Final Project

Here is my video for the final project. I took aerial views at both WMU's Parkview campus as well as Kalamazoo's Asylum lake. I took this to try and capture some of the natural beauty in the kalamazoo area. I also conducted several interviews, but due to the time constraints was only able to include two.

Link to the video

Mission Blue

Mission Blue revolves around Sylvia Earle and her personal experiences as well as professional. Here is a link to her national geographic page for those who are interested in some background information about Sylvia Earle. Link

Ever since Sylvia was a little girl she was obsessed with nature. She was always in the water or exploring the woods. Wanting to discover anything and everything she can. This is why she takes the impact on the ocean to heart. It kills her that no one is doing anything about our negative impact on the oceans. Shes not afraid to call people out and tell them that they're wrong. Her advancements in the scientific community lead the charge for many women scientists. There's a specific coral reef in the Caribbean that Sylvia visited in the 70's that is no longer there. It's completely gone and its due to our high population and our never ending hunger for fossil fuels. We also have nearly fished some species extinct. Fisherman are catching blue fin tuna before they're even of age to reproduce. We continue to fish them younger and younger. There remains around 5% of the blue fin population. We must slow our use of fossil fuels. We must find better alternatives to our fishing methods. The ocean is a beautiful natural system. A system that impacts our lives much more than we can even imagine.

The film doesn't really go into detail about how we can minimize our impact, but it excels at grabbing the attention of the watcher and making them realize that we are destroying the oceans. Sylvia really stresses how much they have changed just in her life time and how concerned she is for the oceans during the lifetimes of her children. It truly opened my eyes. From this class I had a little prior knowledge of our impact on the oceans, but I didn't realize it was as severe as it is. Overall the film was well made. I didn't find it dry much like other documentaries. It kept my attention and informed me on our negative impact on the oceans.

Changing the Worlds Ideals (Bibliography source)

I plan to utilize personal interviews of a few highly qualified individuals to get their own professional and personal take on our current climactic situation. I intend to use parts of this article in order to try and understand Trump's side of the argument.
(Article)

Trump states that wind farms are not a wise energy generator. Says the highest day ever was in the 19th century. That's just the beginning of Trump's views on our climactic crisis. I find it mind blowing that our current president refuses to recognize global warming as a serious issue. With all of the scientific research, how can he refuse to recognize it? I want to use this article as a baseline in my video project. Utilize some of Trump's quotes in interviews asking individuals what their takes are on the situation. Essentially this article is going to allow me to generate better questions, making the video more personal and hopefully allowing the video to hit home to a larger number of people.

One Degree

Much like we all know our world is constantly warming. One degree discusses many of the changes and their impact on our environment.

It has been projected that due to the increased temperature that there will be another Dust Bowl, but this time much more severe. A specific example mentioned is that the high peaks covered with snow and ice are melting. With the melting it is disrupting water supplies, wildlife and the diversity in the ecosystem. With the rise in temperature ice sheets are melting. Ice reflects 80% of the sun's heat, while the oceans absorb 90% of the sun's heat. Causing a rise in temperature in the waters. This rise in temperature allows for hurricanes to be more prominent.

With "Six Degrees" being written in 2007 the information is outdated. We are experiencing much of what has been mentioned to an even greater extent in some instances.

Ishmael Ch 10-13

Firsts I want to say that I can relate to how to narrator feels, when it came to him not being able to speak with Ishmael for a week or so. My best friend currently runs track at Hillsdale and our schedules have been so busy lately that we've had no time to actually hold a real conversation. Not having that ability to even just talk about something completely random for hours makes you think back and miss the days where you could. Its especially hard when you and the other person have the same mind set and share a lot of the same views. Much like Ishmael my friend Nate and I have talked about things more in depth about our world and society. Including, religion and how the universe came to its current state.

Back on the topic of the chapters. I found it eye opening when Ishmael and the narrator agreed that leavers have based their lives around the trial and error of their ancestors of millions of years, while the takers on the other hand base their lives off of thousands of years of experience. Takers also refute the past as much as possible and continue to look forward. In doing this we as a society forget to look down and fail to see the consequences of our actions in the moment. We tend to notice the consequences when it is much too late.

I hadn't really remember much of the plains Indians and wanted to see if they truly made the transition "backwards" when switching from agriculture to hunter-gatherer. Here's a link with a description of their lives before the horse and after the horse. Once they discovered horses, they made the transition to hunter-gather due to the increase in mobility. However, this transition cause many issues. Among these issues is tribal warfare, with their increased mobility they were constantly bumping into other tribes.

An extremely eye opening section was when Ishmael asked the narrator if he was homeless would he hit a button to go back to the time of the hunter-gatherers. When the narrator responded with no, it made me realize that our society is so stuck in their ways that many would rather live miserable lives as a taker than live a life as a leaver. And Ishmael pointed this out to the narrator, stating that "mother culture" has done well convincing him he'd rather be a taker than a leaver for no knowledgeable reason.



Another section that got my attention was the part when the narrator and Ishmael spoke of being civilized. Ishmael became very upset when it came to our society looking at leavers as "uncivilized" which is exactly how our society views most leavers today. I feel its how our society views anyone and anything that we don't understand their ways of life. Our society for the most part views the same way of the leavers as animals. Many animals are intelligent creatures, but we don't understand their ways of life. so, most just label them as dumb or uncivilized. Which is sad to say, because we should put the effort in to try and understand those that we find "different". Their ways going about things honestly can be better than our current ways. We should always be looking for ways to improve ourselves. (Maybe that's just the engineer coming out of me) The comparison between our society and prison is scary, because of how true it is. No matter how rich or powerful you are we are all stuck in this society. There is no escape. We all have to do our time one way or another until our sentence is over.

Ishmael Ch 9

When the narrator walked into the room for his regular meeting with Ishmael he is unsure of how to feel when Ishmael is on his side of the glass. Even though he at this point should know that Ishmael is not going to hurt him and he has had many talks there is something different talking to someone with a barrier and without a barrier. I compare this to talking to someone online or over text. Speaking for myself, there are some people that I'm just more comfortable talking to over the phone or another electronic way than in person. With that barrier you only see the emotion the other person wants you to see. They can mute themselves verbally or over text send laughing emojis when they are really crying. This is the problem with our generation. We are moving to electronic interaction rather than face to face confrontations. There are many arguments that start as text messages. With a text message you put your own twist on the others words and a majority of the time that twist is in a negative light. Removing that barrier may feel weird at first, but it's still the same person. It removes any confusion, because you get to hear how they intended it to be heard. You can't put your own twist on it when it comes right from the source. I feel this is why the narrator was uneasy when he saw Ishmael on the other side of the glass. Even though they'd had conversations together there was always something keeping them separated. Something keeping each other separate from one another and maybe its in a more literal sense. Where the narrator saw Ishmael as more of a reflection of himself and now that can no longer be the case.

Ishmael Chapters 5-8

My fraternity (ATO) has reasoning behind the choice in its letters. The Alpha (A) and the Omega (O) stand for the beginning and end being bound together by the cross (T). Much like the narrator realizes the beginning and end of civilization is mankind. When civilization was first created we all were unaware of the negative impact we had upon the planet. And now we as a civilization we are so stuck in our ways that we refuse to change our habits or for some even acknowledge our impact on the planet.  We just continue to conquer nature.

The analogy between our future and the past involving the wright brothers gave a lot of insight. The only certain in our situation is that there are no certainties. The Wright brothers had little knowledge of what would work and what would fail. So, they found out on their own. Much like their designs, our future is going to be filled with trial and error. We are the trend setters. We have to fight the current if we want to continue swimming.

The narrator sees the basic layout of how life should be. Once this is pointed out he realizes that our civilization is truly depressing. So depressing he tries to suppress how he feels by drinking it away (Terrible idea). He realizes that he doesn't want someone there to guide him for the few short weeks he has with Ishmael,, but for his life. I understand where he's coming from when it comes to being guided. Our lives would be so much simpler and less depressing if there was someone always there to tell us what we need to do. To tell us right from wrong.