Wayne Forest Movie Response

Again, like the speaker on Monday, if it weren't for being in this class and seeing this, this is a topic of which we would have probably never heard of. It was especially interesting because it is something that is extremely local to Ohio University. To have so much of the forest land within Athens County is something that makes this topic seem that much more important.

The idea proposed by this documentary was very interesting. It is an idea that seems too elementary to be true. While thinking about it, it only makes sense that if you leave an environment to itself, it will naturally re-flourish. Many people see that when an ecosystem is destroyed, it is a lost cause and nothing can be done about it. Many people's effort when it comes to saving wildlife is preventing the damage before it happens which, obviously, is the best way to do so. However this is not a topic of nature care that we hear too much about. It would be nice to think that once an ecosystem is destroyed, it will naturally return to its full potential on its own, which unfortunately, is sometimes not the case. This is an interesting case study and its definitely worth a closer look.

Speaker Response

I thought the speaker today was very informative on a topic that unless we were in this class, we would probably never would hear about. The one topic of discussion that he brought up that I think is important to talk about is the idea of ownership. He pointed out that these forests for which he is advocating are national and state parks. Normally when you think of something belonging to the nation or state we think the government owns it. While technically they do, he put it in a way I had never really thought of before. These forests belong to the people. The purpose of these parks and forests if the enjoyment of citizens of the surrounding community and abroad. This being the case, the natural state of these forests should suffice and the scorching of these trees and environments is unnecessary.

Research

While thinking about what I wanted to do for my research topic I obviously wanted to do something that was important to me or at least something that interested me. As I have said before I would hardly consider myself an environmentalist but one thing that I have always enjoyed is the water. When I went to go see the movie Flow it really got me thinking about water in a way that I really never had before. It got me thinking about water as a natural resource and a limited one at that. We as a society consume freshwater at an alarming rate while hardly considering the effects of doing so. I use water every day and never have I ever stopped to think about the water cycle and what a truly amazing process it really is. My family and I love going to the lake and always get upset when we see such a beautiful landscape littered with trash and pollution.

While researching this topic I would like to examine what are the biggest threats of pollution that are facing our freshwater supply today. I would also like to research the differences between the core and periphery. Also, I would like to focus on the cycle of water when dealing with sanitation and sewage. Ultimately I would like to find out what effects we, as humans, have on the cycle of water.

Final Part of Lost Mountain

I believe the difference in the two minds explained by Berry is simply the difference between the coal mining companies and the local population. The rational mind belongs to the coal companies because it says within the rational mind profit is the bottom mind. Obviously the coal miners are not interested in much else than gaining profit the coal. Another important point is that the rational mind is explained as individualism and this is an important point because many times in the book Reece refers to the importance of community and the lack there of within the coal mining industry, but that sense of community is one of the things that keeps the local population strong. The sympathetic mind favors the organic and the wild which is obviously siding with the local population whose main concern is the preservation of their local environment.

The first example the last part of the book where Reece exhibits his sympathetic mind is when he participates in the RFK in EKY. This really gives Reece an opportunity to experience firsthand the true interests of the local people and the pride they have in their land. The visit of Robert Kennedy was a big sign of hope for the local population because they were finally getting the sort of national attention that they deserved. Normally politicians sided with big business and the coal companies but the RFK visit exemplified the slow progress the effort was making. The second example of where Reece uses his sympathetic mind is when he files a complaint with the coal mining company. Reece explains this as one of the only true resources a normal citizen has against the coal companies. This was a significant part of the book because Reece had observed the effects of strip mining by himself and with other locals but not standing side by side with the people who were causing such devastation. Even though Reece came to this story as a journalist, it is obvious he truly cares about the situation.

The quote that really stuck with me towards the end of the book was “As a consumer-driven culture, we have chosen to no longer think of the world as God-given. It’s too convenient. Instead, here in Kentucky, our forests and streams are supposed to be protected by a Department of Natural Resources, because that’s all we see them as—simply a resource” (230). This quote really hit home with me because I am absolutely guilty of thinking the earth as simply a resource as I have said in an earlier blog. I think we do have the right to utilize the earth to fit our needs however this book is proof, with an undeniable composition of evidence, of the negative effects that sort of thinking has on the environment. Reece goes on to say that we forget to see the “value” in the world and that we don’t appreciate what the natural landscape has been put on this earth for, for us to enjoy it, not profit from it. We as a human race see the world as a means to an end. Once that end is met, we no longer care about or appreciate what we have just utilized. We have gained our profit and if we have destroyed an ecosystem, so be it. As I have said in an earlier blog, the reason many people put up with such treatment of our environment is because of what we demand as a race. We put up with strip mining because we demand energy and a cheap and efficient rate and strip mining for coal is one of the most efficient ways to meet that end. So the issue becomes not whether or not to simply care or not care about the environment, but the way we live our lives.

Flow

The movie Flow was a documentary film about the problems affecting one of our most natural resources: water. The film described the water cycle for every purpose for which it is used, everything from drinking, to bathing, to waste management. It showed one sequence on the water cycle where it showed that we drink the same recycled water that we have previously urinated. The first part of the movie explained water cycles and showing that our clean water supply is dwindling. It seems hard to believe with 70% of our planet being made of water that the supply is dwindling but only a small percentage of that water is drinkable.

The second part of the movie closely examined many situations all over the world where the supply of freshwater is being threatened. Globalization and big business seemed to be the major source of the problem. Most of the dire situations abroad seemed to be taking place in countries such as India, Argentina, and a country where the filmmakers spent a lot of time was Lesotho. The big corporation that was causing problems for the local people and local ecosystem in one example was Coca-Cola. Through interviews with locals we had found out that before the soda giant came to that part of the country, their water supply, farming, and overall environment was healthy and self-sustaining. Soon after the factory opened the water supply dwindled and farming yielded a fraction of what it used to. All of those examples seemed distant until they had a part of the film that dealt with a problem occurring in Michigan. Nestle, the water bottling giant, who makes many well-known bottled waters, was pumping water from the local stream and depleting the water supply to the area. Local activists took the company to court over the fact that Nestle was profiting from water they did not own and they did not have the rights to. Initially the court found favor with the activists. However after an appeal the court granted Nestle the rights to continue pumping and selling the water from local streams.

Just like turning on a light switch with electricity, we as a society take for granted the pleasure of walking over to a faucet and getting clean and unlimited drinking water on command. We rarely, if ever, think about where that water came from and how much of it we are consuming. Throughout the movie we see that in many other parts of the world, this easy access to clean water is not the reality. The movie also talked a great deal about dams and how many times they do much greater harm than good. One of the activists talked about the World Bank and their inefficiency of money distribution when it comes to providing clean water. One thing that he said that really caught my attention was the fact that many small villages and towns simply need a small water well to pump water from the ground, not a big billion dollar dam. The phrase he said was something along the lines of the World Bank is able to spend a million dollars in one place but not a thousand dollars in a thousand places. This movie really made me appreciate water as a natural resource and just how really valuable it is to the human race.

As the reading continues, Reece's arguments exhibit the same main emotional tactics that accompany irrefutable statistics. He plays on nation wide fear that is often associated with big business and government which is corruption. He continues with the issue of the coal companies simply not caring about the local environment or the local people as a whole. Which, according to the statistics and stories, seem to be undeniably true. The ignorance of the coal executive to pay for or even acknowledge the damage that they are going to this region is understandably difficult to handle for the local inhabitants. He pushes again the environmental aspect when he talks about going on the flying squirrel exhibit and continues providing an ever-growing list of evidence on how these mining practices are killing the environment of this part of West Virginia.

Lost Mountain Assignment #1

The very effective argument tactic Reece utilizes in this book is the personal and emotional connection he has to the issue. He does not observe from a removed perspective gathering what people have told him about the issue. He is driving through these mountains and seeing firsthand the effects strip mining has on this ecosystem. He provides numerous stories of locals he as personally known and met whose lives have been negatively affected by these mining practices. One point that Reece brought up early in the book really illustrates the kind of message he is trying to convey. That point is on page 17 when Reece points out that the explosives being used in these coal mining strategies are the same explosives that were used by Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City Bombing. This is a foreshadowing to later in the reading where Reece says that strip mining is a form of terrorism.

Like any other environmentalist, Reece uses the destruction of the environment as his main argument. He utilized vivid descriptions of the former beauty of the blue and green rolling mountain side in contrast to the now black and grey, flattened coal mines. He goes on for pages describing the physical landscape that the mining sites have become. He does a very good job of painting the picture of what these mines look like in addition to the sporadic black and white pictures places throughout the book.

The last thing I would describe myself as would be an environmentalist however this does not mean I don’t care about the environment. I believe humans and the environment interact more mutually than people realize. I’m not going to argue that many things humans do have a negative effect on the environment because they do. However humans have lived off the land since the beginning of the human race and I believe that coal is a natural resource that humans have the right to utilize to provide for themselves and their fellow human race.

Coal Discussion

My initial reaction to the con website is that their facts were more straight forward and transparent. They gave solid facts that clean coal plants simply do not exist in the United States. The video that I viewed where the man was standing outside "inside" the new clean coal plant clearly explained that clean coal plants in the U.S. do not exist. One thing about this website is that it did not really do much to offer an alternate solution to fuel. It mentioned wind energy and other sorts of alternatives but does not really much advocating for alternate sources. The pro coal video did not really give many detailed facts about clean coal technology other than it was a good thing. this lack of information on their part reinforces that anti-clean coal site saying that clean coal is not that solid of a system in he United States. However, given the current financial situation in the U.S. coal does strongly appeal to the economic side of interests. This site is saying that coal is affordable and readily available to the Unites States. While this is true, they choose to ignore the fact that coal is a limited and soon to be extinct resource.

In this debate the ideal that is at stake is deciding what is the best natural resource for the U.S. both economically and environmentally. Clean coal technology is the production of coal so that the CO2 emissions are captured and stored so that they cannot be released into the atmosphere. The future for pro-clean coal companies is that they plan to continue to make coal production cleaner and safer. The future for anti-clean coal groups is to do away with the use of coal and begin the creation and use of alternate fuels. The major argument for pro-clean coal companies stating the facts that coal usage accounts for a very large majority of electricity sources in the United States. Their other argument is that coal is very affordable and dependable. The major argument for anti-clean coal groups is that CO2 emissions caused by the burning of coal in processing plants all over the U.S.

The audiences for each argument are different because it can be easily seen that the pro-clean coal ads are appealing to business owners or workers who need an affordable, dependable energy source. The anti-coal group arguments are aimed more toward environmental friendly groups.

The clean coal site is sponsored by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity which obviously is a group whose main concern is the production of clean coal technologies in the United States. The resources for the anti-clean coal site include The Center for Global Development, IEA Greenhouse Gas Program, and the Sierra Club which are all groups whose interests deal with the environment and who are worried about the affects of CO2 gases have on the environment.

The emotional appeals of the pro-clean coal site are affordability and personal well-being of individual workers and business owners. The emotional appeal for the anti-clean coal site plays on the fact that coal emissions are badly hurting our environment. Both are very effective to their respective audiences because business owners are going to worry about affordability and the well-being of their workers. The pro-clean coal site is effective because the people who would look at this this are environmentally concerned about the affects of coal burning.

The visual effects of the sites are polar opposites. The visual effect of the anti-clean coal site uses dark colors and meaningful quotes against clean coal technologies while the pro-clean coal site uses bright colors and uplifting stories of real people to say how important coal is to all of us.

Introduction and Interests

Hey everybody. My name is Paul and I am a Junior, Political Science major from Centerville, Ohio. Some of my interests include water-skiing, sports, politics, and movies.