#4

          On Wednesday, October 3rd, I went to a lecture over Environmentalism in the Sun Room located in the MU. This lecture was called "Environmentalism without nature", and it was put on by Paul Wapner. Paul started off by talking about his book, "Living through the end of nature; The future of American Environmentalism". The main point I picked up from this book was that humans have changed the world in so many different ways, it's hard for us to pick out specific things that we can actually call "nature". He really talked about how he believed that climate change would and will ruin a lot of things, including nature as a whole. Paul brought up a specific part of this book where he talked about how people were changing everything around him. He brought up a part where he lived next to a lake, a very quiet lake. Suddenly motorboats and people started appearing and using this "quiet" lake as a source of recreation and he felt that this was damaging the area. It wasn't just nature anymore, it was a loud, crowded area for people to be hanging around all of the time.
          Environmentalism is summed up to be a way to protect nature and the environment that used to be. It is a mix between science over the environment and nature, and governmental policies used to somewhat protect the environment in some way. It is not necessarily scientific and retains more to philosophical thoughts over conserving nature, such as trees, water, and land. Pollution plays a very large role in negative things happening to our environment. Air pollution is damaging our ozone, water pollution is damaging lakes, streams, and oceans in the United States, and even a type of noise pollution can play a role in this. Nature is not nature if people are driving away on a quiet lake in a loud motorboat poling a group of skiers. Anything that disrupts the natural ways of life plays a negative role in this. Paul believes that serious change needs to occur in order to retain our environment. New energy sources need to be invented that eliminate extra negative side effects, cities need to be started that dont produce air pollution and as much toxins to the environment through air pollution, and people need to start thinking abou their actions. I can not say I necessarily agree a hundred percent with what Paul is trying to say, but I definitely do agree with some of it. It would take a lot of work to get rid of all the negative things effecting nature, and unfortuntly I don't think its possible. However, some of these things can be prevented and we can get rid of some of these things. Paul did a good job of opening my eyes to some of these problems, and I will think twice before doing things that could put our environment in jeopardy.