Read 'n' Seed 1: The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight

The title of the book I chose is called "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: The Fate of the World and what We Can Do Before it's Too Late".  It's written by a man named Thom Hartmann.

The first part of the book is pretty much describing the current crisis earth (and therefore all of humanity) is in.  He especially focuses on the world's oil supply crisis.  Once we are out of oil this will lead to many other crises including famine, water shortages, and war.  After he illustrates our present state of affairs and gives an extremely gloomy look into our future, he offers suggestions for change.  After all, would good would terrifying the reader with all of this "world is about to end" stuff if there was no way to improve our circumstances?  To put it simply, Thom tells us that we have to change the way we relate to earth, we have to change the way we relate to others, but most importantly, we have to change the way we think.   

I chose this book because I'm pretty much in the dark when it comes to our oil crisis.  I've always thought of it as something someone way more qualified than me would find the solution too.  Until that someone told me what to do, I was just going to keep living like I was living.  I realize this is a terrible mindset.  I want to be more proactive.  Out of all of the choices, I think this book will make the biggest impact on my life. 
 
Check out these sites to learn more about this book:
1. Author's Website
2. Book Review
3. Book Review

There are 358 pages of reading in this book divided amongst 38 chapters that vary in length.  The book is also sectioned into 3 parts.  I think I'm just going to separate my reading into 4 big chunks over the 4 quarters, just to make it even.    Can't wait to start reading!

Reflection Post: Week 1 & 2

I enjoyed the first week of Environmental Health.  The ropes activity was a creative way to get us to be critical thinkers.  It’s a good reminder to always look at things from many different angles and to know that problems may very well have multiple solutions.  I feel like that might be a good summary for how this class is going to play out for me.  This was also an important class period because we learned the basics of blogging.  This was definitely a harder concept to grasp than the activity (at least for me)!  However, I’ve found that the more you play around with blogging, the more you learn.  It’s a learn as you go sort of experience!

During week 2 we did a number of things.  We started class with a small slideshow reviewing famous sayings mostly involving gardens and flowers.  We related those sayings to environmental health on a larger scale.  After that we watched a video clip from 60 Minutes about global warming.  Specifically, it was about the government censoring what scientists tell the public about the effects of global warming.  I was really disgusted to find out that the man in charge of editing these reports before they are published was a petroleum lobbyist previous to working in the White House.  Honestly, how can the public make educated decisions when the information isn’t all there?  Also, maybe if they did put out the real information about global warming and how serious it is for our environment people might be more apt to do something about it.  Lastly, we discussed our Read ‘n’ Seed books and our introduction post.  I was excited to choose a book.  When I did take a look at the list I even read the synopses for the books that were already chosen just because they sounded so interesting.  I would definitely add a few of those books to my reading list.  I chose a book called “The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight”.  In the description it said that this book was the inspiration for a short video called “Global Warning” in which Leonardo Dicaprio is the narrator.  I checked it out and it was pretty cool.  It pretty much just lays out the problem of global warming plane and simple so that anyone can understand.  You should all check it out!

Happy Friday!