- Wast Isolation Pilot Plant
- Rocky Mountain Arsenal
- Rocky Flatts
- Three Mile Island Plant
- Chernobyl Incident
Monday, December 6, 2010
Hot Legacy
"If we left this world tomorrow-- assuming by some means other than blowing ourselves to bits--we would leave behind 30,000 intact nuclear warheads" (Weisman, 2007) In addition to the warheads, whatever is left on this planet would also have to deal with the 441 nuclear plants. "Nuclear power is sometimes offered as an effective way of slowing global warming through the replacement of power plants fuelled by coal or gas... [however] nuclear wastes present serious disposal problems. The processing of ores into nuclear fuel has left a residue of hundreds of millions of tons of radioactive waste, while thousands of tons of highly radioactive materials remain as by-products of civilian and military nuclear programs." (Volti, 2009) Storage facilities around the country would be an interesting topic in an Environmental class. Nuclear plant case studies would also be an important topic for thought and discussion.
Wings Without Us
"In a world without humans, what will be left for birds? What will be left of birds? Of the more than 10,000 species that have coexisted with us, ranging from hummingbirds that weigh less than a penny to 600-pound wingless moas, about 130 have disappeared." (Weisman, 2007) While the numbers, only about 1% of all species, may not strike immediate emotion for the birds, it's not the amount of birds that have gone extinct, it's how. In 2005 there were 175,000 towers that were required to have lights on top of them because of their height. The blinking lights attract birds during inclement weather, thus killing an estimated half billion birds a year. (Weisman, 2007) Other man-made bird killers include, cell phone towers, windmills, electrical wires and towers, insecticides, DDT, windows, and automobiles. "Although technological advance has been blamed for a variety of ills, its most obvious and long-lasting consequence has been the alteration and even the destruction of the natural environment. For most of human existence people left the environment pretty much as they found it. But beginning with sedentary agriculture and accelerating with industrialization, the use of new technologies has at times left a ruined environment as its legacy. And there is a strong possibility that environmental problems will worsen as more nations make greater use of industrial technologies." (Volti, 2009) There continues to be a line between technology and our environment. I think it is important to study how technology has changed our environment, for better or worse. The example of birds being killed by such a variety of man-made technologies is a great place to start in the classroom. Other topics that could relate to this chapter would be
- Effects of habitat destruction
- Human caused extinctions
Bird Kill Resources
The World Without Farms
"Yet it was the farm that begat the city. Our transcendental leap to sowing crops and hearing critters-- actually controlling other living things-- was even more world-shaking than our consummate hunting skill. Instead of simply gathering plants or killing animals just prior to eating them, we now choreographed their existence, coaxing them to grow more reliable and far more abundantly." (Weisman, 2007) As we incorporate more technology into farming we lose jobs and increase the use of herbicides, fertilizers and pesticides. Volti looked at one such example in Pakistan, "To take one particularly notorious example, after Western experts introduced large tractors into Pakistan, farm owners replaced farm laborers with the new machines. In one region, 40 percent of these workers lost their jobs, and thus were forced to migrate to the cities and lives of dire poverty. Per-acre crop yields hardly increased at all." (Volti, 2009)
"With the rise of industrialization and the provision of such things as irrigation pumps, mechanized farm implements, and chemical fertilizers, the labor requirements of agriculture steadily dropped, until today less than 5 percent of the work force in most industrial countries is engaged in farming." (Volti, 2009)
Within an Environmental classroom there are several topics that could be studied after reading this chapter in The World Without Us. The short list includes
"With the rise of industrialization and the provision of such things as irrigation pumps, mechanized farm implements, and chemical fertilizers, the labor requirements of agriculture steadily dropped, until today less than 5 percent of the work force in most industrial countries is engaged in farming." (Volti, 2009)
Within an Environmental classroom there are several topics that could be studied after reading this chapter in The World Without Us. The short list includes
- Fertilizers
- Pesticides
- Heavy Metals in the Soil
- Persistent Organic Pollutants
- Dead Zones in Lakes
- Genetically Modified Organisms
- Farming Techniques
My Rationale
To be quite honest, I choose to read The World Without Us because it seemed more interesting than the other option. I really wasn't excited about reading it until I got through the first chapter. I have always had a love for Environmental Sciences, and the way Weisman portrayed a picture of a Puszcza was amazing. Each chapter had me hooked more than the last. What I liked most about the book was how easily I was able to pull out topics that could be found in a Biology, Chemistry, Earth Science, Environmental, even History class. Erosion, urban runoff, evolution, killer lakes, extinction, pollution, fertilizers, insecticides, plastics, landfill management... the list goes on and on. My reason for creating a blog is to gather resources and ideas for using this incredible book in the classroom. I aspire to teach Environmental classes someday and think this could be a great addition to the environmental curriculum in my class someday. While I do believe that this book could be used across the core subjects in a cross curricular unit, I will be focusing on the environmental topics.
Weisman, Volti, Teich, LAI 525, and Me
This semester the 10 of us talked about a lot of issues involving technology and society, and every week we were able to relate our discussion back to education. Technology has so many implications for us as teachers, our students, and our education system as a whole. While reading the World Without Us, I was able to find many similarities to the other readings we have done this semester. One of the overwhelming themes of The World Without Us is "the profusion of life owes much to all that is dead." (Weisman, 2007) Technology works along very similar ideas. Robert Pool's essay, How Society Shapes Technology, book has a prime example of one technology thriving after another has been "killed" Pool talks about the internal combustion engine and the steam powered engines. Both engines had their positives and negative attributes, yet the combustion engines won the technological race in the end. "Experts then and now have called it a draw-- the "better" technology was mostly a matter of opinion. Instead , the steamers were killed of by several factors that had little or nothing to do with their engineering merits." (Teich, 2006) Volti also speaks to the ways in which technology is fueled by the change or destruction of ways we did things in the past. New technologies almost always push either a way of life, or way a society functions out of the way in order to become successful. "Technological change is often a subversive process that results in the modification or destruction of established social roles, relationships, and values...The disruptive effects of technological change can readily be seen in the economic realm, where new technologies can lead to the destruction of obsolete firms..." (Volti, 2009) This theme can also be observed in our classrooms, although as we discussed the infiltration of technology into the world of education has been much slower. None the less there are examples of technology in our classrooms making other modes of instruction or tools obsolete. The classroom set of encyclopedias is not a common site anymore. Information can become obsolete over night, making traditional print a dated source. Classrooms of kids are now turning to the internet for information when they research. For this reason, libraries have had to change the way they do business as well. Many now have subscriptions to online journals, newsletters, newspapers, and databases. The traditional card catalog is also fading out, as more and more people turn to computer search engines to find the resources they need. Technologies like chalk boards are slowly being replaced by white boards, which are slowly being replaced by smart boards. Over head projectors with transparencies are being thrown aside for projectors that are connected to computers. Traditional paper assignments are now being completed online, and submitted to the teachers already graded by a computer program. Some of the new technologies we are using in the classroom have proven themselves superior to the ones they have replaced, however some are still up for debate. Regardless, just like in nature, some things have to die off or fade out for newer better things to evolve into the system. In the end each system has it's own game of survival of the fittest.
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
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