The age of the "Black Swan" is unfortunately upon us as a human race and to the Earth. The term "Black Swan" is new to me but when looking at the essence of the name and the swan itself, you get an unsettling feeling in your stomach in what it actually entails. This unsettling feeling deals with the way our world is today and where it is going. Laurie Mazur brought up a great point in that we as a world have to make changes and start to get smarter about our environment since we are getting a glimpse of what's to come if we don’t make serious changes. There are a lot more environmental disturbances seen throughout the world in certain places due to the deforestation, water damming, making our resources unsustainable and greenhouse gases. Take for instance the abundance of hurricanes that have been rocking the southeast of the United States for the past decade or the amount of large scale earthquakes around the world. The frequency and magnitude of these disturbances aren’t natural which implies our changing world.

The idea the author proposed about giving women more rights, more education, and essentially more opportunities around the world would not only save more lives but it will also help save our Earth. Women have always been the key to civilization and to the success of many great people in history. We as a race have never given women the same amount of credit as they deserve since men have always been seen as dominant and the leaders. In reality a lot of man's great successes have come from their female counterparts. Mazur's idea is right because by focusing on getting women educated and getting them involved in this process will turn the ship in the right direction by giving them a say from all over the world. The women who live rurally in Africa or other parts of the world know the secret to life which is to treat the Earth right and it will treat you right. I understand it’s because they haven’t advanced as far as the United States or other parts of the world but they are living off the land and leaving a minimal footprint. By educating these women and others and giving them a chance to speak out could greatly change the way we live our lives and maybe make people realize the state Earth currently.

I want to say that I know that this process won’t be done in one day but something needs to happen for our world to realize the problems we are facing are real. I mean when reading it’s astonishing to know that over 30,000 species of plant and animal life become extinct due to human’s destruction of the planet. I understand our population is growing and is expected to reach almost more than double in the next 50 years but that should only make us work smarter into combing our earth into what we want. The hardest part which every scientist and sociologist knows is to get everyone on the same page and the only way I see that happening is similar to the movie Armageddon. A natural phenomenon brought the world together to deal with the giant asteroid which made everyone set aside differences and come up with a solution as a team. It’s sad but I feel this is the only way because people don’t understand the fragile state the Earth is in.

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 Its not only natural disasters but the effects on the population and cost of damages. A natural disaster can only do so much damage depending on the area it occurs. I feel like what this article is trying to say is that if we allow women to have choices such as reporductive rights, we are able to slow down population growth. It is commonly known that the reason some places are hit harder is because of the overpopulation of  humans in very limited land.  It really isn't a matter of coping, but of trying to improve lives by giving women a choice. The "Black Swans" just showing how the Earth's capacity of living people is coming near its end.