Annotated Bibliography

1.)Associated Press. "Pollution study targets cigarette waste in Tennessee - Kingsport Times-News Online." Kingsport Times News | Kingsport, Tennessee. Web. 09 Nov. 2009. .
This website talks about a study that the University of Tennessee made. It gives facts about cigarettes and how they are bad to the environment. One fact is that 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are tossed in the United States every year.

2.)Kaufman, Leslie. "The New York Times Log In." The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. Web. 09 Nov. 2009. .
This is a New York Times article that takes about how a little bit of littering can go a long way. There are being programs produced such as the Cigarette Litter Prevention Program that helps with these issues. What I found interesting about this article was that the mayor from San Francisco is putting 33 cents taxes on the cigarettes to cover the cost of 11 million dollars that the city spends annually to clean up cigarette litter.

3.)CigaretteLitter.Org - The Facts About Cigarette Butts and Litter - Cigarette Litter. Web. 09 Nov. 2009. .
This is just a website not an article but I really liked it. I liked it because it gives a lot of information about cigarettes. How they affect the environment, what you can do to help (like different programs that are cleaning the beach such as BUTTsOUT), gives you images of were cigarette butts are littered, and many other things. One fact that I found out was that cigarette butts are not biodegradable. I thought that the inside of a cigarette butt was made of cotton but it is actually made of acetate.

4.)Polito, Johon R. "Cigarette Butt Litter- Two Billion Littered Butts a Day." WhyQuit - the Internet's leading cold turkey quit smoking resource. Web. 09 Nov. 2009. .
It basically talks about why cigarettes are considered litter and what it does to the environment. I really liked it though because it gives really good information such as that annually there are about 1.7 billion pounds of cigarette butts littered worldwide. I also liked that he is passionate about the topic that he is writing about.

5.)"Cigarette Butt Litter." Homepage - Fairfax County, Virginia. Web. 09 Nov. 2009. .
This article is small but it gives a lot of good information, which I really liked. It tells you that under Section 10.1-1143 of the Forestry Code it is illegal to throw any lighted smoking material from a vehicle. It also gives you other laws about cigarette littering. It gives you some background information about cigarettes like the cigarette butts are made of a plastic called cellulose acetate.

Environmental Essay

Roberto
Sotelo
Environmental Science
GMO vs. Heirloom Seeds and World Hunger

Over the years we have been loosing our farmers. No one back then knew about GMOs or hybrid seeds. They just knew the seed and took care of them with their own two hands. Now everything is changed there are less and less farmers with their straw hats and there are more and more farmers with their suits and their GMOs. Heirloom seeds and GMOs are being used now a days and many people argue about using GMOs. One question is if they are safe to use, if by using them are we solving a problem or creating a far bigger one? Which is a better use to feed everyone in the world?
GMO is short for Genetically Modified Organism. One example could be that you are a scientist in a place where it is really cold for most of the year you would want a plant that is resistant to frost. Later you find a fish that lives in really cold temperatures so you get that fish and you find the gene that helps the fish be in really cold temperatures. Then you splice that gene into the plants DNA. Later you get a plant that can live in really low temperatures.
GMO started a really long time ago, in the 1973 by Herbert Boyer and Stanley Cohen (History of GMOs). Now scientists are trying to create crops that are resistant to certain bugs. This toxin is a natural toxin that plants produce. Some say that this method can kill bugs that are needed in order for healthy plants to grow and that it kills other non targeted insects (pest resistant crops). This topic is still in discussion. In 1980 the U.S. Supreme Court rules that GMOs can be patented (History of GMOs). This presents a big problem because say that you are a farmer that has heirloom seeds that your family has planted for centuries and an agricultural company is your neighbor. They, as opposed to you, use GMOs in their fields. The wind picks up and without you even knowing the pollen from their field lands on your crops and your crops have your neighbor’s crop DNA. One day you wake up and they are knocking on your door saying that you have stolen their GMO and threatened to sue you. You later go to court and find out that since they have patented their GMOs you lose your crops and much more, so patenting life should not be permitted. Still there are many uses for GMOs. Some uses can be that you can grow crops in really cold places, make crops that are more resistant to droughts, have the crops germinate faster, and many more.
An alternative to GMOs are heirloom seeds. Heirloom seeds are seeds that have been saved from generation to generation. Some say that in order for a type of seed to be considered heirloom they must be at least 50 years old. The seed doesn’t have to be 50 years old but the family of the seed needs to be old. Many prefer heirloom seeds because they taste better and they are all natural. They also have a lot of varieties. For example a hybrid seed has very little apple varieties compared to 10,000 different types of apples found using heirloom seeds (Why it Matters to Buy Heirloom Plants and Seeds | Healthy and Green Living). Heirloom seeds don’t really have a starting point like GMOs because traditional farmers normally saved the seeds that they really like and passed it on from generation to generation. Some people that sell heirloom seeds like to give background information of the seed like were it came from and how the seeds got to them.
Which methods are better heirlooms or GMOs? I think that the plan to create GMOs with vaccines in them or that have toxins inside them to kill insects is bad because the insects might just get extinct and because of that it creates a chain reaction killing other animals that are reliant on that insect such as small birds and lizards that eat insects. Another thing is that no one really knows what are the long term effects of GMOs (Genetically Modified Foods and Organisms --HGP Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues).
One issue that comes up with putting natural toxins in crops is how much we can take in because if we put toxins in everything, even though the amount is very low, there are going to be some complications because that amount builds up more and more each day you eat vegetables and fruits. Putting vaccines inside the seed doesn’t mean that everyone is going to be safe because maybe a super bacteria comes along because they need to survive somehow. I think that there should be a balance between heirloom seeds and GMOs because nature should not be altered to a point that every fruit and vegetable is considered a GMO. The people have the right to choose if they want to eat GM foods or organically grown foods. Say you have an heirloom tomato that grows big and juicy but can’t be grown in a really cold place then you can splice in a gene and make it so it can grow in a cold place. Another thing that should happened is that we shouldn’t be able to patented plants because we can’t control how they will pollinate. This is a problem because if the wind picks up the GMO crops might affect nearby farmers by mixing with their crops. I think that at the very end it depends were you are and how many people you are feeding. If you are feeding a large population I think we should go with GMOs but if it’s just a little town or just your back yard you should go with heirloom seeds, now for the last question.
Are we ever going to have enough food to feed everyone in the world? I believe that we can. One study shows that we have enough food right now to feed the whole world but the food is just not going around because of other issues such as financial problems and wrong people that have a lot of power over a whole town or city (World Hunger Notes--Global Issues: World Hunger Facts 2009 by World Hunger Education Service). We have enough food right now to feed the world but what about in 58 years? According to a study by the time we get to 2067 there are going to be 13 billion people in the world (Population Growth - Overview of Population Growth Rates). I think that if we change our current food distribution we will have enough even to feed 20 billion people. We need to change it so everyone in the world has food. If we reduce our food waste and just grow what we need and find a way to give food directly to the people instead of giving it to the government to distribute it we can feed a lot more people because some governments are really corrupt and they don’t really distribute it correctly. We also need to find the most efficient way to use the land that we have.
One example could be to make a farm in every city, each have one big farm. This way we can make it more of a closed system rather than an open system. What this means is that we are not going to get fertilizer and resources from other countries and waist more fuel by transporting the crops to other places half way around the world. I believe we have enough room to make a farm in every city. Using the golf course could be useful because you really don’t need that much space for a sport that involves hitting a little ball into a hole. We need to think about all our space we have and how we are using does spaces because we really aren’t using all the space in the city. Just drive around your block and you would probably see abandoned buildings and lots. If we don’t have enough space for the whole city we can always maybe make a big hole and build a parking lot structured building and have different types of crops in every section. We can also have room to teach the current generation how to plant in their back yards if they have space and how to eat right. This will also mean lowering the risk of someone contaminating our food supply that will harm everyone. This way we can make them more interested in farming and when they grow up they can find more efficient ways for farming. If we change all these things and have a mixture of heirloom and GMOs we can have health care go down, make more jobs, and solve the current problem of world hunger.

Bibliography

"Genetically Modified Foods and Organisms --HGP Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues." Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Web. 5 Oct. 2009. .
"HEIRLOOM SEEDS HISTORY - About our company." HEIRLOOM SEEDS - over 1100 varieties of non-hybrid seeds including heirloom vegetable seeds, heirloom flower seeds and heirloom herb seeds. Web. 10 Oct. 2009. .
"History of GMOS." American RadioWorks from American Public Media. Web. 14 Oct. 2009. .
"Pest resistant crops." GMO COMPASS - Information on genetically modified organisms. Web. 14 Oct. 2009. .

"Population Growth - Overview of Population Growth Rates." Geography Home Page - Geography at About.com. Web. 1 Oct. 2009. .
"Why it Matters to Buy Heirloom Plants and Seeds | Healthy and Green Living." Care2 - largest online community for healthy and green living, human rights and animal welfare. Web. 10 Oct. 2009. .
"World Hunger Notes--Global Issues: World Hunger Facts 2009 by World Hunger Education Service." World Hunger Notes Homepage. Web. 3 Oct. 2009. .