In "The Idea of a Local Economy", Berry discusses the wrong doings of the corporations and our global trade. I do agree with his solution of a community to be self sustained. It makes sense that a community be self reliant before that community exports or imports. A point that he made that was really interesting is he says that "...the economy is a machine, of which people are merely the interchangeable parts." . It is sad and evil but true. Those "parts" are also being constantly "replaced" because a lot of them have no choice but to accept the job and its wage. Berry states ideas that seem obvious and common sense but it is something we don't do. He says that we have a problem of letting others take care of the conflict at hand. Even now with out environmental crisis at hand we gave that problem to someone else to fix and that someone else, Berry says, is out politicians of our modern world. In his essay Berry tells the horrors that our globalized economy has created and what will happen if we do not correct our ways now.
I read Al Gore's, "A Planetary Emergency" and I have to say although it is short, he packs a punch in his essay. Something that stands out in his essay is when he states "Indeed, without realizing it, we have begun to wage war on the earth itself." Taking a minute to reflect on that, it is startlingly true. Al says that we have begun to trap more heat in our atmosphere and are causing our ice caps to melt and lowering our available fresh water resources around the globe in major cities. I think that that quote is powerful enough to set some people straight and help set up a possible plan to implement education to the public to inform them of this war.
I have been talking about how the people need to see direct negative impacts on the environments and I think we are finally reaching that point where people will start having to personally deal with these problems and that's when the true efforts to try and improve the environment will start.
ReplyDeleteI think the society should be more self sustained but it's really hard to do because of big corporations like Walmart. Like berry said we give our problems to the rich politicians and they do not care about the environment, all they care about is money.
ReplyDeleteVinny I really like the quote you used for the Al Gore speech i believe i wraps up the whole speech quite effectively. It also is a short speech like you said, and his word choice is what really had a huge impact in my case because each word must have been picked carefully.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of the economy being a machine is really accurate. I think it's interesting how something so complex could be made without us really intending it. It's like our natural urges make it instead of intentional invention. I agree in part with making a local economy. My family keeps a garden and it's great to be able to walk out and eat whenever it's summertime. I hope this article inspired at least a couple of people to start something like that on their own.
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