Contemporary Connections: Environmental Movements - Section 02, Group A

http://www.pollutionissues.com/Ec-Fi/Environmental-Movement.html

Pollution and many of the wastes that us humans produce are only hurting our environment more and more. This article talks about the spills of oil in our oceans over the last 60 years. In the year 1967 one of Great Britain's oil stations spilled close to 40,000 gallons of oil into the ocean. This oil will cause many different problems for the ocean life near the spill. This oil would kill many of the birds that lived near this spill while effecting many of the marine life under the surface of the water. Not even 2 years later this same thing happened with one of the United States oil rigs. It began to leak crude oil in the Pacific Ocean which later ended up on the beaches on California. This oil choked many of the birds and marine life in that area. Oil was not the only thing that was hurting our oceans and bodies of water. Not even 5 months later the Cuyahoga River in Ohio caught on fire from chemical and sewage wastes. This was a huge problem and it was all caused by us. After these incidents many different programs were implemented to help protect the Earth.

The readings of Environmental Movements all attack the topic of conservation in different ways. In the article "Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature" by William Cronon the first line of the article has a huge meaning. "The time has come to rethink wilderness" has a huge meaning by saying that as humans we need to stop and think about what we are considering as wilderness. It seems that people only consider wilderness to be national parks and forest when in reality wilderness is everywhere. Wilderness is what surrounds us.

In the PSA of  Keep America Beautiful they use cartoon characters to get their point across. The main message of the video is saying that "Only you can prevent forest fires" and to protect the earth and its forests because that's all we have, we can just move to another planet, we only have one Earth. This video was also about Earth Day, A day in April of every year in which people come together to help make this Earth a cleaner place. One of the main sayings of Earth Day is "Reduce, Reuse and Recycle." This saying it to not waste things and try to recycle things to keep the Earth free from many of the different harmful products that us humans use.

Both of these readings/videos are connected to a major issue today as well. Pollution and forest fires have been a very huge issue in today environment. This also shows with the effects of global warming caused by all of the pollution created by us humans. If we do not follow these instructions and key points from these readings and video then we could end up completely ruining our Earth and environment. We all need to gather together and put an end to all of the pollution that we are creating and start to make our environment a cleaner place.