The Final Day of Class.

This week was the final week in our sustainability class. We started the fall of last year around September 27, 2010. It was my first year going to university. I loved to take class like this. We have talked about so many different things like Food industry, Global warming, and what was going on in the world.

The first term we have started to talk about trade and how slavery came into the world. I learned that slavery came into the world because of trade. Because of trade, Europeans were able to go into Africa and get people and making them slaves.

We have learned where our meat came from. We have learned every food product we eat has syrup in it. We have watched several movies that have talked about how corn is processed and how they are fed to animals.

We have talked about how human beings killed many animals’ lives because of feeding them the wrong way. We have talked about how animals are force fed in order for them to get bigger and to sell from the people.

The second term we have talked about how global warming impacted the environment. Glaciers have melted because the atmosphere got hot. As we are people, we release lots of carbon to the air which makes the air to become hot. We have read different books that talked about how glaciers melt and what the cause is. We have also learned something about aquifers. Water is becoming scarce because we have used more than we need to use. People take shower every time they feel like taking because they don’t know where the water came from. We read books that talk about dams, aquifers and oceans.

Finally, we have done a group project where each group volunteers to work with environmental organizations. I and 3 other classmates volunteered with Friends of Trees and SOLV. We had fun planting trees and working with nature.

It was one of the best classes I have ever taken because I have learned so many things. My speaking was not good, my writing was not good, and my reading was not great, but now I feel like my speaking looks better because we did a lot of presentation. My writing got improved because we wrote so many different paper/essay like reflection essay, conversation essay, and so on. I am looking forward to have a great summer and come with the same hard work I did in this class. Finally, I am saying good bye to everyone in my class where ever they are. Thanks.

The Final Day of Class.

This week was the final week in our sustainability class. We started the fall of last year around September 27, 2010. It was my first year going to university. I loved to take class like this. We have talked about so many different things like Food industry, Global warming, and what was going on in the world.

The first term we have started to talk about trade and how slavery came into the world. I learned that slavery came into the world because of trade. Because of trade, Europeans were able to go into Africa and get people and making them slaves.

We have learned where our meat came from. We have learned every food product we eat has syrup in it. We have watched several movies that have talked about how corn is processed and how they are fed to animals.

We have talked about how human beings killed many animals’ lives because of feeding them the wrong way. We have talked about how animals are force fed in order for them to get bigger and to sell from the people.

The second term we have talked about how global warming impacted the environment. Glaciers have melted because the atmosphere got hot. As we are people, we release lots of carbon to the air which makes the air to become hot. We have read different books that talked about how glaciers melt and what the cause is. We have also learned something about aquifers. Water is becoming scarce because we have used more than we need to use. People take shower every time they feel like taking because they don’t know where the water came from. We read books that talk about dams, aquifers and oceans.

Finally, we have done a group project where each group volunteers to work with environmental organizations. I and 3 other classmates volunteered with Friends of Trees and SOLV. We had fun planting trees and working with nature.

It was one of the best classes I have ever taken because I have learned so many things. My speaking was not good, my writing was not good, and my reading was not great, but now I feel like my speaking looks better because we did a lot of presentation. My writing got improved because we wrote so many different paper/essay like reflection essay, conversation essay, and so on. I am looking forward to have a great summer and come with the same hard work I did in this class. Finally, I am saying good bye to everyone in my class where ever they are. Thanks.

Looking For a better Energy:

Different parts of the world get their energy from fossil fuels, the sun, solar panels, and e.t.c. Like the United States, their get their energy from the list I made, but they have used too much fossil fuels that ruined the weather. Global warming has been a big factor in the United States.

They have tried different alternative sources of energy such as solar, wind power, geothermal, tides, and hydroelectric power, but there was not that much change. On Thursday, last week in my sustainability class we have discussed about other options that maybe available for the country in order to live in a continent where fossil fuel is no longer the best option to use.

We have learned that the Sahara Desert is a place where energy can be produced. The Sahara Desert holds a lot of solar power. In class, we have discussed that some countries are trying to get their energy from the desert, but it is a gamble because people are thinking those countries are rapping Africa which actually makes sense because European countries have colonized the whole continent of Africa in the 19th Century.

Africa is one of the wealthiest continents in the world because they have a big land, golds and diamonds, their soil is rich of nutrients, and they have big forest like the Congo forest. European countries have raped Africa. In 19th Century, they exported a lot African people and make them slaves, they traded gold with non-valuable things, and they clear cut a lot forests. For example, the Belgians killed thousands of people of innocent in Congo and then slaving them and exporting them to Belgian.

The idea of making the desert into a solar power area will also benefit the African countries. African countries are really very poor and they need money to build roads, railroads, and buildings. This idea is good because Europeans, South America, and North America will benefit from it and Africa will get the money needed to invest on the areas they need to improve like investing money on education, health care, and jobs.
I think, if this idea works, then the world will be save and it is going to be in good hands. Global warming will decline and the use of fossil fuel will drop. Getting energy from the Sahara Desert will put the word in a better shape.

Public transportation:

Last week in our sustainability class we read MacKay’s book, Sustainable Energy- Without the Hot Air. The reading we did last week was focused on sustainable heating and how much energy we used in our homes has an impact in our lives. In MacKay’s book, he talks about how different public transportations like, buses, trains, roller-coasters, and some other ones use energy.

He compared public transportation to individual car. He said that public transportation is far much more energy efficient that individual car driving (MacKay, p.120). I really did not know there was that much difference when driving a car or riding a bus or a train. But MacKay goes on and gives an example by saying that, “London underground trains, at peak times, use 4.4 kWh per 100 p-km – 18 times better than individual cars and even high-speed trains, which violate two of our energy-saving principles by going twice as fast as the car and weighing a lot, are much more energy efficient: if the electric high-speed train is full, its energy cost is 3 kWh per 100 p-km – that’s 27 times smaller than the car’s” (120-121).

I think people were lazier to think more about their life style. They know what they do have a huge impact on the environment. They always talk about global warming, but no signs of change occurred or are occurring. As I talked about driving a car is a waste of gas and it pollutes the environment, so do the trains and buses, but they use less energy. Thinking big is important.

Why do we need to drive a car all the time? Do we not have something else to ride or drive? Why do we have bikes in stores and in our homes and not use them?  Bikes are good for our health and riding a bike saves energy. More bikes mean less driving cars. So people should always go for the better option.

I was so impressed how Mackay delivered such information about public transportation. I drive more than I ride trains, bikes, or buses. This was a good massage for me. I will try to be the person who learns from the mistakes he did. I hope others to feel like the same since it saves our world.

Essays Discussion:

This week we discussed about essays we wrote about past social movements. As a class we discussed about past social movements the last weeks or so. As we know that there are times in this world that gay people did not have the right to freedom, women did not have the right to vote, and black people did not have the right to vote and did not have the right to freedom. From time to time, people started to organize organizations and social movements to protest and to gain freedom.

Black people, women and gays gained freedom after talented individuals like Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther king Jr. led others to a new revolution. Those individuals were really great leaders, but others were there to help and make everything easier for their leaders.

My essay was about the apartheid in South Africa and how people in South Africa had been tortured and mass-murdered. In my essay, I have talked about the history that had taken place in South Africa nineteenth century. Black people did not have any rights, they had been killed for no reason, and they could not even do anything until leader Nelson Mandela who led others to a new revolution.

Nelson Mandela who was truly a leader and talented, had started to organize people who could protest and gain there freedom. While he was in jail for around twenty years, his followers finished the job.  They have done an amazing job after such a long time.

The whole class discussed there essays which so amazing and incredible. There were some individuals who wrote there essay as a poem. They also put music on their essay. The whole class was so interested on hearing other people’s essay when the professor said each and everyone in the class will share what they wrote on their essays.

I really liked my essay and other people’s essay. There were really good essays from talented individuals. Though I wrote essay about past social movements, I am looking forward on writing essays about current social movements which I think it is going to be interesting and fantastic.

“Blessed Unrest”- IMMUNITY

In this book, Blessed Unrest, the author Hawken starts explaining the difference between movements and ideologies by saying that “movement develops its ideas based on observation while ideologies act on the basis of belief and theory” (Hawken, P.142). Then he goes on and gives an example of a movement saying that Charles Darwin did not try to disprove creationism, but he was a field scientist who tried instead to make sense of the evidence he found on the voyage of HMS Beagle” (Hawken, p.142).

As I was reading this chapter, I found that movements are not totally against everything that happens in this world. For example, in this world, we have globalization that really affects/affected the world in the way of trading. For example, there are many countries in the world that was affected by globalization because companies and corporations trade goods to other countries which really affects the goods of the other country because as long as those companies bring goods, the country’s good’s price will drop down. So movements are not against what those companies are doing as long they are not harming the environment. In Hawken’s book, he says that “movements does not disprove capitalism, globalization, or religious fundamentalism, but tries to make sense of what it discovers in forests, favelas, farms, rivers, and cities”(Hawken, p.142).

Movements really have shaped this world because of the work they have done and how they responded to many natural and man-made disasters such as global warming, earth quakes, and Tsunamis, which severely affects the environment.

I liked this part where he talks about movement as immune system. As we know that the human immune system protects the human body from infection. Movement does the same job the immune system does because movements protect, repair and restore the environment from being damaged. According to Hawken in his book Blessed Unrest, “he says that, just as the immune system recognizes self and non-self, the movement identifies what is humane and inhumane” (p.143).

As I explained what movements do and how they are committed of doing serious things such as protesting against global warming, which is affecting the whole world. If we as a people make those people who are helping the environment as our role models, we can change the perception of those people who think global warming is not that bad. If we work together and believe ourselves, we can make our environment look the way it looked thousands of years ago. My massage to you is that do not pull yourself back to help the future generations to live in a beautiful and sustainable environment.

Source:

Hawken, P. (2008). Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World. London, England: Penguin Books.

SOLV PROJECT

I did a project in my sustainability class that involves with sustainability. It was me and my group project that worked on this project together. As a group we were looking forward to do this kind of sustainable project that thoroughly connects with sustainability. This is basically how I liked the project, what I learned, how I worked with a group of commitment people, and how we wrapped everything as a group.

We did this at Mt. Tabor in SE Portland. We were doing this as being volunteers and we actually met many other volunteers who were also doing the same task we were doing the whole hours we were working. SOLV is a big organization that keeps the environment clean and natural. They do this kind of activities where many volunteers like us involve and help parks look clean. One of the ladies that we were interviewing defined themselves (SOLV) as Oregonians volunteering to improve the environment and build a legacy stewardship. This organization does many different activities that many volunteers involve like beach and riverside clean-up, and k-12 education which help students do service projects in their community, but what we were doing or what we have done was different.

We started to separate different weeds and plants from each other. For example our task was to take out some ivy English plants and some weeds from snow berries. The whole point of doing that was that those weeds or the ivy plants will absorb all the nutrients from the soil. They also take the sunshine, water from the rain, and they take everything that helps the snow berries grow better and healthy.

It was a huge place, but we feel like we have done our part which was so simple because there were a lot of volunteers from different places like students from Gresham High School, Comcast, and some people from other organizations.

I feel like I am a part of the citizen world that needs to do some important things for the environment. I feel so happy to work with this organization that is up to this kind of projects that helps our environment look nice. After working with Friends of Trees a week ago and then worked with Solv, I feel like doing this every week or every other week. I will look forward to do this volunteering because I know it helps me and it helps the environment that I live in.

Finally, one of the ladies that we were interviewing told us that some years ago like 10 years ago, Mt. Tabor was a place where all kinds of plants, trees, and weeds grow. It looked green and nice, but some plants started to die which actually caused by lack of air, sunshine, soil nutrients, and oxygen. Then this projects were been started which helped many plants to grow and also the park look green. That was all I did, and what I learned and how happy I am after working with people who have the same ambition and the same goal.