Author Archives: carolinesigler

Posts by carolinesigler

Response 13

Posted on December 3, 2012 by carolinesigler

The presentation about the mining in Treece, Kansas was really shocking to me. There were many unfair and horrible things done to the people in this town; there is not just one thing that I am mad as hell about. First, I would have to say that I am mad as hell about the fact that no one did anything to prevent this town from getting so polluted, even though mining stopped in the 1970s. The towers of mining “chat” remained looming over the town, continuing to pollute its inhabitants although there was no reason why something could have been done to help these people. As Gigdet stating in her presentation, children were especially at risk for health issues, including asthma, due to the chat and other pollutants in the air from the mining. These children are a special concern because, unlike the adults of the town, they did not choose to live in this area. Children should be given a safe and healthy place to grow up in.

I am also mad as hell about the whole idea behind eminent domain. I understand how it could sometimes be necessary to take people’s land if you need to build a road through it, or accomplish some other goal for the public good. But the government should be required to give the people that they are taking land from sufficient money. The government did not give the people of this town enough money for them to buy adequate houses. They were given about $30,000 I believe, which sounds like an especially low amount of money considering how high the standard of living is in this part of the country. Although this money probably went further where in their part of the country, it was still not enough. The mayor was forced to stay in a trailer park. This is unacceptable; I understand why that one couple chose to stay as the only two residents of Treece, even just to stick it to the government.

This situation reminds me of the proposal for the creation of the garbage-processing center. While I understand that it is hard for the government to solve these issues in a way that satisfies everyone, the government should try to ensure that the least amount of people are inconvenienced. This garbage-processing center will severely decrease the land value of the people living there. Also, there are many public buildings that are used by the community in this area. This is a tough decision for the government to make. However in the case of Treece, the government should definitely have given the citizens more money to buy satisfactory housing.

While we were unable to see all of the advertising campaigns presentation, I really liked the first idea. I think that the collage of images is a good way to make an impact on the masses. The message is clearly delivered, and I think that people will understand it. I also thought it was clever that the images paralleled ad campaigns hailing New York City as the Wonder City. Good advertising is one of the best ways to engage people emotionally, and to help them realize that their actions can make a difference.

Koyaanisqatsi

Posted on November 4, 2012 by carolinesigler

I started watching Koyaanisqatsi not knowing what to expect. I had heard what it was going to be like from other students and I began to dread having to sit through this movie. I don’t have electricity in my house at this moment, let alone Wifi to stream the video online, so I had to sit in a local Starbucks to watch this documentary. As I settled in at the conveniently provided desk with my cup of coffee, I began watching the movie, preparing myself for a long and boring 87 minutes.

The first thing that caught my attention was the music. The music was grand and dramatic, at times both calming me and increasing my interest. It seemed to hint at the importance of the images being shown. It added to the immensity of the canyons and deserts on screen. From these to sunlit streaming through the clouds in the sky, waterfalls and oceans, the first part of the movie revealed the enormity of the world around us and how small we are by comparison. I am always especially impressed by the ocean, with its rolling and crashing waves. It seems as if these aspects of nature are ever-present and beyond our control. Our lives and actions seem small and insignificant and it seems almost surreal to think that our actions could forever alter these parts of nature.

However as the documentary continues we see that this in not true. We see huge fields of crops growing, and it is crazy to think that these large areas were planted all by man. It is clear that man can create something on the same level as nature. In a very symbolic scene we see a man on a tractor being engulfed by the black smoke he is creating. This is reflects the idea that we will lead to our own downfall through the pollution we are creating. The music takes a more urgent and unsettling tone as the telephone wires, and huge factories are shown. Our actions are shown as destructive, we using explosives or fire–an atomic bomb is shown. The image of a baby on a beach is juxtaposed with that of the factory looming behind the beach. To me, this expresses the idea that we are not only harming the environment with our pollution, by ourselves and most importantly our future generations.

Not all human activities were reflected with such a negative light in my mind. The huge skyscrapers or the big jet appealed to my sense of amazement at our ability, as a species, to create. The group of people taking pictures shows the kind of innovation humans generally revere. We are able to create such impressive buildings, build a method of transportation that defies gravity, mass produces cars and other objects in such quantity. Many of humanity’s most impressive accomplishments are in the military–shown by the tanks, fighter jets, and rockets. The problem is not that we are unable to take steps to save our environment, we just do not have the drive to do so. We have a tendency towards violence and self-indulgence that will only lead us to further harming ourselves.

The next images we see are the less impressive or grand elements of human creation and consumption. We are shown images of garbage littering the cit streets. Moreover, we are shown people living in this garbage, children playing in water with litter in it, parks and streetlights falling apart. Broken windows signify abandoned buildings that could be used for some other purpose. Some of the most stimulating images of the documentary for me are the falling and crashing buildings that are being destroyed. These images seem to show the less appealing nature of humans, how we not only have harmed the environment in creating these buildings and structures, but that after we build them we do not look after them properly–leading us to harm the environment even more when we take them down.

As the human race is shown in large groups in cities and such, the music speeds up. The music now is in a clear contrast to the slower, grander melody at the beginning of the movie. The film is sped up showing people and cars moving at ridiculous speeds. This was the most hypnotic part of the film as it gradually increases in speed flashing images of human consumption onto the screen. Humanity is shown to be busier, and faster than the steady images of the oceans and mountains. Humans have already managed to impose a significant amount of damage onto aspects of nature that have existed for many, many years in a relatively short period of time. We are constantly moving, constantly consuming–and through this constantly polluting our environment.

The name of this documentary, Koyaanisqatsi, is an Hopi term meaning Life Out Of Balance. I think that this term is a very apt name for this presentation, and that this theme is represented in different ways. First life is clearly out of balance with respect to nature and humanity. We are creating, and destroying at such a great speed, that nature cannot compete with our rate of consumption. In such a short amount of time we are undoing the perfect that nature took millions of years to create.

There is also a clear unbalance within humanity itself. We desire to benefit our lives and improve our condition, however we do not realize that in doing this we are in fact destroying the only place we have to live. We desire to protect our young, yet we think the best way to do this is to buy them toys, food, diapers, clothes–as much as we can–in fact we live in a society that marks success on how much you can buy. But by buying into this idea we are supporting a system that is raping our environment and natural resources. It is this system that will harm our young the most, by preventing future generations from having a safe environment to live in. Humanity is also unbalanced in the fact that we have such great technology and resources at our fingertips, yet we do not chose to use this to benefit the environment. We do not try to save the very thing we need the most.

The last fifteen or so minutes of the film show that humanity is actually fragile and so very dependent on the environment. There are slower paced images of people hurt, bleeding, and unhappy–a reminder of our mortality. It may seem that we hold the upper hand against nature; that life is unbalanced but tipped in our favor. This is not true. We are constantly at the mercy of nature. If there was any doubt of this in my mind Hurricane Sandy served to erase it. I have no electricity, no way to store fresh food, no way to heat my house, and only the limited light of a flashlight at night. Yet I am still one of the lucky ones–people living not too far from me have lost there homes, cars, or even their lives in the destruction caused by this act of nature. As our consumption, and pollution serves to upset nature, nature will only return the favor onto our own artificial and self-made world.

While this is not to become my new favorite movie, I think that I enjoyed and understood the message of this documentary than I originally thought I would. It was at times a little difficult to focus on, but the images and music were as a whole fairly stimulating and served to capture my interest. I think that is a documentary that everyone should see once, as its message will stay with the viewer long after the presentation has ended.

 

Response 5

Posted on October 10, 2012 by carolinesigler

While environmental damage has greatly been increasing in recent years, it is also disheartening to realize that we have been causing harm to this planet for many years in our past as well. The New Bedford study is a great example of how environmental damage has been done in the past and how this combined with pollution of today can prove even more disastrous for our planet. Global warming is just another example of how pollution does not go away over the years but continues to build and damage the earth.

The New Bedford case study showed that negative impacts on an area in Massachusetts. The focus of this study is on a watershed-an area that encompasses a cycle of water movement. They broke the history of the area into different historical period and examined damage done to the area during that period. For example, during the textile period dyes were released into the river polluting it. During the post-textile period electronic parts manufactures moved to this region and polluted PCBs into the river in the process of making capacitors. Even something as seemingly harmless as building a bridge had effects on the environment. The bridge caused sediment to build up on one side, which rendered this side useless as a port. The most recent period represents the time since this region became environmentally aware. This area has since become a part of the superfund program. Attempts have been made to try and clean up the area, however some of the damage cannot be fixed.

From this study we learn that when considering environmental damages, we need to look to the past as well as the present. We can also see how we need to calculate the possible consequences of how our actions can affect the future, as the affects done to the New Bedford area in the past are still being felt by the people living there. I was surprised to learn that the bridge caused such changes to the sediment depositing patterns and that this situation currently seems irreversible. We should keep these ideas in mind when considering global warming. Global warming is caused by the expulsion of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This prevents energy in the form of heat to be rereleased into space and instead is reflected back to the earth. Although carbon dioxide may not seem like the most harmful of toxins, it can cause serious damage. The rates of temperature increase are growing faster than originally predicted. We also have to consider how much carbon dioxide has already been released into the atmosphere. We have been burning large amounts of fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution.

It is a shame that we haven’t began to understand harm we are causing to our environment sooner. If we had realized this earlier then our world would be in a better state today. We also need to remember this so we that leave the world in at least a livable state for future generations.

Response Paper 4

Posted on October 1, 2012 by carolinesigler

            We never really think about what happens to our garbage; we just throw it into the garbage bins and it gets taken away.I remember one of the earliest times that I ever considered what happens with what we throw away. It was when my father took me to a local landfill on Long Island that had been partially converted into a park. We used to go crabbing there and I had always thought that it was incredible that the big hill I was standing on was made of garbage. In retrospect, it seems almost ironic that they used a landfill to create something that promotes environmental awareness like a park does. However putting a nice little park over the landfill does little to alleviate the growing problem of our garbage accumulation.

In my personal family, we try to limit our garbage use. My dad lives by the philosophy that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. He not only saves our own junk to refurbish and reuse but also gathers what other people are throwing out. All of my family’s bicycles are bicycles that my dad recovered from other people’s trash. My dad also always had my sisters and I gather our family’s glass bottles and aluminum cans and return them at our grocery store so we could get the deposit back. My grandparents would have a compost and save their food garbage to use to make soil for their plants. There are many different ways to try and reuse items to limit our consumption of goods and creation of garbage.

 

At work I see the other end of the spectrum. I work at two different jobs in the food service industry and it is apparent that ridiculous amounts of garbage are generated in this industry. Not only is all half-eaten food thrown out, but all food that is made by mistake, left out, old, or tainted is as well. At the end of night I am left taking out bag after bag of garbage. Also neither of my jobs has an adequate recycling program. I am always left throwing out numerous bottles and cans. Also at each of jobs, one employee has tried to collect the recyclables themselves but it has been unfeasible for one person to collect that many bottles and cans and they have given up. On a related note, my mother works as a nurse in the neonatal ICU ward and can confirm the sheer amount of diapers that are thrown out each day. She also says that she has witnessed many parents swear they are going to use cloth diapers either for environmental reasons or to save money, only to give up later once they realized what exactly cloth diapers entail and how often newborns have to go to the bathroom. She has yet to see anyone stick with cloth diapers yet.

I think that the biggest issue when it comes to environment is what to do with our wastes. We have learned that our toxic wastes pollute or breathing air and drinking water, while our material wastes are taking up and dirtying our space. As our population grows, the amount of waste we generate will only grow as well. I think more should be done to encourage recycling or even composting so food and other waste that would decompose easily can be dealt with in a more environmentally sound way. It seems strange that if New York City is able to keep detailed accounts of what garbage was thrown out that they couldn’t then separate this garbage to recycle what could be recycled.

Response Paper 3

Posted on September 27, 2012 by carolinesigler

Just as water pollution is a monumental issue in environmental awareness, air pollution is also a major issue that affects us every time we take a breath. Air is another quantity that I believe many people consider infinite, since there is so much or it and it surrounds us at all times. However this is not true, our air supply is limited and dwindling more and more every day. We must ensure that we work to protect the air supply we have instead of continually pumping it full of pollutants.

Just from my own limited knowledge, I would think that one of the biggest issues with air pollution is that it seems almost inevitable that everything we create, including chemicals or pollutants, will come into contact with our air. Air is all around us, how are we to prevent something from reaching something so ubiquitous? The air seems to be sensitive to all sorts of processes-both natural and unnatural, from the methane being released by cows to fuel combustion, to spray paints and dry cleaning. These all release harmful toxins into the air that pollute it and make it unsafe for us. How are we to avoid all of these processes? Fuel combustion can release a number of chemicals into the air including nitrous oxides and HS, or even CO when it is incomplete. Yet we cannot not expect people to forgo driving their cars. Air pollution coincides with processes that have great instrumental value. Another problem with air pollution is that it is more harmful when the toxin particles are smaller than PM 2.5, rather than when the pollution is larger in size. The larger particles are caught by the nose and prevented from entering the lungs, while the smaller particles are able to slip through the body’s natural defenses. This presents a problem because the smaller particles, the harder it is to filter them out from the air by artificial means and the harder it is to notice the particles before it is too late. Air pollution seems to be filled serious issues that may prove difficult to solve.

I was very interested by the study conducted in central park, determining whether or not gasoline use was the source of increased atmospheric lead. To determine the decrease in lead over the course of the 20th century they drilled a core of sediment out of the bottom of the lake in central park. They divided the sample into 2 cm segments and had each segment represent a period in time, starting in the late 1800s. I thought it was especially clever how they determine which segment represented which years based off of what they found in the sample. The used the levels of cesium they found to indicate that those samples represented the years 1954 to 1963, when nuclear testing began to when the ban on testing was enacted. The results of this test showed that lead levels decreases while lead gasoline was still in use, showing that this was not the case. This test also shows how air pollution is can affect all other parts of the environment. Lead in the air is able to enter the lake in central park, and settle as sediment to the bottom. The cesium found in the lake is a result of nuclear testing in a different region of the country. Pollution to one part of the environment has far reaching consequences to other areas.

Air pollution is a serious problem that is hard to fix. The quote by Richardo Navarro, “In our free enterprise economy, the benefits are privatized but the costs of pollution are socialized” truly describes the state of environmental ethics today. It is difficult to enact programs to benefit the environment when the benefits of pollution go directly to the company that is polluting while the consequences are shared by everyone and left for the government to deal with. This is especially true of air pollution which is a product of so many of the processes which we consider to be essential to our lives.

Response Paper 1

Posted on September 20, 2012 by carolinesigler

Before I entered into this class for the first time I had very little idea what to expect from it. Science and technology in New York City is a pretty vague title that encompasses many different topics. The professor for this class wasn’t revealed until much after registration so I wasn’t able to even hazard a guess as to what direction the professor would take this class. Once class began and I realized that the focus of this class would be the environment I was both interested and apprehensive. I think that environmental awareness is an extremely important topic and that it is very apt for this class since ecology is playing such an important role in the future of science. However, the environmental conservation can often be a controversial topic with regards to how far we should take environmental concerns. This is also a subject that I do not know that much about and am excited to know more.

I already learned a lot in just these first two classes. I had no idea that dead zones existed off the shores of our country in the Gulf of Mexico and the Chesapeake Bay, areas where no fish can live due to the chemical runoff. I also did not know how rapidly humans were depleting the forests and creating more miles of desert. No did I appreciate how greatly overfishing was affecting the world’s population of fish. The statistic that only 10% of the amount of fish that there once were is alive today was quite shocking. Even cattle farming is having a serious negative impact on the environment. When we choose to eat a hamburger from McDonalds it is not just the cow that was bred and killed to make the burger that we have to consider but also how this type of farming is destroying our forests. These are all ways that humans are negatively affecting the environment that I did not fully understand. When you choose to  I think that it is very important to know the impact we are having on the environment even if you choose to do nothing about it.

I also think that I learned more about myself from the first few classes and how I view my relationship to the environment. I was interested to learn the two different views one can have on ecology, either deep or shallow ecology. This also goes hand in hand with the idea of whether or not one views nature as having intrinsic or only instrumental value. I learned that I believe that as a human I only see the instrumental value that nature holds for me. If I were to view any animals as having value outside the value that I assign it as a human, then I would have to view all animals as equals, which I do not do. I also think that I subscribe to the belief in shallow ecology. While I do think it is important to make attempts to save our environment, the main reason I have for believing so is that I want there to be resources left for future generations. I want my children and grandchildren to be able to breathe fresh air and enjoy a high standard of living. I also want them to be able to appreciate the diversity that exists in the world today; I don’t want tigers and other endangered animals to be just a thing of the past for them.

I am very interested to learn more about the environment from this class and to see if my opinions on any of these topics will change with further knowledge. I already believe that the class discussions are very enriching and that my classmates have ideas and opinions to share on this matter along with the course material we will be learning. I think that this class will challenge the way I think about the environment.

 

Response Paper 2-Water Pollution

Posted on September 20, 2012 by carolinesigler

 

Water is one of the most important elements to life, yet it is also something we all take for granted. This is especially true of New York where our tap water is safe enough for us to drink—we do not realize that in other areas of the world this is most certainly not the case. Many other first world countries do not have the wonderful commodity of clean, drinkable tap water, let alone third world countries where the water is so polluted we wouldn’t even wash our feet in it. This is why many people don’t see water pollution as a serious problem—it is hard to imagine that our fresh water supply is limited when we see water all around us. However, I believe that water pollution is a serious issue that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later, before our water supply is permanently tainted.

One important issue of water pollution that hits us close to home is the water pollution of the Hudson River with PCBs. PCBs are chemicals that are harmful to us in that they can affect our DNA and lead to cancer. They are known to bioaccumulate, making the fish in the Hudson unsafe to eat. They were produced as a cheap way to insulate capacitors by General Electric and eventually dumped as a waste into the Hudson. The EPA, realizing the hazardous effects of this chemical ordered a clean up in 1976. However the clean up did not begin until 2008, and has yet to be completed. The river has been dredged, removing thousands of cubic yards of contaminated sediment. This sediment is then relocated to other areas, specifically Texas, where it is buried in the clay there. This clay should serve to keep the toxins isolated for now. While some may protest these chemicals being buried underground, this operation is a viable option for dealing with these toxins and can generate jobs for people in the community. As long as everything goes according to plan there should be no harmful effects from the PCBs. Even though it may seem a little ridiculous to dredge this sediment out of the Hudson River only to bury it underground elsewhere, I think that this plan is a good idea for containing pollutants and keeping them out of the water supply.

While this solution is a little late in coming, at least it shows that the need for clean unpolluted water is becoming more of a concern than before. This solution is a step in the right direction. It is becoming more and more important for us to keep our water clean, since around the world water sources are becoming more and more polluted. The Bay at Rio de Janeiro is extremely polluted, with different oil terminals and refineries, factories, and households all dumping their wastes into this body of water. It has become such a problem that wastes such as diapers can be seen floating freely in the bay. Even in places in America the water supply has become clearly tainted. An article about Treece, Kansas shows that this town is suffering many environmental effects due to the mining that once took place there. The water of the creek in this town has become polluted with trace minerals from the mines, which gave it an orange color, a vinegar-like odor, and killed off all of the life within this water. I sincerely hope this never happens to New York and that we can keep our drinkable tap water for future generations. Fresh water is not an unlimited resource and we must remember to do what we can to keep it clean and pure for as long as possible.

Comments by carolinesigler