Literature on the Environment; the city as text - graffiti as writing Thesis

Literature on the Environment; the city as text - graffiti as writing - Thesis Example An analysis of graffiti as a form of communication will reveal the language of the art as it speaks for the youth of a city in both pictorial and symbolic forms. Graffiti is most often associated with the emergence of artistic expressions that were applied to public surfaces. The growth of its popularity since the 1960’s was associated with counterculture activities, but by the 1980’s graffiti artists began to find prominence in art galleries with their work reproduced on canvas and sold as graffiti art. Artists such as Keith Hring and Jean-Michel Basquiat became important artists in the period from their artworks that were defined by the graffiti movement and its defining elements. Graffiti becomes an aesthetic that has definition according to theorists such as Phase2 and Rammellzee and is expanded to include work that is not defined by the location of the work on public surfaces (Chang 153). Graffiti can be termed as a type of writing that is based on signatures and styles and those who go out into the city and communicate using this form of writing call themselves writers. The linguistics are created through a focus on the use of the city as a blank page on which their story is told through symbols and images. This essay will explore the origins of graffiti and the reactions by the public to the evolution of this form of communication, its exclusive nature as it speaks directly to those who know the language and its inclusive nature as it speaks to anyone near enough to see the message, whether it is understood for its actual intent or interpreted through a lens without street knowledge. This essay will focus on the notion of graffiti writing as literature, part of a vital need by city dwellers to write their name and story on the space that surrounds them, recreating the visual construction of the city as a huge text, ever changing and often undecipherable to the unin itiated. In order to explore the idea of graffiti as literature, an

Save the planet by cutting down on meat That's just a load of bull Essay

Save the planet by cutting down on meat That's just a load of bull - Essay Example In contrast, transport makes up just 13% of the world’s greenhouse gas footprint. Moreover, cows turn out methane gas is 23 times as damaging as CO2. Furthermore, livestock rearing takes up 30% of the earth’s surface. In light of this, Johnson suggests that Dr.Pachauri was perhaps right for being anxious about emissions of methane gas from livestock. Johnson affirms that although Dr.Pachauri’s scrutiny was spot on; his proposition to cut down on meat was ridiculous. Additionally, Johnson (2008) argues that while shunning meat consumption by humans would notably result in decreased methane output; Dr. Pachauri’s recommendation is mistaken as it ignores the pertinent issues at the heart of every environmental problem that presently afflicts the world. Some of these issues include: deforestation, destruction of species, the 1.3 billion people whose livelihoods are reliant on agriculture as well as the persistent human population boom. Currently, the world’s population is about 6.72 billion and anticipated to rise to 9 billion by 2050. Cows are not the problem; people eating the cows are the problem. Additionally, Johnson also reminds the UN of its historic role which entails: campaigning against global overpopulation, family planning championing for female emancipation, and all the real solutions to world’s intolerable and excessive population boom. In support of Dr. Pachauri’s proposition that meat production puts more GHG’s than the earth’s entire transport network, Smith et al. (2007, p.501) suggests that agriculture discharges considerable amounts of GHG’s (such as methane-CH4, nitrous oxide-N2O and carbondioxide-CO2) into the atmosphere. CH4 is generated when organic matter putrefies in anaerobic circumstances, especially from fermentative digestion by ruminant farm animals, from stockpiled droppings. This confirms that Dr.Pachauri is perhaps right for being anxious about methane gas emissions from livestock. On the