Blog Question 1

In regards to the question of what the most pressing environmental concern in my view is, I'd suppose that they're all pretty important. What really scares me is the potential for drastic ecological or environmental change or collapse causing such a drastic shock as to create a worldwide disaster.

For instance, in another class today we discussed the idea of the butterfly effect (you know the butterfly flaps its wings and causes a tsunami), and how a slight increase in ocean temperatures could drastically alter ocean currents and cause massive and rapid climatic shifts. Formerly temperate regions would become near arctic, once humid rain forests would become virtual deserts, etc., and all this in a matter of relatively few years. The results would be catastrophic. This simply one scenario however. Another example might be a disease that hit food staples that are almost genetically identical with no mass produced strains surviving. If the disease were to effect the dwarf wheat we read about for instance, the resulting famine would be monumental.

This is what is really scary to contemplate, for while I believe that there is hope to change our environmental habits, if such a disaster were to happen first, the resulting human tragedy might be irreversible. The governmental response might be even scarier. This is not to suggest that the current environmental degradation is not a tragedy in and of itself, but... contemplating a post-environmental disaster world doesn't exactly give me a warm fuzzy feeling.