Blog Assignment #4: Blog 4 Resource

Review: Treat the Rich

 

Image from: Farnoosh

Psychologist Ronit Lami believes that people who are wealthy suffers from a psychological problem .  People who run their own businesses are workaholics which often leads to unhappiness. According to the following article on Treat the Rich, 37% out of 400 of the richest Americans are unhappy.  Self made millionaires are usually harder to work with and are often stingy about their use of money as well. 

This article points out that money does not bring happiness and that even the richest people of America are unhappy. From my own experience, my family used to own a small buisness a few years ago, and from what I remembered, they were never happy and had always gotten into fights.  Although the buisness did not make us rich or anything, it made their income higher than what they would normally have.  With their buisness, I remember that they were never home much, and we would hardly spend time together as a family.  So even though my parents were able to buy a house from the money that they made, they hardly had time to enjoy being at home.  After a few years, my parents sold their buisness, and are able to spend more time at home.  The relasionship between them also got better, and fought less.  

I don't necessarily agree completely that money cannot bring happiness, but I think it depends on how you use it.  Money can come and go, you can make money anytime you like.  I believe as long as the money is used for a good cause then it can mean something good.  For an example most environmentally friendly appliances costs more money, so they are usually more available to people of middle class and up.  But I do believe that people who spend their time thinking about what is cheaper, and comparing prices just to save a couple of dollars will be unhappy because they are worried about how much money they have lost rather than what their money goes into.

Blog Assignment #4: Selection 33 (Summary)

At the Shrine of Our Lady Fatima or Why Political Questions Are Not All Economic

Mark Sagoff

Image from: Cafe Press

This essay talks about economic decisions we make about the environment and its connection with our political decisions about the environment.  Sagoff gets us to question about our values on everyday necessities and the values of nature.  He also seperates the consumers and citiezens as two different people; what we want as a consumer is not nesscessary what we want as a citizen.  He talks about, from his experience, how the two are very different from one another.  One of the examples he gave was, how he has an "Ecology Now" sticker on his car that leaks oil everywhere.  He also goe explains his cost benefit analysis and compaires it to regulations.  Sagoff also address the two types of approaches to public policy; the first one being a normative versions of welfare economics and the second being the Kantian approach.  He goes on to describe what the two approaches are in more details.

Blog Assignment #4: Selection 20 (Summary)

Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services

Boris Worm et al.

Image from: Tree hugger

Boris describes that the human domination of marine ecosystems are accelerating the loss of biodiversity in the ocean among species.  The loss of biodiversity can cause the recovery of potential, stability and water quality to decrease.  Changes in marine ecosystems are caused directly or indirectly.  Directly meaning, exploitation, pollution, and habitat destruction, while indirectly would be through climate change and the disturbance of ocean biogeochemistry. Marine ecosystems is an important resource of food for millions of people. 

Boris carries an experiment to analyze the effects of these disturbance.  He carried an experiment with coastal ecosystems, large marine ecosystems and marine reserves and fishery closure.  In conclusion, he fould that "elimination of locally adapted populations and species not only imapirs the ability of marine ecosystems to feed a growing human population but also sabotages their stability and recovery potential in a rapidly changing marine environment".  Boris suggests that if we continue to exploit our marine ecosystems the way we do now, it can threaten our food security, coastal water quality and ecosystem stability for our future generations. 

Blog Assignment #4; selection 10 (Summary)

Life and Death of the Salt Marsh

John Teal and Mildred Teal

 

Image from: Marsh

In the beginning of this selection, the authors talks about their experience with wetlands.  They begin to describe the smells of wetlands and compare a the smell of a health wetland with a contaminated wetland.  A healthy marsh smells of Spartina which is a strong odor mixed with the smell of the sea and grasses; while a disturbed marsh smells like hydrogen sulfide and rotten eggs.  Disturbed marshes are usually suffocated by trash and fill from city waste.  

The dangers of marshes comes from human activities indirectly by pollution, and the importance of marshes effects fisherman and the consumers of fishery products.  They believe that by limiting human access to wildlife marshes can help minimize the damage to the marshes.

Blog Assignment #4: Selection 31 (Summary)

Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment

Sandra Steingraber

 Image from: The Good Wife

Steingraber shares her experience with bladder cancer as a young adult, and the history of cancer in her family as well.  Stenigraber believes that "what runs in the families does not necessarily run in blood", but because families share the same environments.  She also mentions that she is an adoptive child, and yet cancer that runs in her adoptive parents, was somehow related to her as well.

This selection, Steingraber talks about her search for answers on bladder cancer and its information on inherited risk factors and enzymatic mechanisms.  She tries to link the environment and carcinogens during this search.  She went on to find that workers who manufacture carcinogens are exposed to higher levels than anyone else.  She also found that two percent, 10,940 people in the United States dies each year from environmentally caused cancers.  What releases these chemical carcinogens into the environment are household materials that contains PCBs and DDT and also pesticides.   

A least toxic alternative would mean choosing the least harmful way of solving our problems such as getting rid of weeds in our fields, cocroaches, fleas, stains or pathogens in our water.  This would help decrease the amount of people exposed to environmental carcinogens.

Blog assginment #4: Selection 24 (Summary)

Restoring Rivers

Margaret A. Palmer and J. David Allen

 Image from: Christoph Gerber

This selection talks about fresh water and rivers in the United States.  They talk about how fresh water and rivers were getting cleaner between the times of 1973 and 1998 but states that the trend has reversed, and makes a prediction that the US rivers in 2016 will be as dirty as the rivers in mid 1970s.  

They also state other problems such as water shortages in local communities and how major rivers no longer flow to the sea year round.  They also mention how 1/3 of the rivers in the United States are impaired or polluted.  Aquatic wildlife were also going extinct at a higher rate than terrestrial or marine ecosystems.  

What lead to this problem was because the US streams and rivers were used as dumping grounds for waste, hoping that the river would carry the waste away.  Massive dams that were built to supply power and minimize floods caused loss of native plants and animals downstream since they could not survive or reproduce without the seasonal changes in flow.

Palmer and Allen thinks additional funding would help in restoring rivers and also enable inter/intraagency mechanisms for tracing projects. 

Blog Assignment #4: Blog Reflection #1

Q: Consider the evidence of affluenza that you see around you.  Do you see it in yourself, your friends, family or North America society?  Can you take action to combat affluenza?

 

Image from: Ibiza Hotels

I definitely see the evidence of affluenza across the North American society and as well as in my friends, family and especially in myself.  

With so many advertisements and blow out sales, it is hard not to buy anything.  Summer sales, back to school sales, Fall sales, etc. people are obsessed with buying new things all the time.  From the TED talk by Matthieu Ricard: Habits of Happiness he talks about how people look outside and gathers everything to be happy.  Constantly buying what ever we can afford just to be happy and feel good, because advertisements and the media is always telling us that we have to look a certain way or how if we do not dress like the models in their magazines then we do not fit in.  Reality shows on TV that does makeovers on people or houses plays a big part in making our society think that what we have is not good enough.  

I, myself, would shop whenever I feel stressed or unhappy.  My friends are also an influence in my affluenza because I would often hear about sales from them.  My family likes to buy new electronics when they come out, but recently it has died down.

I have noticed my behavior in this long before this class, and what I have been doing to reduce the "affects" of affluenza, I have been keeping my Credit cards and debit cards at home.  I have also been asking myself: "Do I really need this?" or "Don't I already have something like this?" when I see something I want or like.  I plan to combat affluenza by continuing this.