follow it at all. I found it interesting how Ishmael explains that humans are subject to the law of competition.

For the Takers, Mother Culture demands increased food production. "Increasing food production to feed an increased population results in yet another increase in population." Without expressing an emotional and ethical perception of the starving millions and the absence of population control, Ishmael emphasizes the logical reasoning behind it all. When the narrator asks, "What do we do about the starving millions?" Ishmael replies, "nothing" because all species are subject to famine yet we decide every year to increase food production (though millions are starving) which results in a greater population. We keep growing and keep expanding past our limits. It's disappointing that we don't understand the cycle of everything. If we produce more food, we lead an increased population over and over again. I understand now that we need to focus on population control instead of increasing the production of food in the United States in general.

Ishmael - Chapters 3 and 4

It is funny to me how at the end of my last post I only focused on human-beings. I didn't mention the planet, the development of micro-organisms into more complex ones, and I really gave no explanation for how things came to be! What is relevant though, is that I mentioned making a living, which is finding my own purpose in other words. I didn't mention jellyfish or wombats, I focused on using the world for my own means.

Ishmael elaborates on the ideas above by telling the narrator that the story we enact everyday goes like this: The Takers believe the world is a human support system. We are the pinnacle of Creation. The world was made for man and man was made to conquer and rule it.

The perspective Ishmael gives is our creation myth. Even though humans have scientifically proven this story, he gives the narrator that it is the story enacted by the Takers. The idea that humanity is meant to rule the world is a myth. I agree with this. In my earlier post, I wasn't sure what man's destiny is and so it is in fact a myth, a story enacted over and over again. But I am confused. If the world was made for man, as in we rely on the world, why do we try to conquer it? Why is the price of enacting this story casting mankind as the enemy of the world?

Quinn has expertly grabbed my attention. He has pointed out my own bias of the world and how it works and has left me searching for more in the coming chapters. I think that in many ways I have taken the world for granted. I've used it's resources for material gain and now I am searching for where I fit in the whole scheme of things. I become the narrator and converse with a gorilla known as Ishmael. It's truly fascinating.

Ishmael - Chapters 1 and 2

I know I am catching up on blog posts, but at the same time, I want to illustrate well thought-out responses to Ishmael in the soon future! My initial impression of Daniel Quinn's novel, Ishmael, is that it grabbed my attention from the start. I am intrigued by the humanity of both the narrator, who remains anonymous, and the gorilla, Ishmael. I relate to the narrator from the start of the book. Like him I wanted to save the world when I was younger, lost hope, and am now searching for a reason to change the way I live for the better.

When the narrator goes to meet Ishmael, I found myself questioning descriptions of the room. The narrator states that he first noticed the emptiness of the room; He then reports the hideousness of Ishmael's face because of the similarity to our own. It is fascinating that out of all the animals, Quinn made the choice to use a gorilla, an animal we consider to be an ancestor of modern day human beings. Also, the narrator points out that we look at animals, even those which we are physically alike, are considered ugly, dangerous, and different from us. We are somehow segregated from Nature and the animals of the earth.

Opposite from the narrator's initial remarks, Ishmael elaborates another perspective. He states that the situation of the animals who are penned up is the same one that the narrator is in.
I specifically want to focus on a quote on page 35, "Even if you weren't personally captivated by the story, you were captive all the same, because the people around you made you a captive. You were like an animal being swept along in the middle of a stampede." I enjoyed reading this part of chapter 2 because Ishmael broadly pronounces the difference between being a captive of a story and being captivated by a story. Quinn also connects people to animals, which is an interesting literary statement. At the end of chapter 2, Ishmael asks the narrator about the one story everyone knows and accepts, aka an explanation of how things came to be. Like the narrator, I only have an impression of what our story is and don't see the full picture yet. Sometimes, I notice my own captivity. I realize that there are many social constructs in the world and that as Takers of the American dream, I think that our story begins with people who gathered food, and then gathered knowledge, and then decided to make something of it all. Without reading into chapter 3, I don't really know what our exact story is. All I know is that my societal purpose is to make a living, well whatever that means.

Walden (Three of the Essays)

After reading three more of the essays in Walden, by Henry David Thoreau, I've decided to write about "The Ponds" in this blog post.

Thoreau makes some purposeful illustrations in this essay that stood out to me. He describes, "It seemed as if I might next cast my line upward into the air, as well as downward into this element, which was scarcely more dense. Thus I caught two fishes as it were with one hook." I think that this is a great statement about how he has connected himself to Nature and to his Spirit. Walden Pond is a sacred place to Thoreau. For two years at Walden, Thoreau can now describe in detail everything about the pond, including the colors, the depth, the shores, the fish, etc. He recounts the adventure of throwing his axe onto the ice and then having to make a slip-noose to pull it out of the frozen pond.

Walden is not only an important place for Thoreau but it is a person, a friend. He personifies the pond by saying, "These are the lips of the lake, on which no beard grows. It licks its chaps from time to time." He retells the tale of how the pond got its name: "...and while they were thus engaged the hill shook and suddenly sank, and only one old squaw, named Walden, escaped, and from her the pond was named." He even makes fun of the nearby ponds,"Flint's Pond!...What right had the unclean and stupid farmer, whose farm abutted on this sky water, whose shores he has ruthlessly laid bare, to give his name to it?"

"Talk of heaven! ye disgrace earth." - Thoreau

Above all, Thoreau describes in detail this pond I have never been to and points out how beautiful it is in Nature. He portrays, "Not a fish can leap or an insect fall on the pond but it is thus reported in circling dimples, in lines of beauty, as it were the constant welling up of its fountain, the gentle pulsing of its life, the heaving of its breast. How peaceful the phenomena of the lake!" Even though Thoreau (hahaha that wordplay!) is writing more so for himself, to journal his thoughts and discoveries, he illustrates experiences that we have all witnessed but forget about over time.