The car makes a sharp turn into the mass of greenery, greeting an image torn right off the pages of a fiction novel. Fairytale houses are woven within the trees, dappled sunlight tinting their roofs, and a dirt trail winds down to a dreamy fishing pond and a farm populated with llamas, donkeys, rabbits, and sheep. The air tastes crisp. The warm sun draws families out: parents chat with neighbors over ice tea as their children bounce along the community trampoline, and an aged couple saunters…
Charles Darwin is commonly misattributed with developing the entire theory of natural selection, which he describes in his work The Origin of Species. However, Darwin was not the first scientist to take note of phenomena regarding species self-improvement nor did he even coin the term “natural selection”. Instead, Darwin was simply the first to provide accurate, natural world justifications for why species’ self-improvement occurred and, moreover, was the first to leave divine influence out of…
To Be or Not To Be Countless animals are dragged away from their natural environments and are forced to live as a subject of observation. In addition, they serve as amusement for the animal capturers, the human race. Over a time span of one hundred years, zoos have been a popular source of entertainment for interested human beings who are curious to learn about the various kinds of animals that the world holds. A certain question has been floating in the air for many years. “Are zoos cruel to…
(Marion and Leung, “Environmentally” 229). These issues can drastically change the natural environment surrounding the trail and result in ecosystem loss or extinction of key species, which is why prevention is such an important action to take. While regulatory actions have been the first reaction to environmental degradation, education has become the best way to minimize the detrimental effects of tourism on the natural world because of the simplicity in application, widespread effects, and the…
The age-old question of nature vs. nurture is one that continues, even today to plague both philosophers and scientists. The question pertains to the idea that we as human beings are either influenced by our genes or our surrounding when it comes to our behaviour. Both sides of the argument have logical fact supporting their thesis, however a new thesis has a risen; perhaps it is not nature vs. nurture, but nature via nurture. Establishing the idea that our behaviour is based on our genes and…
Environmental Education & Sustainability in Schools Many school districts are debating whether or not to include some form of environmental education in their curriculum. Environmental education not only benefits student health and knowledge, but encourages them to develop into citizens who are prepared to make a positive impact in local and global communities. According to the United Stated Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), “Environmental education is a process that allows individuals…
and agriculture. The manufacture of electricity is the single leading cause of CO 2 secretions in the United States. Coal provides 57% of the overall energy harnessed to generate power. The burning of coal indisputably creates more CO 2 than natural gas or oil. Roughly 86% of all coal used in the United States, is utilized for electricity generation…
The Energy of the Generation After the nuclear incidents in Chernobyl and Fukishima, it has created a worldwide panic over the usage of nuclear power. Due to the perceived risks, people were skeptical about whether the use of nuclear power was a reasonable option for producing energy. As a result, countries are resorting to renewable sources such as solar power, wind energy, hydropower, etc. It became an alternative to nuclear energy. Despite the nuclear incidents, nuclear power has greatly…
only plastic trees, humans are not truly restoring the environment to it’s natural habitat at all. Rather, humans are altering the natural in a way that is more convenient to us. Both environments would now have an added artificial human touch to their nature. The two cases accomplish this on different levels of the human involvement and convenience spectrum. In case A, humans are eliminating only one aspect of the natural wetland environment. Mosquitoes are a rather large and common aspect of…
According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, hydraulic fracturing or fracking is a “well stimulation process used to maximize the extraction of underground resources.” The resource most commonly extracted using hydraulic fracturing is natural gas. The practice of hydraulic fracturing is highly controversial as proponents and opponents debate its environmental benefits and costs. To begin, the use of hydraulic fracturing has greatly increased in the twenty-first century. The…