My thoughts on creating a powerpoint compared to writing a paper is I like creating a powerpoint a lot more. I think it is easier to state the key facts of what you are trying to talk about. In creating a powerpoint, you are given the chance to make the presentation yours. I can incorporate my writing with pictures, graphs, and links that relate to the topic. I can also correlate the the background of the slides with the topic. In writing a paper, one is limited to his writing only. One can express himself through writing, but in powerpoints, one can show a picture or graph and describe how it relates to the topic. Overall, powerpoints are a lot easier in expressing one's topic because it is not limiting. It is a nice way to incorporate more than just writing.

Since the the beginning, the earth has undergone many changes. Rocky Mount, for example, has changed tremendously since its beginning in the 19th century. Since its establishment, buildings, houses, and roads have taken over the once untouched land. With the one of the first cotton mills in North Carolina and the Wilmington-Weldon Railroad, Rocky Mount became a historical and developed city. This picture is a bird's eye view of the city of Rocky Mount in the early 1900s. Although this picture shows the construction of many buildings and roads, a lot of things have changed and have been built since then. Growing up in Rocky Mount, it is strange to see how much has changed since the 1900s. Rocky Mount has developed a lot since then and it is weird to see all the empty lots of nature. I love seeing old pictures of how things used to look like, but at the same time, it sad to see how much things have changed. Even today, I watch big areas of trees being knocked down to build roads or unnecessary buildings. Seeing how nature has been destroyed by development of the past years is upsetting that nature is being damaged and disappearing. 

I believe the relationship between the environment and religion is small. God created the earth and I think it is important to respect and protect what God has created. When one thinks about religion, one does not usually think that the environment is a valuable part of religion. In the video, Mary Evelyn Tucker talks about how humans today no longer see the earth as sacred. She thinks that humans do not know who they are anymore and it reflects by the way they are treating the earth. In the article "A Green Future for Religion", Bron Taylor incorporates many environmentalists belief on the crisis of the environment. He mentions Maurice Strong, a Canadian who served as General Secretary for the 1992 “World Summit on Environment and Development”, and his view on the earth. Strong says that he worships the earth because it is sacred. He sees the forest and the trees as churches. Slowly, the nature of the world has gone down hill and is no longer able to provide as much because of pollutants, population growth, exstinction of animals, industrialism, and so on. People are starting to realize how the the deterioration of nature is effecting the poor and religion. We rely on the environment for so many things, but it is quickly being destroyed and it makes one ask the question, what are humans going to do if they continue to treat nature like this? Tucker and Grim believe that the way we are living now is causing a huge crisis. We need to change our relationship with the environment because it is threatening everything on the earth. Although I do not believe religion is mainly about nature, I do think God wants us to protect it. The earth provides one with so many resources, and with those resources disappearing, the beauty and the value of the earth is going away too. Although Tucker mentions people worshipping the earth, I do not agree with her. No one should worship the earth because God created the earth to provide for us, not to be worshipped.  Even though people know that the earth provides us with plentiful resources, God is the one who put those resources on the earth not the earth itself. I think people look too deeply into ideas like this and religion should be simple and not overanalyzed. I do agree that the way we are treating the earth is harmful, but the earth is changing over time. The population is the largest it has ever been, areas around the world are being industrialized more and more, and new inventions are being created that are not always the most efficient and green. People should not rely on the earth for everything they need in life, they need to rely on God. God should be the one people go to for help and desperation. He is the one who created everything in life and is able to do anything. Religion is not about focusing on protecting the earth, so I think people should more concerned with their relationship with God and worshipping God for all that He does.

Synthesis of Richard Kahn’s “Towards Ecopedagogy”

            Ecopedagogy is a movement towards promoting environmental education to the public. Being educated about the environment is important because it is essential to alerting awareness, teaching skills and behaviors towards the environment, developing sustainability, and promoting balances between human’s life and relationships with animals and the environment. Although environmental education is very important, Richard Kahn, in “Towards Ecopedagogy”, also explains how environmental education has been “unable to provide either solutions or stop-gaps for ecological disasters that have continued to mount due to the mushrooming of transnational corporate globalization over the last few decades,” (Kahn 7). He describes how globally, we need to be more than environmentally educated to become more environmentally sustainable.

As the world has become more focused on industrializing and less on conservation, the environment has been the most effected by it. With the population doubling and growing extremely larger every year, forests, animals, ecosystems, and fossil fuels are all disappearing. Kahn explains that we need to change the way we are living or everything is going to become extinct. He mentions that capitalism is responsible for the poverty and the suffering people are experiencing today. Worldwide, people are not realizing and are not educated on the issues of today’s environment. People are quickly destroying and damaging what is left of the environment and that is why Kahn, along with many others, is towards ecopedagogy. Recent studies have shown that Americans want environmental education to be taught, but the same studies show that Americans have a huge misunderstanding of a lot of the basic environmental ideas and facts, which show that even with environmental education, there is still a lot work left to do. Modern environmental movements have tried to come up with ideas to help preserve, protect, conserve, and help the environment, but they have not been successful. William Stapp, founder of environmental education, believed that “the goals of environmental education were: knowledge of natural environment, interdisciplinary exploration, and inquiry-based student centered framework,” (Kahn 7). Kahn states that the development of cultural ecoliteracy is essential for our goal of sustainability. Being ecoliterate gives one an understanding of the roles imperialism, colonialism, and industrial capitalism has had on the environment and an understanding of how to act towards the environment.

Many founding figures of the ecoliteracy movement believe in multiple parts of the environmental education, including education for sustainability, humane education, and ecojustice education.  Founding figures see the essentialness of environmental education, but they also see the problems of it too and wonder why it is not fixing the crisis. In Apple Valley, Minnesota, students, who attend the School of Environmental Studies, go to zoos to incorporate it into their studies and environmental themes into their work. Students who attend Zoo schools have shown to “improve reading and math scores, performed better in science and social studies, and develop ability to transfer knowledge from familiar to unfamiliar contexts,” (Kahn 7). Although students are being educated with environmental issues and ideas, it lacks students becoming involved in environmental programs and reaching out to environmental issues and rights.

In “Towards Ecopedagogy”, Kahn discusses the importance of ecopedagogy, the movement of development of environmental education and sustainability. Federal and state governments have said that environmental education needs to be taught in public schools, and most Americans have agreed that this is important. Even though being educated about environmental issues and ideas is important, it is shown in studies that most adult Americans do not know the basic facts and information about the environment. Followers of the ecopedagogy movement see how essential it is to inform the public about the environment, but they see how, even with education, we are still struggling to conserve and be sustainable. The amount of animals and species being killed and ecosystems being destroyed annually is increasing large and it keeps getting worse. With environmental education, people are able to understand how to treat the environment and be aware of the problems we are facing. It is important to be educated on environmental issues, but it also important to act on ideas that are working to help the environment and are promoting well-being of animals and ecosystems.