Pollution

Environmental Disruption In The American West I joined the service learning last week which name is Recyclemania Service Learning. This service learning is about environmental disruption and how to protect our environment. I got really good time and new experience during the service learning, and I also supposed it’s a valuable class for me because I learned a lot of things about pollution. The first part of The Recyclemania Service Learning was to talk about the environmental disruption, especially the water pollution and the disafforestation in the American West. The instructor showed how serious the water pollution was. Many factories and rubbish recycle companies dump their refuse into the rivers or oceans. The flotsams not only pollute the water but also kill the aquatic life. Other animals or people catch them and eat them, thus the toxicant will be absorbed by animals and people, and cause the illness and cancer, also the toxicant will be spread farther and farther. It seems that some people are far away from the pollution, but they still will be affected by the pollution. The second part was to pick up garbage in the parking lots. After doing two-hour job, I found there are lot of rubbish which was thrown beside the cars by the drivers, also cigarette butts all over the campus. These showed that how people don’t care about their environment which is closely bound to them. In my opinion this interesting service learning is reflected to the pollution of the American West in many ways. From the service learning we can knew that the pollution of American West is really serious. The American West has serious water pollution problems due to the rapid development after the Second World War which I knew from the service learning. Government built a lot of factories along the rivers, and they dumped their scraps in rivers. This caused big pollution and Ecological destruction. We also can see from Anderson and Chamberlain’s textbook, Power and Promise, “Moreover, large corporate farms did immeasurable damage to the environment in California and elsewhere over the years, due to overuse of aquifers and polluting wells with fertilizers. In Los Angeles County today, some 40 percent of the wells are polluted” (page 376) From this quotation we can see that the water pollution causes a big problem, because water is one of the most important resources for humans. We can both learn from service learning and Power and Promise that the American West is a place lack of water resource, and it seems water pollution is a big issue for the American West. I think, certain counter measures need to be taken as soon as possible. To begin with, the governments of all countries are supposed to formulate rules and regulations to deal with the pollution problem. The service learning also talked about the another main reason caused the environmental disruption in the American West which is disafforestation. Because of the demand of lambers, thousands of trees are being cut without replacement. This cause a great damage to our ecological environment like water and soil loss, lacking of the oxygen supply, changing of temperature and so on. It is also reflected on Anderson and Chamberlain’s textbook, Power and Promise, “The forest industry in the Pacific Northwest, like the agriculture industry, struggled in 1980s, though it began its decline much earlier.Weyerhaeuser began to export lumber to japan about 1926, but exportation and growing domestic demand for lumber led to a concern that forests might be depleted forever.” (Page 362) From this quotation we know that the American West people in order to satisfy themselves to ignore the balance of ecosystem. It’s also like the drivers in the parking lots of our school who throw their garbage on the ground. But they don’t know they are damaging their own environment. As we all know, trees are very useful and bring great benefit to us. Unfortunately, nowadays in many parts of the American West even the whole word, lots of people fail to realize the importance of trees. They have cut trees down in large numbers without a plan. I learned a lot both from service learning and Anderson and Chamberlain’s textbook, Power and Promise. They both have similar ideas and related to the environmental disruption of the American West. In my opinion, it seems obvious that tomorrow will be better and brighter only if everyone does his part and tries hard to seek solutions for its control.