Becca Hedges
Dr. MacLean
Geo 3010-01
6 Jan. 2017
Reflection 1
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The first 100-days of president elect Donald Trump’s administration will be interesting. He has posed several monumental tasks to accomplish. Under his six measures to clean up corruption and special interest collusion, his second item suggests a federal hiring freeze as well as reduction of current employees. This will directly affect the management of land entities. Range trend and watershed studies, grazing permits for ranchers, and habitat rehabilitation projects are just a few of the sectors that will see a negative impact. If there are not enough employees out in the field collecting data on what flora has come back after say a wildfire, there is no way of accurately measuring if a treatment performed on the area has worked let alone actually being able to perform the treatments themselves. Predictions of the food sources for wildlife can not accurately be made if there are no employees to go and collect that data. Wildlife will die or relocate to where they can be sustained. This could create a strain on the resources of the area in which wildlife relocates. Proper personal are needed to ensure that ranchers are abiding by the regulations of the permits they hold for animals like cattle and sheep. Overgrazed locations become barren and useless, not to mention a sad looking landscape. They could also fill in with invasive species that provide no nutritional value to animals. While some of these potential jobs are also found on a state level, some departments rely on federal funding.
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The national park system is another sector that will not be able to manage the protection within the established park boundaries. This defeats the entire purpose of having protected land. While there are many other sectors of the federal government this item would effect, the last one I will discuss is about our water. Water management is a potential problem everywhere, particularly in desert environments. If we do not have anyone to monitor our reserves we run the risk of going through what California is experiencing now. This 100 day item is one that is most concerning to me personally as my husband’s employment is on a range trend crew.
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In the seven actions to protect American workers three items will have more impact on the environment than the others. Item five proposes to lift restrictions of production. This particular item proposes many questions for me, for example; will environmental protections of emissions be relaxed? What kind of quotas would energy related companies have? How much of our resources hold a potential of becoming depleted if we aggressively take from them? If we reopen mines and oil fields or begin new ones will there be regulations to restore the landscape back to the way it was before hand? While this could keep, bring back, or create jobs the price will be seen on the landscape, ground water, and even in the atmosphere. The more refineries and mines there are the more greenhouse gasses we release. While some operations do have the requirement of restoring the area, most do not. These areas are dangerous to humans if entered. If the mine still has resources when closed some elements and compounds like lead, uranium and sulfuric acid are harmful to our health.
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Item six talks about energy infrastructure projects. These projects like the Keystone pipeline arose from the fact we are a society of consumption. This also makes us a society of I want it now. Pipelines aid this type of behavior. Pipelines anywhere have the potential of malfunctions. Earthquakes and plant roots can create leaks and clogs contaminating the surrounding area. Sure there are people who will come in and clean up the mess but no one can guarantee 100% they will get it all. Nothing lasts forever and everything deteriorates over time. Wind and solar farms are becoming more common and are improving the quality of the energy gathered but they are still not as efficient and they take up so much land.
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Item seven worries me. Climate change needs to be addressed. What I will say about this is before I returned to school I did not believe it was a real thing. My opinion has most certainly changed. My opinion changed based off of becoming more educated about the topic. I was able to make a more informed decision. By cutting off funding we are denying the public of the education they need. We are sending the message that it is not real and/or we don’t care. This will drive the already established mentality of consumption without regard to the effects it creates.
The last item in Trump’s plan I will discuss is the end of offshoring. This particular item while also aiding in the return and creation of jobs feeds into to some other items I have discussed like climate change. Even if business are given tax breaks for materials made or mined in this country it is not eliminating the toll the environment faces. Right now we outsource to other countries, but this still contributes to the global loss of green spaces and damage to our atmosphere.
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Edward Burtynsky’s photographs made very powerful statements in and of themselves. Some of them made me feel sad for our world, others really made me think about how I am contributing. Each picture I viewed sparked questions. In California 45 million tires sit there, some catching fire. Some questions came to mind. What good can come of this? How many toxins were released when they caught on fire? Why can’t we find some way of efficiently recycling them? Another set of pictures were the fields littered with oil rigs. What a depressing landscape. How will that field look when the rigs are no longer in use? In China the photographs of the 3 gorges dam just shouted out this is needless to me. While dams can be good for water retention and water generated energy this dam displaced 13 separate communities. He talked about how the people from these communities were the ones who did the demolition of structures. How good of a job did they do? Did they get all the trash from the ground? If not how will that affect the water quality? Was there any material they were able to reuse? But most of all why did they rebuild so inefficiently? During the section with the photographs of the huge factories in China I was thinking about my contribution to them, particularly the coffee maker factory. Wow! I drink a lot of coffee. I have had many coffee makers over the years for various reasons. How many of them were made in factories like that I wondered.
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All of Burtynsky’s pictures in some way can be tied back to the items I discussed from Trump’s 100-day plan in many ways. They are interconnected because the photographs communicate that the world is driven by the “I want it now” syndrome with no regard for long term effects of our precious planet. It shows the humans are using earth as though they have another one to go to when this one “breaks”.