Reduce, Recycle, and Reuse

Reduce, Recycle, and Reuse

“Good Morning Vietnam” was the greeting Robin Williams gave every morning on the move he played in as a American soldier radio jock in Vietnam. I am starting this article out with these words of greeting because in the next 25 years we may be in a environmental resource war. I am near completing testing to become a first year high school biology teacher. As I study, one of the topics I should become proficient on to be taught to students in biology in ecology and ecosystems.

Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time there are five families that lived in a large grocery warehouse store. Let’s call the store Wal-Mike. These families are free to use any of the items in the store and all of the facilities in the store. As the years go by the families have kids and they multiply. Now the only thing I forgot to tell you about the store is that there are no future shipments to come to the store. Once all the items in the store are used then the families will die of starvation from a lack of food and water. (The human body can go many days without food abut only several without drinking water.) But that way in the future let’s see how long these families can survive. Will they divide the store into parts geographically? Will they start a barter system? Will theses families create a monetary system? Will some one try to become rich? Will they use things in the store to create and store energy that will not kill them? In the winters will set fires to keep warm? What will they do about the pollution from the smoke and garbage and OMG the rodents? Will they create some form of energy. As the families multiply and the store becomes more populated the resources and food and toilet paper and gardening tools and soil and water are depleted, what will they do? Will they have a moratorium on the amount of children born? Will they conserve the food? Will they conserve, consume and reuse?

Density dependence is the ability of an organism or species to reproduce in number according to the space. Carrying Capacity is the environments ability due to space and resources to maintain the maximum number a organism or species. Exponential growth is the ability of a organism or species to grow in vastness according to the amount of food. Aggregation is the destruction of the environment due to the multiplicity of the organism or species and the environment. Rape and plunder of the environment with no thought of tomorrow. The environment is used and mismanaged until destruction of the environment. To bring this home this is what cancer does to the human body, it multiplies until the body can no longer support the growth of the cells.
Take a look at any rodent population or roach or rat. The more food the faster they multiply. And I do mean multiply 2, then 4, then 8, then 64, the128, then 256 and so on. If we don’t take care of the resources on our planet and stop looking to acquire creature comforts with no thought or conscious, I can see Armageddon coming as we kill each other looking for water and food.
This is the story of the planet earth. I think I have painted a good enough picture for you to get it. Our fossil fuels are becoming depleted by 2015 we will be on the down stroke of the known supply. Economics tells us that more of the amount of a product that is consumed by the public the more valuable it becomes and the less the supply the more prices increases. We can see that the price of crude oil be 250.00 per barrel maybe 7 or 8 dollars per gallon at the pump. Then what, think about your travel expense, the amount of money you will have for food and clothing.

Tell our young people to go to school become thinkers and engineers and save our planet form ourselves, the time is short we have only a few years to turn back and slow down and save our planet and all of our lives and the lives of the babies coming into this mess that has been created by men who craved wealth and infected us with greed. Can you think of something that can Reduced, Recycled, and Reused?