past present future

Past, present and future this is part of our life. Ideally,We should look back to our past, live in the present and think of the future. Yet we always tend get the wrong idea.

We sometime get too obsessed with our past, we stop moving forward. We stop improving. Our past is for us to learn and gain experiences. Not for us the feel regretted or admired.

In present, we tend to waste our time. Nothing much is done as the time past. From this quote "today is a gift that is why we called it PRESENT", therefore we need to fully utilize our present make the greatest use out of it.

When think about our future, we tend to day dream. In the end we archive nothing at all. From present we think to build our future not dream of it. Our dream is show in the past not present. Time is ticking even when we are breathing. Each second past become our history, each second come is our present and each second coming to us is our future. They will not stop for you nor run faster for you.

So how could we not move into the wrong path? Believe it or not, we can do self hypnosis to correct our path. Our mental can be the greatest tool to success or obstacle to success. You may think it is strange to self hypnotize. How can we hypnotize ourself with clear mind? Simple do it when we are subconscious(just like when we feel sleepy). Then we keeping repeating in our mind on the thing we wanted to do. Those thoughts will be imprinted on our mind, and those unwanted thought will not be able to preoccupied our mind. At least now we will be more focus.

In summary, the way that our past, present and future turn out depend greatly on our mind set. And with great determination on self hypnotize we can set thing right.

Man-kind over rule nature

Long before there was civilization, the lands were green and the rivers were clean. Now the lands are brown and the rivers are dirty. Deforestation has caused lands to turn brown. According to Spicer (2006), "originally there were 15 million square km of tropical rainforest currently there are 7.5 - 8 million square km, with the current rate of loss about 2% each year and growing"(Spicer, 2006). So what could have caused deforestation? The answer is civilization. Most importantly, during civilization, urbanization increased the rates of deforestation. There are three main activities happening during urbanization: the increasing need for accommodations, food resources, and other economical activities. These activities have caused more forests to be cleared.

It is because human are having better life due to urbanization, population has been increasing all this while. According to Stock and Rochen (n.d.), "population is continually growing in the third world" (Stock and Rochen, n.d.). This tells us that population in Southeast Asia is growing. And because of this growing population, more urbanization has taken place to meet the people's demand for better life.

Firstly, due to the increasingly need for accommodations more forests are being cleared. We know that civilization is the cluster of human beings in one location. Urbanization is an activity that helps improve human life. So, one activity that can improve human life is to provide accommodations to people. This will provide them protection from the harsh environment that they will be facing. In the past, this activity was carried out by clearing forest to provide land for building houses and materials for building those houses. In this present world, forests are cleared to provide more lands for building more houses so as to accommodate the increase in populations. According to Lindsey (2007), "global markets consume rainforest products that depend on sustainable harvesting: latex, cork, fruit, nuts, timber, fibers, spices, natural oils and resins, and medicines", which means there is always a constant rate loss of rainforest as there is harvesting of rainforest products happening every now and then, and those products are also some of the ones that improve the well-being of our life. In short, it is urbanization that has helped people in getting better life to support bigger families. But at the same time, it has also destroyed our forests.

Secondly, due to the increasingly need for foods, more forests are being cleared. As we know food and water are the essential elements for human survival. In the past, human got the food from the wild and water from river. That is why early civilization was found near forests and rivers. It is because urbanization human realize how to be self-reliant on getting food resources. One method is rearing domestic plants and animals. So for this method to be carried out, places are needed for agriculture. Hence, to provide such places, nearby forest has to be cleared. To worsen the current situation of deforestation, human being ability to be self-reliant on getting foods has increased the chances of human survival. Thus, this has led to the increase in population and the decrease in death rate. In other word, more forests have to be cleared for agriculture purposes in order to meet the food demand of the increase in population.

Lastly, in this present world, economy is the greatest tool to get anything we want; therefore forests are cleared to make space for industrialization and business hubs like shopping center. Due to the invention of money, a civilization needs to be prosperous in order to get materials from other civilizations or countries to support their citizens' welfare. In the past, one civilization got materials from other civilization by exchanging those materials they wanted with the materials they have within their reach. Now everything is done in dollar cash. So urbanization is carried out to create wealth for the purpose of trading. It can be done by having economic activities such as industrialization and business hub. Again, the same element is needed for such activities to be carried. That is Land. The same thing applies as the previous two activities which is the clearing of forests. In addition, industrialization poses threat to the environment like land pollution thus strongly affected plants growth. As a result, this pollution double or triple the rate to deforestation. Consequently, in future time, we will only see rainforests on photos, papers or videos in the museum. Therefore, the economic activities occurring in countries in Southeast Asia have caused serious environmental problem of deforestation.

To summarize, since countries in Southeast Asia are still developing, and urbanization is employed for the development, they will certainly face serious deforestation problem. Land is not something that can be created without sacrificing other element, so we cannot have land without clearing anythings. Therefore, deforestation becomes unavoidable for urbanization's sake in Southeast Asia.

In view of the fact that to keep a balance between anything we follow this example. After we spend some money, we always find a way to earn money, so that we can keep a balance between our cash flow without exhausting all our wealth. But in this case, the balance cannot be established. It is because forests size is not easily maintained without using other lands for reforestation.

Reference

Spicer, J. (2006). Biodiversity. Oxford: Oneworld Pubns Ltd.

Stock, J., & Rochen, A. (n.d.). The choice: Doomsday or arbor day. Retrieved March 11, 2008, from http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/society/deforestation.htm

Lindsey, R. (2007, March 30). Tropical deforestation. Retrieved March 11, 2008, from http://eob.gsfc.nasa.gov/Library/Deforestation/

disposal schmees

Wastes are produced when we dispose of items by any means. Then these wastes have to be cleared either by the ‘zero waste’, incineration or landfilling method. Usually incineration of wastes and landfilling work hand in hand as waste ashes produced during incineration are mostly sent for land filling. In ‘zero wastes’ method waste products are reused or recycled into profitable resources. Yet in some cases during ‘zero wasting’ when wastes are unable to be reused or recycled, the incineration method is employed. The advantages of the ‘zero waste’ method are reduced depletion of natural resources, reduced pollution and reduction of space use by treatment plants. The only disadvantage is that the cost of maintaining and operating the plant is high. The only advantage for the incineration method is the treatment of wastes is inexpensive and can be easily done. The disadvantages are it depletes natural resource, causes pollution and takes up too much space in disposing of the ashes. Therefore, if I can consider which method to be employed in Singapore, I would consider the ‘zero waste’ method due to these reasons: land size, natural resources and environment.

Firstly, Singapore has limited land. If an incineration method is employed as the main way to clear wastes, one day there will be no more land available for development and we will have to stay in an environment full of waste ashes. Since all humans have to breathe, we will face problem like getting those ashes or flue gases into our lung. In the end we face serious health problem. On other hand, if we follow the ‘zero waste’ method the problem mentioned above will be greatly reduced.

Secondly, Singapore has no natural resources. Since the ‘zero waste’ method enables us to reuse or recycle waste into profitable resource, we will be less dependence on importing more outside resources. This will make Singapore less vulnerable to resource cut off from other countries.

Lastly, the ‘zero waste’ method is more environment friendly than incineration method. As fewer natural resources will be excavated, cause mostly the resources are recycled and reused. In addition, this method reduced pollution because less burning is done compared to the incineration method.

In the nutshell, in Singapore ‘zero waste’ method should be preferred compare to incineration method.

"Saving Nature"? Is it sane environmentalism to emphasize humans over nature?

In science, we human is categorize as mammal type animal. Then why is that other mammal type animals has to be sacrificed for the survive of man-kinds? All living things have desire to live. So why human life has the highest priority to be protected first?

Basically, the nature food chain cycle of living being start from plant, plant is then eaten by herbivore, herbivore is killed by carnivore, carnivore is killed by either a stronger carnivore or bacteria , then with the help from the bacteria plant get it nutrient from the dead carnivore. Again why is this been disturb by human?

In the past, we humans are just as wild as wolves, lions or dogs. The only instincts humans have are hunt and breed. As time past humans' brain ability grew stronger and develop new skill like starting a fire, create weapon and etc. Although, all other animals do evolve, they only grew stronger in their physical body to accommodate to the changing Environment.

Finally, in present, humans' brain has the ability to think and feel. It is because humans can think more complex things, they found ways to prolong life. Furthermore, it is because humans can feel and with their ability to think act as catalyst, they create emotion like love, kind, or even terror. Since emotion can classify as good and evil, for survive sake human enforce law to protect themselves from the evil emotion.

Therefore with law restriction, sane environmentalism is employ. If we remove all those factors human will just be ordinary animal and is part of nature, no special attention will be made in protecting them. We will not have any policy to employ to favor any beings, humans over nature or nature over humans.

We know that what is done cannot be undone. So we have to prevent rather that amend for the destruction made. Sane environmentalism is just utter rubbish point of view in showing the love of our nature. Most importantly, Greed is the greatest threat to all humans and nature. It is because of greed we want more land to better life, more food for better living and more money for better future.

In a nutshell, throw away our greed, humans and nature can coexist, there will be no priority over and beings.

(p.s. I know that greed also help human in moving forward. In the mean time it has cause too much trouble.)

picture source: http://arkansastonight.com/archives/2006_07_09_archive.html