{"id":834,"date":"2017-08-14T06:07:20","date_gmt":"2017-08-14T06:07:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/?p=834"},"modified":"2017-08-14T06:07:20","modified_gmt":"2017-08-14T06:07:20","slug":"powerful-choices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/powerful-choices\/","title":{"rendered":"Powerful Choices"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our environment and the natural resources within it have quickly become a topic of scarcity and political power.\u00a0 One of the most valuable natural resources has developed an new competitive market across the world.\u00a0 By the time we enter the year 2100, experts predict that over half the world’s population will experience water scarcity.\u00a0 Like drilling for oil, the most politically strong and heavily financed companies will become powerhouses in the future of our water industry.\u00a0 We are already seeing the effects of smaller farmers being pushed off their lands and being replaced with bigger farms that can afford to dig deeper into the earth’s soil to receive more water for irrigation.\u00a0 We are also observing a similar pattern regarding the development of genetically modified foods.\u00a0 Concentration of power and wealth have brought companies such as Monsanto, that plants a massive 90% of seed crops in the United States.\u00a0 Thousands of acres of land are being sacrificed to become land for crops and pastures for livestock, including ‘land grabs’ that impact foreign populations that then impact their own food systems.\u00a0 The agricultural methods we use, such as deforestation, are leaving a large carbon footprint.\u00a0 Livestock GHG emissions alone account for nearly a quarter of our global emission rate.\u00a0 The race to the top is creating a divide between populations across the world, creating regional and global tensions that will peak when scarcity becomes something we cannot ignore.\u00a0 As we continue to harvest with a consumption-based mentality, ecological problems such as overharvesting, pollution and habitat loss will diminish our food and water systems for many generations to come.<\/p>\n

Picture Source:\u00a0https:\/\/images.fineartamerica.com\/images\/artworkimages\/mediumlarge\/1\/the-last-drop-mark-fuller.jpg<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our environment and the natural resources within it have quickly become a topic of scarcity and political power.\u00a0 One of the most valuable natural resources has developed an new competitive market across the world.\u00a0 By the time we enter the year 2100, experts predict that over half the world’s population will experience water scarcity.\u00a0 Like drilling for oil, the most… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,3,9,22,30,14,16,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consumption","category-economics","category-energy","category-farming","category-genetic-engineering","category-soil","category-systems-thinking","category-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=834"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":835,"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834\/revisions\/835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}