Environment and Ecology

Cities are the rich nodes of civilization, the centers of every nation's culture, its commerce, arts, and sciences, which explains why so much attention is focused on their forms, their structures, and their internal functions.  Much less attention has been paid to outer ties, relating the city ecologically to its larger geographic setting: the primary focus of this article.

Like coral reefs, cities are complex ecosystems: three-dimensional physical bodies, a close fusion of organic and inorganic components.  Analogous to individual organisms, each volumetric city ecosystem depends not only on internal exchanges but also on outside exchanges, relying on the latter for the provision of necessary energy/materials and for the disposal of unnecessary wastes.  The far-reaching effects of energy/material inputs and outputs constitute the ecology of these peculiar human-dominated ecosystems.

Confusion results when the inner functionings of cities, their physiology, is mislabelled their ecology.  An example is the book, "The Ecological City" a collection of essays that largely deals with internal improvements of urban settlements by designing into them more of the undomesticated world.1  True, an inner ecology does exist in every urban setting, but it is not the ecology of the city; it is the ecology of people, the connections between inhabitants and the city ecosystem that envelops them.

At the ecology-of-cities level, within Earth's regions, problems are much less tractable than at the ecology-of-people level, within cities.  Uncritically mixing the two dissimilar levels fosters an unwarranted optimism about solving city problems.  Babylon and Tikal are reminders that city planning and city beautification are no hedge against the dangers of peripheral influences, especially those rendered virulent by neglect.

The Kids Ecology Corps is Kid Power!

You Can Change the World!

Do you know that you can change the world? The Kids Ecology Corps is about your using what we call Kid Power to make change.

If you want to make changes, you have to make a commitment. Making a commitment means sticking to something until it is done. It also means that you have made a decision. If you make good decisions, the changes you make will be good changes.

If you want to change something that is too big for you to change by yourself, you have to work with other people.

What happens if you and your friends and a lot of other people believe the same thing? What happens when everyone who believes the same thing works together? They become what is called a critical mass. They can put lots of energy into making a change. When they make a commitment to work together, they can make big changes. Sometimes the changes are so big that the whole world changes.

We call the whole world the global community. The global community is you, your family and friends, your community, your state, the United States, and all the people and nations of the earth.

When the United States Congress makes a law about the environment, other people around the world pay attention. Sometimes, the laws in the United States change the way other countries do things.