Chapter 24

Here we are on our last reading in our book “World History.”  The class was long, and lots of work, but yet it went by quickly.  I learned so much in such a short time.  Every time I get closer to the end of a class, I start to feel sad.  I truly enjoy all my classes here at NDNU, as well as this History class.  Sometimes I wished that my classes were longer instead of short courses.  But at the same time, I am glad to see that I am getting closer to being finished with my education. 

Now this brings me to the last chapter I read.  This chapter brought me back to when I was a little girl playing with a Barbie doll.  I never looked at the doll “as being more harmful than an American missile” (p. 723) as it states in this chapter.  Let alone Ken being her unmarried companion.  I just thought Barbie was a mature, shapely doll that I was playing with.  When I was young I always did notice her figure and everything else that came with it.  At a young age, of course we don’t have that type of figure yet, and I guess when looking back we probably did want to look like her when we grew up.  But I never saw that being harmful to me.  I never knew that in other countries they were seeing the Barbie as a negative influence on their children. 

When I look back at the first chapters when human first evolved, using basic old stone tools and also known as gatherer-hunters, I think of them as that how we were at the beginning of mankind.  Then the Neolithic era became a bit more advance using new stone tools, and then came agriculture.  We look at how amazing we have grown on this earth from the beginning.  Most of us would think of this as progress, but after reading Chapter 24, the progress we have made is not really progress as far as the environment goes.  With all the new technology, our environment is being destroyed.  There are three ways that the environment is being change:  1. “Is by the quadrupling of the world’s population in a single century”.  2.  “The ability of humankind to tap the energy potential of fossil fuels” and 3. The economically growth.

With all the above, it’s changing our forest and grasslands.  Some animals and plants are being extinct.  There is heavy air pollution in some cities.  For instance, Japan are having to wear facemask.  The pollution is even killing people in Mexico at a large rate.  We all heard years and years ago that the “chlorofluorocarbons have thinned the ozone layer, which protects the earth from excessive ultraviolet radiation” (p. 749).  Has anything really been done to protect the ozone, since it’s been pointed out?

Logging has been a great concern for years.  All of our forests are being destroyed.  I enjoy hiking the beautiful areas like Yosemite.  If technology keeps destroying the environment then our children’s children will not be able to see the world like we see it right now.  This is a global concern now and with this technology someone, and all of us need to take a different approach to save the environment.  Otherwise we simply won’t have one to save.

Last, I thank Professor Andrews for making this class entertaining with all the debates, and projects we did in class.  Even though I would rather being traveling somewhere in Europe this summer, I am glad that this class was part of my summer.  It was as if I were in Europe, well perhaps studying it instead of actually being there.