The Environment

The Environment
Threshold
Hartmann cautions his readers of what is happening to our environment and how humans are driving themselves to their own form of suicide. The Earth is similar to the human body, it is very complex and if you lose an organ, most likely, you will lose an important ability. The author compares the vanishing of organisms to losing parts of human organs. “The salmon goes, a kidney is gone. Whales vanish, a lung is gone. Because-like the organs of our body – each fish [even though whales are mammals] is part of the larger whole of the ocean, its loss reduces the living viability of the ocean.” (Hartmann 24). Marine life is essential to humans and is at sake of diminishing due to overfishing and global warming.
“In science, Dr. Worm and eleven other scientists from Canada, the United States, Panama, and Sweden reported on all the sixty-four large marine ecosystems worldwide, which collectively have produced 83 percent of global fisheries yields over the past fifty years. They found fisheries all over the world in or on the verge of collapse” (Hartmann 25).
Hartmann is saying that many species of fish are going extinct because fishing companies are over fishing, and also because the waters are getting warmer.
We are able to detect that the water is getting warmer due to looking for how much watts is absorbed from the sun, and comparing that to the radiation that was lost into outer space. Theses numbers are supposed to be in balance with one another, but what we came to discover is that Earth was absorbing more energy than it was in the 1880’s. This is a problem because if there is a warming in temperature then ice glaciers are going to melt [which they done so] and raise sea levels. This allows for more sun to be absorbed in the Earth, because the glaciers ice are supposed to reflect the sun back.
Hartmann poses a solution, which is to “reverse these numbers- [or] turn them negative- long enough to go back down below 350 ppm, [if not] the human race (and most other mammals) may crash into a dead end wall” (Hartmann 33). PPM (parts per million), represents the carbon dioxide level which, for the first time, is increasing. If the carbon dioxide levels gets out of control, it will reach a “tipping point” in climate change that would result in disaster.
What I found extremely interesting is how the author of this novel suggests that to reduce to 385 ppm, where as Kerry Emanuel, the author of What We Know About Climate Change suggest we stop at 450ppm. I am unaware which suggestion is most likely correct, but the levels of carbon dioxide should not be increasing so drastically like it is now.



Hartmann, T. (2009). Threshold: The Crisis of Western Culture. [Unknown]: Viking Adult