Author: chrislau

This chapter of City at the Water’s Edge really ties into a lot of the issues we were discussing about the Mannahatta paper and goes into detail about how one of the most prominent natural habitats (forests) were destroyed over a few hundred years. I found the example provided by McCully on page 117 regarding how Britain only had one-eighth of their land still “wooded”, so they had to use America as their new source of lumber. This basically represents how countries around the world think today, as we constantly see some countries running out of resources on their own land and resorting to taking those resources from other places. As resources become scarcer, they become more valuable, and only draw in more people to take them away. The advancement of civilization and the progress in technology over these few centuries also play a major role in the destruction of the environment. McCully mentions the importance of shipbuilding for the British and the major impact that had on the devastation on the forests due to massive amounts of wood required to build one ship. However, if Britain didn’t have these strong warships, they might have not been the world power they were at that point in history, so this really presents the problem of whether or not we should sacrifice the environment for our own gain, and if we do, is there a limit to how far we should go? The Industrial Revolution also falls into this category, but without it, would America be where it is today? It is just too tempting to not exploit the environment because there are no immediate short term consequences compared to the short term gains that we can receive.

Another interesting point in the article was the difference of the mindsets between the European colonists and the Native Americans regarding their natural world. McCully mentions on page 120 that both parties viewed the forests as a source of food, fuel, tools, and construction materials, the Europeans would reap the trees for profit and excessive use, while the Native Americans only used the trees whenever it was necessary. Why couldn’t the Europeans adapt this Native American mindset and how different would our natural world be today if this Native American mindset was present in our population today. Unfortunately, the European mindset instead of the Native American mindset is what passed on down to the generations of Americans. Today, people can finally sense that the environment is continuing to degrade at an alarming rate because the effects can actually be seen. This is a problem with how our civilization thinks because we don’t think about consequences that will happen in the future until those consequences start to impact us. If only we noticed 400 years ago how important these natural environments really were and adopted the Native American mindset, the world might be in a lot better condition than it is in today.

 

Manhattan is well known today as one of the largest cities in the world, hosting hundred floor skyscrapers and stores of different companies around the world. After reading the article, one should realize how many sacrifices were made in the environment to get Manhattan to where it is today. Table 2 on pages 552-553 of the article really paints an alarming picture of what happened to Manhattan as a landscape from 1609 to 2004. Basically, over the course of about 400 years, Manhattan’s landscape has shifted from one side of the spectrum to the other. Manhattan started from an almost absolute natural landscape consisting of 99.9% natural areas and 0.1% areas dedicated to humans. Today, Manhattan has almost become a landscape fully dedicated to human use (~97%) with only around 3% left to natural areas. These changes in percentages show that with more and more humans on the planet and their increasing needs, the environment will only continue to deteriorate as time passes. In my opinion, there is a zero-sum balance between human population and their needs and the environment. There is a limit to natural resources and ecosystems in the world, and as people continue to harvest these resources and take over these ecosystems for profit, our environment will only dwindle further until there is nothing left.

Technology also plays a big role in harming our environment. The transformation of Manhattan from a natural island with a lot biodiversity to the big city it is today only took 400 years. 400 years is not a lot of time compared to how long the Earth has existed, and yet examples like Manhattan changed completely from one side to another in only this short period. This correlates with the fact of how fast civilization has advanced in these 400 years and the technologies created to help humans. For example, lets take technologies that help us harvest natural resources. Without these techs, it would probably take us a lot more time to destroy our environment, but with them, the rate that we are using up our environment grows exponentially. The environment cannot create their own technologies to defend themselves or adapt fast enough to grow new means of protection, which is why our progression is not a good sign for the natural world.

Another thing that surprised me was how many different ecosystems were actually present in Manhattan in the past compared to what we notice today. In the past, the people on Manhattan were surrounded by these abundant ecosystems, but a lot of that has disappeared in modern day. We only see the towering buildings above us and would’ve never known about what Manhattan was in the past if records weren’t kept. This just shows how drastic the transformation of Manhattan has been and that people usually don’t realize what has been lost to create this city we have today.

It is definitely scary to think of what the world will look like in a couple of hundred years from now as the population continues to skyrocket and the lack of resources and land motivate people to harvest every last bit they can find for profit. Every action we take has a consequence whether we notice it or not, and if human society continues what they are doing without thinking about the consequences, then our planet may end up being destroyed way sooner than we thought.

IDC 9/2 Article Response

Chris Lau

The article made a couple of great arguments regarding how people can be more connected to the environment and to do things to preserve and save it for the future. First of all, the author mentions the continued growth of cities and its effect on people especially the younger generations who are born living in these cities, which creates detachment from the natural world around them. He brings up the term “shifting baseline” syndrome, which basically implies that as the environment continues to be destroyed, the people aren’t really noticing it because they only see the environment around them and compare the state of the environment in the future to the environment they were born into and are used to. This means that the environment is actually degrading at a faster rate than people think it is. This point makes a lot of sense because people don’t generally travel or pay attention to places where the environment is in great shape and just think of it as maybe the trees or parks surrounding their homes, so they don’t really get a sense of some of the other unique environments that exist around the world. This ties in with the factor of time that he also mentions because lets be honest, people especially those who live in the cities generally live really busy lives and can’t stop for ten minutes every time they see a new plant or organism. Also, even if they pause to observe the environment around them, they probably won’t know the names of the things they are looking at and don’t have a guide next to them to tell them what they are looking at. 

Now, one possible solution to educate people more about their environment would be through the education system. As the author mentions, one of the best ways to help people learn the value of the environment is during their childhoods. Children are obviously spending more and more time indoors playing with all the fancy technology around nowadays compared to the children in older generations, who generally spent more time outside playing and exploring. It is definitely harder today for kids to spend time freely outdoors because their parents are usually busy people and the safety conditions aren’t as good as they used to be. Also, even the kids’ schedules are lined up with many different activities because parents want their kids to have diverse skillets and talents, so they can prevail in this competitive world. Simply put, there isn’t enough time nowadays for children to be spending 2-3 hours each day playing with soil, grass, and bugs. However, a solution that I think could work would be to integrate interacting with nature and the environment in school. The curriculum in public schools require biology, chemistry, and physics, but not environmental science, which in my opinion might be more practical for some of us compared to the other three topics mentioned above. There should be more on hands learning for elementary school students regarding the environment around them instead of just studying topics via textbooks and technology in the classroom. This solution wouldn’t interfere with time also because every kid has to spend their day at school, and it wouldn’t take any time out of their extracurricular activities or playtime at home. Not many children today are going to choose to go outdoors and play around with grass and bugs compared to staying at home playing with their iPads or watching their favorite shows, so having this required on hands outdoor learning experience at schools will show them some interesting things about the environment and perhaps spark new interests regarding nature within the kids!