Ecological Vampirism
THIS IS JONO'S POST
“The machine appeared
In the distance, singing to itself
Of money. It song was the web
They were caught in, men and women
Together. The villages were as flies
To be sucked empty.
God secreted
A tear. Enough, enough,
He commanded, but the machine
Looked at him and went on singing.”
- R.S. Thomas
Los Angeles: the jewel in the desert, a bustling metropolitan city built in an area unable to
sustain its population. As nature crumbled around us, our primary concern was maximizing
water supply to satisfy our massive demand for water in turn transforming the L.A. river into a
pitiful stream, a tear of God slowly trickling through the monstrosity of industrialization and
development that is our beloved city of angels. Although the roulette wheel of blame may point
in many directions such as city officials, the army corps of engineers, flood control officials, low
rainfall( Deverell 115), the ultimate cause of the L.A. river’s demise was increased demand
causing decreased surface flow in favor of underwater flow.
The natural flow of debris from the mountains into the ocean has been blocked by
debris flow dams to prevent the loss of property that exists in a place where homes should not
naturally exist. This results in two problems: the first being that our beaches lose sand, forcing
us to import sand from elsewhere and the second being that we need to hire dump trucks to
empty debris flow dams just to put the debris back up on the mountain where it can then again
fall down. Additional human activity in the area has only made the issue worse: logging has
made topsoil looser resulting in heavier debris flows and the rising intensity of chaparral fires
caused by human activity result in aliphatic long chain hydrocarbon layers on top of mountains,
decreasing water absorption and resulting in more floods and landslides.
In the face of the inhospitable environment of L.A., we have dominated nature, sucking
it dry of its resources and creating new technologies and machines to combat the
environmental issues which we created such as creating dams to combat the landslides which
we caused. We have become vampires upon our environment, but now the question is if
whether or not such vampirism is sustainable or ethical and whether or not we can continue to
treat the environment as a pool of resources to be extracted.
While the citizens of Los Angeles have sucked the life out of a river and ignore the dangers of mountains, I would not begin to say that all LA citizens are vampires to the environment that we live in. While I hope that the nature lovers outweigh the environmental-unfreindly, it would be naive of me to think that we are living in a place where nature is cherished and preserved. In class we have discussed how our love for "views" have shaped the need for houses in the mountains. In my opinion, views/hiking/visiting the beach are the few ways that Angelenos truly appreciate nature, and even then they do not protect it (ex. beach pollution). While people look to the mountains and may admire its beauty, "What happens when you deny that a river is a river?" (Price, Thirteen Ways of Seeing Nature in LA). The vampirism comes from denial: denial that debris flows will crush ones home, denial that the layer of fog in LA is not related to pollution, denial that a river is a river. As an environmentally conscious person, I am heavily against the constant fuel emitting nature of LA but I can understand why people flock to the mountains to build their homes. Unless majority of LA citizens trade their obsession of houses with views for sustainable lifestyles, the environment in LA will continue to be under siege of the city growing inside of it.
ReplyDeleteIt is true that as an industrial, commercial hub, Los Angeles has lost touch with its environmental side. I agree that some citizens of LA have resulted to treating their own backyard poorly with disregard to its natural beauty, whether out of disrespect, ignorance, or pure carelessness. Especially with destinations like the beach or even hiking trails nearby, it is easy to forget that these are places to be cherished and treated with respect, and in turn, are taken for granted. It becomes easy to disregard these commercialized places as jewels of nature, and here, it is awareness that becomes important. The way many are treating the environment now needs to end, and that will only come with awareness- of surroundings, of nature. It is not at all sustainable and instead does the opposite, contributing to the deterioration and demise of important environmental features in the city of LA. Moving forward, it is critical to become more environmentally conscious and consider the potential long-term harsh effects we all can have on a daily basis.
ReplyDeleteAs vampires suck more blood, they grow stronger, and the person in which they received the blood becomes a vampire as well. Although we may not be meant to reside in the LA area we have made it work, just as victims of vampires have found a way to make their new lives work. Our exploitation of the natural environment in LA will only make it stronger for posterity. The city of Los Angeles will grow just as muscles do, small tears which are then repaired with a stronger reinforcement. Although I do not think what we are doing to the river, mountain and beaches is the right thing to do right now, I do think that it will help develop our city into a stronger metropolis that is capable of dealing with the issues that we are seeing today. Vampirism is an extremely unsustainable use of materials (with the exception of the debris dams, but those just create issues), but it is the only form of life that we have. Los Angeles was built in a place where resource extraction is the only way to live because we simply have no resources, with only the exception of oil. If we want to continue life in the region in which we are in, we must continue to extract resources. Vampirism is neither the ethical option nor the sustainable option, but it is the only option that we have, so in order for LA to remain the cultural hub that we know it as today, we must continue to suck the resources from places that we do not belong. We are caught in an ethical dilemma to either continue to take from the environment or to fall into a depression. Although it may not be the right option, there does seem to be an obvious one.
ReplyDeleteThe question of whether or not we can continue to treat our environment the same way, seems like an obvious answer to me. Although our society endorses environmental activists trying to preserve nature, that is certainly not the norm. Saying we want to preserve our environment is one thing, taking a stand to do so is something else. We live in a consumerist society that values material. Material wealth, material things and to value nature goes against this. To preserve our environment it takes more than making sure you recycle, it is consciously re evaluating your daily life. Not buying the newest cars, clothes, and technology is being environmentally conscious. If as a class we decide to focus on being environmentally conscious than we all need to be educated on what this entails. We need to make sure we are active and not passive. Not being a part of the problem is the first part for a solution, but to truly take a stand means to push ourselves out of our comfort zone and to engage our families and communities. It means reprioritizing our values.
ReplyDeleteI think that maintaining a solid natural foundation under a city's development is one of the most important aspects of stable cities. Not only does this strategy help with the areas resources and sustain healthy grounds, it also helps to keep the community from abusing nature for their own decline. By extracting such large amount of resources, we are only focused on short term solutions. Effective long term city planning requires acknowledgment and maintenance towards nature. By ignoring the environment, we lead our community to its own demise. Ethical concerns are harder to generalize, but, for myself, I believe that causing such detrimental effects to our city's foundation for our selfish short term goals is clearly unethical. If the most important objective in a community's development is its potential to flourish, environmental maintenance should be highly considered because the way we treat our natural surroundings defines how large a community can become.
ReplyDeleteIt is clear that our extraction of resources is not a sustainable way of handling the environmental crisis across the world and in Los Angeles; however I believe that it is the situation that we are in right now and there's very little that can be done unless strict laws are imposed. Being in such a popular and populated city, our extraction of resources and use of land is vital to the daily lives of Angelinos. I believe that we are on a path of destruction and accepting our fate because there is very little possible way that we can band together to stop our vampirism of Los Angeles resources might be the right answer. Think about how much Los Angeles has changed in the past 100 years. The city has gone from a prairie to a metropolitan, and there are no signs that the construction will stop any time soon. We have sucked all of the resources out of this great land and we are past the point of destruction.
ReplyDeleteI think that in the past citizens of Los Angeles turned a blind eye to the environmental disasters that were heading their way. The natural resources that the city provided was quickly used up and the remaining resources were taken for granted. The LA river was the source of water for almost all the inhabitants in Los Angeles until 1913. The river came to its demise when the inhabitants of Los Angeles began to disrespect this natural resource and treat it improperly, dumping carcasses, oil and trash into the river. Unfortunately, the past affects the present and people of LA continues to waste its resources and disregard the role we play in the smog and uncleanliness of Los Angeles. Los Angeles is an industrial hub and with that comes pollution and other sorts of contamination in our city. It is important that we learn from the past of Los Angeles and move forward in attempt to promote a clean and healthy city that is aware of our environmental problems.
ReplyDeleteI believe that we can not keep extracting from our environment if we want to continue living on this earth. However as we humans slowly progress towards a society that is efficient and runs on renewable energy sources, society has grown accustom to extracting and unfortunately we have waited to long in order to stop what we have coming. I do think that trying to move towards a green society will only prolong our end because as a society there is no possible way that we can all be on the same page in order to completely stop from extracting all of the resources. The reasoning as to why this is so is because as humans we have adopted a "protect me and my family first" mentality as opposed to all of us working together as one.
ReplyDeleteI don’t think that we cherish nature enough to say that we are vampires to Los Angeles… I mean we aren’t in twilight, and this isn’t forks. The thing is that there is so much pollution everywhere: the air, the ocean, and even the river that we as Los Angeles settlers have ruined. We have also ruined views with houses that we have built on the mountains to obtain views every morning when we wake up. We also don’t cherish the beach by polluting it with various scraps of garbage as well as beach houses. In that sense, we had taken the very essence that was Los Angeles before we settlers can in and caused harsh environmental problems.
ReplyDeleteWe can not keep treating our environment like a pool of limitless supplies because it's not. Before we began draining the river and industrializing the land of Los Angeles, there was balance amongst the natural world. This balance allowed for things to grow, prosper, die and repeat. The Land of Sunshine's second chapter, "The Los Angeles Prairie" retells the history of Los Angeles as a prairie. When grizzly bears roamed the land before LA, they played a significant role in the structure of the ecosystem. The end of the prairie came with the end of the grizzlies, which ended with the beginning of American settlement in the 1800s. We moved in and took what we wanted and got rid of what we didn't want. This selective settlement dramatically shapes the ecosystem to support an entirely different environment. Similar to forcing the grizzly population into extinction, we have developed the river into a site of industry. We have hacked our surrounding environment to become something it can't promise to support. If we could somehow establish a more balanced, appreciative and teamwork type of relationship with our surrounding environment, there could be hope for a thriving society alongside a thriving environment. The issue is many angelinos are not informed or focused on the decaying of our surroundings and do not want to let go of their established lifestyles. And for those who do care, it may be too late to fix anything at all.
ReplyDeleteFrom Halston: Since the beginning, Los Angeles has been a hub of resources, land, migration, and much more. Over the years I think the population has in fact taken advantage of the natural resources in LA, clearly exhibited by the treatment of the LA River, and has used it up without giving anything back. The ratio of consumption versus production has such a big discrepancy that most people don’t take in to consideration. LA residents still continue to use up all resources and the resources continue to deteriorate because there is no significant support for the environment of LA. I think people in LA are beginning to see what they have done because of the fact that the resources themselves aren’t as substantial. People will soon figure that out and are going to stop what they are doing because they are no longer receiving what they want.Ethically I think people will continue to use up LA resources but not out of malice or from a bad place but because of economic necessity.
ReplyDeleteLos Angeles was once a jewel in the desert—a place that, unlike its harsh, dry surroundings, had a surplus of natural resources and was lodged in a seemingly perfect valley between the ocean and the mountains. However, we have spoiled its brilliant shine, having hidden it under layers of smog and environmental destruction. This city and the LA river was a gift that kept on giving—and we took from it all we “needed to survive until its channels [were] drained dry…And then [we] took some more” (Gumprecht 134, Who Killed the Los Angeles River?). The industrial corporations of the area are literally and figuratively machines: they consume all our valuable resources for the purpose of spitting out material objects while releasing harmful fumes that pollute our atmosphere, and they “sing of money” constantly and without pause. Everything that has the potential to be turned into profit is immediately taken by humans without any thought given to possible repercussions and is converted into a money-making business. And, if this city is to thrive as it has for the past hundreds of years, humans will continue to search for and use up resources where they can; and when they run out of one resource they will simply move on to the next or think of a way to transport water or oil from far away. We can’t deny that we are vampires, but we also cannot do anything in the imminent future to change that.
ReplyDeleteHumans have been extracting the life out of the earth for decades. The results, both short term and long term, are disastrous. Los Angeles, once a "jewel in the desert" like a jungle with an abundance of wild life, now sits as the opposite, a concrete jungle. The long term affects on the environment may be more startling and difficult to change. We as Poly students can all agree that preserving the environment is of utmost importance and can all take measures to do so as well. However, the problem arises once we leave the Poly community. Can we, as Poly students, tell a coal miner that their job is not important? Can we tell them that they must go unemployed and not put food on their table for the sake of the environment? Bigger problems arise when we look on a global scale. Can we, as Poly students and Americans, tell people from third world countries that they cannot attempt to industrialize their country even though we did it ourselves? These moral questions are the reason that no matter how hard we work to preserve the environment, there will always be major challenges. All we can really do to preserve the environment, if anything at all, is monitor our daily environmental choices.
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