Bay Checkerspot Butterfly: Environmental Analysis

The environment and ecosystem have been greatly affected since the early ninetieth century. Environmental issues increased as globalization spread to new countries. The use of fossil fuels, to produce goods and new technological advances, increased the amount of greenhouse gases. Environmentalists, like Dr. S. Weiss, explain the chain reaction globalization causes in certain areas. The brief extinction of the Bay Checkerspot Butterfly was a chain reaction of the emissions released by thousands of cars that drive on highway 280 everyday, that caused the growth of certain grasses, which covered the natural wildflowers that sustain the population of the butterflies. Likewise, “the globalization of hamburgers has helped destroy ecosystems and encouraged methane-producing cattle breeding” (Lechner 262). Although globalization is a huge factor in most environmental issues, it was useful in efforts to reduce the amount of environmental impacts and issues we are facing around the world. Because of globalization, “western countries had grown wealthy enough in the 1960’s to be able to afford focusing on environmental problems as a prime “post-material” priority” (252). Subsequently, many INGO’s were formed for conservation efforts, and a new political party, the Green Party, emerged from several countries.