Plan B, Chapters 1-3

I don't like this book. It was published in 2009. All of the cited journals and articles are from no earlier than 2009, but some of them are as old as 2004. In the world of science & technology, that's a huge gap. It's 2014. This book is 5 years old and is far too out of date to be giving viable information to students, and I encourage this book be replaced with something more up-to-date as soon as possible.


But back to the quotes...

"Business as usual is no longer a viable option. Food security will deteriorate further unless leading countries collectively mobilize to stabilize population, stabilize climate, stabilize aquifers, conserve soils, protect cropland, and restrict the use of grain to produce fuels for cars"

Grain should not be used for fuel. The yield of fuel produced from corn is extremely low. Algenol, a local business, can produce over 10X the yield with algae to produce ethanol. Technology like that of Algenol is what will cure us of our addiction to fossil fuels.

"While desert expansion and water shortages are now displacing millions of people, rising seas promise to displace far greater numbers in the future, given the concentration of the world's population in low-lying coastal cities and rice-growing river deltas. The numbers could eventually reach the hundreds of millions, offering they another powerful reason for stabilizing both climate and population."

If we don't do something about the amount of CO2 we're dumping into the atmosphere, then we, floridians, will be in serious trouble. Ft. Myers is only 10 ft. above sea level. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that the rate of sea level rise for the 3000 years before the industrial revolution averaged only between 0.1 and 0.2 mm/yr, while the rate has increased to 1.8 ± 0.5 mm/yr when averaged from 1961 to 2003. Increasing CO2 emissions will make seas rise even faster, leading to devastation of seaside property.


"With energy, our goal is to close all coal-fired power plants by 2020, replacing them largely with wind farms. In the Plan B economy the transportation system will be electrified with a broad-based shift to plug-in hybrids, all-electric cars, and high-speed intercity rail. And in the Plan B world, cities are designed for people, not for cars."

Cities designed for people, not for cars. Let's have a thought experiment, shall we? A majority of cars run on gasoline. Gasoline comes from oil drilled from the ground. The oil drilled from the ground is owned by the oil companies. The oil companies donate billions of dollars to republicans running for political office in the US. Therefore, the republicans, in order to keep the support of big oil, want to keep them happy, therefore, the republicans build cities designed for cars instead of people, and that's how Tampa, and other republican-run cities were born.

A land remembered

Rather than selecting quotes from this story, choose a character from the book. Briefly describe who the character is and their role in the novel. How does the character relate to their environment and the natural world? What is the character’s sense of place and legacy? How do you relate to this character? What is your sense of place and how does this relate to the character? What is your legacy and how does it relate to the character? Compare and contrast.

Zech MacIvey

Zech MacIvey is the son of Tobias MacIvey, and father of Solomon MacIvey. He was raised by his father in the Hammock of Southern Florida. Zech only talked to 2 females in this book, excluding his mother, and slept with both of them. He helped his father, Tobias, with the maintaining of the "MacIvey Cattle Company" by assisting in the capturing, branding, and transporting of swamp cows from the areas around their home to Punta Rassa. Zech relates to his environment similar to that of the seminoles, who he shares not only similar ideals, but also a son. 

I think Zech MacIvey failed his father and failed as a father by the way he raised his son, Solomon. The cause of this failure could become a masters-degree dissertation in and of itself. I'd say its a combination of his affair with Tawanda, his reaction to Solomon's selling of birds to stupid rich people, and the death of his wife, Glenda. 

When Glenda, Zech, and Solomon were traveling, they ended up in a city that had a shop that sold exotic birds. Solomon found the shop fascinating, and got an idea. He asked for some money from his father, bought some empty cages from the bird shop, and a few hours later, was found by his father selling small birds to the locals. Solomon told the locals that the birds were "kookabens," and "they'll turn green and red when they grow up." Zech knew and told his son that the birds were really baby buzzards. But instead of scolding his son for being dishonest and ordering that he stops the scam and refunds the money to the townsfolk, he brushes it off as good fun, and later lies to his wife about it when Sol exclaims that he wants to use the money he made to buy land. 

Zech traveled to the Seminole village after being shot in the foot, hoping that their medicine man can heal him better than the doctor in Punta Rasa. Instead of making this a learning experience for his son, that the modern world doesn't necessarily have all of the answers and that some things can be accomplished through more uncommon methods used by the Seminoles, he tells the boy he's raised since birth that he has a brother, and that his father cheated on his mother with a Seminole woman. Although the boys do become friends, I believe that its Zech’s drive for maintaining and expanding their farm and vast wealth that prevents the two boys from learning from one-another, specifically Solomon learning from Toby, Zech's bastard son. Zech makes Sol promise to never tell his mother about Toby, which makes Sol question the trustworthiness of his father, and the lessons that Zech tries to bestow on him. 

When Glenda died, Zech told his son Solomon that he shouldn't worry about women, since they'll eventually die and you, the man, will be crushed. "Sol, don't ever get yourself tied up with a woman. It's like owning dogs. You get to liking them, and it hurts powerful when they go away. And they all go away. If you get to lovin' a woman too much, it'll bring pain and sorrow when she leaves you. It's done hurt me twice, and the pain of it is pure awful. It'll never go away. Don't let it happen to you."

What is wrong with this series of statements? This is what I think ultimately causes the complete failure of Zech's fatherhood, and the cause of Sol's spiral from the nature-loving steward of the environment like his father, toward the money-grubbing destroyer of natural beauty that he becomes. In this lesson, Zech encourages his son to forget seeking a mate, since their eventual death overshadows all happiness that can come out of the relationship. This idea is appalling on so many levels. The biggest one is that Zech is saying this, about his wife, to his son, meaning that if he, Zech, were to have taken the advice that he was currently bestowing to his son, then his son, ironically, wouldn't have existed in the first place! This implies that Zech thinks his love, marriage, and all that came of the relationship, including their son Zech, was a mistake. Horrible. 

Not only that, but Sol takes his father's advice, which makes him shift any focus he may have had, or would have had, away from  seeking a mate. This makes Zech become a workaholic. This, along with the lack of lessons on natural stewardship, and the importance of sharing the natural world with all that his father never seemed to get around to endowing him with, and with the land that he bought through the scamming of innocent people, Solomon completely shifts away from what the past 2 generations of MacIvey have acted, and becomes a rapist of the natural world. He cares more about money than anything else, betraying his father's legacy. Zech failed to teach his son the importance of the greater good, like when he saw all of the animals, predator and prey, seek refuge at a water hole during a drought.

Sol realized his failure when he visited his family home to find that it was torn down, replaced with orange groves. Donovan, the man who was hired to take care of the grove, exclaimed that Sol should be happy of his actions. It would mean more money for the company. His blindness and lust for money was the cause of the destruction of his family home. Ironically he realized that he did the exact same thing to the custard apple forests to plant vegetables, which led to Toby hating the actions and yelling at Sol.

Even after seeing this irony, he still sold all of his undeveloped land as lots. He then mirrored his “kookabens” scam by selling the land at huge inflated prices, only to buy them back with the same money after the prices plummeted due to a destructive hurricane. 

Zeck MacIvey created the monster that created the MacIvey Empire. That is his legacy. 

I relate to this character very little. I am educated, was born in a wealthy family, and have spent more of my life inside than out. I may have never seen the things that Zeck MacIvey has seen, but I appreciate how he tried to save the land before its ultimate destruction, even though he failed to explain the importance of preservation to his son. 

My legacy is still unfinished, but if my intuition and predictions serve me correctly, I will become a world-famous environmental engineer who solved the climate crisis with a yet-unknown form of clean energy that sequesters carbon greater than anything currently known. I will then run for US senate, and push forth sweeping legislation to tax carbon emitters and create a more natural and healthy world. I will be sure to impart in my children the importance of working with nature, and how not to destroy it, unlike Zech. 

Grunwald

"When our distant descendants move into the Fourth Millennium, I hope it will be remembered that this generation, at the beginning of the Third Millennium, put aside partisanship, narrow self-interest and short-term thinking by saving the Everglades."

Almost every day I think about that idea. Humans have come so far over the last 1,000 years. We've fought plagues, droughts, floods, nature, and each other, yet we are still here. We haven't blown ourselves up with the Hydrogen Bomb. We haven't starved out despite surpassing 7 billion of us existing all at once. We've accomplished a whole lot. Yet we still have so far to go. The amount of nonsense, illogic, short-citedness, hypocrisy, and otherwise stupidity that goes on among the decision makers of this nation makes me think that we won't see the 4th millennium. I'm not sure, and I suppose it doesn't really matter. I won't be around to find out, so the best thing I can do is try to push society in the direction of potential existence in the 4th century.

http://www.condenaststore.com/-sp/Yes-the-planet-got-destroyed-But-for-a-beautiful-moment-in-time-we-created-a-lot-of-value-for-sh-Prints_i9318014_.htm

But when it comes to the everglades, I do have hope. Everglades restoration is happening. $4 million is going toward restoration, in order to turn back the clock to before humans decided to damage it. I trust that by the time restoration has been completed, (if florida isn't already underwater from climate change) we will see a healthy everglades nearly identical to the one that existed 500 years ago. We have great potential to alter the hydrology of the planet for its benefit instead of our own. 

I have a very love-hate relationship with politics. This nonsense with Al Gore and CERP is something that makes me hate it."Unfortunately for the environmentalists, every other key stakeholder wanted the opposite. Sugar growers, home builders, water utilities, and Florida’s other economic interests were all determined to make sure CERP did not favor nature over people…" The idea of destroying the natural beauty of the everglades, something that exists no where else on the planet, for the sake of sugar cane, and houses just sickens me. And the idea that this nonsense could have lead to the election of George W. Bush by having Gore lose Florida makes me want to pull my hair out. 

Fortunately the airport didn't happen, and the Everglades lives to fight another day. I think the environmental movement both in florida and nationally is large enough to handle any potential future attacks against the everglades without nearly as much trouble. "As the new millennium dawned, the Everglades was not yet saved. But it was not yet doomed either." I trust that the everglades will not be doomed for quite some time. The nation is slowly but surely opening its eyes to the importance of environmental stewardship & sustainability. 

Douglas

The way Douglas describes the everglades makes me really want to travel there. Even the ways people described it negatively, “…vast, miasmic swamps, poisonous lagoons, huge dismal marshes without outlet, a rotting, shallow, inland sea, or labyrinths of dark trees hung and looped about with snakes and dripping mosses , malignant with tropical fevers and malarias, evil to the white man,” it’s just BEGGING to be explored! It just blows my mind that this wonder of nature, with no equal on the planet, is just sitting in our back yard!

I’ve never been there before, but I want to go as soon as I can. I’ve heard a lot about invasive snakes damaging the ecosystem and that some people are actually hunting the snakes. THAT would be one hell of a summer! I’d love to do that for a month just to see what it would be like. I can’t say I have the same passion as the author, but I sure would love to spend some time there (certainly not permanently).

http://news.ifas.ufl.edu/2006/06/judas-snakes-help-researchers-removes-pythons-from-the-everglades/

I heard an interesting story from one of my engineering professors recently regarding the everglades. I'm not certain if it's true or not. I trust that it is, however I've not done any significant, in-depth research on the matter. Apperently during either WW2 or the cold war, the US navy was annoyed that they had to travel all the way around the florida peninsula to get from 1 side to the other for training purposes. So they proposed the digging of a canal, similar to the Pannama Canal, that cuts through the state for more easy travel for their ships. Well, they dug the canal, and were just about ready to bust open the flood gates to fill it with water, when someone from the US Army Corps of Engineers came running in to stop them. If they were to create this canal. It would have caused seawater to flow south into the everglades and completely destroy the ecosystem. I don't know if that story is true or not, but it's scary nonetheless.

The way this author describes the Everglades makes me feel like I was there. It's an eerie paradox the way she calls the everglades "unchangeable changing."

Overall I'd say this is the most enjoyable reading of the three we've had so far. It's not preachy, it's descriptive. It's not repudiative, it's beautiful.

Leopold

Land is still property.
Leopold really likes to use big words to make him sound smart.
"That man is, in fact, only a member of a biotic team is shown by an ecological interpretation of history. Many historical events, hitherto explained soupy in terms of human enterprise, were actually biotic interactions between people and land."

I understand what this excerpt from his book is trying to say, that men should appreciate and care about the land, and that poisoning it, like we do every day, is like poisoning ourselves. I get it.

"Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land." Leopold 63
 I like this quote and am going to use it when necessary.

This excerpt heavily emphasizes people and land over profit. Which I support as well.

"it is only in recent years that we hear the more honest argument that predators are members of the community, and that no special interest has the right to exterminate them for the sake of a benefit, real or fancied, to itself." Leopold 65
This quote points out that there are bigger things in play than predators eating prey for the greater good of humans. The whole system is connected together. We can't just look at one aspect of an ecosystem and decided that it's beneficial for us. Just like we can't just decide that it's not beneficial to us, and immediately irradiate the problem. We have to look at the big picture.

"...in fact, much higher education seems deliberately to avoid ecological concepts." Leopold 76
Gonna have to disagree with you there, Al. If by higher education, he means universities, I'd say that in this day and age, Universities are doing far better in educating their students about the importance of maintaining a balanced ecosystem. Take, for example, this class.

http://www.china.org.cn/english/environment/238666.htm

Louv

Currently, the United States educational system is in a transitional phase. It is trying to have the best of both worlds: high test scores, and active students. Students can't read while running, and they can't run while reading. Louv describes where the educational system was before: Little time outdoors as students focus strictly on their studies. This is apparent in the quote: "many districts considered recess a waste of potential academic time or too risky"
Economists and doctors have proven that an active lifestyle in children and adults is not only beneficial for a child's physical health, but also for their mental health. Releasing energy in the outdoors can help kids focus better in class. Louv explains how useful a therapy nature is for ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). I personally think that the over-diagnosis of ADD and ADHD is a terrible burden on society. Overmedication of children will, in my opinion, cause severely negative long-term effects on not only the children themselves, but on a societal level; as is mentioned in the text, "Critics charger that often-perscribed medications....are over prescribed, perhaps as much as 10 to 40 percent of the time."
The text cites that the cause of this over-prescription is due to rapid urbanization. Children in cities don't have as much ability to release energy, causing hyperactivity. I think that this is one small aspect, but I'd consider the real culprit of overmedication and overprescribing ADHD is that adults refuse to let children be children. They want to run around, they want to  be free from the constraints of a classroom.
Further reading, however, emphasizes data that does link thinking more clearly and being in nature, so I suppose I was incorrect in assuming no link... "...those who had walked in the nature preserved performed better than the other participants on a standard proofreading task. They also reported more positive emotions and less anger." I personally don't have ADHD, and I personally find more solace in front of a computer screen than in front of a pristine lake. But maybe that's just me. Now that I think about it, it may have been my prevalence to go outside and play around in the woods next to my house that kept me from being diagnosed with ADD or ADHD. But that's just anecdotal evidence.

Journal Guideline

 Your journal entries are an opportunity for reflection on your own thoughts, beliefs, questions, and/or concerns regarding a particular topic, issue, or experience. It is a reflection of your learning in the course and a record of your journey through the semester, not a diary. Each journal entry should reflect a minimum of 30-60 minutes of work. The ultimate purpose of the journal entries is to provide you with a medium to express your ideas and opinions and to facilitate an understanding of the material and experiences in a way that is meaningful to you. Each entry is worth 10 points toward your final journal grade which is worth 10% of your course grade.

Guidelines:

Your journal will take the form of an online blog.  Blogger is free and easy to use, but any will be acceptable as long as you can submit a URL and I can access it.

Each entry must reflect 30-60 minutes of effort and should include appropriate and related photos, drawings, video clips, and links, anything that you wish to include.  Be creative!  This is an expression of your thoughts as you move through the course!

For entries related to reading assignments, select 3-4 quotes that strike you in some way and reflect on them.  Be detailed and give reasoning behind your thoughts. For example – don’t just say “This quote is dumb!” Tell me why it is dumb. Be prepared to discuss these quotes as a group in class.

All work reflected in the journal should be in your own words.  If you use other authors’ work you need to properly cite and reference the information including photos, graphics and/external links (photos by taken by you will need to be referenced as well).

You need to use correct grammar and spelling, using complete sentences, with correct English - "you" not "u".

Journal entries are due before class begins each week.  You will submit a URL to your blog in Canvas.

You will be graded on the richness of your ideas and discussion, not on your opinions.