4pages

one is assginment

the other 3 essays are related work for this English class.

 The main themes of the course are the ethics of land (proposed by Leopold), the climate crisis, the ecological crisis, the carbon footprint, and the path of sustainable development. 

1

Zhang

Taoning Zhang

Professor Walter

English 1C

January 26th, 2021

How can think like a mountain solve the environmental problems we face in 2020?

What is destroying Earth? Why is the environment we live in deteriorating every day? Most of us may already have an answer. We as humans continue to destroy the environment, endanger other species, and destroy our home. All living things, including human, depend on Earth. We rely on the water, soil, air, and food provided by Earth. However, we have been creating environmental problems such as global warming, deforestation, acid rains, floods, and distinction of animals continuously. Several of the most urgent environmental problems include climate change, pollution, deforestation, water scarcity, loss of biodiversity, as well as soil erosion (Marks, 2018). If humans continue to destroy the environment we are living in, we would also cease to exist one day because we could not live without clean water, fresh air, land, or food. The environmental problems we currently face are detrimental to our survival. Therefore, it is important to “think like a mountain” as suggested by Leopard when it comes to environmental conservation.

Humans should put ourselves in the shoes of the wild life and think like them because we are all interdependent. We rely on each other. Humans could not live without the wilderness or the natural world. Our ecosystem is a complete cycle where we all depend on each other. If humans only think about ourselves and ignore the environment, environmental conservation would not be realized. Humans would seek “machines, votes, and dollars”, which are all material gains. In the long term, this would cause trouble for the environment we rely on. If the environment is damaged, humans would not be able to survive either. As Leopard suggests, “In wilderness is the salvation of the world”. Only if we think like a mountain and realize the importance of wild life and the natural world, we would be saved. It is a poetic expression of good advice on the relationship between man and nature. Thus, from the point of view of protecting the nature, thinking like a mountain would help us to better understand the importance of environmental conservation.

Moreover, thinking like a mountain help us to face the environmental problems and find solutions. Humans are not the master or conqueror of the natural world. When we think like a mountain, we see ourselves as part of the natural world. We see the wolves, deer, and other living beings. We start to understand the meaning of the “howl of the wolf” (Leopard). When humans are too focused on ourselves or our economy, we tend to overlook the wellbeing of wild animals and the environment they live in. We have to think like a mountain because it allows us to understand the harms we are causing to the environment and the negative impacts we have brought to the animals and creatures living in the same environment. Governments lack the motivation to solve the environmental issues as they are more focused on the economy and human welfare. However, government policies spend largely on public support (Kulin and Seva, 2019). If the public feels that environmental conservation is important, the government would be more likely to increase government spending on environmental protection and carry out effective policies to solve environmental problems (Kulin and Seva, 2019). When we think like a mountain and feel the pain of the creatures, we would start to imagine our own future if we continue to destroy the environment and ignore the environmental problems we face today. Only then, we would realize the necessity to preserve the environment and start to act. With collective effort, people would also be able to push the government to make positive changes to protect the natural world.

On the other hand, thinking like a mountain is not enough to solve all of our environmental problems. Humans have done many irreversible harms to the environment. For instance, global warming has led to melting of glaciers (Marks, 2018). Soil degradation has caused loss of usable land and polluted water (Marks, 2018). Thinking like a mountain is only the first step to solve the environmental issues and save our environment. It helps humans to recognize the voice of the wilderness and the natural world. After thinking like a mountain, we still need to take more actions, come up with effective policies, and carry out these policies to resolve previous environmental issues, reduce further environmental damages and save the natural world we are living in.

In conclusion, thinking like a mountain enables us to listen to the voice and needs of the wilderness and recognize that humans are also part of the natural world. We would not be able to live without the wild life. When we think like a mountain, we would be able to feel what other creatures feel and realize the importance of clean water, air, and land. When we think like a mountain, we will truly be part of the wilderness and mother nature. We will stop focusing on material gains such as money, politics, and the economy. We will look from a long-term perspective and strive for environmental conservation and sustainable development. Therefore, thinking like a mountain is the first, and a critical step for us to solve the environmental problems we face in 2020.

Works Cited

Kulin, Joakim, and Ingemar Seva. “The Role of Government in Protecting the Environment: Quality of Government and the Translation of Normative Views about Government Responsibility into Spending Preferences.” International Journal of Sociology, vol. 49, no. 2, 2019, pp. 110–129., doi:10.1080/00207659.2019.1582964.

Leopard, Aldo. “Thinking Like a Mountain.” A Sand County Almanac, Oxford University Press, 1949.

Marks, Joshua. “The 6 Most Pressing Environmental Issues-and What You Can Do to Help Solve Them.” Inhabitat Green Design Innovation Architecture Green Building, Inhabitat, 1 Apr. 2018, inhabitat.com/top-6-environmental-issues-for-earth-day-and-what-you-can-do-to-solve-them/.

Taoning Zhang

Dr.Walter

2021/2/8

Why environmental sustainability?

Climate change is one of the most significant aspects affecting human life. This situation

is associated with the adverse effects of the change in the different parts of the world. Aspects

such as global warming have led to the development of climatic catastrophes across the globe.

Every day and often in the dailies and global news, we hear about tragic events associated with

natural calamities such as floods, earthquakes, landslides, and even drought and famine, where

people die in large numbers the various climatic changes. Such events are experienced due to the

lifestyles maintained in the different regions of the world. Images captured in different media

sources show that the world is doomed and the environment is destroyed. Scientists argue that

human activities are the leading cause of climate change. Is nature tired of human ignorance

associated with the lifestyles they maintain, which cause environmental pollution? Is nature

turning against humans to revenge for the destruction that humans have caused it? What are we

doing to manage the impacts of climate change? Humans are the most intelligent creatures on

earth. Since they are considered the leading cause of climate change, they can also solve the

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climatic problems affecting the universe. Despite the knowledge about the climatic situation and

the possible scientific solutions to the problem, are humans ready to change their lifestyles to

save the planet?
Naturally, the environmental forces are considered to be in a state of sustainability. In a

presentation made in the Ted show by Jackson Carpenter about the different steps to cut the

carbon footprint by 60%, he argues that the universe has a natural way of containing its carbon

dioxide through processes like the carbon cycle, which involves a complete cycle of carbon

dioxide between plants, animals and the atmosphere. The carbon cycle is considered to influence

life on earth. Still, the lack of balance between the carbon dioxide released in the atmosphere and

the carbon absorbed from the atmosphere through the carbon cycle is associated with the

greenhouse effect. Climate change is associated with an increase in the volume of carbon gases

in the atmosphere. According to Carpenter, imbalance in the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide is

associated with the extinction of different animal species in the late Jurassic period due to the

increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leading to the development of carbon seas

leading to the development of minerals such as coal. Such events are likely to happen in the

current world If the level of carbon dioxide is not checked to lead to the development of global

warming. Due to this reason, different principles of sustainability need to be applied to ensure

that the condition is mitigated before it worsens.
According to scientific research, fossil fuels are the leading cause of global warming and

climate change. This situation is associated with using such fuels in running engines, which are

used for different purposes in human life. Taking transportation, for example, the increased

number of automobiles and flights which use fossil fuels to run their engine make the most

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significant contribution of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In an argument made by Steve

Westlake in 2019, 10% of the earth’s population, which comprises the wealthiest individuals on

earth, is responsible for almost half of the world’s total carbon dioxide emissions. This level is

associated with the increased use of fossil fuels, which are used in transport activities that entail

both airplanes and vehicles in their daily endeavors. This situation shows how individuals can

have a significant impact on their environment.
On the other hand, Carpenter argues that everyday individuals channel volumes of carbon

gases in the atmosphere, putting the risk of running out of oxygen in the atmosphere, leading to

significant impacts. The continuous channeling of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere is

associated with the increasing impacts of climatic changes experienced in the universe. Due to

this reason, individuals should be responsible for the actions they undertake as they play a

significant role in the environment they live
in.
Different measures have been developed to create awareness of the situation and

influence people to implement the proposed measures To reduce climate change impacts in the

universe. This process includes the utilization of sustainability principles such as conservation of

the ecology, conservation of biodiversity, development of human resources, and public

promotion enhancement. Enhancement of sustainability is the key to solving most of the

environmental problems that are experienced today. Different researchers argue that the situation

is not yet out of hand and can rectify the situation and make the world better again through the

implementation of conservation measures. Carpenter argues that he has researched the impacts of

climate change and its causes over the past ten years. Through his research, he was able to

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identify several steps that can be used to solve the situation. In his speech, he argues that sources

such as atomic energy, ocean tides, gravity, and sunlight can offer clean and alternative energy

sources for a sustainable world. Over the years, such measures are communicated through

different media and various policies implemented. However, there is still overdependence on

fossil fuels as the world is yet to adjust to clean energy due to the lack of adequate resources,

which means that the emission of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere is still high.
The situation is getting worse, and more is yet to be done to ensure that the world is safe

from climate change. Will we continue to sit down and watch nature consume us as it did to the

animal species in the late Jurassic period? Do we still have to wait for the government to

implement the different measures to conserve the environment? More needs to be done to hasten

the transition process or to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels. It is the responsibility of every

individual to take part in the process as the climatic change affects all humanity at the same

magnitude. People should take the matter into their hands and become the agents of influence if

they want the situation to be rectified at ease. Carpenter argues that everyone has a responsibility

and a role to play to push for a safe world. He argues that individuals have the power to choose

other sources of energy such as electricity and heat apart from the use of fossil fuels, and this

situation can cut 60% of the carbon emitted in the atmosphere every single day. On the other

hand, Westlake argues that individual activities such as reduced use of transport means such as

flights can significantly reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere. This aspect means that

both individuals and groups have a role to play in preventing climate change.
From the different arguments mentioned, it is evident that human activities play the most

significant role in developing climatic change and global warming. It is also evident that every

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individual has experienced the impact of climate change in one way or the other. Studies have

also demystified the myth that climatic change is uncontrollable, and this information can be

used to bring hope to those who had given up their hopes in the process. Therefore, it is high

time that every individual should develop a sustainable environment for future generations to

come. Let everyone be an environmental ambassador and spread the message of environmental

conservation to friends and relatives to ensure that every individual participates in the mitigation

process by changing our lifestyles. Through collective efforts, individuals can make great things

happen as our actions are very significant. Let’s change our perception of life and our attitudes

towards what we can accomplish as individuals and embrace sustainability in our daily lives.

Together, we can make the world a better place.

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Works cited
Carpenter, Jackson. “Three Steps To Cut Your Carbon Footprint 60% Today”. Youtube, 2017,

https://youtu.be/63hAHbkzJG4. Accessed 9 Feb 2021.
Westlake, Steve. “Climate Change: Yes, Your Individual Action Does Make A Difference”. The

Conversation, 2019, https://theconversation.com/climate-change-yes-your-individual- action-

does-make-a-difference-115169.

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https://youtu.be/63hAHbkzJG4.%20Accessed%209%20Feb%202021

https://theconversation.com/climate-change-yes-your-individual-%09action-does-make-a-difference-115169

https://theconversation.com/climate-change-yes-your-individual-%09action-does-make-a-difference-115169

https://theconversation.com/climate-change-yes-your-individual-%09action-does-make-a-difference-115169

Why environmental sustainability?

Taoning Zhang

Dr.Walter

2021/1/30

Stewards of the Earth: A Role for Humankind

“The Earth will not continue to offer its harvest, except with faithful stewardship. We

cannot say we love the land and then take steps to destroy it for use by future generations.” These

are the words of John Paul II. The majority of us can hardly imagine that the Catholic Pope

would one day enlighten scientists on how to do their work, and it seems that we have arrived

exactly to this point. The efforts put across so far to settle the debate on the diverse disasters

befalling on us and those that we have engineered have been futile (Holbrook 62). For how many

years have we been trying to come up with an argument to avoid the climate change disaster? We

are currently encountering the utter failure of a way of reasoning that we sometimes refer to as

“positivism,” a term that has its origin in the 19th century supported by philosophers like Comte,

Saint Simon, and Condorcet, among others. During that period, it seemed to be an excellent idea

to apply reason and science to settle questions, maybe a good idea, but in practice, it does not

work. Despite this, we are familiar with what exactly is happening and why; it is all about

scientific logic and method, yet the message does not pass. In the process, we keep destroying

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everything, including ourselves. Human beings have a responsibility of coming up with proper

strategies of conserving the environment by focusing on ethical issues affecting the ecosystem

like environmental justice and sustainability, anthropocentric and ethical biocentrism principles.

Sustainability is important in improving our ability to achieve environmental justice. Pure

reason does not tell us that we should do something to keep other species that share the earth

with us alive. Rather, it has led us to such absurdity as believing that individual egoism is the

most effective means of handling the earth’s commons. It has turned the ecosystem into a

gigantic food store where one does not need to pay for what they get. This is why environmental

justice has emerged as a vital matter of concern in environmental ethics. According to the US

Environmental Protection Agency, environmental justice is the expressive participation and

reasonable treatment of all persons irrespective of their backgrounds, income levels, national

origin, color, or race in line with the implementation, development, and enforcement of

environmental policies, regulations, and laws (Hettinger 15). Environmental ethicists have raised

several worldwide issues concerning justice and the environment. This is because it has been

challenging to temporally or geographically contain environmental hazards. The environmental

settings of individuals not yet born are majorly affected by our present policies, lifestyle, and

practices. This has made it necessary for environmental ethicists to determine what we owe to

individuals who are far away from us across time and space, especially those who are not yet

born. Therefore, the vital area of ethical research concerning the issue of environmental justice

and sustainability is the debate revolving around sustainable development, which focuses on

attaining the wants of the current generation without compromising the ability of the

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forthcoming generations to meet their own needs by trying to bind together concerns about

equality, economics, and environment.

Anthropocentric approaches are linked to environmental challenges and thus a sensitive

issue in environmental ethics. Linn White Jr, the author of a highly influential paper titled “The

Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” upheld the fact that humans were both superior to and

separate from nature and was the root source of environmental catastrophe (Carter 62). This

means that only humans are perceived to have intrinsic value meaning that things other than

human beings can only be considered valuable as a means of our ends, which is usually known

as strong anthropocentrism. It can also mean that only humans possess value in their own right,

considering that everything else must get its value from some relations. To balance this

reasoning, some people who may consider themselves non-anthropocentric about the moral

status may maintain that at least some nonhuman things like the ecosystem, animals, populations,

living organisms, and species also have interest ought to be considered in human moral decision-

making.

The ethical biocentrism notion claims that all living things have a moral status. The idea

of reverence for life instigated by Schweitzer in the book The Philosophy of Civilization is

considered an early form of ethical biocentrism. His work outlined the philosophy for a

civilization that included the ethical foundations, the connection between nature and humans, as

well as the limitations human population and its exploitation of natural resources (Cochrane 5).

The majority of biocentric ethicists maintain that all living things can be harmed or benefited.

This thus means that they have a good of their own or interests or a good of their own and that all

human beings should respect this good. However, there are some objections to biocentrism. For

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example, it is usually argued that biocentric advocacy cannot be put into practice totally

considering that human cannot shy away from constantly causing harm to living things and that

it is totally insane to think that we must consider the welfare of bacteria, especially if we are to

consider them as of equal importance to cognitively complex animals. On the other hand,

inegalitarian biocentrism avoids this reasoning. This is because being alive need not be the only

standard for moral worth. A Streptococcus pneumoniae and a lion are both alive, and they may

be both alive, meanings that this is morally relevant. However, it is important to note that that the

lion has a brain. This means that an individual who maintains that it is worse to kill a lion than a

Streptococcus pneumoniae is misguided. Therefore, even though biocentric ethicists may cling to

egalitarianism in principle, they seem to support practical methods that are in conflict with the

egalitarianism principles that prioritize some organisms over others, resulting in an alteration of

inconsistency.

Moreover, conservation of wild animals and areas should be prioritized due to changes in

the climate and increase in human demands for land, freshwater and sea. The two significant

methods of nature and wildlife management are the preservation and the wise use of nature

(Singer 199). These two methods oppose the extermination of wildlife and the unthinking

marginalization. However, in terms of the actual management of nature and wildlife, the two

tactics vary (Singer 199). The wise use approach purposes of accommodating humanity’s

continuous use of wild nature as a resource for raw material, timber, and recreation. Therefore, it

means that the idea of wise use appeals to our individual interest or to the interest of humankind

over time that includes the forthcoming generation (Singer 199). Thus, the main purpose of

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management should be in line with enhancing and maintaining nature’s yield as a valuable

resource for human beings.

To conclude, when it comes to the issue of environmental conservation, we need to take a

totally different view. This is because it is crucial for us as the stewards of the earth to understand

that every individual has the right to live in an ecologically sound and adequate environment for

our well-being, dignity, culture, and fulfillment because it is our role as humans to conserve our

environment. Our view should not direct us to think that we are the owners of the planet, but on

the contrary, it should make us understand that we are the stewards of the earth. It is thus

important to note that we do not need to be religious or scientists to take up stewardship; we just

have to have at least a feeling that there is something out there that goes beyond the mere

satisfaction of individual desires. It is never a question of survival, but it is a question of

humanity and dignity.

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Work Cited Page

Carter, Alan. “Inegalitarian biocentric consequentialism, the minimax implication and

multidimensional value theory: a brief proposal for a new direction in environmental

ethics.” Utilitas 17.1 (2017): 62.

Holbrook, Daniel. “The consequentialistic side of environmental ethics.” Environmental

Values (2018): 87-96.

Singer, Peter. “All animals are equal.” Other books by the same author 1.5 (1989): 199.

Hettinger, Ned, and Bill Throop. “Refocusing ecocentrism.” Environmental Ethics 21.1 (2015):

3-21.

Cochrane, Alasdair. Animal rights without liberation: Applied ethics and human obligations.

Columbia University Press, 2015.

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Stewards of the Earth: A Role for Humankind

2/9/2021 Essay 4: Self Reflection

https://canvas.pasadena.edu/courses/1111116/assignments/8665479?module_item_id=12653184 1/1

Essay 4: Self Reflection

Due Wednesday by 11:59pm Points 75 Submitting a file upload

Submit Assignment

This is going to get personal.

Directions:

Review your papers and critical reading responses. It might help to print out these documents so you
can read them with some slight detachment. Read them slowly, and feel free to annotate them,
revise them, or just comment on them as you would another’s writing.

How has your writing evolved? How has your thinking evolved? How have you changed?

Which readings or videos inspired you and why?

If you had to choose just three paragraphs from everything that you have written this semester to put
in a personal time capsule to open in 20 years, which ones would you choose and why?

Your last essay is a self-reflection.

Prompt:

What have you learned about yourself in this course? Feel free to focus on your writing, critical
thinking, or thinking about the environmental crisis and revolution.

Requirements:

Compose an essay of at least five paragraphs (1000 words or more), using all of the elements of the
academic essay that we have been practicing. Your thesis will assert what you know, think, or feel
inspired by and why. Your body paragraphs will demonstrate and develop this thesis using concrete
examples for your own writing and experience, and perhaps also from the works you have read or
watched. Your conclusion paragraph will convey the significance or upshot of this experience, so
save the best for last.

There is no draft submission for this paper, but you are welcome to work with classmates on your
drafts. I will let you decide about that.

Since this is a personal paper, feel free to use the personal pronoun. It only makes sense here.