McKibben Interview and Bioregion Quiz response

From reading and listening to the podcast of the interview of McKibben’s book Eaarth, it is apparent that the average American may be uneducated on the bioregion around them. McKibben is a well-educated man who has many great ideas on how we can help save the environment. One thing that he stressed a lot was reducing your carbon footprint. One effective way to help reduce this is to localize the economies. However, local is a vague word and he is meaning is drastically shrink the size from the world or a country to a county or a town. This way travel time would be cut down and everything a person would need would be very close. Many people may not even know what is in their direct surroundings, inside their own bioregion. The bioregion quiz shows that many people may not know what is in their own bioregion. To be able to know about a bioregion information on the plants, animals, land, and weather needs to be known. What food is grown there? What plants inhabit the area? What animals inhabit the area? What is the weather like? When all of this information is know we will be able to localize the economies across the world. Each country will no longer have to rely on anther countries to provide for. Localization of the world’s economies will help save the environment.

Bioregional Quiz

1. Trace the water you drink from precipitation to tap.

Rain - Lake Rhodhiss – Water Treatment Plant- City Water Pipes - House

2. How many days till the moon is full (plus or minus a couple of days)?

Maybe a week

3. Describe the soil around your home.

Red Clay with some areas of Darker Dirt  

4. Where is the food you eat grown?

Not here

5. Name five native grasses in your local area?

6. Name five native, edible plants in your bioregion and their season(s) of availability.

7. From which direction do summer storms generally come in your bioregion?

North East

8. Where does your garbage go?

Trashcans – Garbage Truck – Dump

9. On what day of the year are the shadows shortest where you live?

10. Name five trees in your area. Are any of them native? (if you can’t name them describe them)

Pine – Oak – Maple – Dogwood – Cedar

11. How long is the growing season where you live?

Four months

12. Name five resident, and any migratory, birds in your bioregion.

Humming Birds – Cardinals – Hawks – Crows – Woodpeckers

13. What is the land use history of humans in your bioregion during the last century?

Small Towns and Farm Land

14. What species have become extinct in your bioregion?

15. What are the major plant associations in your bioregion?

Forests

16. From where you are reading this point north.

To the left of the room

17. What spring wildflower is consistently first to bloom?

18. What kinds of rocks and minerals are found in your bioregion?

Granite

19. Were the stars out last night?

Yes

20. Name some beings (non-human) which share your shelter.

Raccoon- Deer – Turkey – Rabbits – Coyote

21. Do you celebrate the turning of the summer and winter solstices?

No

22. How many people live next door to you? What are their names?

Two, Mr. and Mrs. Elmore

23. How many creeks are in walking distance of your shelter and what are they called?

One

24. What are the names of the First Nations or Traditional Owners where you live?

Micol’s

Resource Depletion

As the World’s population keeps growing we have to expand living environments for everyone to inhabit.  These new environments take up space though.  You cannot just poof them out of midair, they take up resources to build, resources that we are running out of.  There is a great need for the Island Civilization.

If we want to continue to live in a thriving world with the modern technologies we need to live in the Island Civilization.  With the Island Civilizations we would be able to prevent the problems of resource depletion.  As the population is expanding we have the need for more houses, houses take lots of wood.  A large portion of the wood used to build these houses comes from the forest.  When the first Europeans came to America the land was thriving with forest; there were no large skyscrapers, no large college campuses. If we were to build and live in the Island Civilizations we would have these large forested areas.

With the Island Civilizations we would only have a negative impact on the areas that we lived in not the entire world. The trees would grow tall and only few would ever be cut down. We need to save our resources. We need to build the Island Civilizations.

Imagine you are walking down a forested path, there are tall trees on all sides of you, there are birds chirping. You hear small animals scurrying around in the leaves, and then you see a large buck run in front of you. All of a sudden you open your eyes and see you were about to cross a busy city street, there are no forest there are no tall trees. The only thing in the sky is airplanes. There was no buck that was running in front of you, it was just a speeding car. This will be the reality if we do no build Island Civilizations and help the environment and reduce the amount of resource depletion, so we can go into the forest and see the buck.

http://www.explainingthefuture.com/resource_depletion.html

Island Civilization summary/response

Island Civilization is a fascinating idea; it opens new light to what the human race needs to strive towards.  Roderick Frazier Nash opens up by not even mentioning the idea of the island civilization until the last half of the essay.  He explains all of the problems we have with the way the human race does not live in the ecosystem but is almost in charge of it.  His ideas expressed that one possibility in the Fourth Millennium the human race will completely control the ecosystem. With the use of modern technology humans would one day control the world so much that the weather, temperature, animals, and anything else that humans needed would be exactly like we want it. But it would be a healthy earth with no diversity; we would only have what we needed to survive. Only animals we eat would live and only plants we needed would grow.  Another was we would turn the Earth into a waste land so that nothing would be here. It would be proven that humans would have ruined the world. Another scenario is that we become more primitive and live off the land with no large buildings and we would have technology but use it wisely. The final scenario is the island civilization.

The island civilization was a much better solution to living in the world than the other three. With the island civilization the population would have to shrink down to less than a quarter of the current population. In the island civilizations the populations would be separate from each other and each having a 100 mile radius or circle. It would be like the Greek city states of the past, where there would not be an exchange of resources but of culture and knowledge.  Each population would have all of the resources it needed to survive on their own. Outside of the cities the land would be free; the animals would roam as that want to and the plants too. The island civilization seems like a possibility in the near future.

The world we live in is exactly the way was Nash described it in Island Civilization. If we keep going on with the old and bad habits we have the Earth will end up being a waste land as described in one of the scenarios.  However, if we change our habits one of the three other scenarios is not too far out of reach. If we turn into the controlling humans as described in the second scenario does not seem very bad for the humans, since we are the ones in control, then there is a problem with sustaining the environment. No matter how many inhabitants there were the ecosystem would not be in balance what so ever. The plants and animals would either invade everything or go extinct. There would be no way that the human race would be able to sustain the earth where we were in complete control and only had the species we needed. The idea looks good on paper, but when put into action it might turn around on us. The fourth scenario, island civilization seems that it would work the best.

The island civilization also looks great on paper and would most likely work when it was put into action. The entire idea of the island civilization seems great. The environment would have very little impact from the towns; it would almost be like the humans did not live there since there would be so little interactions.  The only problems would be cooperation with the humans. Would one civilization not want to take over another? There is no way say that there would be do disputes between them. I can understand them working for several years, but not forever. The idea seems very practically; especially since the outside environment would be able to live on it’s on without the human interactions. The island civilizations would be a large feat if they were to happen, we would not really have to give up any of the modern technology just have a smaller human population on earth. I think with the human race growing and the advances in modern technology we would be able to establish enough island civilizations on Earth and other planets that the population would still be able to grow. If humans really start to care about the Earth island civilizations on this planet and others is not far in the future.