Environmental Ethics: Quiz Oct 24

Monday, October 22, 2018

Quiz Oct 24

LEN 13-15 (after catching up on 10-12). Presentations Rosemarie Kuenn, State of Fear by Michael Crichton; Baylee Burk, Odds Against Tomorrow by Nathaniel Rich; Abigail Redman, "The wind-up Girl" by Paolo Bacigalupi

1. What's become of Atlantic cod?

2. Who were the codfish aristocracy?

3. Who certifies sustainable fishing practices? What do critics say about that?

4. Name a couple of Cheryl's "sacrifices"?

5. What does Cheryl's pounding heart tell her?

6. How do almonds compare to other food products, in water required for production?

7. What are some health and ecological benefits of almonds?

8. What does methane do 20x more effectively than CO2?

9. How many straws do we throw away each year?

10. What's the BAN list, and what's atop it?

11. How much plastic is in the ocean, with what results for marine life?

12. Why does Bayan Slat disagee with "Think global, act local"?

13. What more is there to a stainless steel straw than Cheryl realized?

DQ:

Do you have any favorite food memories from childhood that now give you pangs of conscience?
Do you regret having been raised (if you were) on a diet formed by corporate interests like McDonalds and other fast-food and processed-food enterprises, and by a system of industrially-driven agribusiness? Have you or will you raise your children differently?
Have you read Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma, Cooked, Food Rules, or other books on environmentally-conscientious eating? What do you think of Pollan's food mantra: "Eat food, mostly plants, not too much"?
Do you research "what's ecologically responsible to buy," look for certifying labels, etc.? Will you?
Is "greenwashing" real? How do you avoid it?
What does "sustainable" mean to you?
Do you consume fast food? Is it possible to do so with a clear ecological conscience. when considering "how much land, fertilizer, fossil fuels" etc. go into its production?
Is it bad parenting, and bad citizenship, to buy Happy Meals for your children?
Is nostalgia for unwittingly bad food choices misplaced? Can we create the same feeling for better choices?
Are you making any sacrifices for the planet? 169
Do you wish you'd been born in a more benighted era, when nobody suspected that our various consumer habits might be bad for the environment?
Do you question the morality of bringing children into the world, these days?
Do you ever think about trees? How do you feel about them?

2 comments:

~*~Kari~*~October 23, 2018 at 6:27 PM
1. I think it’s well and good to have our fast food in moderation, but I prefer home cooked meals. I don’t even mind cooking or cleaning. The nutritional value of a hamburger and fries is limiting but delicious. Just as I type this I feel a pang of conscience. I didn’t know about the fast food industry’s unethical treatment of bovines as a child but now I would feel better now eating a salad with juice instead. I’m just lucky my family believes in moderation of fast food as well and I did not have the problem of childhood obesity growing up!
2.It’s bad parenting when you enable your children to proceed through life with bad eating habits and giving them a predisposition for diabetes, but that usually happens when we excessively eat food with no nutritional value without moderation. I think children enjoy happy meals but it’s a better choice to give substitutions for unhealthy options: juice instead of soda, apple slices instead of fries, and make unhealthy eating a very limited thing.
Reading this chapter makes me want to buy reusable straws.
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AnonymousOctober 23, 2018 at 8:35 PM
Max McConnell
1. Who created the Filter-O-Fish? Lou Groen
2. According to the critics of the MSC, why have they compromised their standards? Pg 162 to keep up with the demand created by Walmart and other big retailers that sell MSC certified fish
3. According to Cheryl, how long are the longest fishing lines used on some Canadian MSC certified fishing vessels? Pg 162 up to 40 miles
4. What does Cheryl initially vow to live in peaceful ignorance about? Pg 169 The negative impacts of almond milk, whatever they are.
5. About how much land is dedicated to almond farming in California? Pg 172 about 800,000 acres
6. What is the biggest consumer of agricultural water in California? Pg 178 Alfalfa
7. What does Cheryl say is the most dangerous place in the world? Pg 179 Her own mind
What two young people specifically give Cheryl hope? Pg 199 Milo Cress and Boylan Slat.
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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

Monday, October 22, 2018

Quiz Oct 24

2 comments:

Peripatetics