Reflection on "Hope for Animals and Their World"

             

            In Vandana Shiva’s article “what is biodiversity and why it is so important”, she claimed that mankind are the main cause of species extinction and changing of natural environment. On the other hand, in the article Hope for animals and their world, the author Jane Goodall, Gail Hudson, and Thane Maynard states that there is hope and it is never too late. This article consists of several stories, and each story has an individual or a group of people who has energy and dedication to make a change.

            The stories show that changing the environment for the animals is not an easy task. It involves millions of dollars and hundreds of man power. Take Paul Rokich, who restored forests to a mountain in Utah, as an example. For fifteen years, he work mostly alone, every evening, every weekend, year after year, he carried buckets of grass seed up to mountain and sowing. However, without the help Kennecott Company, spending millions of dollars cleaning up its poisonous emissions, Paul would never success to achieve his goal.

            Uncle Ben said, ‘with great power, comes great responsibility.’ With no power comes with no responsibility. A wolf would eat every deer they can until the deer became extinct, and then it starves himself to death. Human is doing the same thing in a much larger scale such as deforestation or polluting rivers and lakes. However, Examples in Goodall’s article show that there are people that are not short sights. I believe more and more people will realize that if they continue destroy the environment without thinking about the consequence, they will become a victim of their action eventually.

Reflection on "What is Biodiversity and Why is it So Important"

Thomas Jefferson said, ‘the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.’ That is very true in terms of politics and it is very true also in terms of protecting the environment. In Vandana Shiva’s article “What Is Biodiversity and Why Is It So Important”, she states that biodiversity and cultural diversity hold the key to sustaining alternate solutions for human health and nutrition; something people are always looking for. However, at the same time, people are eliminating there alternating solutions by industrialization, economic globalization, and new technologies such as genetic engineering. That would eventually limiting our choices and affecting our alternate solutions for human health. 

            Vandana states that ‘mankind is one among millions of other species. It does not have a right to push other species to extinction or to manipulate them…without concern for their wellbeing’ However, same as human, millions of other species try their best to make their lives better and without concern for others wellbeing. Beavers use tree sticks to build their home, while homo sapiens use concrete to build their houses. Humankind’s activities are merely one of the millions of cultures of animals, insect, microorganism and plants. Modern medicine, genetic engineering and commercial farming are part of nature culture which brings a better quality of lives of mankind.

            However, it does not mean mankind can do whatever they want. Uncle Ben said, ‘with great power, comes great responsibility.’ With no power, comes no responsibility. Mankind has the greatest power among all the species. However, it is necessary to realize that the power of mankind is not great enough to overcome the consequence of changing the environment by them.

My current “sense of place”

         Vandana Shiva said, ‘Humankind is one among millions of other species.’ I agree with her. According to modern evolution, humankind is not the end or purpose of the evolution. Same as other species, humankind is merely a branch of the tree of evolution among thousands of other branches. It is very hard to say which branch is higher class than the other branches.

         It is nature for every species, including mankind, to put their self-interest first. According to evolution, the main goal of life is to survive and reproduce by all means. One species would push other species to extinction or to manipulate them without concern for their well being in order to survive and reproduce. It is perfectly justified for doing this.

         However, mankind has the ability of rational thinking and the knowledge of science. They are capable to plan, partially predict future and inference the advantage and disadvantage of their current actions. To avoid of lost of their long term interest, mankind tends not to destroy the environment just for a short term interest. The purpose of protecting the environment and ecosystem is just to protect mankind, not for anything else. According to evolution, competition among species is not only by killing each other. In many circumstances, co-operation among species is a better strategy to survive. Mankind has great power, but the power is still not great enough and we still rely heavily on the ecosystem.

         Human is part of nature. When we say “the environment is destroyed”, it means the environment or the area around is not suitable for human to live. For the earth, it just means that a little bit change of ecosystem. For instance, an asteroid hit on the earth caused the extinction of dinosaurs and 90% of other species. However, thousands of years later, the other species came up and build the world we see today. There is no such thing that “the environment is being destroyed”. By not protecting the environment, mankind are not hurting the environment, but they are hurting themselves.