Bioquiz with a sprinkle of podcast

Taking, or attemping to complete a bioregional quiz is eye-opening.  There are so many questions about local economy and the environment that most citizens could not answer.  This lack of knowledge has lead to a lack of concern for the current economic and environmental crisis.  In McKibben's podcast subtitled, "Eaarth", detail goes into explaining the correlation between the lack of citizens' awareness to the increasing need of environmental changes.  For example, questions such as where food is grown to what species are extinct in relation to bioregion, stump the masses and warrant a cause for concern.  McKibben being somewhat of an expert on Earth's growth and change over time, explained that while the population may be pondering a rescue for Earth's resources, there may not be enough time to think those ideas through before the resources run dry.  Answering the questions on the bioregional quiz should not be a difficult task; however, the basics of bioregional elements are not relevant to the everyday life of a large population of people and are not something that is considered important or detrimental to know.  However, citizens really should begin to start answering the questions to really understand a bioregion and how each compartment of a bioregional infrastructure works.  In essence, the summarization of these two individual sources of information would be that with the increasing lack of bioawareness, the Earth will continue to lose in the battle with technological and economical growth and expansion.

Groundwater Depletion

One environmental issue that contributes to a need for an “island civilization” is the depletion of ground water.  Ground water is the source of drinking water for about half the total population and virtually all of the rural population, and it makes available over 50 billion gallons per day for agricultural essentials.  Ground water depletion is caused by sustained ground water pumping.  The amount of ground water in storage is continuously decreasing due to the overuse of pumping and the results of this are things such as the deterioration of water quality, increased pumping costs, land subsidence, and most importantly, the drying up of wells.  The general areas that are affected by the depletion of ground water are the Southwest and High Plains, but many areas across the nation are beginning to experience overstressed aquifers.  The ranges of the resulting effects depend on numerous factors including pumping and natural discharge rates, physical properties of the aquifer, and natural and human-induced recharge rates.  One example of a distraught area that had been affected by this is the Atlantic Coast Plain.  Areas such as ones in Nassau and Suffolk counties, Long Island, New York, have experienced lowering of the water table, saline ground water moving inland, and reduction of the base flow of steams.  Other locations on the Atlantic Coast have also experienced similar effects such as surface-water flows being reduced and the sudden occurrences of saltwater intrusion in states such as Massachusetts, New Jersey, South Carolina, and Florida.  I think that these places are being affected the most because of their location on the coast near large bases of water.  Because they are the closet to the water, they are the ones that are most directly hurt by the overuse of ground water pumps. If this continues to occur, the world will continue to keep slowly running out of ground water and other main resources until the ground is no longer able to produce water to keep up with the demand.

Source:  http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/gwdepletion.html

Island Civilization

            The essay written by Roderick Frazier Nash entitled, “Island Civilization”, captivated my attention and opened my eyes to the reality of the mistreatment of humans to the planet.  One of Nash’s main points was that while humans normally see the decrease in forests as an increase in shopping centers and highways, what they don’t see is the decrease in land to sustain civilization.  Nash gives a brief history of the early European citizens and they’re mindsets on land expansion.  For example, because the early citizens were carrying a bias attached to the Bible, and the Bible classified ‘wilderness’ as the land that God cursed, the first colonists were not concerned with preserving forbidden forests.  Derived from that mentality, the new colonists created new tools of transformation such as axes, dams, and freeways that left the wilderness in strewn leftovers.

            As expansion continued, Americans began to worry as to whether or not progress had gone too far.  When the 1890 United States Census stated that there was no longer any frontier, that statement was a reality check for Americans who then began to realize the importance of wilderness preservation and civilization.  While the beginning movements were based on the “ideas of wilderness as a church” and “a stimulant to a unique art and literature and a psychological aid”, the more recent arguments centered around the idea that the conservation of nature was not about us, but rather about the wilderness that we had been controlling since the beginning of civilization. 

            Food chains and ecosystems were the first scientific reasons that led ecologists to believe that nature was a community that mankind belonged to, not owned.  Nature began being compared to blacks, natives, and women as an oppressed minority in extreme cases.  There is only two percent of the contiguous forty-eight states that is wild legally, which sadly equals the amount of paved roads.  Because of the decrease in biodiversity amounts, many biologists were led to believe that there may be a Sixth Great Extinction approaching.      

            After giving a summary of the history of natures’ declination, Nash begins to break down the possible futures of the Earth and human civilization.  The first scenario entitled, “wasteland scenario”, describes a world littered and consumed with pollution.  “Garden scenario” describes an Earth with no diversity, clean water running through streams and far and wide grain fields; however, the waters would have low bio diversification.  The third scenario, “Future primitive”, would resume ancient living styles such as hunting for food and make shifting shelters and clothing.  The final and favorite scenario of Nash goes by the name of “Island Civilization”.  Island civilization would build better tools that would create peace, not war; also, there would not be any civilization with nature.  Nash describes the islands as a way to scale back from lavish living and equalize humans and their impact.

            Reading Nash’s article was definitely an eye opener for me, because I had never really thought about the future of the Earth past fifty years or so.  Thinking about the distant future of over a thousand years really opens up possibilities of bettering the Earth’s current economic and wild life problems.  I agreed with Nash’s point that we should not dismiss all of the technological progress that has been made thus far, but rather to use it responsibly.  With all of the technology being created, and those behind it, we should be starting to plan a way to reverse the upward rates of population grown and the downward rates of living space remaining.  I do feel that humans have too many amenities that could be scaled down and altered to not be so wasteful to the planet.  Nash made a very impacting point when he asked the question of whether or not society will make the appropriate changes deliberately or desperately.  If society does not go ahead and begin preparation for the upcoming decades, I fear for future civilization and the slowly dwindling natural resources left.