Easter Island...

Reading the Easter Island article, I felt as if it was really repetitive and I could not really find when the writer of this article was getting to his main point. Anyways, although it was tough for me to focus on reading this article I did manage to find some things interesting. Firstly I've always recognized these weird little statues and compared it to Hawaii or something but never really thought anything of it or the significance of them when I see them in cartoons or t.v. and such. These statues were like clues that there was once rich civilization for these statues could not have been build without many natural resources. When describing the actual environment of where the islanders live and the islander's physical appearance and way of living it does not seem as if these statues would have been build by the same people. The writer stated that it was as if these statues sprung out of the ground. The article described that the island lacked many resources for food. For example, in the water it lacked many coral reefs or lagoons which meant that their were not many fish or shellfish. And there were no trees which is probably the most important resource. There diets were really high in carbohydrates which is really bad and often substituted healthier things with foods that were not very good to eat everyday since there was a lack in healthy foods.This article mainly focused on was these mysteries huge statues. The islanders in the past wasted extreme amount of natural resources around them that they could have used on their selves but instead used them to see who can build the bigger statue. The main things that they wasted was the trees. The trees were used to roll and help in making these huge statues that they were so fond of. The reason for this was that they were very competitive and the ones that made the largest investment into building their statues was like a sign of wealth. In class we discussed why they may have not been thinking of the outcome of wasting the trees. The reason could be the values of the people, none of them really thought about speaking out and focused mainly on pleasing their chiefs and trying to show off their wealth and status. This reminded me of how we discussed that in America many people display a sign of wealth by showing off things. For example people show off their wealth by wasting their money on the "fly-est" car and the most expensive, or the cleanest shoes, or the biggest, most power sucking, most expensive HD television or whatever else people try to show off. Many people complain about global warming, pollution, killing natural environments, killing endangered species, etc. but no one really does anything about it and no one thinks anything of it because most people will probably enjoy living their lives and think it won't directly effect them. In class we discussed how this may connect to the America, the American way of life. In America a natural resource that make every single part of our life going, by keeping our televisions on, our lights on, building anything we use in our daily lives, all of these things are dependent on fossil fuel/ oil. "Fossil Fuel is like the trees in Easter Island" said by Andy. I thought this quote was really interesting for we only have an limited amount of fossil fuel and America is wasting it at an extreme rate yet no one really realizes how fossil fuel effects us. Unfortunately for many cases people do not realize how to appreciate and treat something till it is not there anymore. When our whole society collapses because we have run our of fossil fuel and past out oil peak, that is when everyone will scratch their heads and wonder "maybe i should have cared...". Although as many people try to spend big on luxuries, making their house look nice, making their ride look nice which is our way of showing our status and wealth, they don't really think about how these things might not exist as the more people buy and waste natural resources the faster our society is going to get to that point of collapsing. And buying hybrid cars and going green may help a little but won't stop the processes of decrease in fossil fuel as those things still need oil to be built.