Environmental Ethics: Quiz Oct 20

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Quiz Oct 20

Ch 5
1. When will we reach climate conditions last seen 55 million years ago, if current rates of increase in atmospheric CO2 continue?

2. What do divergent climate models remind us?

3. What worst-case scenario do scientists consider increasingly likely?

Ch 6
4. What economic idea favored by climate skeptics is clearly wrong?

5. The backlash to what environmental classic should have forewarned us about "Climategate"?

6. What nation was rated last on the 2014 Global Green Economy Index?

Ch 7
7. The world's largest single source of carbon pollution is what?

8. How much will demand for coal in electricity generation in the U.S. decline by 2020?

DQ

What kinds of "unconstructive behavior in international forums" might the next US presidential administration commit? How will you address that, as a citizen?
What sort of "carbon price" would you support?
How do we close "the gulf between what the scientists know and what politicians choose to say"?
Should someone apologize for Climategate?
"It is astonishing that we have persisted with [coal] for so long," given its health and pollution costs. Is it also astonishing that so many US politicians continue to advocate for the coal industry? How do we change that?

It was great to hear from our guests on Tuesday that MTSU is moving in the right direction, with the Green Power Switch program etc. What we still don't know is the extent to which MTSU students' money still flows, via institutional investment, towards supporting the fossil fuel industry. Now that we're in the process of breaking ties to the Tennessee Board of Regents and establishing our own governing board, this becomes a crucial question for us to continue to press. One of the ways we can press it is by getting involved with the Students for Environmental Action, mtsu.sea@gmail.com, and by holding open our invitation to Dr. McPhee to address the issue. Contact him directly, Sidney.McPhee@mtsu.edu, or via his assistant: kimberly.edgar@mtsu.edu.

	Mother Jones (@MotherJones)
10/19/16, 11:15 PM Climate Change Got Exactly 2 Seconds of Time in the Final Debate mojo.ly/2enBExj

	Architecture (@archpics)
10/15/16, 3:55 AM KODA is a tiny solar-powered house that can move with its owners buff.ly/2dzzCIM

	EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)
10/19/16, 5:50 PM It's Time to Get Rid of Your Lawn! ow.ly/5K0G305levD @foodandwater @WaterAidAmerica

4 comments:

Kevin BibbyOctober 20, 2016 at 3:18 PM
How do we close "the gulf between what the scientists know and what politicians choose to say"?

I think that by continuing to protest these various environmental issues and continuing to grow and expand that cause in numbers will eventually force politicians hands. I mean you may be getting all this under the table money from the dirty industries but at some point they have to realize that they have to have voters to help them keep their seats. Also I think this election cycle has shown the power of the media and what power social pressure have on politicians and their actions.
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Kevin BibbyOctober 20, 2016 at 3:21 PM
"It is astonishing that we have persisted with [coal] for so long," given its health and pollution costs. Is it also astonishing that so many US politicians continue to advocate for the coal industry? How do we change that?

We must get big money out of politics because this has gradually shifted the most politicians minds from helping their constituents and doing what is best for the country and its present and future to politicians doing what is best for the profit margins of their supporters and doing what they can to help these dirty businesses that are doing vast harm in order to continue receiving the money from them to further their political careers.
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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

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Quiz Oct 20

4 comments:

Peripatetics