Environmental Ethics: Sign & commit

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Sign & commit

Joshua told us all about the Presidents' Climate Commitment yesterday. 661 college & university presidents have already signed and committed

to eliminate net greenhouse gas emissions from specified campus operations, and to promote the research and educational efforts of higher education to equip society to re-stabilize the earth’s climate. Its mission is to accelerate progress towards climate neutrality and sustainability by empowering the higher education sector to educate students, create solutions, and provide leadership-by-example for the rest of society.

So our class now has set itself the definite working goal of persuading MTSU's President McPhee to lead us in joining them. Shouldn't be too hard a sell, should it? We'll see...

Dear President McPhee,

Yesterday one of my students presented a report on the Presidents' Climate Commitment, at whose behest 661 college & university presidents have already signed on "to eliminate net greenhouse emissions from specific campus operations" and pursue other goals promoting and modeling environmental sustainability.

We wondered if you were familiar with the PCC, and what you think the prospects might be of adding your name and MTSU's to the list of presidents and institutions on the cutting edge of this important initiative.

We'd like to invite you to meet with our class at your convenience to discuss how we might move forward on this, and related efforts to "green" our campus.

And by the way: I recently received a query from someone looking for the "Students for Environmental Action" at MTSU (also listed with CampusActivism.org). My office phone is listed as a contact for this organization, which apparently was co-founded by my predecessor (and the former occupant of my office) over a decade ago. Its faculty advisor is one "Brendan Martin," who I cannot find in our directory.

Time to revive and resuscitate this defunct shell, folks?
==
Bicycle rentals, repair shop catch student, faculty attention:http://mtsunews.com/blue-raider-bike-program/ …

‏@VandyPhilosophy

Friday Nov 9 at 7:30pm: Robert Kane (Austin), "Ethics and the Quest for Wisdom" (TN Philosophical Association Keynote)

Elizabeth Kolbert, "Greening the Ghetto," New Yorker Jan.12, 2009: Van Jones, on top of the world

‏@TIME

With #Sandy, the world's greenest author is seeing his fears come true | http://ti.me/SzOaZX

==
Finally, this just in:

"In a surprise announcement, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said Thursday that Hurricane Sandy had reshaped his thinking about the presidential campaign and that as a result he was endorsing President Obama."

“The devastation that Hurricane Sandy brought to New York City and much of the Northeast — in lost lives, lost homes and lost business — brought the stakes of next Tuesday’s presidential election into sharp relief,” Mr. Bloomberg wrote in an editorial for Bloomberg View.

Our climate is changing,” he wrote. “And while the increase in extreme weather we have experienced in New York City and around the world may or may not be the result of it, the risk that it may be — given the devastation it is wreaking — should be enough to compel all elected leaders to take immediate action.”

Bloomberg Endorses Obama, Saying Hurricane Sandy Affected Decision - NYTimes.com

1 comment:

ElizabethSparkmanNovember 5, 2012 at 1:39 PM
Is there a way to sign online??
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NOV 5 GT 5.15--5.21 (thru Mending...Earth). McK thru Terry Tempest Williams. Final report presentations begin... NOV 7 GT 5.22 (Hope... What Next?). McK thru Ellen Meloy... NOV 12 MacA Part I-The Long View. McK thru Jack Turner... NOV 14 MacA Part II-Trajectory Changes. McK thru David Quammen... A NOTE ON OUR TEXTS. This is an ambitious reading schedule. Read what you can, prioritizing the texts in descending order: first-listed assignment for each class gets top priority, second gets 2d, and so on... Fall 2024: HONORS BUILDING 116, T/Th 4:20 pm

TEXTS Fall '24

First things first--a proper education

“The complexity of our present trouble suggests as never before that we need to change our present concept of education. Education is not properly an industry, and its proper use is not to serve industries, either by job-training or by industry-subsidized research. It's proper use is to enable citizens to live lives that are economically, politically, socially, and culturally responsible. This cannot be done by gathering or "accessing" what we now call "information" - which is to say facts without context and therefore without priority. A proper education enables young people to put their lives in order, which means knowing what things are more important than other things; it means putting first things first.” ― Wendell Berry

The college project

“The American college may be considered a continuation, at the human level, of the self-education process of the earth itself: universe education, earth education, and human education are stages of development in a single unbroken process...The entire college project can be seen as that of enabling the student to understand the immense story of the universe and the role of the student in creating the next phase of the story.” --Thomas Berry, “The American College in the Ecological Age,” in The Dream of the Earth

“Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating.”
― Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

“Nature shrinks as capital grows. The growth of the market cannot solve the very crisis it creates.”
― Vandana Shiva, Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis

“Why should we tolerate a diet of weak poisons, a home in insipid surroundings, a circle of acquaintances who are not quite our enemies, the noise of motors with just enough relief to prevent insanity? Who would want to live in a world which is just not quite fatal?”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“How can we be so arrogant? The planet is, was, and always will be stronger than us. We can't destroy it; if we overstep the mark, the planet will simply erase us from its surface and carry on existing. Why don't they start talking about not letting the planet destroy us?”
― Paulo Coelho, The Winner Stands Alone

“When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: if you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren't optimistic, you haven't got a pulse.”
― Martin Keogh, Hope Beneath Our Feet: Restoring Our Place in the Natural World

“When the last tree is cut and the last fish killed, the last river poisoned, then you will see that you can't eat money.”
― John May, The Greenpeace Story

“We are being made aware that the organization of society on the principle of private profit, as well as public destruction, is leading both to the deformation of humanity by unregulated industrialism, and to the exhaustion of natural resources, and that a good deal of our material progress is a progress for which succeeding generations may have to pay dearly.”
― T.S. Eliot

“There is a tendency at every important but difficult crossroad to pretend that it's not really there.”
― Bill McKibben, The End of Nature

“We know, at least, that this decision (ending factory farming) will help prevent deforestation, curb global warming, reduce pollution, save oil reserves, lessen the burden on rural America, decrease human rights abuses, improve publish health, and help eliminate the most systematic animal abuse in history.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals

“An attitude to life which seeks fulfilment in the
single-minded pursuit of wealth - in short, materialism - does not fit into this
world, because it contains within itself no limiting principle, while the
environment in which it is placed is strictly limited.”
― Ernst F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered

“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.”
― Aldo Leopold

“Saving the world requires saving democracy. That requires well-informed citizens. Conservation, environment, poverty, community, education, family, health, economy- these combine to make one quest: liberty and justice for all. Whether one's special emphasis is global warming or child welfare, the cause is the same cause. And justice comes from the same place being human comes from: compassion.”
― Carl Safina, The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World

“The re-establishment of an ecological balance depends on the ability of society to counteract the progressive materialization of values. The ecological balance cannot be re-established unless we recognize again that only persons have ends and only persons can work towards them.”
― Ivan Illich

	Michael Pollan (@michaelpollan) http://michaelpollan.com/
5/14/15, 10:57 AM All the lectures and talks from Edible Education 101 are now online. All told, a great introduction to food politics bit.ly/1Fausvx

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Sign & commit

1 comment:

Peripatetics