Response to Taking Root.

I thought taking root was an amazing story about the amazing changes some people can make. It started out as one person who saw what was going on and refused to sit by and let Kenya slowly die. It was amazing to see the snowball effect how what started out as one passionate person grew to include almost all of Kenya. I thought it was also very interesting how them planting trees and crops that served them rather than cash crops made such a difference that people were noticeably healthier and younger looking. I did not know that doing something like that would make such a difference. Although the amount of resistance that the Kenyans had to put up with from the government was a bit disheartening. I am not sure if I would be willing to risk death and life imprisonment to plant trees. I would hope that a government would be more willing to protect its people and less concerned with squashing peaceful protest. It is amazing how many people united behind a common front. One difference that I definitely noticed is that in Kenya they were only fighting the government whereas in most other areas they are fighting the government and gigantic corporations that want to leach all of the resources out of one area and maintain a strong presence in the region. This achievement was made even more impressive by the fact that it was done in Africa which is an impoverished an uneducated nation. Another difference I noticed was that everyone in Kenya ended up behind the issue even the Kenyan military. In the United States our attention is divided between so many different environmental initiatives everyone is more concerned about getting there voice heard that they drown out everybody else. I think that if everyone in the nation was behind a certain issue like releasing carbon into the atmosphere we could make a difference but the divisiveness hampers us.