Final Assignment: Sustainibility

Before starting APES this year, I thought sustainibility was only a financial method. Now, I understand that sustainibility is the duty and ability each human being on Earth has to use its resources equally so that they will beavailable for centuries to come. Through sustainibility, the human race is able to prosper greatly far into the future, but other issues of preserving Earth's resources have caused huge problems all over the world.

The massive population growth in India really caught my attention. Because of certain traditions and customs, most Indians, especially living in poverty, do not know the consequence that this massive growth is having on their country and its environmental well-being. Arranged marriages are predonminately performed around the country, and sometimes the relationships do not turn out for the better. Recently, efforts have been made to educate both spouses on problem solving, protected sexual activity, and the use of birth control. Especially in the slum areas of Mumbai, families tend to have 4-7 children at the least. Most families want to produce at least one male, in order to carry on the family name. The wives often feel obligated to their husbands and follow their requests, causing them to become very weak and ill. The children are not adequately fed, and they often resort to scaveging in landfills, full of hazardous wastes and other materials. Women in India are now becoming more involved through education of the world's overpopulation.

The Aral Sea is another thing I learned about in APES that really got my attention. Before the class, I already new it was small, but I didn't know exactly why. Once the world's fourth largest freshwater lake, the Aral Sea is what many scientists call the greatest ecological disaster in the world. During the reign of the Soviet Union, the government decided to divert large amounts of water from the Aral Sea as irrigation water for newly cultivated rice and cotton. Overtime, the sea began to shrink because so much water had been diverted to numerous areas across Asia. As the water began to disappear, so did the majority of the sea's native fish species. As displayed in the picture above, many fishing boats and other ships have been stranded in the desert formed by the shrinkage of the sea. The salinity of the Aral Sea is three times saltier than ocean water, and the lack of water has caused the large amount of salt to crystalize in the desert. As it is picked up by the wind, the salt can travel as far as the Himalaya Mountains, causing irritation to the human respiratory system. The Aral Sea also once served as a barrier for immense summer heat and extremely cold winter winds, but that barrier is gone and has caused major limate change in this part of the world. This is a display of the unexpected consequences when humans alter the natural flow of the environment.

I never realized how much of an impact literature had on environmental awareness and regulation until this year. The first work we learned about was Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac. Leopold is considered by environmentalists to the be one of the main drivers of the modern environmental and conservation movement. He also laid the foundation for the study of environmental ethics. Though his book was published in 1949, one year after his death, the environmental classic expresses Leopold's view; "the role of the human species should be to protect nature not conquer it". We also discussed Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Published in 1962, the title of the story referred to the silencing of many birds because of their exposure to pesticides, particularly DDT. Carson decided to look into the issue herself and found that independent research on the environmental effects of pesticides was almost nonexistent. Through her efforts, DDT was banished from being used in the United States.