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Maddie Guasch
I enjoy hiking in my free time. I find it to be a nice way to get out of the house and into nature for a couple hours. It is a way I clear my head or an excuse to chat with a friend without phone interruptions. This was a sign I saw along a hike one afternoon that would not have caught my eye prior to taking this class. It reads "area closed for plant rehabilitation". It's simple. But, it serves as an example of APES knowledge being used in the world. It also demonstrates our community's care and concern for the ecosystem's inhabitants. I am thankful to have APES terms and concepts to connect to the meaning behind this simple sign upon seeing it.

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Xander Lea
Every day millions of Americans sit in traffic. It is a part of everyday commuting. In the Bay Area it is especially bad as there is so many cars on the road. I have experienced sitting in hours of traffic and it can be very frustrating. Often a simple drive can take exponentially longer with bad traffic. This is bad for the environment in many ways. The high emmisions from the car could be stopped or at least slowed in a few ways. Many people carpool or use public transportation. Its also a good idea to get a job or attend school close to your house. As the population increases, the roads will only get more and more crowded so its important to be conscious about these things

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By Nicholas Perkins

My Opa (grandfather) in Indonesia, actually owns a mining company that he started himself. He has about 40 workers that he has employed that have a different variety of jobs. Indonesia is a thick jungle so he has some workers that are just hired to clear the forest. Sadly in Indonesia, there is not that many restrictions when it comes to the safety of the environment since it is a developing country and they need their resources first over anything else. It is kind of like in a way like the open pit mine that we went to in Clayton. In APES we learned a lot about the rocks and the different types of mining that there are. My Opa has an open pit mine in Semarang, Indonesia. The rocks that his workers mine, go to building roads for this developing country that is now putting a lot of money into building strong and sturdy roads that will last for a long period of time, than with the dirt roads that they have now. It is crucial that they build these roads because Indonesia receives plenty amounts of water and the dirt roads turn into mud roads and that becomes difficult and dangerous to try and navigate through.

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By Gabi Ballardo

When I was younger, my family and I used to go to a Christmas tree lot every year to pick out our own tree to bring home and decorate; however, we recently bought an artificial Christmas tree. It not only saves us from having to buy a tree each year, but also it is also beneficial to the environment. Many people purchase real Christmas trees, which is damaging the environment. This deforestation disrupts ecosystems and the organisms that live in them, and it adds to the effects of climate change as there are less trees to take in carbon dioxide.  Because there are fewer trees to take in the carbon dioxide, less oxygen is being produced through the process of photosynthesis. As oxygen is necessary for the function of living organisms, it is vital that we do our best not to remove autotrophs, such as the trees. If more people started to purchase artificial Christmas trees, than this could help prevent problems from deforestation. After thinking about these impacts, it also made me wonder how much energy we use each year during the holidays and how else we could reduce the amount of negative effects on the environment. How else can we insure that our activities do not impose further environmental complications while celebrating the holidays?

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By Sofia Earle

The weekend before thanksgiving, I had to play in a softball tournament in Huntington Beach. On Saturday, me and my team decided to go down to the beach and have a bonfire. Ironically this trip made me think of APES. I remembered that the California coast was an up-welling zone. I also remembered that when El Nino is in effect, the water is suppose to be warmer that it usually is at this time of year. My team and I decided to test this theory by going night swimming. Suffice to say the water was not what we expected it to be. within the first minuet of getting into the water we immediately regretted our decision. It was freezing. Now looking back, It was probably foolish if me to think that the water would be warm in the middle of winter but I found it really cool at how was able to relate Apes to my everyday life.

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By: Paxton Buckley

This photo was taken about six months ago at the animal shelter, where I have volunteered for almost five years. After learning about human overpopulation in APES, I could really relate it to the overpopulation problem we see with dogs and cats today. Similar to family planning in humans, pet owners in developing countries or uneducated pet owners may not have the resources and/or knowledge to spay and neuter their dogs and cats. This leads to an excessive number of homeless dogs and cats because the unaltered animals reproduce at a rate much faster than humans can give them homes. This also connects with the idea of carrying capacity. A limiting factor for dogs and cats would be a lack of willing and able homes to take them in. This leaves many animals homeless, with nowhere to go. And, because people are not getting their animals fixed, it creates even more of a problem. Thinking about all of the animals in unsuitable conditions worldwide brought my attention back to humans. We are overpopulating this world and it is proving to be detrimental to the humans born into and living in poverty. Just as we are leading an initiative to spay and neuter pets to provide better lives for them, we need to do the same for humans (but maybe a little less severe than sterilization. Humans deserve to have basic decencies and that's not going to happen for everyone until we can figure out how to effectively and humanely control our worldwide population.

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by Jack Kennedy

Christmas time is upon us! This is obvious when listening to Christmas Music that's on the radio 24/7 or the constant gift advertisements popping up all over the place, but a major way to tell that it is Christmas is by driving down the streets that are lit up by Christmas lights on the houses. I see these lights everywhere I go. Most of the time I see one or two strands of lights on a house. This is respectable because they are sharing their Christmas joy while not going over the edge with decorations. Sometimes, however, I see houses that are covered in lights. I believe that when there are lights that are covering the house from roof to ground, it has gone a little far. In our APES class, we have been learning about how much work goes into mining and using resources that come from the Earth. This includes coal which helps provide electricity for your home. Setting up an extensively large amount of lights requires lots of electricity. This is an example of wasting Earths resources. Don't get me wrong: I love Christmas time. I think that it is great to set up lights on your home, as long as you are conscious of the amount of resources you are using. One or two strands can light up your home well while using a portion of the resources that are needed to power 20 strands. Here is a picture of my neighbor’s house. They put up their Christmas lights every year the day after Halloween, and leave them up until around January 5th. They put lights on their roof, windows, trees, walkways, pillars and bushes. In my opinion, they use more lights than are necessary to spread Christmas cheer for all to hear.

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by RJ Millena

My sister and I went to a Daybreaker (an event that's kind of like a very friendly, g-rated rave that takes place early in the morning) in San Francisco on Small Business Saturday. The Daybreaker was featuring small businesses making a positive impact on the world by giving away their products. One of those businesses was a bottled water company called Salvare la Vita, or Save Life in English. This company really stood out to me and reminded me of APES because the company's mission is to "provide clean and safe drinking water where the need is greatest," according to the back of the bottle. They include safe water projects as part of their operating expenses pre-sale and pre-profit, which I think is really cool. They've built and maintained 31 clean water well initiatives in nine different countries, producing enough clean and safe drinking water for 30,000 people for 20 years. This is so important and relevant with all of the clean water crises happening in many places, including our own country. It reminded me of our discussions on developing countries and the possible obligation that developed nations have to help developing ones. Additionally, the starter of this company is a lady, a refugee, who came to America from Afghanistan.

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by Margo Lowry

My dad took this picture in Glacier Bay when my grandparents took us on a trip to Alaska two summers ago. Global warming is a big issue worldwide, and we can really see the affects that it has by looking at the polar icecaps and glaciers around the world. This is affecting many different species of animals and is taking away that habitat of many. With the rise in population, we can expect global warming to get worse. We know from the last unit that human population is only going to keep growing, especially in undeveloped countries, and with this population growth comes more pollution and more demands for different goods and a larger ecological footprint. The glaciers in Alaska alone are sending 75 billion tons of water into the ocean every year. The current sea level rise rate is 2.5 times faster than it was from 1900-1990. With this change that is occurring, we are seeing many changes in habitats and are seeing many different species becoming extinct. If we don't slow down our population growth and make our ecological footprint smaller, these glaciers will soon be gone and the beautiful habitat and all the unique and diverse animals living on them will be gone as well.

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By: Nikki Musco

This is a photo of some of the children in an village in fiji, they are all siblings and have 3 more siblings all of whom are very close in age, I also met their mother who was not older than 24. She had her first child very young.

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By: Nikki Musco

APES has given me a new outlook on everything, no matter where I go. Chapter six was focused on population and it wasnt until we started discussing the factors that affect the population, especially in developing countries. I went on a service trip in August in Fiji, and it wasn't until this chapter thaat this trip made a big impact on me, when thinking about the environment. While working in a village I noticed that they relied heavily on the crops they grew because their economy was struggling, I also noticed that despite the villages financial situation, all of these families had more than three kids. This could be due to cultural beliefs but it is laso due to the lack of accessibility to family planning in all of the towns. The growth rate for Fiji will continue to increase if precautions are not taken, and women are not given this chance. I also noticed that most of these mothers are very young and majority of the children are sick, this leads to a increased infant mortality rate because the correct pre-natal care is not given. Despite the growing population, Fijians do still rely on agricultural businesses and not large cities which means that the country is still developing. The land in Fiji is mostly untouched by man, leading to a healthier ecosystem in general, which does lead to better agricultural production.  The percentage of land is not high when the population is not incredibly high.

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By: Keleva Salt

APES has made me look at our world differently. Now I become more aware of the resources that I'm using as well as the amount of resources being used around me. The little things like the amount of paper I use on a daily basis. But when we went to the mine in Clayton this past November I realized that our roads wouldn't be possible without the material that the miners mine. I was driving from a softball tournament and noticed that the roads were very smooth. But I wondered to myself where did all the roads come from and how did they form. But then when we went to the mine, the worker talked about how roads were formed from the material that they get from the mine. Although I never thought about roads until then, it hit me just exactly how much material we are extracting from the earth in order to make the roadways that we have. But luckily we have ways to make the land that is used for mining into something else that can be useful for example agricultural purposes or recreational purposes. Everything in our biosphere really is interdependent but when will it come to a point where we run out of the material that we need? This is why the human race should come together and do more to live more sustainably, because the smallest but most useful things, such as a road, are important but we need to think about what the effects are in our planet.

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By: Olivia Conte

In early November, I went into San Francisco on a Saturday morning for a college interview. After the interview, as I made my way back to the Civic Center bart station, I passed through the farmers market at the Ferry Building. I absolutely love farmers markets, and this one was bigger than any I'd ever been to before. There were countless vendors lined in front of, behind, and along the side of the ferry building, each selling various kinds of produce, coffee, meats and condiments. I spent a good 45 minutes just walking through it and seeing all the different farms represented. I couldn't help but notice how at almost every booth, there was a sign advertising, "Local!". There is something about local produce that appeals to people. Buying from local farmers makes people feel better about where their food comes from as well as the fact that they are supporting local farmers. This locavore movement directly applies to many of the topics we have been discussing in APES. One of these is the triple bottom line discussed in chapter 20. The triple bottom line emphasizes that economic, environmental and social factors must be taken into account when making decisions about the economy and development. Buying local encompasses all three of those factors. In buying local, less gas is being emitted into the atmosphere (and being used in general) because large vehicles like trucks and trains are not needed to transport the food long distances. This in turn protects natural capital. Additionally, money is being put into the pockets of local farmers, increasing well-being of the local community. Buying local is a sustainable practice because it discourages excessive use of fossil fuels and keeps money in the immediate economy instead of growers in other countries. I have grown to be more aware of how my purchases affect the environment. Now, when I go grocery shopping, I try to buy foods produced locally, or at least in the United States. I believe that we can achieve global sustainability if we first start locally.

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Apes is incredibly applicable to everyday life. A huge part of my life is my education at Carondelet.  Everyday I am surrounded by many positive women who empower me. By attending such an academically and spiritually challenging school, I am extremely grateful for the amazing education that I chose. Unfortunately, access to proper education for women is not occurring globally. In many developing countries typically in phases 1 or 2 of demographic transition, the lack of education for women corresponds with a high population momentum. Overly populous countries including China and India have tried various methods for population control. Whether its China's One Child Policy or enforcing various forms of contraceptives, each method brings up many ethical and social issues. However, arguably the most effective form of population control is simply giving women their right to an education. As a result, women who are empowered with an education are more self sufficient, independent, and are granted more opportunities as opposed to solely being responsible for the household. Consequently, more women chose to delay childbearing or even decide not to reproduce entirely. This is evident in the results of countries in phases 3 and 4 of demographic transition. The proof of the power of education women was evident in a southwestern country in India named Kerala. This extremely dense country strongly emphasizes "the three E's". This means education, employment, and equality. As a result literacy rates are equal between the genders, and the country has over a 90 percent literacy rate. More women are independent and use contraceptives. By enforcing the three e's the methods and goals population control are put into action. I always consider the power of education whenI feel stressed, bitter, and ungrateful.

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I am the Lorax and I speak for the trees. Here you will add what you have learned about APES & Sustainability. Follow the directions on schoology for how to post your picture and thoughts. I thneed this post by Friday November 25th.