Intro to Environmental Studies 24

 I read the book Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. I remember being excited but also nervous to read this book as I have very little understanding of Native American culture and how their culture influenced their connection to nature. Braiding Sweetgrass is a combination of memoir, science writing, and Indigenous American philosophy and history. The book opens with a retelling of the Haudenosaunee creation story, in which Skywoman falls to earth and is aided by the animals to create a new land called Turtle Island. Robin Wall Kimmerer explains how this story informs the Indigenous attitude towards the land itself: human beings are “the younger brothers of creation” and so should humbly learn from the plants and animals that were here first. At the same time, the world is a place of gifts and generosity, and people should give gifts back to the earth as well. I found this to be interesting, our Western culture has programmed us to take and take for the benefits for profit,...

     The other day I came across this TED Talk (that I’ll have linked down below) from Franziska Trautmann, a college student, that has lived to see the devastation of her beloved bayou in Louisiana over her lifetime as sea levels rise and the land becomes more and more eroded. She also had noticed the immense amount of landfill that had been accumulating due to the lack of recycling facilities in her area. As her and her boyfriend lamented over these facts while finishing off a bottle of wine, they began to brainstorm ways to reduce the amount of glass bottles being contributed to the massive landfills. After research, they gathered that glass was originally made from sand! So with the evidence of sand being such a finite resource in the area, and everywhere, they found a way to turn their wine bottles, that would inevitably end up in landfill dumps, into sand to restore their local bayou. With determination and purpose they found a human sized machine that was able to g...

Out of all the entities contributing towards the exploitation of resources within Mexico, Coca-Cola is one of the top culprits. I could not believe that the executive in the documentary could claim with a straight face that the company has never received special treatment especially as Vicente Fox doubled as the chief executive of the company in Mexico while being president. From my experience, Coca-Cola is one of the most powerful entities in Mexico and has used an approach of exploitation and injustice to get there. I came across a building covered in zapatista posters in January of 2023 and entered out of curiosity. We were told that this building was claimed by 150 indigenous families called the Otomí, who were displaced by Coca-Cola in order to extract groundwater. These people had been living on that land for generations, but as soon as Coca-Cola discovered that they had groundwater, they used their power to push the Otomí out of their territory with the Mexican government backin...

 Going into it, I believed that there were some benefits from exposure to nature such as reduced stress, improved mood, and creativity development, however I was pretty surprised to find that these benefits are only a small portion of its effects. In the article that I chose for my annotated bibliography, the researcher conducted various experiments on multiple sets of men and women to measure any physical or mental changes. Their approach focused on taking blood samples from these people before, during, and after practicing forest bathing. They found that the levels of various NK cells or natural killer cells increased by around 50% and that the presence of anti-cancer proteins increased between 28-48%. The importance of this is that with higher levels of NK cells and anti-cancer proteins, the body is better equipped to fight bacteria, viruses, and tumors, making forest bathing essentially a potent immune system booster. With this knowledge, the idea of exploring forest-bathing as...

  The documentary we watched in class today was truly eye-opening. I was completely unaware that corporations selling water existed. I find it alarming that big corporations have already gained control of some of our clean water sources. It’s saddening that parts of the world still don’t have access to clean water like we do. I can’t imagine having to walk miles to find water, and the water they were collecting didn’t look safe. I think it’s extremely unfair that these countries are not getting paid what they deserve for crops. Hopefully, we can work towards solving the water crisis without relying on big corporations and help developing countries gain access to clean water.  

The introduction of American Camino Walking as Spiritual Practice on the Appalachian Trail introduces the significance of the Appalachian Trail. The author, Kip Redick, discusses how the AT is officially designated as a "National Scenic Trail". He then goes into how individuals experience the AT. He begins by describing more disconnected forms such as driving past it or stopping along a scenic overlook. Then he discusses the more intentional forms in which people experience the AT such as long or short-form hikes along it. Redick details the spiritual connection that hikers have to the trail and all of the 'sublime prospects and encounters' found along the trail. Redick describes how the spiritual practice of walking speaks to so many hikers of all different backgrounds. He credits this translation of walking to spirituality to "the widely extensive human practice of journeying". Redick expresses that though the trails were not created for a spiritual reaso...

               Watching the documentary in class was very interesting. Many issues discussed with water are connected to specific environmental warming impacts like rising sea levels, carbon emissions into the atmosphere, etc. One of the key aspects people think of when someone mentions environmental issues is pollution. While many people think about pollution as trash on beaches and in parks or on a more terrestrial basis, it is important, if not more important, to educate about the pollution in waterways because it affects everyone globally.  In my opinion, I believe that one of the reasons that many people do not seem to be climate skeptics or not worried about environmental issues and climate change is because they are only referencing surface-level knowledge. For example, they may know that carbon emissions into the atmosphere are warming the earth. However, they probably do not go as far as to think about what else this affects. Th...