Kahlil Dawson 11/14/13 Sustainability

Sustainability

For more than a century, The Puget Sound has been home to millions of different species of fish and amphibians, has served as a tourist attraction and a food source for the people of Washington State. The Puget Sound was founded in 1792 by George Vancouver who named the mass of water after one of his great officers Lieutenant Peter Puget (wiki 2009). The Puget Sound roughly covers 1.6 million acres and has 2,500 miles of shoreline. (Puget Sound facts 2010). And produces nearly 20 billion dollars for the state from tourist attraction, walk ways that provide a view of various activities you can see going on in the body of water. From fishing to farriers riding up and down the mass of water. But with all of this activity going on with the Puget Sound reports have been going on that the water quality in the sound is the worst it has ever been. An estimated 14 million pounds of toxic chemicals enter the Puget Sound annually (Puget Sound Education 2010). 70% of the salt marshes in the sound have been contaminated or completely lost. The fish in that area are some of the most contaminated in the state, which poses threat not only to the animals and mammals around the area but as well as the thousands of people who live around the area. Which poses the question. Should the states have the right to use the environment and natural resources for the benefit of present and future generations at their own discretion? Or should there be some type of regulation or law to this? The states should have a right to use the environment and natural resources to help with the states economic progress because in some states that is a big part of their production of money, but I dont believe it should be at their discretion. States should regulate in how much use they put on the

specific environment they are home to. The state government should also have ways to help preserve and keep up the environment. Since humans have existed on earth, we have used and manipulated the environment and resources on the planet in order to ensure the survival of our future generations. From the era of the cave man, to our advanced generation now. We use the land to survive. But to what cost? There have been thousands of cultures before us that have gone extinct, due to over use of their environment. For example the Moai people. Moai people were a very successful culture when they inhabited the Easter Islands. The land was lush and tropical, full of trees and many other resources. There was so many trees that the people thought the resources available to them were endless, using them irresponsibly. Kind of like how or generation acts. Since the people thought the resources were endless they used a massive amount of the resources. Way more than what they needed to survive. They used the trees for building huge houses. They used the trees for building massive statues and other such items. They used so much of the trees that they chopped every single tree that had been on the island down. Which completely changed the landscape from a tropical and lushes environment to a more desert and flat land type of area. This affected the Moai people in a big way because they know longer had those resources that the trees produced for them. The food supply became scarce. They had no wood to build boats so they couldnt leave the island. The once very successful culture that they had collapsed and eventually in time became extinct. There are plenty of other examples that shows what happens when you abuse the resources you have in your environment. And they all have the same common factor that happens to them after they use all of the resources. All of the cultures become extinct. Is this entailing our future as a generation? Im not sure but resources say that our planet is in the midst of its sixth mass extinction of plants and animals, the sixth wave of extinctions in the past half

billion years (extinction crisis 2012). This is a serious concern that we need to address in our country but it all starts with the states and learning how to sustain our environments and natural land resources that we still have. Sustainability is what it means to maintain our natural environment, and natural resources. In the various readings they also describe sustainability as having conditions where the people, animals, and nature are kind of synced in harmony or have a connection with each other. Flores Spirit of Place idea best describes that. Spirit of place, in other words is grounded in the human interaction with local environments. In order to insure our survival and for us to keep surviving and adapting. We will have to learn how to sustain. In The Ethics of sustainability by Anna Peterson, Charles J. Kibert, Leslie Thiele, and Martha Monroe. They did research and found an article by Dr. Karl Henrik Robert a Swedish oncologist that was written in the 1980s. That describes what our society shouldnt so we can sustain and ensure the existence of our race. The first step he mentions in the article is to not use up all of the earths crust. Like the burning of fossil fuels and the mining of natural metals and minerals. We would have to recognize there is a threshold on these natural resources and that if we used enough of the earth crust a lot of ecosystems would be affected. Surprisingly the consequences he mentions have somewhat already happened in our generation now. He mentions that the increase use of these resources would have a major rise in greenhouse gases which would lead to global climate change. Which explains the melting of the ice caps crisis that we have, and why we have global warming. He also mentions that there would be a rise in contamination in surface water and groundwater. Which is problem we face today in pollution. Trying to find clean and healthier water for people to survive off of. In short terms he says the first step requires society to

implement comprehensive metal and mineral recycling programs and decrease economic dependence on fossil fuels. Step 2. He says Society needs to find ways to reduce economic dependence on persistent human-made substances. Examples of human made substances that effect the environment and land resources as well as animals is DDT. Which is used for diseases found in insects that effect humans such as malaria or typhus. And is also used in crops as people know to kill off insects that eat or can destroy crops. Man-made substances like this is a problem for the environment because they can stay in the soil for a long time and spraying areas with DDT affect predators at the top of the food chain. That eat lower level prey as such as fish or insects that have DDT in them. Which in turn effects the environment because it kills off predators that control the population of prey. Step 3. In a sustainable society, humans will avoid taking more from the biosphere than can be replenished by natural systems. What he is saying is we shouldnt take from the earths resources than we need. Which is what we arent doing as a society. According to Bill Gates it is estimated that humans will harvest roughly 17% of the earths biosphere this year. Step 4. In a sustainable society resources are used fairly and efficiently in order to meet basic needs globally. He gives the idea that overall as a society that we should believe in fairness as far as regards for basic human needs. That we should all cut back on the amount of resources we use for the greater good of society. Basically that the world doesnt need the newest iPhone for survival, or we dont need the newest TV. Half the time we as a generation arent appreciative of what we have. If we learn how to be more appreciative of the little things, that alone can teach or society how to sustain environments and land resources. How to take care of our nature and animals. How to take care of our land, and to help us sustain our future as human,

and to avoid becoming extinct. If we learn how to become more sustainable then the world will become a better place. All in all, our resources in the world are depleting and at a very fast rate. Resources like the Puget Sound that are in trouble in Washington. If states as well as people could get educated in how to sustain their natural resources and what it means to be sustainable then the world would be better off than what it is right now. We are using up way to many resources at a rate that we dont need to keep up. If we dont change our ways soon it may lead to the extinction of our race. But I do believe there is still hope in our generation. We are a very bright group as you can see in the technology we have built to improve our society. We just need to put our focus more to creating things to sustain our universe instead of creating things to hurt it and put us in a deeper and deeper hole. But it starts with each of us individually. To make family friends and people you dont even know, more aware of what their actions do to the universe. Instead of walking past garbage on the ground. If you see it why not just pick it up and put it in the garbage or recycle more. Use less water in your homes as well as electricity. Choose healthier foods to eat and make people more aware of situations. If people do this, slowly but surely we can get back to the way things used to be and hopefully we can sustain whatever we have left in our environment.

Works Cited soufi, B. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puget_Sound Wws.peacecorps.gov (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.mysteriousplaces.com/Easter_Island/html/tour4.html. Retrieved from http://pugetsound.org/education/polluted-runoff Center for Biological Diversity. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/biodiversity/elements_of_biodiversity/extinction_cr isis/ (n.d.). Retrieved from http://rio20.net/en/documentos/the-ethics-of-sustainability/