The Animal’s Place article was very interesting to me since I’m a vegetarian and only have been for 4years. I thought that this article brought up good point about why you should or shouldn’t eat meat and it got me thinking. My question would be : According to the article why eating meat would not be so bad or even beneficial?

One point that Pollan brought up was the animal killing when combines harvest grain and kill a lot of mice and other rodents as well as killing of other animals by pesticides. He said that according to Steve Davis if all people became vegetarians, the total number of animals killed every year would actually increase. This was a different point of view that I never thought before. The author of the article also states that a lot of people choose not to eat meat because of the moral aspect and how the animals are treated in the farms and how they are slaughtered. He says that if more slaughter houses had open windows so people could see what is going on behind more people either would become vegetarians and/or protest against such behaviors. I think I would also start eating meat if it was just like from the farm like Polyface Farm where animals are allowed to be them and are killed in a human way.

In the article by Richard Lamm talks about the importance and limitations of history. I believe that we can learn from past mistakes and predict the events for the future. In terms of science whenever scientist/researchers perform an experiment they always want to know the background and history before something became what it is now. History is important to teach us about past mistakes and/or provide us with a background to help solve certain problems. I do agree with the author that history, the past may not help us with sustainability and global warming if people are stuck in the past and are not able to see the future.

After reading this article do you have faith that we will become more sustainable in the future by learning what works and what does not from the past?

The author seems very negative about how we are affecting the earth and becoming selfish. That we have become ignored about everything around us and that this might prevent us from moving forward especially if we look too much into the past and not the future. I believe that we have advanced so much already with technology and sustainability and that we will keep moving forward and resolve problems. We can’t resolve all  problems in the world however people have becoming more aware of the problems, education has increased and thus knowledge to do greater things.

Even though there is so much uncertainty about nature and how it works, why should people still trust scientists and their research?

In everyday life we observe nature and based on those observations we make inference of what is going around us and how that affects our daily life. If things repeat over time or act in the same way we infer that it will act the same way every time. The assumption is that nature exists and behaves in an uniform ways this viewpoint is usually taken by non-scientific community however scientist understand that nature is complex and a lot of times unpredictable. By conducting research and/or observations scientist can help us make the world make more sense and help us be more aware of our actions. This way when it’s hard to make a decision people can look for answers in science to make a better judgment of their actions such as current topics; global warming and conservation of species. It is important to distinguish falls claims especially in the media that is why it is important to be educated about a topic by turning to the science community to gather information and make predictions.