Journal 19

-Reflect upon how you made meaning out of this colloquium class experience from a personal, academic, and relationship to your chosen major or future profession.  

I think that personally I made meaning out of this colloquium class by trying to really make changes in my life that do/ will in fact make a big impact. I think that the number one thing that I learned is that the time to really change habits and help change the world is now. Not tomorrow, or next week, but now. Mostly because we really just don’t have and can’t afford to sit around and wait for everything to just “work itself out”. I think that academically this class shouldn’t be as long as it is and grading for this class should just be either pass or fail, and not actually receive a letter grade. I think this because how are you going to grade someone of learning about sustainability, especially if they don’t believe in it. I know that if I didn’t believe in it I would think that learning about it is being forced upon me.  Actually, even though I do believe in sustainability I think this class is still for upon us, but I regress. I think that when I get older and become a marketing manager some of the topics covered in class will help me to a certain degree. Overall, I understand why we have to take this class, but think that it should be shorter like a six week class and that we should also get a pass fail grade on it.

Journal 17

- Reflect on the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Articles 

When I was reading Majoiry Stoneman Douglas’s article “The Nature of the Everglades”, I was kind of taken aback. I was because I have lived and traveled throughout Florida constantly my WHOLE life, and have never heard or thought of the Everglades in the way that Douglas described and talked about it them. It was almost like I was reading a love song or poem. I have just always thought of Everglades as a huge swamp that covered a large part of Florida. I didn’t know that there wasn’t any other place I the world like them or that they were called River Glades, but then it switched to the Everglades in the early 1800s.

        When describing the Everglades Douglas talks about every part of them starting with the grass. Here he describes how big the Everglades actually is and how big it is and how there’s saw grass. He talks about the grass as though it is almost indestructible and unstoppable and how the only thing that can really ‘conquer’ it is fire. He then goes on to talk about the waters. Here he talks about how the water is mostly made up of rain water and how the rainy season is long. And he too describes the rainy seasons, and how the water just piles up. Which clearly we all know because we live here and we know that during the summer it rains at least once every single day! Next, he talks about the rock, which holds up the sea water and how it holds a lot for freshwater.  When I originally read this I didn’t know if he was talking about the Florida aquifer but, I took it as if he was. Then he talks about “The River of Time”. Here he talks about different events that have taken place to shape Florida. Lastly, he talks about “Life on the Rock”. Here he talks about a lot of the different species that inhabit the land. He talks about everything from bees and flies to trees, to  dragonflies, to birds, and even talk about Big Cypress Swamp.

Journal 20

Describe some of the high points or the things you found most difficult about colloquium.

There were a couple of things that I found to be difficult about colloquium. I think that the most difficult thing is the excessive amount of reading we have to do. Not only, are the readings excessive, but they are extremely repetitive. Save the environment, environmental education, sustainability, human impact, etc. After you have read four different readings you get tired of reading about the same things. On top of the reading being excessively long they are sometime hard to read. Now, I LOVE to read in my spare time, but those are books that I WANT to read not ones that I am FORCED to read, and there’s a big difference. The books and articles that we are required to read are also complicated at times. The authors use complicated phrases and words that I think if they just put more in laymen’s terms people would actually be able to enjoy reading their work more. The next difficult things about colloquium are the movies. When I say this I mean it is hard to watch a movie one week and get a test and fully comprehend what we saw three weeks later. Sometimes we are asked very intricate questions one a movie that yes, I personally can recall the gist of the movie, but not small minute details. I am taking five OTHER classes excluding colloquium, so one small detail in a movie, three weeks later doesn’t exist in my memory.

        It was also difficult not knowing what your grade was throughout the semester. Yes, I’m not going to lie and say if I knew I had a high grade then I would take it easier at times, but it would have definitely been helpful. Not knowing what you have in class does make a difference, because like most other students who take colloquium environmental biology or sustainability isn’t my major. While I think the things that we learn in class are very valuable, I think that my major classes are more valuable. I know that when I have a finance test coming up and I also know that I have to read 20+ pages for colloquium, I am picking finance. This is because finance is something that I am going to NEED when I want to get a job. If I don’t know the things that I am supposed to learn in classes that pertain to my major when I get out of college, but I know a lot about sustainability, realistically it’s not going to benefit me. I feel as though you can learn a lot of the stuff that we learn in class by just being and informed person.

        I also, think that it is difficult having a class schedule that isn’t really definite. It is kind of a letdown when you stay up till two in the moring reading things that you are supposed to be quizzed on in class the next day, only to find out that you’re not going to be. I’d rather have a class schedule that is followed or at least have an email sent out informing me that I wasn’t going to be tested on the material as planned. This just makes my ‘happiness or appreciation’ for the class drop lower and lower.

Journal 18

-My though on Climate Change and the human impact on the planet

My thoughts on climate changes… where do I begin? Should I start of by telling you my thoughts on the oil crisis or how it seems like we as a species are going to end up starving ourselves to death? It feels like more and more no one cares. No one cares about their environment, not one cares about education, no one cares about anything. Only thing that people care about is whether or not they are going to be able to get the new iphone when it comes out at four in the morning. The things that humanity finds value in are things that are cheap. TVs, cars, reality shows, fast food. All these things are relatively cheap. Clean water, clean air, renewable energy resources, all of these things are PRICELESS, but these are the things that people value the least. This probably makes our ancestors roll over repetitively in their graves. It’s almost like everyone is only looking out for themselves, which leads to countries only looking out for themselves, which makes no sense because everything is connected.

I feel like many people think that climate change is a joke or just some hypothetical thing that might happen a hundred years from now. Climate change is saddening. As we read all the different articles about the large about out species that are either already extinct or on the verge of extinction, I think “When are we going to go extinct? When is our expiration date?” I hope that we will be able to find the technology that it takes to keep living great adventurous lives. I don’t want to have to tell my kids to go on the computer to see what a lion or grey wolf looks like.  I want them to still be around for my kids, and I am not talking about in a zoo where there are only three of them, and they were bread and born in captivity. I want them to be able to go and take trips all over the globe without feeling guilty that their ecological foot print is getting bigger and bigger. I just want them to be able to enjoy life like I do without worrying about destroying the world.

Like the saying for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, for everything someone does in one part of the world it has an impact on someone else in another. I think the key to stopping all of the madness is education. Education is the key. Through education people can not only learn about how what they are doing is impacting other people, but they can learn how to live better lives. Lives that don’t always involve sitting in front of TVs, or driving to the grocery store to buy one thing. We can learn how to grow our food in a more sustainable way and how to live with the resources that this ONE Earth provides. I think that in order of us as a species to survive the next thousand years we have to make huge strides in many different ways. We need to become more eco friendly, we need to find renewable energy; we need to renew ourselves.

Journal 16

- Reflect upon Squeezing More Oil from the Ground & Crude Awakening

Oil, oil, oil! It seems like now a days everything that matters revolves around oil. After watching Squeezing More Oil from the Ground and the Crude Awaking clips, I feel like our world is up a long river with absolutely no paddle. I feel after watching these videos that oil is almost an evil. I mean that in the sense that not only does oil control literally how much food we eat, because of escalading food prices, but it controls our governments, who in a way kind of control us. In the videos they talk about how oil starts and dictates wars.  Honestly I feel almost at a loss, because I want to say oh oil doesn’t control this or oil doesn’t control that, but I feel as though it almost ALWAYS does! It is sad that something that is way less complex than a human can have such control over our lives.And on top of all of that we don’t even have an absolute definite answer on how much oil there is actually left!

            I know that finding a replacement energy source for oil isn’t going to be easy, but after watching these videos it feels like leaders of many countries, especially ours, aren’t taking this crisis very seriously. It feels as though they are just trying to drill, drill, drill, for as long as possible! If they spent half as much money and time on coming up with solutions for renewable energy as they do with finding new oil reserves and fields, I think that we would be A LOT closer in finding a real replacement. Unfortunately this is not the case. As long as countries are still hooked on oil, people will be hooked on oil.

Journal 15 Field Trip to Downtown Fort Myers, Fl

           

        I actually liked the field trip that we took to downtown Fort Myers. Usually I am a little hesitant on some of the field trips we take because they are almost always outdoors during the HEAT of the day, but luckily this one was different. For one it rained before we went so it wasn't so hot outside. Second we did a scavenger hunt around downtown. I really enjoyed the hunt. I kind of wish the clues were more clear and the objects were easier to find, especially since we couldn't go into the stores, but all in all it was fun and enjoyable. Before the field trip, not being a native of the Fort Myers area, I hadn't been to this historic part of the city before, but I liked it. It kindda reminded me of the city where I am from, which is Jacksonville. Except that Jacksonville is a lot bigger and there a lot more people.

            I also liked it because it brought my fellow classmates and I closer together. I am not saying that they are my best friends or anything, but it did bring us together. I think that you should actually do it more towards the beginning of the year, this way the students do become more comfortable with one another and will probably voice their opinions more in class. Also, I think that next time you do it there should be a prize for the class as a whole instead of just groups, because I know my group members and I tried hard, but we still got seven wrong.

Journal 13 and 14

Red Sox Spring Training

My service learning couldn’t have been more enjoyable! Hanging out with cool friends and people while helping out the environment at the same time, what could be better than that? Not much! This semester I did my service learning at the Red Sox Spring Training stadium. I was a part of what they call the Green Team. As a member of the Green Team it is your responsibility to go around the stadium and collect any type of plastic recyclables that you find or that people hand you. Already at the stadium there were so many recycling bins, but we were still able to collects tons and tons of plastics and recycle them. Some fans that were at the games loved the fact that there was a Green Team while others didn’t really care. As I said before there were already so many recycling bins around the stadium and even though there were a lot of team members too there were still so many people who still didn’t recycle their garbage. The worst was when I would see someone throwing away their plastics in the garbage can when the recycling bins were directly next to the them. At times this got EXTREMELY frustrated and I wanted to yell at them and be like “Hello! You could have recycled that!”  It really amazed me at times that people didn’t do it, when it was so easy to do! Other than that frustrating aspect I really enjoyed doing this as my service learning project instead of just going to a nature preserve and picking up garbage or weeds! Personally I think that there should be more service learning projects that are fun to do like the one I enjoyed doing! 

Journal 12

Damn I sure hope no one  lives like me!

Ok, so I'll be quite honestly with you, before I took this test I thought that I would not have that big of a carbon footprint. I mean I recycle more than all my friends, I turn off the lights more than all of my friends, I try and carpool more than all my friends. I just felt as though 'Oh, I am sure not going to have the smallest footprint but, I am definitely going to have a pretty good sized one. Boy was I wrong. I was soooooo wrong! Once I finished the quiz my results were that if everyone of the earth lived like I live then we would need 6.57 Earths!!! What I mean geeze!! That made me feel sooo bad! I definitely know that I need to do something to get those numbers to start and come down! It is just ridiculous! Recently though I did watch this documentary called Food Inc. and I have been trying to eat more organic and shop more at local farmers markets, but it is definitely a challenge. The only farmers market that I can go to on consistent basis is Whole Foods. Which isn't even a farmers market but it is the closest thing to one! 

          Overall I think that it would be a good idea if everyone took that test. Not so they can just jump of and say they want to change their whole lives, but more so that they will know what THEIR personal impact is and how they can help reduce it.

Journal 11

CORKSCREW SANCTUARY!!!

          When we went on field trip to Corkscrew sanctuary it was actually my second time visiting and this time I actually liked it more than the first time that I went. I think the biggest difference is that the first time that I went I just went with a friends and we didn’t have a personal tour guide we just walked around by ourselves. Plus, last time that I went my friend and I got chased by a raccoon, and that is never fun!!! L

            This time when I went I got so much more information about not only how the sanctuary itself was started and what it’s about, but more the actual animals that reside in the area. One of the most interesting things that I learned this time around was that way back in the day when women used to use bird feathers in their hats that was actually literally killing of the indigenous birds that resided in Southwest Florida. Some of the birds actually resided in the sanctuary. Well (I can’t remember her name) but there was this one lady (YES A WOMEN) who helped start the sanctuary and she helped put awareness out to people letting them know that they were killing the birds and therefore helping save the birds.

            Anyways I really enjoyed our tour guide too, he was super down to earth and when he was giving us our tour he really related a lot of stuff about conservation and the environment directly back to use and gave us ideas of things that we could to as college students to help it out.

Journal 10

 Allocation of Resources- Will a Capitalistic Free-Market Economy Always Optimally Allocate Resources?

  For my research I think that a free-market economy will in fact, always optimally allocate resources. Google defines a free market as 'An economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses'.  In a free market there are many, many stake holders who want certain goods and services and they are willing to pay for those goods and services. Therefore when there is a free market resources are allocated in a way that the person who is willing to pay the optimal highest price gets the good. I think that this is a good way to allocate resources. Is it the fairest way to allocate resources? NO! Most definitely not since there is an un- proportionate amount of people who have money and those who do not have money. This means that is there are goods that are being allocated then poor people will get the 'leftovers', if any at all. But this does not mean that the goods are not being allocated in an unprofitable way. This in fact means the exact opposite.

            Personally I am all for a free market economy. I think that it is a good market that is able to (for the most part) self regulate itself, thus keeping the government out, in a good way. Also in a free market economy buyers can buy any commodity that they want to at whatever price they want to pay. While on the other hand producers can produce almost whatever goods they want to. Another benefit of a free market economy is that price is determined by supply and demand, and there are not price ceilings or price floors.

Journal 9

Reflection upon Aldo Leopold’s “The Land Ethic”

After reading “The Land Ethic” I think that Leopold makes many valid points. I am not saying that he turned me into someone who is going to drop everything and change the way I live my life; I do think that his article made me think a lot about certain things.
The first thing that Aldo delves into is ‘The Community Concept’. He says that every individual is a member of a community and that his instincts prompt him to compete for his place in the community, but his ethic prompt him to also co-operate. Which is soooo true if you think about it! It’s almost when you ask someone their opinion on something that you already know you like. You’re not really looking to know if they really like it but you’re looking for their reassurance and for them to like and do what you want them to do.
      Leopold then points out a good contradiction that we have in our own Star Spangled Banner, when we say for the land of the free and the home of the brave, but we don’t love or appreciate our lands, waters, or our other resources. I had never ever even noticed that we sang that and that we pretty much did the exact opposite! Kind of comical, not in a mean way but really it is!
        Next Leopold talks about our ‘Ecological Consciences’, and says that “No important change in ethics was ever accomplished without an internal change in our intellectual emphasis, loyalties, affections, and convictions. The proof that conservation had not yet touched these foundations of conduct lies in the fact that philosophy and religion have not yet heard of it. In our attempt to make conservation easy, we have made it trivial.” Now when I originally read this there were a couple of important things that I took away. For one I completely and one hundred percent agree with what he said about how changes in ethics take internal change. When you want to change something that has been so ingrained, it truly does take and internal change. You, cannot just all of a sudden one day just wake up and say ‘Oh, yep, I think today I’ll change my political stance. Or the stance that I take on abortion, poverty, war, etc.’ Those are really big choices and decisions that we make through our life experiences. Those are choices that take thought and consideration if you want to change them.
       Next, he says that since philosophy and religion have yet to ‘hear’ of conservation then it is something that people are not going to want to change for the better. To me this means that since people put such an emphasis on their belief systems and personal outlooks, that until those areas of their lives are involved we conservation, then people won’t really take it seriously or put an emphasis on it. Which to me makes perfect sense; growing up I went to church a lot and what I learned there helped make up the things that I think are ‘important’. Since not once going to church did I hear that we are destroying our plant I never put it at the top of my ‘Important Things’ lists.

Journal 8

cancelled!!! :)

Journal #7

Respond to this statement:
"The United States has a 15,000,000,000,000 ($15 trillion) economy. According to calculations by Sachs, all countries need to quickly begin spending 1% of their annual GDP in order to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. The 1% will be spent in an effort to begin cutting emissions now—closing the faucet—until we reach the 80% reduction needed by 2050. Our efforts will be in vain if America does this and other countries don’t follow.
Note (food for thought):
We give 1.3 billion dollars annually in military aid to Egypt and another 200+million in economy aid. 2 degrees warming offers no guarantee that we can avoid runaway warming—it only affords us a reasonably good chance.
1% of our GDP amounts to $150 billion annually. I personally would like to see us spend 2-3% in order to error on the side of caution. We currently spend: $738 on national defense, $738 billion on Social Security, $251 on debt service to the national debt, and $779 billion on Medicare and Medicaid. As a society, we spend more on healthcare than just what the government spends—somewhere between 16-19% of our total GDP goes to healthcare. This is in stark contrast to all the other industrialized countries which spend between 6-12% of their total economy on healthcare and cover everyone. If you are interested in how other countries approach healthcare, I have provided anoptional video at the following link (56 mins. broken down into 5 chapters):
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/view/
We need to cut spending by $700 billion to $1.3 trillion (the wide range is due to the level and timing of our economic recovery) to prevent the deficit from increasing too much beyond the 14 trillion dollars it is already at. At some point, the international bond market will no longer have confidence in the “full faith and credit” of the United States Government—the world’s most secure borrower—and begin charging us a risk premium for our borrowing. An event like this (Greece-like dilemma) will lead to the “red ink” rapidly spilling everywhere."




First off I would want the United States to stand up and take the lead to stop climate change, I think that it is a very, very unrealistic idea. I feel as though the United States has lost a lot of its ‘spine’. Yes, I do think that other countries would follow our lead if we did in fact take the lead but, honestly I just don’t see us doing it anytime time in the near future. I think that instead of nations waiting for us to step up they or another extremely influential nation should. Like if China stepped up they could easily influence other Asian nations, who make a lot of the products that people use worldwide. If this did happen other countries including, America would definitely take notice and make changes. They would for many different reasons, the main one being that we get a huge chunk of the goods that we use from Asian countries. If they made the change then we would almost be forced to make a change as well. For example, if the Asian nations passed a law saying that they would only trade with other countries who were vigorously taking steps to become more environmentally friendly then we would HAVE to become more environmentally friendly. If we didn’t many of the goods that we use on a daily basis would in turn become expensive and people would be freaking out, and the government would be force to initiate change.

I also think that politics are having a detrimental effect on making changes to becoming more eco-friendly. I feel as though politicians today don’t care about the people that they are serving. They are too busy fighting among themselves like third graders to see the devastating effect they are having. They are not here to help make the world a better place and but rather here to serve themselves. I think that for one politician’s should have limitations on how long they can serve for. By doing this we could easily eliminate people who are only politicians who care only about themselves and get ones that care about the people they serve and want to be able to represent them. Because a lot of them are there only to serve their own self interests. I think that future generations will not blame the common people, but rather blame government for global warming.

When it come to resolutions to the problem and figuring out exactly what parts of our GDP to take money out of to make changes, I think we should take it out of many different areas. The first place that it needs to be taken out of is government spending, and by this I mean take it out of the salaries of the people who hold different offices in the government. Such as senators, mayors, politicians, etc. They make way too much money. By lowering their salary only people who want to actually serve the people that they are representing will want to run for office. Next, we should take a small portion out of the military. Then take some out of Medicaid and Medicare, and then take a large amount of money that goes towards foreign aid. Hopefully by then we will have taken out at least one percent out of our GDP.I definitely don’t think we need to even touch the money that is going into education. (If anything it needs to be dramatically increased!)

NO MORE WATER!!!!

We hear more and more everyday that many places all over the world are having water storages. When ever I hear this I just want to yell out and scream "HOW!?!?!". But really exactly how are we having water shortages when due to climate change sea levels are rising rapidly? I think that the  ONE good thing about global warming is rising sea levels. Yes, I do live close to the coast and I don't want my house to be six feet under water but I do think that we can use this to our advantage. I think people freak out when they hear about water shortages because they have the misconception that this means they are going to die of thirst, but what it really means is that there is a shortage of cheap water. What do I mean by this? I mean just like 'cheap oil' is coming to an abrupt end so is 'cheap water'. That is water that is cheaply extracted from the earth. There is still literally billions upon billions of gallons of water on the plant, the only problem is that most of it is salty. Well luckily, for us desalination was created a while back! There are some places where this is a widely accepted way of getting water but, for some places especially in America people are so used for paying so little for water that even a slight increase in price makes them loose their minds. Well I am all for people loosing their minds over the cost of water. I think that if there is in increase water prices people will do the SAME thing they did when gas we up...CONSERVE IT!!! 

Journal 6: Reflection on the video "The One Degree Factor"

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1443126869678785107#

Reflection on ‘Geographic Strange Days: The One Degree Factor’

            After viewing ‘Geographic Strange Days: The One Degree Factor’ I had mixed feelings. On one hand I thought that the movie made a lot of good points about climate changes and the arising problems. While on the other hand I thought that some of the things they called ‘problems’ I thought had simple solutions, so I didn’t view them as problems. For example: When they were explaining the decline in caribou populations, Edward Norton, the narrator said they were dwindling because of a couple of different factors. One factor was that instead of going and feeding in the plush valleys they feed more towards the mountain tops because there aren’t as many pesky mosquitoes. Another reason included rain. Mr. Norton explained that it has recently started to rain in December and when the wet water freezes it creates a sort of shield over the grass, which the caribou feed on. This leads to the caribou not eating enough in spring which means they don’t have as much fat on their bodies, so when winter comes they are at a disadvantage. Also, during the winter they don’t feed as much due to the rain so they don’t reproduce on a healthy scale.

            I honestly feel like there is a very simple solution to this problem… spray for mosquitoes! If you spray for them this means that the caribou are more likely to come down the mountain and not use as much energy looking for food while eating more so once winter comes they are healthy and can reproduce at a healthy rate. I am not saying that we need to eradicate the mosquitoes all together because I know that there are other animals they eat and rely on mosquitoes to live, but just control their populations.

            There was also another part of the movie that I thought there were simple solutions. When Edward Norton was talking of the zooplankton populations going down I thought to myself “Why don’t they just farm raise zooplankton and dumb it into the ocean to help increase their numbers?” I know that this one might be a hard solution, and one of the key questions to this solution would be how to pay for farm raising zooplankton. Well, I have also thought of the solution to that problem. Tax. I think that in order to fund the farm raising of zooplankton there should be a tax on ALL boats  on the west coast now since there are so many boats the tax to each individual wouldn’t be significant. How much a certain person pays for the tax depends on how big their boating vessel is. You could also tax industries that are a certain distance from the coast as well.

            I know that my solutions might not be solutions at all, but I think that they are somewhere to start!

Journal 5

FREEBIE!!!!!!!!!

'Fish Are Our Friends Not Food'

Tilapia, grouper, salmon, tuna, dolphin! Yum! Yum! Yum! I love fish, but there's one tiny problem with that.... so do billions of other people!
This is a problem for many reasons. The main one is that since so many people eat fish, the fish populations have gone down drastically. We are starting to fish so much that the we are overfishing our seas. We haven't been giving some fish enough time to reach their sexual maturity and then we catch them before they have time to reproduce! This is becoming a major problem not only for the fish, nut humans alike. In many of the places that we go to commercially fish are the same places were the locals go to fish. The problem with this is that there is no way for poor locals, who have small fishing boats, to compete with huge commercial ships. This means that they are going home hungry at night. But there is a silver lining! People have been trying to come up with eco-friendly solutions to fix this problem! Some suggest that we try and farm raise the fish we are going to eat, while others suggest eating sustainable fish and sustainable fishing practices. Whatever the solution we need one and we need it quick!

Journal #4- Erik Assadourian's Aritcle

BREAKING NEWS: THE WORLD IS NOW!!! HIDE YA KIDS! HIDE YA WIFE!


BY:Jocelyn Scott interpreting Erik Assadourian's article "The Ride and Fall of consumer Cultures"


In Erik Assadourian's article he discusses how human's have been conditioned to act and like certain things and since they have been so conditioned it becomes normal.. "Human beings are embedded in cultural systems, are shaped and constrained by their cultures, and for the most part act only within the cultural realities of their lives. The cultural norms, symbols, values, and traditions a person grew up with become 'natural.' Thus, asking people who live in consumer cultures to curb consumption is akin to asking them to stop breathing-they can do it for a moment, but then, gasping, they will inhale again." CITE In this passage he main talks about how our media and culture make us think that we have to have everything new and the more money that we have the more unhealthy not only we become but we make the Earth more unhealthy also. Mr. Assadourian also mentions that the top seven percent of the wealthiest people in the world contribute to a large chunk of pollutants. Then he says that since there are just so many people on the Earth our ecological foot print has become massive and that for as many people as there are we use more than we have.