Earth As Modified By Human Action Summary

One of the oldest books the Epic of Gilgamesh gives us a view on how the old civilization Mesopotamia and its people were it roots back to the year 2000 B.C.E. The book starts off by the King Gilgamesh sending a temple-prostitute to tame a wild man named Enkidu who acted like an animal in the grasslands. The temple-prostitute then sexualy charms him to win Enkidu’s trust. then convinces him to go back with her to the city. She then clothes him and teaches him how to eat cooked food and brewed beer and how to bathe. By her words it shows how the mesopotamians lived.

Aldo Leopold’s essay “The Land Ethic” was published in A Sand County Almanac. The short paper confronts the imperfections in the most common approaches in preserving the environment. Leopold’s answer is to develop a new branch of environmental ethics to model humanity’s ever-changing relationship with the environment. Leopold observantly describes the history of ethics, the meaning of community with the land and why it’s appropriate to do so. Toward the end of the essay – as the reader is ready for Leopold to thoroughly explain his moral code – he ambiguously finishes, “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise” (Leopold, 224–225). The reader

Rachel Carson’s Man and the Stream of time possesses enlightening perspectives of nature that have been marinating in her mind for ten years. Her writing reflects upon the effects that man has on nature and the role he plays in the ever changing environment. Her sole observation is that it is man’s nature to want to conquer the world, but nature is not one to be conquered. The writer affirms that nature is an entity that must be dignified, Like English poet Francis Thompson said, “Thou canst not stir a flower without troubling of a star.” Most environmentalist would agree that nature is not stationary, we cut the trees now today, its not just the trees that disappear ten years from now. As humanity advances, we create a multitude of

Alexander Von Humboldt was a Prussian naturalist whose work has helped shape and define our modern understanding of nature. He used enlightenment rationalism to navigate his way through life and his deep connection to his natural environment inspired a visionary movement in ushering out the monotheistic creationist worldview. “Humboldt’s books, diaries and letters reveal a visionary, a thinker far ahead of his time. He invented isotherms...discovered the magnetic equator...came up with the idea of vegetation and climate zones that snake across the globe…and revolutionized the way we see the natural world.” (Invention of Nature, 5). Although his work was extensive, author of ‘The Invention of Nature, Andrea Wulf suggests that his work has largely been forgotten due to his polymath approach of including art, history, poetry and politics that made him unfavorable. While Humboldt gave us our concept of nature itself, “the irony is that Humboldt’s views have become so self-evident that we have largely forgotten the man behind them.” However, although his work individual work may be overlooked, Humboldt’s success in making science more accessible work and as a result, his legacy lives on as the source of inspiration for many influential thinkers throughout history.

“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise,” said by none other, Aldo Leopold. In A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold, an American environmentalist, brought a new idea to the environmentalist’s table: “land ethic.” His idea of a land ethic is a moral responsibility of humans to the natural Earth. Leopold’s idea has been discussed since the publication by a wide variety of people, from the public to scholars. Since

The audience of this book is presumed to be the general person who is not fully intact with the ideas that he or she is disrupting the ecosystem and is not aware of the effects they are doing as a whole. The book argues that no ecosystem is completely inert as things such as climate changes or drought can also affect the enviorment. Without human interaction an environment can still have issues, but the introduction of human life and economy does take a grave toll on the climate. These are irreversible effects that mankind are doing to the ecosystem. The English

Environmental history explores a variety of topics in order to connect nature to humans. In doing so, a new history emerges. As this history unveils itself, it becomes evident that throughout time, humans have taken it upon themselves to improve the nonhuman world for their own gains. Numerous scholars have contemplated this idea, and while they do not all agree on the meaning or the means of improvement upon the land, it remains a constant theme. By exploring the theme of improvement to land, a clear path forms. The idea of improvement in environmental history creates artificial agency for humans, as well as revealing that improvement cannot happen without having an adverse effect on humans.

Coexisting with each of its counterparts, Mother Earth and the system in which we live in effortlessly orchestrates the fundamental basis of not only human existence but nevertheless all of the life in which it contains. The climate of our Earth however, has been continuously changing since the beginning of its formation about 4.5 billion years ago although; it wasn’t until around the early 18th century that a widespread concern occurred in American minds regarding the treatment of our environment. This altered perspective made way for understanding that humans have made the biggest impact to our planet, biosphere, and atmosphere etc. drastically more so than any other organism. It is commonly argued in Jared Diamond’s The Worst Mistake in

As each day my surroundings broaden, I feel more desolated as my family members are being lacerated and decimated. I am a living organism in the Plantae kingdom. Humans, animals, and even some wild plant such as the Sarracenia can defend themselves, Darwin wrote The Origin of Life in 1859. In that book, he explains the process of natural selection and survival of the fittest. From the awakening of the second industrial revolution of the 19th century, more and more deforestation has this planet faced. An estimated of 18 million acres of forest, which is roughly the size of the country of Panama, are lost each year, according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization.

In the book, The Control of Nature by John McPhee, one can see humans in a multitude of locations attempting to control the various aspects of their natural environment. Furthermore, it is clear that the three enduring understandings of Earth Science are present throughout the book as an ongoing theme. The first, the idea that energy, from the Sun and from Earth’s interior, drives all of Earth’s cycles and processes, can be interpreted in many different ways. However, in the different sections of the book, one sees that the Sun can cause weather patterns and can lead to different outcomes. Additionally, the energy, or power, resulting from the intense heat and pressure from the Earth’s interior, can cause volcanic eruptions. As for the idea that matter moves through Earth’s spheres in cyclical processes, over varying periods of time, and at different scales, one can see that water, land, plant matter, and even molten rock come and go in a definite period, whether it is thirty years, or even centuries. In regards to the third idea, that Earth’s surfaces and processes are altered by human engineering, one can see a plethora of examples in the book. The energy from the Sun and from Earth’s interior and the events that are caused from that energy can cause humans to alter the surfaces and processes of Earth by building everything from levees to basins and can even cause humans to make an attempt at cooling flowing

During his time, Aldo Leopold was a conservationist who believed in the longevity of the land and that we should protect it, even if we must protect the land from ourselves. While this was an unpopular opinion, realizing that the land and animals naturally work together in a symbiotic relationship to protect one another was very apparent to Leopold. He believed that humans should be doing our best to lessen our impact on the environment. Time has caught up with Leopold’s ideologies and it is time that our efforts and contributions to the earth did too.

The battle between technology and nature is not a new one. From deforestation to fishing technology that can pierce whale hide, technology and nature have played a game of tug of war for ages. From the time man has first picked up a plow and seeded the land, nature has been there with a tornado to wipe the work away. Every time man had started to overpopulate, wild animals and weather would keep it to a reasonable level. But what happens when man advances faster and with more force than nature can? When an industrial revolution or a form of colonization force nature into a small, confined corner. When animals and plants become history and myth. When the amazon becomes a concrete jungle? The battle between technology and nature has affected the world through globalization, industrialization, and colonization, and continues to affect the world both past, present, and future.

White’s thesis in The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis states that in order to confront the expanding environmental crises, humans must begin to analyze and alter their treatment and attitudes towards nature. The slow destruction of the environment derives from the Western scientific and technological advancements made since the Medieval time period. “What people do about their ecology depends on what they think about themselves in relation to things around them” (RON p.7). Technology and science alone will not be able to save humans until we adjust the way of thinking and suppress the old ideas of humans power above nature. Instead, we need to learn how to think of ourselves as being

Nearly everything that a human does is in response to the environment. Our lives are defined by what is around us and what we find in front of us, whether this means accepting, dealing with or changing it. This has been the pattern since primates first stood up and became Homo erectus, and has continued until we considered ourselves doubly wise. The shape of the land affected where humans moved. Weather was something with which to contend. Fire affected humans until they conquered it – and herein lies the core of the relationship. The earth affects humans, and humans affect it back, viewing characteristics and patterns as problems and challenges, and finding a solution.

The decline of the environment due to natural and human exertion is known as the degradation of the environment. The natural weather occurrences such as heavy rain, flooding, storms, earthquakes, volcanoes etc. are not administered under human control. These meteorological phenomenon’s wreak devastation on the environment from time to time causing the land to become unsuitable to cultivate. On this subject matter, the human population does not contain the power to stop the wrath of Mother Nature. Rather, we are forced to sit back and watch. Nevertheless, humans engage in a crucial role towards the degradation of the environment in which we live in. Unavoidably, the degradation of the environment is a rising and utmost worldwide subject. I accept that the root cause to environmental degradation is the excessive use of resources on our land utilized by the processes under capitalism. As Jensen wrote in Endgame, “The global industrial economy is the engine for massive environmental degradation and massive human and (nonhuman) impoverishment.