I remember learning about this when I was in middle school. An
ecosystem will periodically go through something like a fire that will destroy it
and then it will slowing grow back to what it was before the fire. Its allows the
ecosystem to refresh the plant life that is there and to allow new plant
species to grow. If this didn’t happen, the ecosystem would recycle the elements
that are in the plants and it would become stagnant. I remember on our wet walk
we talked about two different areas; one where a controlled chemical burn
happened and one where nothing has happened to it. The area where the chemical
burn happened had begun to regrow the plants that where present before while
the other area looked over crowded and some of it was dead. Sometimes the environment
needs to hit the reset button and these disturbances allow it to do that.
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| Forest regrowth after a fire posted on http://envirosci.net/111/succession/fire_ecology.htm |
"The replacement fertility rate is the number of births per woman that will keep the population constant at zero population growth. for humans, the replacement fertility rate is 2.1, slightly above 2.0 to compensate for infant and child mortality." (Robertson 2014)
When you think of the stereotypical American family they
have two children to each mother. However, this is not the case many times. I
know my mom has 5 kids, which is way over the 2.1 children to each mother. Additionally,
I know a lot of family that have more than the 2 kids so that is part of the
reason that the human population is growing at an astounding rate. This isn’t just
happening in America also. In many underdeveloped parts of the world the more
children you have the more hands you have to work to make money for the family.
This means that family’s will have way more than 2 kids so they can make enough
money to live. Also it use to be the case in China where you could only have a
certain number of children. Im not sure if that is the case anymore but I don’t
know if that is the answer to this dilemma. Its going to be nearly impossible
to come up with a solution to this problem that makes everyone happy.
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| Family picture posted on http://www.ladiesagainstfeminism.com/biblical-womanhood/book-review-start-your-family/ |
"Growth as the core economic paradigm has been developing for several hundred years and has become solidly entrenched since the last century. Although an end to growth seems inevitable, moving to a different economic model will involve dramatic change." (Robertson 2014)
I agree that we need an economic shift if we are going to
start to try to live sustainable but I am not sure how possible that is. We
have always lived as a capitalist economy that promotes growth and competition.
This doesn’t take in account what it is doing to the natural world when we are
producing the products that we want. It will take a dramatic change in what we
are doing now to get us away from this thought process and Im not sure people
are open to that idea. It will take agreement with all countries around the
world to make this shift because just a couple of countries doing it will not
have the effect that is needed on the environment. I also think that it maybe too
late to make this shift. It is going to take many years in implement this and
by the time that it goes into effect and actually makes a difference in the
world we may have done too much damage already.
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| Capitalism posted on http://speakingofdemocracy.com/tag/capitalism/ |
Robertson, M. (2014). Sustainability
Principles and Practice. New York, NY: Routledge.
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