Charley Fite
Professors Bill Garcia/Jamie Strickland
TA: Amanda Stone
LBST 2213: Q01
1 December 2014
Stewardship: Trees/Deforestation
In recent centuries trees have become a very crucial resource used in everyday life to keep our world’s current economies and lifestyles thriving through their variety of uses such as paper products, construction material, and space to plant crops in mass proportions. Different countries have distinct worldviews within their cultures that influence whether people are likely to take steps to either promote or reduce deforestation. In a stewardship worldview, deforestation would be seen as a major threat to our future as humans and to the world itself, and we have an obligation to stop it.
Stewards believe that with good management strategies and mindfulness, we will not run out of resources in the future. Their goal is to create a world where Earth continues to thrive and humans can still prosper comfortably. Deforestation is seen as a harmful action to stewards for many reasons. For example, deforestation leads to a destruction of habitat, increase in greenhouse gases, loss of biodiversity, unfertile soil, and even lower precipitation due to a decrease in evapotranspiration. It was stated that global deforestation accounts for the loss of thirty-six football fields worth of trees every minute, and that the Amazon rainforest will no longer exist in fifty to one hundred years if it continues at this rate. Deforestation also causes a rise in the amount of carbon dioxide in the air, thereby allowing global warming to pursue even further. It has been noted that the lack of trees causes evapotranspiration percentages to decrease. That leads to less precipitation in those areas, making it more difficult to bring back the rainforests once they are gone.
Losing all of our rainforests would alter atmospheric chemistry because the dynamic equilibrium that the vegetation and climate have with each other would be massively different, so the goal for stewards is to find ways to reduce atmospheric changes before it is too late. Examples of how to do so are the methods: replanting rainforests, fast wood monoculture, and multispecies plantations. Fast wood monoculture is the process of growing trees only for the purpose of using them for paper products and construction material. Multispecies plantations allow for more diversity and biodiversity in what grows there, but are more difficult to maintain. Despite all of the hard work necessary to save our rainforests, people that believe in stewardship will do whatever it takes to help start regrowth processes and try to assist in passing environmentally friendly laws, because they understand how important trees are to nature and our survival.
Stewards sometimes learn to accept this worldview because of the country they live in and it’s culture. A developed country that has become reliant on technology and modern ways of living would be more likely to have many people that fall in the planetary-management worldview category because our culture emphasizes technological advancement to meet our humans wants and needs, and not Earth’s. However, there will always be a mix of these worldviews even within the culture. If a person is educated well in the subjects of science they will be more likely to have a stewardship or environmental wisdom worldview because of their understanding of how important the Earth and it’s processes are for us to continue living. I, personally, consider myself to be in the stewardship category. I encourage human technological advancement but I am passionate about the importance of preserving our resources, like trees. People from other cultures in developing countries that rely more heavily on agriculture and nature would be more environmentally friendly and may even fall in the environmental wisdom worldview. Each person has their own views, but the ones who actually do something to slow deforestation will be the ones that make the biggest difference in our future.
Professors Bill Garcia/Jamie Strickland
TA: Amanda Stone
LBST 2213: Q01
1 December 2014
Stewardship: Trees/Deforestation
In recent centuries trees have become a very crucial resource used in everyday life to keep our world’s current economies and lifestyles thriving through their variety of uses such as paper products, construction material, and space to plant crops in mass proportions. Different countries have distinct worldviews within their cultures that influence whether people are likely to take steps to either promote or reduce deforestation. In a stewardship worldview, deforestation would be seen as a major threat to our future as humans and to the world itself, and we have an obligation to stop it.
Stewards believe that with good management strategies and mindfulness, we will not run out of resources in the future. Their goal is to create a world where Earth continues to thrive and humans can still prosper comfortably. Deforestation is seen as a harmful action to stewards for many reasons. For example, deforestation leads to a destruction of habitat, increase in greenhouse gases, loss of biodiversity, unfertile soil, and even lower precipitation due to a decrease in evapotranspiration. It was stated that global deforestation accounts for the loss of thirty-six football fields worth of trees every minute, and that the Amazon rainforest will no longer exist in fifty to one hundred years if it continues at this rate. Deforestation also causes a rise in the amount of carbon dioxide in the air, thereby allowing global warming to pursue even further. It has been noted that the lack of trees causes evapotranspiration percentages to decrease. That leads to less precipitation in those areas, making it more difficult to bring back the rainforests once they are gone.
Losing all of our rainforests would alter atmospheric chemistry because the dynamic equilibrium that the vegetation and climate have with each other would be massively different, so the goal for stewards is to find ways to reduce atmospheric changes before it is too late. Examples of how to do so are the methods: replanting rainforests, fast wood monoculture, and multispecies plantations. Fast wood monoculture is the process of growing trees only for the purpose of using them for paper products and construction material. Multispecies plantations allow for more diversity and biodiversity in what grows there, but are more difficult to maintain. Despite all of the hard work necessary to save our rainforests, people that believe in stewardship will do whatever it takes to help start regrowth processes and try to assist in passing environmentally friendly laws, because they understand how important trees are to nature and our survival.
Stewards sometimes learn to accept this worldview because of the country they live in and it’s culture. A developed country that has become reliant on technology and modern ways of living would be more likely to have many people that fall in the planetary-management worldview category because our culture emphasizes technological advancement to meet our humans wants and needs, and not Earth’s. However, there will always be a mix of these worldviews even within the culture. If a person is educated well in the subjects of science they will be more likely to have a stewardship or environmental wisdom worldview because of their understanding of how important the Earth and it’s processes are for us to continue living. I, personally, consider myself to be in the stewardship category. I encourage human technological advancement but I am passionate about the importance of preserving our resources, like trees. People from other cultures in developing countries that rely more heavily on agriculture and nature would be more environmentally friendly and may even fall in the environmental wisdom worldview. Each person has their own views, but the ones who actually do something to slow deforestation will be the ones that make the biggest difference in our future.