9/7/09

Response to Speth-My first experience reading about environmental concerns in 2009.

Throughout various biology classes in high school, English classes, and general life, I have had some exposure to talking about environmental issues, but it's always something that I process quickly, and disregard. I am ashamed to say this, as much as I am aware of it. It's a hard topic to stomach, and many spend a lifetime avoiding information.

This semeser, my goal is not only to dive into this material and information about the state of our world, but to digest it, and figure out what can be done by someone in my position (socially, physically, financially, etc).

Speth, as a first reading was certainly a challenge. It is scary. A common response to fear is to run away, but when there is something that we clearly cannot outrun the only solution becomes to face it, head on.

Speth outlines some of the issues that we are now dealing with some 20 years fter the discovery of some of the most presssing environmental issues. The solutions that we found many years ago are not doing enough. The fight to restrain ourselves from overusing resources, energies and damaging fuels is a difficult one.

In the article, Speth outlines some of the most otable sentences from the IPCC's report in 2007. The collective evidence that global warming is happening, and at a rate that we never would have predicted, is enormous. For example, that 11 out of the past 12 years have been record breaking in global surface temperature. To have these consecutive years directly correspond to years that we have had the most output of greenhouse gases, seems to me to be undeniable evidence. Although most governmental bodies have acknowledged this, they, like me, are still in the first steps of starting to make real changes that can help sustain our environment and (eek!) prolong our existence.