Paul Hawken, Regeneration (PH) -33. (Remember to declare your midterm report presentation topic preference ASAP.)
- Have you visited www.regeneration.org? Impressions?
- COMMENT on Jane Goodall's foreword? Do you agree that the climate crisis is interconnected with and insoluble apart from issues of poverty, health care, social justice etc.? Do you share her three reasons for hope? 6-7
- Do you see the proposal to put "the future of life at the heart of everything we do" as consistent with the urgency of addressing "current human needs, not future existential threats" and an "imagined dystopian future"? 9-10
- Are you confident that we'll be "going in the right direction at the right speed by 2030"? 10 If not, will you nonetheless engage the crisis and assert your agency?
- COMMENT?: "there is no difference between a climate denier and someone who understands the problem but does nothing." 11
- Do pessimists and defeatists lack imagination? 12
- Have you attempted to exert influence "upstream"? Will you? 13
- Does anything in the Readers Reference Guide surprise you? 14-15
- Will we "cease using the ocean as a dump" anytime soon? 17
- Will we stop using the ocean as a "lawless commons" anytime soon? 19
- Are too many academics (like Enric Sala, formerly) effectively writing obituaries for life on earth rather than working for solutions? 20
- Should we be seeding more kelp forests and consuming more seaweed? 23-4
- Did you realize how rapidly the mangrove forests had declined in just the past forty years? 27
- Do you think developers realize or care how badly they're compromising the tidal salt marshes and seagrasses? 29-31
- Why are we not better at learning from and retaining the insights of indigenous peoples and ancient scholars like Jia Si Xue? 32
From #DamonGameau, the author of our Afterword: #2040film. An aspirational journey to discover what the future could look like if we simply embraced the best that exists today.
First time I taught Environmental Ethics we read Paul Hawken's Blessed Unrest. He's still hopeful, though he says he "didn't intend it; optimism discovered me."
COMMENT?: "there is no difference between a climate denier and someone who understands the problem but does nothing." 11
ReplyDeletePhysically, there is no difference between a climate denier and someone who understands the problem but does nothing to fix it. Neither are taking responsibility for the role they play in the ongoing struggle of climate change nor spreading information on the issue and how it could be fixed. Sure, one understands that there is a problem that needs to be addressed or fixed, but by lack of doing anything about it, their knowledge of the issue bears resemblance to that of a brick wall. You could read an entire dissertation on climate change to a brick wall, but that doesn't mean anything is going to come of it.
Why are we not better at learning from and retaining the insights of indigenous peoples and ancient scholars like Jia Si Xue? 32
ReplyDeleteFew people, especially developers, refuse to take the time to learn how to work with the environment and how the environment can work for you in a symbiotic relationship. Since the industrial revolution, the idea has been to procure quantity and quick, regardless of harm to the environment or even ourselves really. Now, being generations removed from the beginning of the industrial era, we have kept the same practices of stripping the environment for whatever we may need it for; all the while forgetting how our ancestors and native people worked with their land to ensure they could stay there indefinitely. I feel like we are not better at learning and retaining insights from people willing to take the time and do the work because at this point its "more work than its worth" for a lot of corporations. That is, because many corporations refuse to acknowledge how they are prime contributors to the degradation of our world on every level. Denial and laziness are responsible.
COMMENT?: "there is no difference between a climate denier and someone who understands the problem but does nothing." 11
ReplyDeleteI think practically there is no difference. The same might be said for someone who recognizes the problem but gives into a kind of defeatism believing that the worst effects of climate change are inevitable, and that this somehow absolves them of any responsibility to change their own behavior. In fact the latter too may even be more morally culpable because of their choice to do nothing to stop a crises they acknowledge as a real and dangerous threat.
Are too many academics (like Enric Sala, formerly) effectively writing obituaries for life on earth rather than working for solutions? 20
ReplyDeleteI think this absolutely true. Maybe not the majority or even close to the majority of academics publish pieces and work that might be effective obituaries, but due to the nature of our media economy, these are the views that often have the farthest reach and they do immeasurable harm projecting them, giving rise to inaction and a fatalist acceptance of something that is far from inevitable.