Have you ever noticed how dramatically the climate has been changing? The heat
waves hitting and drying us were all the signs the Earth has been telling us that it
has been contaminated. Although the most of us are busy driving to work, preparing
our morning coffee and just simply doing our everyday activities most of these
warnings the earth gives us slides by unnoticed. The earth we once knew is hurt
from the flooding, burning and drying which allowed it to turn into something
fundamentally different. As human beings living on planet earth we can contribute
by solving one of the biggest issues, factory farming. Bill McKibben, the author of
Eaarth wants us to focus on eliminating the power the fossil fuel companies, because
it plays a big role in damaging the environment. As we the people create the
problem by constantly demanding for capitalism leading to an increase for fossil fuel
companies, which only makes it detrimental for Earth, I believe we should find other
alternatives to use renewable energy and hopefully change the social structure to
help the environment.
Bill McKibben wants us to focus on using energy from our local communities
rather than one fossil fuel company to provide globally for our energy. In our society
we are use to having fossil fuel companies providing the energy for the world rather
than small local farms providing local energy. The problem with fossil fuels
creating energy is that we are making more problems like climate change.
McKibben means by ‘holding on against the storm.’ For example if a person who is
over weight constantly overeats everyday, they will end up with high cholesterol.
Now they need to take all sorts of medication to remove high cholesterol since the
overweight individual is now fighting death, which is what McKibbens mean when
humans are facing the storm. We are constantly continuing our ways of using energy
like a overweight person continuing to over eat, and not realizing that the Earth is
showing signs of disease with climate change. People would try to save more energy
at home as the overweight individual takes their medications for the high
cholesterol. This allows us to escape death for a while as we maintain reducing the
energy we use but will still cause us to eventually face death when McKibben says
we face a storm. Individuals cannot just reduce the energy they are using, but should
be changing to a different lifestyle.
When we think of having smaller communities, the amounts of fossil fuels we
use will be used more wisely. Michael Allen Fox who wrote the article
‘Vegetarianism and Treading Lightly on The Earth’ would agree with McKibbens on
investing in using fossil fuels more wisely. In Fox’s article he talks about how the
environment is being impacted based on our choice of diet, such as “having ozone
depletion caused by extensive use of fossil fuels and significant production of
methane gas by cattle.” The amount of foods individuals are consuming has used a
great amount of non renewable energy, and we have been overusing our resources,
which is causing us to consume the well being of this planet. Raising animals needs a
great amount of intensive water usage and energy, which could have been used for a
better investment in Earth’s future. I agree with Fox on this because to make a
quarter pound hamburger the environment would have to give up 2.904 gallons of
water vs. to make a kilo of wheat only it needs 264 gallons of water. Both Fox and
McKibbens hopes individuals will not just reduce their usage on non renewable
energy or consumption, like the overweight person on medication, but to have a
complete lifestyle change for the benefit of this planet.
The simplicity of starting in a small community was a lot less difficult since it
was much easier to maintain. Mckibbens states in his book Eaarth, “The project
we’re now undertaking-maintenance, graceful decline, hunkering down, holding on
against the storm-requires a different scale. Instead of continents and vast nations,
we need to think about states, about towns, about neighborhoods, about blocks. Big
was a dynamic; when the project was growth, we could stand the side effects. But
now the side effects of that size-climate change, for instance are sapping us. “ In this
quote he talks about how we focus too much on the big things when we should be
focusing on smaller things. Big things as in when we have Walmart buying from
farms providing food for our whole country and small when we just go nearby our
homes to our local farmer for food. We run better with imports from our local town
rather than working large with imports from all the way across the country.
McKibben believes we are safer if we make our society smaller instead of taking the
risk of having one large import providing globally. I agree with him that relying on
smaller family businesses will actually benefit us, since small communities should
be able to survive on their own.
Small communities running on their own with consumers buying from local
farmers is beneficial for humans less harmful to the environment. One of the
solutions to keep communities stick with their locals is having cultured meat.
Cultured meat is meat invented inside a lab which will reduce our usage of fossil
fuels and factory farming. Stellan Welin who wrote ‘Introducing the New Meat.
Problems and Prospect” states how “cultured meat involves 7-45% less energy than
conventionally produces meat (only poultry has lower energy use), 78%-96% lower
emissions of greenhouse gases, 99% lower land use and 82-96% lower water use.
These figures indicate that cultured meat holds great environmental promise.” This
is one of the great potential advantages on how it will benefit the environmental
impact. These type of meat productions can simply be done in small areas, which
McKibbens would absoluetely love to see how it can be done in small cities which
fulfills his idea on thinking small. Thinking small by how communities can rely on
themselves rather than buying from large companies that provide globally.
-going on with daily lives
-eliminate fossil fuels
-focus energy on local communities
-environmental impact on choice of diet
-small communities focusing by themselves
-cultured meat