A Comparative Analysis Of Bill Mckibben's Waste Not, Want Not

As a society of Takers, what can we do to curb the destruction of our planets resources? As Ishmael states, “What were you expecting a magic word that would sweep all the nastiness away?” (Quinn 250). Here, Quinn is saying that our culture’s destructive tendencies are not something that will self correct it self or just simply disappear. He also reminds us that all of our industrial and agricultural accomplishments have been based on inventions. Therefore, that is there inventions and

It may seem strange not to get in your car to go to the market to pick up produce when you can hand pick beautiful produce from your very own home. Grown with the very water you wash with. Talk about recycling. In an Earthship all water that is from the sink, tub or laundry is used for watering the garden. It’s astonishing the amount of water being wasted as it heads down the drain in the shower when it could very well be tending to a bountiful garden that would feed an army! Where will we be, or where will future generations be when water is scarce and we as a nation could have done something about it. Making simple changes to our everyday comfort zones can be difficult but it is something that we can afford to do at this point when it is not as critical as it will eventually be.

Hill provides the audience with a chance to see how having less belongings can cause happiness through a logical perspective. Hill chose this casual tone for his speech because he was speaking to a large group of intellectuals who focus more on the business side of how a few proposals work. Graham Hill is a knowledgeable and fair speaker because he gives the audience a better understanding about how personal space is changing over the course of generations.

“Many current discussions about sustainability focus on the ways in which human activity...can be maintained in the future without exhausting all of our current resources… there has been a close correlation between the growth of human society and environmental degradation - as communities grow, the environment often declines” (603).

“Does the U.S. have a chance of reducing the amount of waste in the world today?”

There are different ways people in the United States waste a lot of natural resources. For instance, just like Allen Billington claims, “We are wasteful people.” News programs and print newspapers show that in fact Americans are the greatest consumers of all. Every year trees around the world are cut down specifically for U.S. different purposes. Such as construction of houses, buildings, furniture, educational supplies, books, pencil and paper. Also, California is experiencing a drought, and some people knowing is becoming very scarce keep on wasting it. These are some of the causes on how people waste so much water, is either by taking long showers, washing their car, washing their hands, laundry and irrigation. In the news they say that the number one use of water in California is through irrigation. Lastly is the way we are destroying little by little the air we breathe through the pollution of cars, refineries, deforestation of fires and factories. All of these aspects have a negative effect on the change of the climate. The three different ways people in the United States are wasting natural resources is from cutting down of trees, the consumption of water in excessively amounts and lastly polluting the air we breathe.

If we choose to keep cutting down trees and consuming natural resources then they won’t be able to replenish fast enough and there will be none left, posing many problems like having fresh water available to drink, wood to build products, and land to farm on. Obviously not many people are properly educated on environmental issues and how they make them worse but if we as a society choose not to educate those who aren’t then they will continue to use too many resources and not think about how their lifestyle is hurting our environment, which will make environmental problems even worse than they are today. Now as humans we’ve always wanted to get bigger and better, but if we keep expanding and building as much as we are then there won’t be as many resources available because we’ll have taken over spaces and land that was needed for those natural environments to live. Although this seems like a drastic point and something that we can’t really stop, if we always think that we need to keep building, someday we just won’t have any land to do it and also at the same time realize that we don’t have resources

First, Gross argues that if we stopped wasting resources, it would contribute significantly to sustainability for the US alone. For Instance, in response to a water crisis, California used 31 percent less water than it did back in July of 2013. He says this “shows that great leaps in conservation are possible with comparatively little upfront investment” (Gross). The fact stands that water is plentiful and extremely cheap, but also a valuable resource. Similarly, Gross urges us to keep the same

"Save the Planet," "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle," "Go Green." Quotes like these have become a commonality in today's age. We all are familiar with the large efforts to help preserve the environment. In "Ideals of Human Excellence and Preserving Natural Environments," Thomas E. Hill Jr. sums up his essay by stating, "The point is not to insinuate that all anti-environmentalists are defective, but to see that those who value such traits as humility, gratitude, and sensitivity to others have reason to promote the love of nature" (688; par. 4) This excerpt provides the thesis behind Hill's argument. The author found that

In Christopher Morley’s satirical piece, “On Laziness”, Morley attempts to convince his readers to take time for reflective thinking instead of just continuing through their effective, restless lives. He achieves this purpose through redefinition, irony, details, as well as his concrete assertions.

This can be easily avoided with parents raising their children in wise counsel. Resourcefulness will always silently fight wastefulness but the definitions of the two can be perverted and manipulated to align with each other. My mother is a spectacular example of a resourceful human being, she saved the aluminum pins on soda cans for only a few months and made purses out of them for my sisters. These purses not only have a unique value being how they were created and what they’re made from but also a sentimental value that would keep my sisters from ever getting any other purse. For this reason people will never become as wasteful to the maximum in the sense of throwing things away but instead being what is known as a

In today’s fast pace society, we often do not pay much attention to the amount of natural resources we are consuming, and the limited supply of these resources that we will have in the future. The depletion of natural resources is the consumption of a resource faster than it can be replenished. All human beings depend on these natural resources for our basic needs. People often take for granted the abundance of natural resources we have as of now, and use them at an unsustainable rate, putting many of these resources on the verge of becoming depleted. It is reported that humans are using 30% more resources than the Earth can replenish each year, thus leading to deforestation, degraded soils and land, and polluted air and water. Our current world population is 7.2 billion and growing at a rapid rate of about 1.14% per year, however the earth’s natural resources are only sustainable for 2 billion at the current demand. As populations grow, consumption increases at a faster rate than technology can find new ways to produce natural resources, and the problem gradually gets worse. At the way humans are living, we are using 2-3 times more of the earth’s natural resources than what is sustainable. Our ecological footprint is 1 ½ times the earth’s ability to provide the resources needed to meet this level of consumption. When humans need employment, food, or ways to raise their standard of living, they often look to practices such as deforestation and burning of fossil fuels as easy

Since I knows, human has overuse natural resources and it will run out of the earth soon. I started to conserve natural sources at my house first. First, what I had done was conserve energy at home. While people at home, they like to turn on the light and computer all the time. They waste on energy and waste forty eight cents every two hours if they leave the light on. This is the reason why I always make sure that I turn off the light and computer before I leave the house. Second, I reuse the old furniture. Because most people think old furniture had smell and old, they just throw it away and buy a new furniture instead. To me reuse the old furniture is pleasant way to conserve natural resources because I can reduce deforestation and I can decorate new furniture to however I would like to. Moreover, I save money and get a new furniture at the same time. Third, I reduce water waste. It is another way for me to save natural resources because people have waste so much water on their daily and

What is my view on waste? There was statement in our reading that stood out to me, and that was we are a “throw away” society. We always must have the latest and greatest then we forget about an item that seems to be obsolete and then just throw it out. Example would be the latest and greatest cell phone that is released approximately every 6 months; we tend to discard outdated items every year, because society tells us too. Obviously, we play a ginormous role as a nation in discarding things improperly. We just throw materials out and try to forget about it. The saying goes and I truly believe that most American’s look at waste as “out of sight is out of mind”, to be blatantly honest before this class I had that same thought process. Once I threw something out I just forgot about it and figured it wasn’t my problem anymore.

Did you know that humans have access to only 1 PERCENT of the world’s freshwater? That is about 7.4 BILLION people sharing that 1 percent of usable water. We use about 80-100 gallons of water EACH day. Although you may think “oh well, I’ll just use less water”, you know that’s not going to happen. You need to understand that your actions are contributing to this water crisis. For an example, jobs and our education plays a role in this by grabbing attention whether or not it uses water and because of the popularity, no one really cares about the disadvantages anymore. There are certain water issues that contribute to this water disappearance like road salt, littering, plastic water bottle usage and MANY more. Not only are we