Indigenous Resistance

                Marker’s piece on the Costal Salish people of the Pacific Northwest demonstrates what happened to the native people of the Americas when Europeans arrived. When the Europeans arrived, they started to take over the land and the people. When all was conquered and the people were broken, they demanded assimilation. They did everything in their power to make this happen. Schools and churches were the best way that they found to teach the natives their culture. Through the schools many natives of the Americas were converted to the European religions and taught the languages of their conquerors. There were many cases of entire peoples broken without much resistance. This was not the case for the Costal Salish people of the Pacific Northwest.

                The Costal Salish people took home in the area that is now covered by Washington State and Canada above it. Because the lands were divided, the people were as well. Both sides, however, tried to assimilate the native people. They used private schools and public schools to try to get the younger generation of the Costal Salish to become assimilated in the culture of their surroundings. The people resisted. They did not assimilate as planned and fought against their captures culture. The children in both situations had difficult times resisting the constant barrage of culture, but kept strong with their families. They did get reaffirmations of their culture through the winter spirit dancing revivals which healed “the psychological trauma from attending both residential and public schools” (Marker 769). The Costal Salish people are strong willed and have strong spiritual and cultural bonds.

Third Essay Plans

For this next essay, I thought that it would be a good idea to choose a place that has been making great strides toward sustainability and agricultural solutions. After a bit of searching I found that Asheville has been doing just that. The city has been praised by many vegetarian organizations for its friendly environment towards their practices and way of life. Asheville also has a very large Earth Day festival and has been voted as one of the best places to be on Earth Day. Asheville has been trying to localize agriculture even more than it is now and will continue to improve in the future.

A Second Artifact

            This is a picture of many hands holding the world. If looked at closely, it can be seen that the hands are different racially as well. This is because the world does not care about race or ethnicity. This means that anyone can help out with the problems that earth is facing if they really want to. There are also many hands wrapped around the world signifying that many people are needed to help with the problems that we have.

            The world that we live in is in grave danger of being destroyed by our actions. We can only fix and undo everything that we have done to the world by working together. How a person looks should not determine how they feel about the earth. The picture shows all different races helping out and holding the earth and that is how people should be with the crisis that we are facing. We are ethically bound to help the earth that has housed us for thousands of years, so we should not let petty, superficial things stand in the way of us doing just that.

Environmental Ethics

                This is a picture of a light bulb. The bulb is filled with a peaceful landscape and behind the bulb is a row of wind turbines. This picture can be interpreted in many ways, but the main way that I see it is that people have a responsibility to safely power the earth. All of the crazy things that people do to power their homes and life are destroying the environment. This should not be the outcome of attaining energy, but far from it.

                Environmental ethics is caring for the environment in the same way that we care for other people or animals. People need to treat the environment with respect because it is the only one that we have. If we destroy everything on this earth that is green, there will be no way of restoring the planet to what it once was. One of the best ways that people can treat the planet respectfully is to use more environmentally friendly energy alternatives. We cannot rely on fossil fuels forever; we need to get people to start using better, sustainable alternatives. As the picture shows, using sustainable wind energy can power a light bulb while keeping the earth in pristine, beautiful condition.

                As a people, we have a responsibility to keep the earth clean and livable for future generations of people. We should not be consuming all of the natural resources that we do at such an alarming rate, because there are not enough to support that lifestyle. There are environmental ethics that we have to abide by if we want the earth to survive long enough for another thousand of generations to come. This all starts with figuring out ways to create energy more sustainably and recycling many of the items that we use to reduce the amount of garbage on the planet.

Carbon Capture and Storage

                With the high amount of carbon dioxide that is circling in the air at this time, the world is in a very difficult spot. In order for the world to return to a manageable amount of carbon in the atmosphere, the total needs to be cut by about twenty percent. Now this may sound like a daunting and difficult task, but there are solutions out there. One of these solutions is a technique called carbon capture and storage (CCS) and it involves taking carbon from the atmosphere and storing it below ground.

                After people have entirely drained a gas field or an oil reservoir of its contents, all that is left is a space in the ground that people will never think to look at again. CCS takes these spaces in the ground and finds use for them. The carbon that is taken from the atmosphere is stored down there and pretty much sealed away so that it will be taken out of the equation. This process has become fairly controversial in the past few years because of the risks that it can involve. There is a small chance that the carbon dioxide will leak from the reservoir and will contaminate its surroundings. The reason that this is so controversial is because the contaminants could spread into the groundwater that people drink. This is a controversial problem but a very unlikely occurrence because of how many times it has been tested and proven unlikely. A fairly modern storage facility in Australia proved that this was the case.

                In the case of carbon dioxide storage in depleted gas fields, the benefits highly outweigh the risks. The ability to take away almost a large chunk of the carbon in the atmosphere is a great necessity and people have found a way to do it. Now all that needs to happen is for the public to develop a greater understanding of the process and how insignificant the risks are when compared to the benefits.