Unit 4 Ethical Essay: World Resource Use

You and Me

Energy consumption, population growth, conservation, recycling. They are all such complex topics. How do we best help ourselves and our precious land. What do we do now so that we do not leave our descendents with an unfixable situation. It seems many of the solutions that are discovered to help us conserve our resources are later found to be damaging in a way that was at first not considered. Take, for instance, the practice of recycling. I know that I feel good when I recycle. I know that I am reducing the amount of material that will be dumped in the local landfill. But do my actions result in a net benefit for the environment? I do not have recycling pick up at my house. I have to drive to Sun Dog Ranch Road to drop it off. From there, I'm sure some big diesel burning garbage truck delivers all of the recyclables to processing plant. How far does that truck have to travel beforing reaching the processing plant? Do some goods get delivered to one plant and the others to a different plant? How much energy and other valuable resources do the processing plants have to expend to break my recyclables down into a reusable form? I don't know the answers to these questions, but I do wonder, do we end up with a net benefit or not? Again, these are hugely complex topics with no simple solutions.

Recycling is big here in the US and hopefully in all of the other developed countries of the world. Do they have recycling progroms in 3rd world countries? I am sure they do not. They also do not have individually packaged granola bars and disposable toilet bowl brushes. So the problems that we face today must vary by region and country. The US and other industrialized countries have focused on reducing population growth to a sustainable level. 3rd world countries have not. Should they? Absolutely. Although energy consumption per person is so much less in those countries, so is their supply of naturaly resources. In addition, progress towards leveling off the population growth there needs to start now. We all need to do our part.

More importantly, the industrialized countries of the world need to stay focused on reducing energy consumption and finding renewable sources of energy. Subjects like these can at times feel like they are far off in the distance. They can be topics we do not need to worry about today or that we leave for someone else to worry about. I, personally, am probably not going to solve the world's energy crisis. So why do I need to think about it. The reason is simple. We all can do our part. We can all turn our air conditioner up a degree or two and our heater down a few degrees. We can all change out our incandescent light bulbs to compact fluorescents. Some of us can ride our bikes to school or work instead of driving our cars. We can choose paperless billing and e-statements instead of receiving paper copies every month. Ways in which each and every one of us can contribute are out there, we just need to put them into practice.

Unit 3 Ethical Essay: Exercise

Get Out

How can it be? Exercise facilities seem to be popping up on every corner. But you don't need to be an expert to know that obesity is on the rise in our country, not only in adults but in children as well. So why is it on the rise? Because of the way we view exercise.

To start, what does exercise mean? Does it mean dragging yourself to the gym every day and plopping yourself on a treadmill for 20 minutes while you watch TV or read a magazine? Or does it mean throwing a dvd into your player at home and doing 30 minutes of cardio-kickboxing? Neither sounds like much fun to me. How does going for a walk with your spouse sound? Or pushing your kids on the prairie path in the stroller? Maybe today you ride your bike to the video store instead of driving. Then maybe tomorrow you take a walk up into the mountains to get some fresh air and take in a great view. We need to change our perspective on what it means to get exercise.

Secondly, there are a few problems with using exercise - especially exercise at a gym - as a means to achieve the goal of weight loss. First, what happens when you reach your goal? Do you stop exercising? Do you end your membership? Is it fun to be inside, when the weather is beautiful outside? I don't think so. And is exercise fun when the whole point of it is to lose weight? Probably not. Instead of using just weight loss as a goal, what about combining it with things like:

Tomorrow I am going to walk the same distance, but I am going to do it 1 minute faster.
OR
Tomorrow I am going on my hike except I am going to walk 5 minutes past the point where I turned around today.

As you reach these goals, set new ones. And what about combining these small specific goals with more geneneral goals: I want to feel healthy. I want to my lungs to burn a little. I want to feel the burn of lactic acid in my muscles and tomorrow I want my muscles to ache a little. I want to feel invigorated by the cold morning air. I want to feel strong.

Lastly - if at all possible - exercise needs to be a family event and it needs to be outside! The obesity problem in our nation's children is not going to improve unless they learn from their parents the importance of living a healthy lifestyle. There are so many wonderful ways to give your body a workout in the great outdoors. While you are outside getting some exercise, your children can be learning to appreciate the importance and greatness of our National Parks. Especially in the Prescott area, we are so blessed with 1.25 million acres of acres of beautiful National Forest land. And unlike a gym membership, when you excercise outside - you can get in a good workout - for free.
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So there you have it. We need to change our view about exercise. Forget the gym. Get outside and take your kids. Take in the view. Make it a priority in your family. If you need to lose weight, combine that goal with small specific and big, broad goals. Your body will be happy.

Unit 2 Ethical Essay: Food

When I was growing up in my parents house with my 3 sisters, dinner time was an event. It was a group affair. Mom would start dinner. She stayed at home while my dad worked on the farm all day. She made everything from scratch. The four of us would trickle in to help set up the table.

She would yell at us for snacking out of the salad bowl before dinner started. I distincly remember getting my hand slapped for that on more than one occasion. That was and still is one of her biggest pet peeves. Every night we would sit down to the best dinner one of the smallest kitchens (sans T.V.) in existance. We would eat and talk and tease each other.

Occasionally, the teasing would lead into a small food fight. Yes, I am embarrassed to say that I may have missed one of my sisters now and then and regrettably ended up whipping jello on the wall of my parents kitchen. Laughter would erupt; we would get into trouble. We would have to clean the whole kitchen including the walls, by ourselves.

Fast-forward 20 years. My husband and I both work. We both love mountain biking...for the workout, the freedom, the time spent in nature, the smell of the pines, the feel of the air, for the rush. It is a blast. We both feel so lucky to have a hobby that we both love. We can do it together and it is good for us. It gets us outside.

The downside to having jobs and having a hobby that we both like and can spend an endless amount of time doing, is that our time around the dinner table suffers. We tend to make a large portion of something once or twice a week and eat the leftovers for a few days. The good thing is that we love Mexican food. We have probably eaten burritos for dinner 80% of the time over the last year. We are using fairly heathly ingredients (chicken, blackbeans, corn, cilantro, tomatoes, cheese, potatoes), but some of them come from a can instead of being fresh. We also love to have salad every night.

Regardless of what we eat for dinner, we do not spend the time at the dinner table like I did when I was little. It feels like we get home and race through dinner so we can sit down and relax. We need to change our mind set so that we incorporate relaxation into our meal instead of hurrying through it.

I also love the idea of buying locally and eventually growing some of my own produce. I need to figure out how to make that a part of my life. The websites from the link for this essay are a great way to get started.

Unit 1 Ethical Issue: Genetic Technologies

Pass the Corn Please

Genetic engineering is the altering of genetic material. The purpose of genetic engineering is to produce a new, a better, or more of a "product." The "product" can be anything from insulin, to a salt-tolerant tomato plant, to a new liver. At the heart of genetic engineering is recombinant DNA. Recombinant DNA contains DNA from two or more different sources. To create it, scientists find a gene that has the characteristics that they are looking for, they cut out that segment of DNA, join it to a plasmid, and insert the plasmid into a host cell. As the host cell divides, the gene of interest is cloned, and you end up with, among other things genetically modified food. There exist both benefits and drawbacks over the use of genetic engineering in general, and more specifically over the use of its products in our farmlands, which ends up on our tables.

The benefits of growing genetically modified plants are numerous. Scientists have developed plant varieties that are resistant to herbicides. The benefit of this to the farmer is that weeding is not required and sometimes only one herbicide is required. What this means is that the farmer does not need to till, which contributes to soil erosion, and only one application of a herbicide is required instead of the application of multiple herbicides. Other plant varieties have been engineered to tolerate cold temperatures to prevent the devastating effects of frost. Plant varieties are also being engineered for improved nutrition. For third world countries that rely on one crop as their main source of food, improved nutritional value per serving could help reduce malnutrition.

At the other end of the spectrum is another view of the use of genetic engineering as it relates to our food supply. One of the biggest concerns is about the safety of the food that is produced. In general, there is concern that there is no way to know which products at the grocery store contain genetically modified foods and which do not. Many also believe that genetically modified foods may introduce new allergens, especially in children. Others worry over the impact to the environment. The pest resistant varieties of plants that are being developed could also be inadvertently killing other organisms, along with the pests. It may also be possible for the gene to transfer to other plant species. For instance the herbicide resistant gene could be transferred from the target crop into a weed species. This could make that weed tolerant to the same herbicide.

As you can see, there are valid arguments both for and against the use of genetically modified plants in the food supply chain. There are benefits that range from reducing erosion to improving nutritional value. The biggest arguments against their use are the potential health risks and the potential impact to the environment.

I believe that this argument will continue for some time to come. Research will continue; new variations will be developed and tested. Tests and studies will continue to determine if any concerns are legitimate. Labeling will be improved, so that people will have the option of choosing genetically modified food or choosing non-genetically modified food. Profit, in the end, will determine whether the use of genetically modified plants continues.