Cause and effect

Warning: the desert is expanding
One of the main catalysts for climate change in my home country China is the expansion of deserts. According to report of the Chinese government, China has increasingly had issues with desertification of what was once profitable land in recent years. There are many reasons why the deserts in northern and northwestern China have become larger. But generally we can combine all the reasons into two major reasons, the non-human reason and the human reason.
For the non-human reason, since northern China is in a dry and mid-dry environment, the stability of the ecosystem is very bad. Furthermore, the soil in that area is sandy. The top layer of soil is loose and the vegetation is fragile. So it has a low ability to protect itself from wind erosion. When the weather becomes dry, the surface of the sandy land becomes more active. Especially when there is wind, the circumstance becomes worse. The wind blows the surface of the land and carries sand from far away. The result of these activities is the expansion of the desert and the sparseness of vegetation, which causes more dust storms. The principle behind this result is quite obvious. The wind blows over the sandy land and takes away the surface soil, which mostly is made of sand. Then the sand carried by wind travels to other places and gathers for a certain amount of time. Eventually the land is invaded and occupied by sand and becomes desert after some time. Of course, the plants cannot survive in such a dry and changing environment. They become fewer and fewer, which also makes the desert’s formation faster.
For the human reason, because of the population boom, it is very difficult for the fragile ecosystem to support the huge demand of food, and water. Although the government creates and carries out a lot of policies such as the forbidden of cutting down trees and the prohibition against of depasturing in certain areas, people just do things in their own way. They burn the forests to get more land. They feed animals on grassland without limitation. When the land becomes sandy and not arable, they just give it up and choose another place. Finally, all the land becomes sandy which causes dust storms when the weather is windy. A small desert is formed in that way and these small deserts join together to become one huge desert. A very ironic phenomenon is that the government has planted thousands of trees. But a few years later people in that area cut them down in order to get firewood. At last, all the residents have to move to other places due to the expansion of desert.
As Raven pointed out in his book, “all humans need Earth’s flora, fauna, and microorganism for sustenance, materials, energy, and even the air they breathe”, we must learn to protect it and show our appreciation to it. However, some people still haven’t realized the importance of protecting the environment while they are getting the benefits from nature. They do whatever they want to do to the environment without considering the future and their descendants. That’s why some environmental problems still cannot be solved today. The warnings from nature have come for a long time. It’s high time for us to think together to solve the problems.

China's desert is expanding: government. (2007, December 4). Retrieved March 10, 2008, from
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Chinas_desert_is_expanding%20government_999.html

Huang, S.j. (2002, February 26). Why China's sandy land becomes more and more. Retrieved March 10,2008,from
http://www.10thnpc.org.cn/chinese/huanjing/109118.htm

Raven, p. H. (1997, p.1). Nature and human society: The quest for a sustainable world. Washington,D.C:National Academy press

Science and Technology Daily News.(2002, January 28). Sand storm: the wolf from northern. Retrieved March 10, 2008, from

http://www.10thnpc.org.cn/chinese/huanjing/102002.htm

rewrite

We should apply different methods to handle the waste for different parts of China since they are in different economy and technology levels. For example, the east and southeast China is much richer than the southwest part of China. In poor areas, people are busy developing economy and do not have enough time to consider their life quality problems such as the handling of waste. They need to put all efforts and different resources to reach the task of economy development. However, in rich areas, people have a lot of money and what they care is not just whether they can earn more money but also how to improve their life by applying the most advanced technology. Then zero waste would be suitable for rich regions and land filling would suits the less advanced areas. Then reason comes from the differences between zero waste and land filling.
Firstly, zero waste is kind of recycling and environmental friendly method. It uses certain technology to turn the waste into new resources which can be used again. However, land filling is just a temperate method which cannot solve problems permanently. As we all know some materials can stay underground for a very long time which can cause problems such as underground water pollution. Land filling just covers the problem and leaves it for future. Secondly, zero waste is possible for any countries like Singapore. But land filling require a certain area to be reserved. Actually when it comes to cities, the reserved land is quite huge since there is a huge amount of waste everyday. So zero waste is more flexible. Finally, we need to concern about the problem of money and technology. Not every country has the financial and technological support. So for this aspect, land filling seems can be applied for any poor country once there is enough land.

Save the Przewalski's Gazelle

There are only 300 przewalski's gazelles in the world, according to the stastics from experts. And there is no man-raised population which means that once the wild population die out,and then this special species will disappear from earth forever.

Nowdays we can only find przewalski's gazelles in the Qinghai lakeside in Qinghai altiplano. However, przewalski's gazelles existed widely in China in history before 1980.After that they disappeared from other habitats except the Qinghai Lake. Since they are in a incontinuous separate distribution state, the area they live is as large as 825 square kilometers which is very dangerous for such a species. What make things worth are that the Qinghai Lake is getting smaller and smaller due to nature and human reasons and the challenges posed by the construction of some projects. So far the only way to protect this precious species is by protecting the wild population. The most important thing is to set up protected areas to give them enough living space. We should also negotiate with the local government and the LakeEast rangeland to restrict the enclosure. Just do those things is not enough at all. We must set up man-raised population area to raise them in rangeland and set them free when time is suitable.

Przewalski's gazelles are dying. We must take action faster to protect them. Otherwise, we may cannot see them anymore!

Recycling in China and Singapore

As people gradually realized that the resource of earth is not infinite, they began to find new ways to get resource. After many experimental trys, people find that so far the most effective way is to get resource from what we used before but had thrown away-garbage, which not only solves the problem of how to deal with the garbage, but also gives us what we need. Since this idea was spreaded around the world, every country more or less has began to apply it, either developed countries or developing countries.

Since China is a developing country which is short of different kinds of resources, recycling is more necessary and benefitial. However, although the government emphasizes this idea teeth and nail, waste is still quite common. From the requisition of land, the exploitation of mine and the irrigation to the shining lamplight of emporium day and night and throwing away of food in restaurant, wasting can be saw everywhere and everyday. It seems that saving and recycling are still not highly considered by common residents. To be honest, China is just beginning to recycle.

However, as a developed country, Singapore did quite well in this area in the past. Maybe the domestic situation of resources makes Singaporen realized that as a small country residents, they have no choice but to recycle. So we can see recycling bins everywhere. A lot of cleaners are hired to collect the garbage and clean the city. That's way the city is called "garden city".

Recycling is not an easy job which can be done just by government. It needs everyone's participation and effort if we want a continuable development of our society. Let's unite together and apply recycling to the end.

Stop snowing please

I never saw such a heavy snow which flew without direction and filled the whole world with white. I never knew that snowing could also be a disaster in so-called ''Jiang Nan'' district in China. I grew up in ''Jiang Nan''. I had never experienced such a heavy snow since I heard "global warming" which I hated so much for taking away my loving snow. I could only figure out a rough image of snowing from my parents or grandparents. But what happened this winter shocked me totally. The crazy snow lasted for almost two weeks and was still going on which was incredible for people who lived in southern China where people had few warming facilities in winter. According to “East Morning News”, till Feb 2th the big snow has destroyed 223,000 houses and damaged 862,000 houses. The direct economic loss was about 53.79 billion Yuan. The snow covered 1.2821 million sq.km of China. More than 100 million people were affected. My hometown Anhwei province was also one of the most seriously affected places. According to the materials from the state government, till Jan 30th more than 10.799 million people were affected. Many villages were short of electricity and communication. Almost all the expressways were covered by heavy snow which could not be used anymore for the time being. Some railway stations and bus stations were out of service for the same reason. It was said that people at home could not go anywhere. Another consequence of the snow was the rising of goods’ price.

Chinese New Year is coming. However, thousands of people are stopped from going home by the snow. In some area people even do not have enough food since the transportation system has crashed. Millions of people are suffering. Stop snowing please! Let people have a nice new year.

Duststorm

Why is the duststorm in the northern and northwestern China getting severer ?

There are many reasons why the dust storms in northern and northwestern China become severer. But generally we can conclude all the reasons into two major reasons, the nature reason and the human reason. For the nature reason, since northern china is in a dry and mid-dry environment, the stability of the ecosystem is very bad. Furthermore, the soil in that area is sandy. The layer of soil is loose and the vegetation is frangible. So it has a low ability to protect itself from the eroding of wind. When the weather becomes dry, there are more activities from the sand blown by wind. The result of these activities is the expansion of desert and the sparseness of vegetation which cause more dust storms. For the human reason, because of the population boom, it is very difficult for the frangible ecosystem to support the huge demand of food, water and so on. Although the government carries out a lot of policies, people just do things in their own way. They burn the forest to get more land. They depasture animals on grassland without limitation. When the land becomes sandy and not arable, they just give it up and choose another place. Finally, all the land becomes sandy which causes dust storms when the weather is windy. A very ironical phenomenon is that the government planted thousands of trees. But a few years later people in that area cut them down in order to get the firewood. At last all the residents have to move to other places for the expansion of desert. Some people still haven’t realized the ponderance of protecting the environment while they are getting the benefits from nature. That’s why some environmental problems still cannot be solved today.

Meaning of life

The meaning of life, the more I think about this topic, the more complex question it becomes, the more confused I become. Finally, I manage to understand something which I'm not so sure. But it seems reasonable. To me, the meaning of life changes with our life experiences.

In fact, I began to think about it when I was in middle school. At that time, there were not so many annoyances. Life was simple and carefree. My family treated me well except my study which they were very strict with. So the meaning of life is just to get the highest score or become a top student in school.

As time goes by, I knew more and more about life. I slowly began to understand that getting the highest score was not my meaning of life anymore. Since I was a very naughty student, I caused a lot of troubles to my parents. Then I saw that my parents were unhappy and worrying about my future. Although I was not so mature and considerate but I could still feel something. My meaning of life changed. I tried my best to make my parents happy and not worry about me.

After I stepped into university, I was suddenly troubled by something called dream or ideality. I feel the pressure from outside. I worry about what I should do after graduate. Life is not easy anymore. The meaning of life, I know it's as simple as before. But I will find it someday.