reflections

1) How do you currently, or plan to in the future, contribute to a more environmentally sustainable economy?
I will try to cut my energy costs when it is affordable to me. I will also try to make the move to a eco friendly car or utilise public transport more. I will buy locally and organically to support local farmers and get rid of the transportation CO2

2) Are there local sustainable business that you support?

I have not found a sustainable business that I support, take in mind though that I come from a small town and our business' are not too big. With that would like to see more sustainability coming to small towns and spreading across the nation.

3) Have you considered your financial investments and their ethics?
I have not, but when the time comes I really think my decisions will be based on two things. The final value of the investment and it's effect on the environment and my feelings behind that. I want to make money yes but there is no good things that come from destroying the environment.

ted talk

For my activity I watched Sylvia Earle's TED Prize wish to protect our oceans.  She starts by explaining what she has done and learned from the oceans.  She learned to scuba dive in 1953.  She used many different techniques like submarines  to discover the ocean's floor.  The ocean is our life support system.  We are drawing out our resources faster than they can replenish themselves. This is a great problem. The only way a problem like this will get fixed is if we could see the decline with our own eyes. We must explore and protect the ocean in ways that will restore its health and give it many years to grow . Build up our fisheries again so we are not running out of fish is a good step.  In 50 years we've eaten 90 percent of the big fish in the ocean,but that's not all the problems we have.  Excess carbon dioxide is driving global warming and causing ocean acidification.  We are clogging the ocean with excess plastics.   We are killing organisms that drive our nitrogen, carbon and oxygen cycle. There must be a way to fix this. Well now we have marine reserves, but they make up only 0.8% of 1% of the ocean, it is not enough.  We must leave the oceans for its resources and let it grow again. May it be by marine reserve, harsher laws or company ethics, the oceans need to be saved and explored.

I found this Ted talk interesting and helpful. They talk about the diminishing population in our oceans due to human use, consumption and waste. I really found it sad to see the numbers related to the oceans. As an avid snorkeller I have seen and been to many different reefs and marine reserves in the pacific and Indian ocean. The difference of the fish and wildlife is incredible. What we need is more protected marine reserves in all waters all around the world. That means hot or cold, even the non resourceful waters must be protected. If we don't stop what we are doing, there will be no more fish to see, eat or admire, and that's just the beginning of it

Environmental justice is an idea that came to play in the 1960's. During these times coloured people had less justices and rights and therefore their environmental and health rights were not respected. Big companies started building landfills, incinerators and factories that have big health and environment issues, right next to the growing black community. This is at a time and place where blacks made up 20 % if the population. Can you imagine that? These companies couldn't have put it anywhere else and made it a environmentally racist act. From those days people have pushed for equality in dealing with the environment.  The National Black Environmental Justice Network is a group today helping coloured people be environmentally equal. They have made way be winning relocations and by getting a clean air act passed.

 Environmental justice is a social movement in the whose focus is on the fair distribution of environmental benefits and burdens. All members of society will receive the same burden/benefits unlike as was with the incinerators in black communities.

3. Our Stolen Future (S29)

The author beings the piece talking about our many, many years experimenting chemicals on animals and how those days are catching up to us. It seems that most of the synthetic chemicals that we produce have not only seeped into animals bodies but ours as well. We have accumulated persistent synthetic chemicals in our body fat, just like all other animals This is very concerning because smaller doses of these chemicals can do lot more damage to us. Not only are people getting sick and dying but hormones and braincells are dying or changing which damages our population as humans even more.

No, I don't think cancer is the only thing we have to worry about. There are thousands of diseases and infections that are life threatening and made by us man in a lab somewhere that we should worry about. Fire proofing, plastic raps and preservatives are all examples of things we should not trust as much as we do. If we keep abusing our planet with synthetic chemicals, we will have a whole lot more than cancer to worry about.

2.Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment (S28)

Sandra Steingraber begins talking with unique examples on adoptees showing the same hereditary traits as their adoptive parents. Now of course Sandra found out that it was no real but she did find something very interesting. At a young age the adopted Sandra found herself diagnosed with bladder cancer. By tracking down her adoptive parents side she saw that cancer was wide spread through her adopted family. With many years of research she came to the conclusion that cancer is more of an environment disease. PCB's & DDT are still in the air as well as many carcinogens that we cannot even name or keep track of. Everything you by today is packaged and treated with chemical. This is why I don't find the rise in cancer alarming.

It is hard to tell if something is carcinogenic in humans because there are many factors that can be involved. Temperature, quantity, purity and time all play big factors. Some chemical may react differently in a colder temperature. Quantity depends on the amount of the chemical you are absorbing. Purity is hard to keep a hold of because in the air everything mixes together which could create a volatile reaction. Lastly we have time. Time is a tricky one because there in no way we can know what a chemical will do to us in 30

5. Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services (S17)

human use and impact has made us more and more greedy when it comes to taking things out of the water. Human impact can relate directly to the diminishing populations of our fisheries. In this article we first found out the roles of biodiversity in maintaining the ecosystem service to humans. We see our fisheries diminishing directly caused by exploitation, pollution, and habitat destruction, or indirectly through climate change. These changes are all human backed which will slowly decrease the number and diversity of species in our oceans in fisheries and the stability of the ecosystem itself. After many experiments the team concluded that with a higher and more diverse population an ecosystem grows much stronger and stable,  there's a positive correlation between ecosystem diversity and population and species recovery. The more diverse the ecosystem is,then the higher the species count, when the count is higher the different population work together in a manner to boost its ecosystem. If not the loss of diversity brings many horrible things such as; algal blooms, oxygen depletion, shellfish and beach closure. Other problems that could arrive are fishery collapses that is on the everyday rise.

1. Collapsed fisheries recover better in high-diversity ecosystems because it is found that  there is a 20 to 30% enhancement of resource use efficiency.  A diverse ecosystem is much more stable, it is observed to either increase resistance to disturbance or enhanced recovery afterwards. The more diverse the ecosystem gets the more stable it will be

1. Ecosystems and Human Well-being (S 10)

This article talked about the great and ever changing relationship of man and the various ecosystems, The article first gives us the idea that we lack a change in an ever changing environment, It talks about crop land and fisheries to add to that idea, They then go on to talk about the people and how a good environment helps them and what is found in them.In a healthy human environment there should be no hunger and no widespread  poverty, disease and child mortality rates would also be down, The article then goes on to talk about ways we can help and try to build our dying ecosystem back up. Agriculture, fisheries, water and forestry are the industries to work with. If we build on those then our ecosystems builds and brings in new population which then causes biodiversity.

1. I think the hardest part of managing ecosystems sustainably is that they're also ways in multiple constant changes. Our ecosystems are always changing because it is comprsismised of so much natural things such as animals and flora. With all the new advancements in technology it is still hard to see if the world is changing or if we are changing it?