Haley Conroy - 2/16/23 - “The Most Successful Species?” Humans in the Landscape Ch. 6/ Rotten

 

  • This week we read more about human domination of ecosystems and how one of the most striking disproportionate aspects of environmental studies is the role of humans on planet earth. The author acknowledges how humans can be seen as insignificant figures in the grand scheme of the natural world. This led into the exploration of how hurricanes or earthquakes or other natural disasters can destroy cities and land while also depicting the strength of nature. In this chapter, the author also acknowledges how environmentalists tend to see the influence of humans as a hazardous thing. This was interesting to me but I understand the insight due to the power of humans and how we always talk about how we can learn to better interact with nature and our species. One aspect of this chapter that was really interesting to me was a graphic found on page 129 that depicts the generalized pyramid of energy flow in the biosphere. This is something that I had learned about previously but it was interesting how this graphic depicted producers, primary consumers, secondary consumers, and tertiary consumers. 

  • Additionally, we explored the Netflix documentary called ‘Rotten’. Rotten dives deep into the food production underworld to expose the corruption, waste and real dangers behind your everyday eating habits. A lot of these institutions and corporations are involved in fishing, farming, etc and make interesting ethical distinctions. 

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