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Reflection

   This course has made me develop a new appreciation for nature through different readings and discussions. It exceeded my expectations for the class and opened my eyes to see what a powerful tool literature can be for conveying ideas about the environment.  One of my favorite readings was Memory of Water. I like reading post-apocalyptic novels because I think they can serve as a warning or guidelines on what not to do so we can avoid something bad from happening. Memory of Water opened my eyes to what a possible future can look like if we are not careful to keep a sustainable amount of drinking water. It brought up how different issues going on in today's world, such as plastic waste, war, and water sustainability, can impact the citizens of tomorrow. I also thought the book was interesting because it conveyed the idea that humans from today are are being careless on how their decisions will have consequences for Earth for future generations. The future world the novel describ
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Commonplace Post

She thought of the Amazon rainforest, so often called the earth's green lung... She thought of the predictions of several models, that the great forest, currently a massive carbon dioxide sink, might turn into a source of CO2 if it was stressed enough by drought and tree cutting. What would happen then? "Hell on earth," she said aloud.  - Loosed Upon the World  "Entanglement" by Vandana Singh  This quote brings attention to the fact that we are destroying the only thing that could be saving us. As the story says, our forests are the earth's air purifiers turning the toxic carbon dioxide into the fresh crisp air. They are what we are grasping on to for hope that we will continue to have clean air. We know how important forests are for survival and yet we continue to destroy them. The author brings to light the consequences that will be felt when increasingly more forests are replaced with carbon producing cities. The result would be literal hell as tempe
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Commonplace Post

“ One hundred and fifty years ago , the monster began,  this country had become a place of industry. Factories grew on the landscape like weeds. Trees fell, fields were up-ended, rivers blackened. The sky choked on smoke and ash, and the people did, too, spending their days coughing and itching, their eyes turned forever toward the ground. Villages grew into towns, towns into cities. And people began to live  on  the earth rather than  within  it. ”  - Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls This showed me how humans became separated from nature.  The monster is a reference to the pollution and how it came to be. The industrialization age brought pollution, disease, consumerism, materialism, egoism, and many more.  It spread through the world like a plague. It kills our planet just as it kills us but the separation that we created gives us the ability to ignore it. People stopped looking at the sky looking away from all the smoke and pollutants that continue to harm us. Instead of living "
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Commonplace Post

"Its not worth thinking about them, Noria. They didn't think about us, either."  - Memory of Water  This quote caught my attention the second I read it. The main character of the book, Noria, was wondering more about humans before the severe climate change. Her best friend, Sanja, tells her not to because we never though of them. This quote reminded me that all of the decisions we make today, affect the people of tomorrow. The consequences of climate change we face in the present are caused by all of the world's decisions leading up to today. I believe our purpose for living is to contribute to society in a way that will create a better future for later generations. The quote made me reflect on all of our decisions and come to the conclusion that we might not be serving our purpose. We have neglected our purpose and replaced it with money. I only hope we don't get to a day when we can feel the climate change severely and won't be able to do anything about
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Commonplace Post

"It was beautiful and still, a wild and lonely place. Through the green and yellow treetops below us I could see the water of one of the ponds sparkling in the sun. I got the idea that my eyes- our eyes- were the first ever to see it. Yet that was not true, for as we descended into the valley, a deer suddenly appeared in the trees ahead and went bounding off down the slope. There were wild animals there, and I wondered if they even suspected that outside these walls of mountains there were cities and roads and people." - Robert C O'Brien Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIHM It is a nice and simple description of a wild nature scene that made me feel as if nature can be a beautiful unknown world separate from ours. This makes me think about all the numerous instances when humans have conquered nature and destroyed it for their own purposes. All of the environments we have taken down will never be experienced by anyone ever again. It can be good for parts of nature to be undi
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Commonplace Post 3

“How healing it was to be back at Gombe again, and by myself with the chimpanzees and their forest. I had left the busy, materialistic world so full of greed and selfishness and, for a little while, could feel myself, as in the early days, a part of nature." Jane Goodall, Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey We have built a world where nature is separate from us. In our world, we are so busy and worried about the material things that we lose sight of ourselves and our environment. This is important because if everyone is too busy to worry about the environment, our human impact will deteriorate Earth to a point of being inhabitable. It is only when we leave our selfish and greedy world that we find ourselves and get back in touch with nature.
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Commonplace Post 2

"I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you." - Annie Dillard "Living Like Weasels" I came across this quote when researching about Annie Dillard. I think its an interesting way of thinking that we should live by necessity rather than choice. If we were to live by necessity, a lot of environmental problems would be solved along with other kinds of problems as well. Annie introduced the idea that it is our own greed for the things we want that gets us into the issues we face today. It definitely changed the way I think about the choices we as humans have in life.
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