Monday, 12 January 2015

Week 12 [12.01 – 18.01] Ecology?

     Humanity has always used  natural resources for their own goals. However , until the industrial revolution it didn’t cause big problems.
Humans who have existed for only 200 000 years have changed  the earth and introduced confusion into the natural environment; rainforest cutting, air pollution, hunting and many more humans ‘ behaviors cut the chain which kept order between all species. It’s a huge problem not only for fauna and flora but mainly for humanity.



     The picture above presents a documentary movie called “HOME”. It shows how beautiful our planet is and what we can lose if we don’t change our approach to using natural resources.
      We should promote various synthetic counterparts for things which are made from nonrenewable natural resources. A good example is e-paper. E-book readers are gaining popularity very fast and I guess within several years it can totally replace plain paper . However, it will probably look different than today. This change should save a lot of trees which can clean the air. We should promote various types of renewable energy instead of coal and petroleum. Natural resources will come to an end soon but then it will be too late for finding a new source of energy to power all electric devices.
There are people and organizations like Greenpeace,  ecologists who fight to change law in order to protect the natural environment. These organizations do  not always achieve their goals but with help of society they often have influence on  governments and business.
      The biggest organization called Greanpeace was established in 1971 in Vancouver and have offices in many countries. They have very wide area of actions. They work for stopping climate changes,  protection of  rainforests or stopping genetic modifications. Many people say that Greenpeace is too radical because some actions are near to eco-terrorism. They are criticized  for taking part in the discussions of ecology, when their ideas are neither ecologically nor economically appropriate. Greenpeace cofounder Patrick Moore left the organization  as he believes that the organization is motivated by money and politicians  and forgot about the main targets.
There are many other areas where changes are needed. Perhaps these changes will depend on our generation.

Questions:
1. How can we reduce human impact on natural environment?
2. What do you think about Greenpeace? Are similar organizations needed?

Sources:

1. http://www.treehugger.com/culture/world-premiere-of-yann-arthus-bertrands-home-this-environment-day-june-5.html

16 comments:

  1. We can try to usimg products that we can recycle and use them again. It is a simple way to help our natural enviroment. People can save water or use less electricity.
    I don't have good opinion and I'm against this organisation. They cause more damage to natural enviroment than help it. In December 2014 Greenpeace damaged Nazca Lines which are on UNESCO World Heritage List.
    I don't think that we need such organization as Greenpeace.

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  2. I don’t know exactly how Greenpeace works, and what are statistics. It really annoys me when they are trying to convince people at the street to sign petitions. I know that they are working for good of environment, but still it is annoying. I have seen many times how they have been fighting in definitely not polite way with person that didn’t want to sign.

    Every single person have impact on natural environment. In such case everyone should take care of acting natural friendly. Human impact on the environment covers many areas like: agriculture, technology, energy industry, manufactured products, transport and many many more. As a single person it is hard to save all of that.

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  3. OMG, eco friendly giberish. It's natural order at this point.
    1. How can we reduce human impact on natural environment?
    Yes. We can start mass murder.... Other than that we can limit what we do, but without massive discoveries in the next couple of centuries, we gonna be in trouble. We can always move to another planet...
    2. What do you think about Greenpeace? Are similar organizations needed?
    Greenpeace is useless. Bunch of eco friendly so called world helpers. God i loathe them so much.
    We all have impact on the world we live in. We all produce waste. Are we the worst, sure we are. As a single person we cannot change a lot tho.

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  4. I personally have similar opinion like all of you that Greenpeace is useless in such form like today.
    Mass murders hmm it's too extravangance I guess. People should be educated about natural environment and try to change their own behaviour. Next they shoyld try to convince other people and we have chain reaction. It's not imposssible but all of us should try to bw less harmfull for nature.

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  5. As to Armand's sentence that "As a single person we cannot change a lot", I'd like to quote David Mitchell from Cloud Atlas: “My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?”

    Personally, I think ordinary people can definately make a huge difference. After all, it's us who make society. A great step is learning more about ecology and the ways we can help our environment: saving electric energy and water, recycling, using totebags instead of plastic ones, etc. We should spread that attitude and the government should encourage citizens to be more eco-friendly, for example by penalties for businesses which are polluting the environment.

    As to Greenpeace and other organisations like that, I think they unfortunately suffer from a phenomenon that influences many social groups: the most known cases are the most radical and the controversial ones. Ecologists may do much good in the world, but they're still more associated with the failures of the most radical of them. I think it's not fair; I cannot say I'm a fan of Greenpeace, but I'm definately not going to judge them by the most radical people from their organisation.

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  7. Armand - I can't agree with what you wrote about the murder. We can definitely help the natural environment by recycling materials like paper and plastic.
    But this is as far as I am willing to go.
    I don't believe in the idea of CO2 limits, for example. Two countries that produce the most of this gas: USA and China don't give a damn about this - the just care about they national economy and industry and it it the right thing to do in my opinion.

    Global warming being caused by CO2 emissions is another bunch of lies invented to extort money from vulnerable countries like Poland.
    Of course the temperatures are rising but this is caused by natural changes in the sun's activity - it happened a few times in history.

    And don't even get me started about the Greenpeace. I remember in early 2000s how they tried to block the construction of a highway bypass of Augustów. They preferred people being ran over by trucks in Augustów than couple of trees being cut down in the area of Dolina Rospudy.

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  8. In my opinion taking care of the green space in our planet is weary important. Here we are live and we can`t change planet.
    What we can do? People can reduce the amount of garbage. We can limit energy consumption. But the hardest part is information people how important it is.
    I don`t have opinion about "ecology" organizations. I think sometime they do something good but they didn`t information people about problem (I have never see information from this organization).

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  9. I met an opinion which holds that humanity has very little impact on our planet. What worries me is that a lot of radioactive waste rests on the ocean floor. People eat fish and seafood, which swim in the same ocean. Trees clean the air? Probably do not have any influence on, and the air is clean by oceans that produce the most oxygen.
    In my opinion organizations like greenpeace is needed for us, because they show that people are destroying the environment of the animals for example, but a lot they are wrong with their theories.

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  10. Our economy is based on constant growth and I think that this is the main problem, because everyone only cares about growth and no one cares about that our resources are limited. Almost every product has limited life cycle only to maintain economy growth. In my opinion we can reduce impact by changing our economy to something other. We should also remodel our cites to something more accurate to current situation. Here you can watch interesting concept of city.

    I think that most of organization like green piece want only to receive some money and they really don't care about environment.

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  11. I don't think that we need organization like Greenpeace. Like Maciek said a lot of theirs theory are wrong. I hate when one of their members hook me on the street trying to convince me to sign petition like Karolina said. We can help more our environment by sorting rubbish for example. I think Czarek have right organizations like Greenpeace try to make some money on that.

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  12. It seems to me that Greenpeace and other organizations of similar type are killing our economy, because it’s them who negotiated the current limits for the production of CO2 thanks to which our mines are being closed and green energy sources, which are definitely more expensive, are being provided. However, it is not proven that CO2 causes global warming because a range of scientists do not agree with this theory.

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  13. Climate change is something natural, it will happen sooner or later and we can not do anything about it, so why fighting with it? Greenpeace is another way to get money from government for doing nothing creative. They should start doing some research and science to provide people with more eco-friendly stuff. Instead they just stop people from building roads and new work places.

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  14. I think that investing more money in scientists that try to find more methods in humans to start being more healthy in treating the environment is really good. Greenpeace in my opinion is a really interesting and positive organization.

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  15. A lot of theories about global warming and natural problems exist.Firstly CO2 isn't the most important factor in that problem. And that is true, because only volcanoes produce more greenhouse gases than humans CO2. On the other hand nature is easy to repair herself. Simple example. Humans kill all fish in oceans. Humans die of starve. In oceans appear another species and Earth will be restarted without humans.

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  16. We need an organization that will be attentive to the environment. However, their actions should be a bit different than Greenpeace. Such organizations should rather take care of it to educate people how to care for the environment, give examples of actions that will reduce the destructive activities.

    The easiest way to protect the environment is to reduce the use of water and electricity. Also, garbage sorting is a simple act, which also reduces the harmful human activities.

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