The summer of 2012 was the worst drought the American Midwest had seen in decades, although irrigation has done much to modernize agriculture there is no substitute for rain. Crops nationwide withered under the heat of the merciless sun, the fate of those crops affected global populations until the following spring. But the question many professionals in the field have been asking is why? A factor of the 1940s Dust Bowl was the unsustainable farming practices of the time; but now keeping their soil healthy is a large concern to most farmers. This leaves only one possible suspect, nature; or what humans have done to it. The concept of Environmental Security is subjective and the effects of environmental issues weave through national and …show more content…
The USDA rejected the draft, they felt that the data used by the AHS was inaccurate. Farmers eventually started to notice discrepancies between the 1990 map and what they really saw. The country had gone for almost 20 years with an outdated hardiness zone map, prompting the National Arbor Day Foundation to try. Their findings seemed to validate the draft from the AHS three years earlier. The USDA continued to drag its feet, eventually making a new map in 2012. Showing the changes were actually more profound than what the AHS or the Arbor Day Foundation maps had shown. American farmers were overjoyed by the changes they saw, zones 5, 6 and 7 grew northward. These zones are where the most profitable crops in American agriculture are grown: corn and potatoes in zone 5, wheat and oats in zone 6 and cash crops like cotton and tobacco in zone 7. There are over $60 billion dollars made from the sale of American corn each year. With large crops growing better in wider areas substantial fiscal gains are expected to be made by many agri-giants like Conagra, Pioneer and Monsanto. But what of the independent American farmers? Although there is no way to predict the fate of an entire lifestyle, it is logical that as the agricultural conglomerates gain power and land there will be no room for the small farmer in a future of industrial agriculture. Although the environmental changes facing the United States show numerous benefits,
The Dust Bowl, battering the Midwest for nearly a decade with high winds, bad farming techniques, and drought, became a pivotal point in American history. The wind storm that seemed relentless beginning in the early 1930’s until its spell ended in 1939, affected the lives of tens of thousands of Americans and the broader agriculture industry. The catastrophic effects of the Dust Bowl took place most prominently around the Great Plains, otherwise known as the farming belt, including states such as Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas, which were hit extraordinarily hard. Millions of farming acres destroyed by poor farming techniques was a major contributor to what is considered to be one of the worst man-made environmental disasters in American history. This period resulted in almost a decade of unstable farming and economic despair. Thousands of families sought government assistance in order to survive. Luckily, government aid to farmers and new agriculture programs that were introduced to help save the nation’s agriculture industry benefited families and helped the Great Plains recover from the Dust Bowl. Furthermore, the poor conditions in the farm belt were also compounded by the Great Depression as it was in full swing as the Dust Bowl began to worsen. In addition, World War I was also underway which caused a high demand for agricultural products, such as wheat, corn, and potatoes to be at its peak, which lured many people to the farm belt with the false expectation that farming
The citizen suit provision of the Clean Water Act is an important tool to protect and improve rivers, creeks, streams, and wetlands especially as state agencies may not have the resources to conduct regular water quality monitoring on every water body. Citizen involvement in monitoring and reporting pollution problems is key to watershed protection; hereby helping the government enforce the laws.
The United States of America is the world’s largest corn overproducer. With such heavy focus on corn, I would like to draw attention to a measure taken by the United States government, the Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996. This act increased the amount of farm land that is meant to be used in the States for growing corn from 60 million acres to a whopping 90 million acres. Such a significant increase cannot go without some kind of effect. Writer, Michael Pollan, in his book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”, discusses the instability of the US farming industry as well as the negative environmental implications corn has on us. This instability and environmental impact has given rise to movements promoting a return to more
Environmental scanning can be viewed as a way of acquiring information about outside events that can aid organizations in first identifying potential trends, then interpreting them
In what was one of the most fertile areas of the United States, one of the Nation’s worst agricultural disasters occurred. No rain came so crops did not grow, leaving the soil exposed to the high winds that hit the area in the 1930s. Stretching over a 150,000 square mile area and encompassing parts of five states—these being Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico—the Dust Bowl was a time where over 100 million acres of topsoil were stripped from fertile fields leaving nothing but barren lands and piles of dust everywhere (Ganzel). While things were done to alleviate the problem, one must question whether or not anyone has learned from this disaster. If not, one must look into the possibility that the United States may be struck
The environmental protection agency has been stepping up its mandate of ensuring safer and better environment for not only the business operators, buts also the society as a whole. In order to achieve this goal of environmental protection, there has been the creation of environmental protection agency that has ensured that all the businesses, irrespective of their size and type, strive to ensure that the environment is protected for the benefit of current and future generations.
The environment and the health of the surrounding population go hand in hand. The Environmental Protection Agency takes on this ever so important mission of protecting them both. The mission statement of the EPA states, “The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Small Business Programs is to support the protection of human health and the environment by advocating and advancing the business, regulatory, and environmental compliance concerns of small and socio-economically disadvantaged businesses, and minority academic institutions (US Enviromental Protection Agency, 2010).” The impact of its mission can be defined clearly as it examines the impact of contamination in the air, the water, and the land on human health.
There is an alarming situation emerging in the Southwestern United States where record setting drought conditions persist and the forecast for the future warns of continued drought conditions. Effects of the drought are as visible as they are alarming; Lake Mead, one of the largest reservoirs in this region is well below its high water mark leaving officials to wondering how they can continue to provide both water and electricity to the region. According to the National Climate Assessment 2014, ninety-two percent of this region uses irrigation to water crops accounting for seventy-nine percent of the water withdrawals (Garfin). In addition, a study by NASA concludes droughts in the Southwest United States may be longer and drier than previous droughts in the last one thousand years (Cole). The ongoing drought in the Southwestern United States is driving water reserves to dangerously low levels, adversely affecting an agricultural system that will have ripple effects throughout the entire country, unless the farmers of this region can learn to farm without water they may not survive.5
The status of nature and the environment in American society had not been given much priority in the political sphere due to it being deeming trivial, and its proponents basing their argument on moral and aesthetic grounds, yet the surge of scientific data and new information through the birth of the field of ecology, would prioritize the status of America's natural environment in the political process, and lashed back against the increasingly polluted world Americans lived in, on a legal level. Rather than a spiritual belief in the divinity of nature's beauty, environmentalists drew upon a new rationale, being the new science of ecology, that grew through the support and funding of government agencies, educational institutions as well as
Since the beginning of civilization humanity has adopted a subjugating stance toward nature. Ecological exploitation has become the de facto standard, contributing to the illusion of self-subsistence provided by modern society. This mindset is untenable given humanities reliance on the natural world, as best demonstrated by the critical importance of various parts of the environment to humanities continued existence. This includes the importance of biodiversity to medicinal advancement and climate adaptation, the role of insects in the renewal of the biosphere, and the importance of the environment for humanities psychological health.
Ethics is the study of what is right and wrong in human conduct. Environmental ethics studies the effects of human’s moral relationships on the environment and everything within it (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2008). The ethical principles that govern those relations determine human duties, obligations, and responsibilities with regard to the Earth’s natural environment and all of the animals and plants that inhabit it (Taylor, 1989). The purpose of this paper is to reveal environmental issues that are threatening the existence of life on Earth, and discus our social obligations to refrain from further damaging our environment, health and life for future generations. I will discus the need for appropriate actions and the ethical
Environmental problems are something which belongs to nature or known as “Mother Earth” [13]. Nature was created to help people survive from gathering foods until build a house. This phenomenon happens continuously without thinking how much damage that nature has because human’s fault. Nature gradually becomes worse and animal’s life in danger. People who are aware of the importance of nature react. Those people do several ways to save the environment. Although these efforts can return back the environment, these efforts only can be hold temporarily. This problem happens because those people who are aware of the environment only slightly; for remaining, there are people either do not know or do not care about the nature. People’s efforts
Pollution is the introduction of harmful substances or products into the environment. It is a major problem in America and as well as the world. Pollution not only damages the environment, but damages us also. It has cause many problems ranging from lung cancer to the greenhouse effect. It is all among us but we continue to live in our own filth. What is the reason behind this flawed logic? In this paper I will examine the problems and solutions for this issue.
According to Mintzberg, the environmental school of thought is a strategy dealing with the forces outside the organization. Unlike the other schools in his book, Strategy Safari, the environment plays a central role in the strategy formation process alongside leadership and the organization where the organization becomes subordinate to the external environment. The environmental school assumptions are that during the formative period of the organization the company shapes itself in response to the environment, but after that period is increasingly unable to respond to the environment. Moreover, the organization long term survival depends on the early choices made during its formative period. Over time, Mintzberg states, leadership becomes
Pollution has become a major issue over the years because it contaminates the Earth’s environment and affects human health. While some environmental pollution is a result of natural causes such as volcanic eruptions, most is caused by human activities. The increase of various types of pollution has made cancer pollutant more prevalent among the people, raising the risk of getting cancer. After being exposed to theses pollutants, the effects may be immediate or delayed. Some of the delayed effects, due to the exposure, can go unnoticed for many years. Another major issue that pollution creates is the tremendous cost for preventing and cleaning it up. However, we can not regulate the pollutants to the extent where there are no more possible