No Impact Man by Colin Beavan

I will be addressing how Jeff Wilson took on an extreme project to enlighten people about what it without a doubt means to live deliberately. I will be explaining how Jeff Wilson took on this intense project that also had an environmental educational aspect to it as well. Another point of view on this outlandish project is that it progressively alters a dumpster in to something way more than a person would ever expect.

In this essay I intend to explore the narrative conventions and values, which Oliver Smithfield presents in the short story Victim. The short story positions the reader to have negative and sympathetic opinion on the issues presented. Such as power, identity and bullying. For example Mickey the young boy is having issues facing his identity. It could be argued that finding your identity may have the individual stuck trying to fit in with upon two groups.

Have you ever thought about how your actions or opinions affected the environment around you? We’re constantly unaware of what we do that impacts the environment’s condition. One author named Wendell Berry blames the public in his article regarding the way society and the industry has treated the environment and its natural resources. This raises concerns whether we should be putting more importance on the economy or the land that we live in for the sake of our future survival. While I agree with most of Berry’s points and perspectives I slightly disagree with a few of his opinions, but nonetheless he brings up a great matter in today’s modern society.

As The World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do To Stay In Denial, by Derrick Jensen and Stephanie McMillan, is a graphic novel about the state of our environment. They use cartoons and abundant sarcasm to convey the message that the attempts people are making to save the environment are not enough to do any real good. Their message challenges both those of Edward O. Wilson and the University of Connecticut in that Jensen and McMillan’s ideas are much more radical and suggest that the ideas posed by Wilson and UConn, such as the importance of recycling and sustainability efforts, are ineffective at saving the environment. We must resolve the challenges posed by Jensen and McMillan so that all of the ideas put forth in the sources may work together rather than against each other. In order to do this we must accept that some of the ideas given by Jensen and McMillan may be too extreme to do any real good and that the ideas suggested by Wilson and UConn, though slightly ineffective, are nonetheless important steps in saving the environment. Taken alone, none of their ideas will save the environment; instead it is necessary to combine the ideas of Wilson, UConn, and Jensen and McMillan in order to create a more realistic plan to save the planet.

Americans, as a whole, do not care about the environment anymore. When we watch the news or simply talk about our day, there are always more pressing topics that come up. However, as a nation, the threat of a failing environment seems to be forgotten because the effects are not as obvious as other threats. Bill McKibben’s “Waste Not, Want Not” discusses how much time, money, resources, and people America has actually wasted and how little effort has been made to try to change. McKibben causes readers to think it is too late to save the environment from our wastefulness because we put our efforts into systems that do not help the environment, spend more money and resources than necessary, and refuse to acknowledge how much were wasting.

American political activist Jody Williams once said “There’s a mythology that if you want to change the world, you have to be sainted like Mother Teresa or Archbishop Desmond Tutu. But ordinary people with lives that go up and down and around in circles can still contribute to change.” In an excerpt from his essay “Why Bother?” published in the New York Times Magazine, American public intellectual Michael Pollan reveals his goal to convince ordinary American citizens that they are capable of changing their behavior in order to reduce America’s carbon footprint. Through the use of the four rhetorical elements situation, purpose, claim, and audience, Pollan aspires to have his readers gain a greater understanding that the environmental crisis is “at heart a crisis of character” (Pollan 766). However, although Pollan targets the correct audience to carry out his purpose, he fails to provide proper evidence to support his claim that individual contribution matters.

Many environmentalists advocate and try to convince people about living a life without harming the environment, but they fail to impactfully do so; however, Colin Beavan, a writer and blogger, puts himself to do the impossible: living a whole year without affecting the environment at all, which is more effective than only talking and not doing. Throughout the documentary No Impact Man, in order to convince the audience that they should live an environmentally friendly life, Colin Beavan appeals to ethos and uses imagery countless of times. He shows several moments of doing environmental friendly actions and talks about different associations wanting to contact him or quotes professionals; he also shows many hardships during times when he has to give up things he uses regularly to use less.

John Lubbock wrote, "Your character will be what you yourself choose to make it." This is a great opinion, but I also have an opinion of my own. I personally feel that experiences shape you into who you are. Every situation you go through impacts your life in many different ways. One small decision can change your life forever.

While I started my volunteer educational program, another man was well ensconced in his own. Al Gore took up a cause that many people seemed to be ignoring, our environment. The issues of climate change and general environmentalism are very important to me. I see similarities between the challenges of managing a clean environment for our globe and the challenges of managing good health to me. Through concerted efforts to make routine changes we have the capacity to live more ecologically friendly, and often healthier lives. I have seen that with just a few adjustments, I can control my diabetes to the point where most people do not even know I have it. Likewise, I believe that if we commit to making fundamental changes in the way we go about our lives, we can easily remedy several environmental issues we face today. By going to Berkeley Law School and focusing on Environmental Law, I can apply my own life’s lessons

3. Mark Owen’s memoir No Easy Day is a first-person account of a Navy Seal who witnessed the take down of Osama bin Laden. Owen describes the journey of becoming a SEAL and the countless missions of which he was a part. He illustrates the work of the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group, known as SEAL Team Six. The readers are taken along with the team right into the line of fire. They hear first time accounts of the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips in the Indian Ocean in 2009, stories of street attacks in Iraq and, primarily, the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011. He describes the process of becoming a soldier for SEAL Team Six and numerous hours spent to prove his readiness. As Owen told CBS’s Scott Pelley on 60

Though people are uneducated about the problems we have at hand and even some still seem to not care when informed, I still hold out hope. There are people who care, and those people will make a difference because every small difference leads to a bigger difference. “Attitudes are also changing… the thousands of protests against chemical plants and waste incinerators show the extent of concern about the environmental health.” (320-321, When a Billion Chinese Jump). I hold out hope that we can change the global environmental problems we faced and make a difference. Though this won’t be easy to change it won’t be impossible.

Question “Do you know that using cars for the planet is like smoking cigarettes for people?”

Pollution has plagued the world and living things within it since the industrial revolution and the development of new technology. While some people might know the effects of the environmental disasters that have occurred through the years, other do not. Maya Lin created a collaborative memorial to try to gear people’s attention to the problems being faced in the environment. The collaborative memorial can easily be accessed by anyone who has a computer and internet access. For example, the BP oil spill affected a great number of living things and marine animals, due to a human error and the failure to clear up the problem efficiently. Another example is the Flint Water Crisis that caused innocent children to become deathly sick due to the lack of necessary chemicals. Another example about pollution is the Great Smog of 1952, which occured London, the smog lasted for five days and killed about 4,000 people. Most of the people that were affected by the smog were children, the elderly, and people with respiratory problems. The memorial is meant to shine light on the living things that are going extinct around us and how we as humans have contributed to their extinction. Its purpose is to evoke empathy, better understanding, guilt, sorrow, and even rage. By creating the memorial, everyone’s eyes can be open to the negative effects that our pollution has caused the world. The memorial also provides ways people can make a difference in the world where living things are going

As a 17-year old teenager going to high school, contrary to the environmental activist, David Suzuki’s, remarks about the ignorance of humans about nature, I receive much information about these kinds of problems at my school, from dedicated assemblies, eco fairs and special days that address our responsibility to deal with nature in a more responsible fashion. Yet, when the school day is over, all of the information seeps out of the roof of the school; plastic water bottles are still found in the corners of hallways and leftover Tim Hortons cups are still present in the desks of my former Business class. Even when I step inside the door of my house, the disconnection from nature is apparent. Most of my time at home is spent looking at a screen and doing homework and the only sign of nature would be the fly

In “Man Has No Nature,” Jose Ortega argues that man must earn his life metaphysically. Ortega’s strongest argument towards this belief can be seen as the process that one must go through to earn their life. Ortega has the ability to, through only four pages of writing, describe man’s nature and how that seems to effect his choices. In this paper, I will make evident all of Ortega’s evidence that, man must determine what he is and then make him that belief in order to earn his life metaphysically.