Personal Narrative: My Ecological Footprint

North America is increasingly using more and more resources, which results in outsourcing, increased pollution, and more. However, we are not at wits end; there are things we all can do, and have done as an entire continent to keep ourselves from over consumption. One example is removing disposable plastic utensils, and using paper

My personal Artifact is a baseball my son and I caught at the Giants game. It is white, round, has red stitches, and is smooth when new, but when we caught it it was beat up and the blue writing on it was smeared. A baseball is small and light in size. It can be thrown at speeds up to 100 MPH, or hit at at speeds higher than 100MPH, so when playing the game or watching you should be paying attention at all times. A baseball is made of a rubber or cork center, wrapped in yarn very tight, covered by white leather with red stitching around the out side, making it a very hard ball.

Now that I have been in The Fellowship Initiative for over a year, an extracurricular activity sponsored by JPMorgan Chase. I definitely see myself growing as a person. From advancing skills to building personal relationships with other people , I am glad that everything is falling into place in my life on a professional spectrum. In TFI we went on a trip this past summer to upstate New York for a camping trip called Outward Bound. For Outward Bound , we went away upstate for 10 days in the Catskill Mountains.

America- the land of opportunity, the land of the great. There hasn’t been a time when America hasn’t been great, however improvements are always underway for continued greatness. I can attest to a great America that exhibits qualities such as environmental prosperity, unlimited educational opportunities, and promoted health and wellness ventures. We must incorporate the best aspects of life into the American dream in order for the dream to fulfill the wants and needs of it pursuers.

On May 01st if everyone lived like me, 3 Earths would be required which means it would take 5.2 global hectares of productive land just to support me. Just looking at the results I expected it to be lower because of the lack of activities. My American footprint is below when it comes to earths, but over when it comes to the global hectares average. The five categories that contributed to my ecological footprint was food, shelter, service, goods, and mobility. Food was the highest contributor with a 1.4 gha and mobility had a 0.8 gha which was the lowest out of all the categories that contributed to my footprint.

Three ways that I am currently reducing my ecological footprint are unplugging things when they are no longer in use, turning off lights when not in the room, and energy efficient appliances. When I am not using the toaster, chargers, or the rice cooker, I will unplug them to avoid increasing the electricity we are using. If I am not in a room I will turn off the light to avoid wasting electricity. If I am in a room where the sunlight coming through the windows provides light we turn off the lights as well. In the house there are energy efficient appliances.

As a person goes through life he or she may wonder “Who am I?” and “What is my purpose?” The objective of this paper is to allow me to reflect and critically analyze who I am as a person. In this paper, I will discuss my social location and identity, my life experiences and my privileges and disadvantages.

Volunteering on behalf of Habitat for Humanity was an eyeopening experience, as I was able to witness the positive changes I made. Habitat for Humanity strives to bring communities together, using volunteers to build homes for those in need. Upon discovering my local chapter of Habitat for Humanity, I instantly signed up for the next build and spent my entire Saturday helping a family in need. Hardly having nailed something before, I was suddenly tasked with building the frame and siding of somebody's future home. I took this responsibility seriously and spent the next 8 hours meticulously nailing away, making sure I made no mistakes.

Backyard Oasis Time, time is relative, it is different to everyone, and everyone is different to it [1]. In my idea, night is the best time of day, the time where everything is most serene, so this is the time I ventured out into my backyard to sit, to relax. The sky is as dark as it can get, being my location, and the few stars I can see, are brighter than most anything around me . My favorite spot in my backyard is the weeping willow, there you can hear the wind rustling in the leaves and the small leaves constantly falling and hitting the little puddle of water that never seems to disappear . Going outside at night, I knew it’d be colder, though I did not have warm shoes with me, so I went out barefoot.

1. Introduction: Carbon dioxide (CO2) is one of the important green house gases (GHGs) emitted in the atmosphere through various human and natural activities. The human activities include rapid industrialization and urbanization, deforestation, excessive use of fertilizers in agriculture, excessive use of fuels, papers and many other manmade resources whereas natural activities include volcano eruption, forest fires, earthquakes etc. Emission of GHGs in the atmosphere leads to global warming which is one of the primary reasons behind the atmospheric changes that affect the human life directly or indirectly. The consequences of global warming are extremely harsh seasons, untimely rains, extended summers and floods that results in human deaths, destruction of flora and fauna in addition to the huge economical losses.

Throughout my life I have come from and created a few identities for myself. Perhaps, the most dominant identities that have been apart of my life are being an athlete and being a family orientated man. In this paper I will write about how my identities have shaped my life. First off I believe my biggest identity is being an athlete.

Saving the environment for future generations has been a controversy for many years. Some may say that global warming isn’t real and some say that the world is going to end. There are hundreds of organizations all over the world that protect our environment, all of the people that are part of these organizations have a need to help out. However, there are also hundreds of people that don’t believe in taking care of the environment. To me, nature is really important to me and I believe that every ecological system has some kind of value.

The. Last. One. Oxygen. That's all I need.

To become a sustainable society, we must eliminate our contributions to: No1. The increase of concentrations of substances extracted from the Earth’s crust (heavy metals and fossil fuels) No2. The increase of concentrations of substances produced by society (plastics, dioxins and DDT) No3. The physical degradation of nature and natural processes (harvesting forests and destroying habitat)

Following the industrial revolution, it took industrialized countries more than 200 years to establish a living standard under which an environmental movement could emerge. Furthermore, the gap worldwide between the rich and the poor is widening (OECD, 2015). As a reaction, the growing population from developing countries understandably demands equitable living conditions compared to citizens in Europe or the United States. However, establishing higher standards of living is opposed to concentrating efforts on reducing emissions. As a result there will be decades of ever-increasing GHGs globally, currently primarily caused by developed countries and by developing countries in the