Environmental Ethics

PHIL 3340 Environmental Ethics-Supporting the philosophical study of environmental issues at Middle Tennessee State University and beyond...

Sunday, November 6, 2022

The World’s Peatlands Are Climate Bombs Waiting to Detonate

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/05/opinion/climate-warming-peatlands.html

Posted by Tom Smith at 3:48 PM

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Interconnected Planet (K. Modine)-please read and comment

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The Crucial Years-Bill McKibben

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TEXTS Fall '24

Erle C. Ellis, Anthropocene: A Very Short Introduction (EE)... Paul Hawken, Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation (PH)... William MacAskill, What We Owe the Future (MacA) ... Bill McKibben, ed., American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau (McK)... Greta Thunberg, The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions (GT)... David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming (WW)... For more information contact Dr. Oliver – phil.oliver@mtsu.edu

Office hours

Fall 2024: Tue/Thur 11 am to 1 pm by appt (in person or via Zoom; on campus (in 300 JUB or at another designated location, call to confirm location before coming in)... (615) 898-2050... (615) 525-7865-only during office hours please. Other days on Zoom, by appointment.

Syllabus

Home
Syllabus 2024

Make the right kind

Greta & Jane

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

Climb into the world

"Inscendence" - the impulse not to rise above the world (transcendence) but to climb into it, seek its core. Thomas Berry, via Robert Macfarlane

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

Environmental hubris

“Man aspires to govern nature, but the more one studies ecology, the
more absurd it seems to speak of any one feature of an organism, or of
an organism/environment field, as governing or ruling others.” Alan Watts

The Weekly Anthropocene

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Up@dawn

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Up@dawn 2.0

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Featured Post

Naomi Klein's "This Changes Everything"

“Every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable.” Thus spoke President Kennedy in a 1...

350.org

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Nature World News : Environment

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Grist

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Environment

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Environment | The Guardian

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Long Now

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Books

American Earth '09
An Inconvenient Truth '07
Beyond Earth Day: Fulfilling the Promise
Blessed Unrest '12
Botany of Desire '07
Bridge at the Edge of the World '12
Eaarth: making a life on a tough new planet
Ecotopia '12
Ecotopia Emerging
End of Nature '07
Environmental Ethics (Andrew Light)
Environmental Ethics: The Big Questions
Ethics of Climate Change '09
Ethics of What We Eat '09
Field Notes From A Catastrophe '07
Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth
Global Warming Reader '12
Green Space, Green Time
Greening of America
Native Pragmatism: Rethinking the Roots of American Philosophy
Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence '11
Nature's Way: Native Wisdom for Living in Balance with the Earth '11
Omnivore's Dilemma
Primal Roots of American Philosophy
Rebuild the Dream '12
Red Alert!: Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge '11
Revenge of Gaia
The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth
Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning '11
Whole Earth Discipline '11

"A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't." Mark Twain

"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them." Ray Bradbury

...ALSO see "Some past texts"...

More books

Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're in Without Going Crazy
Atmosphere of Hope: Searching for Solutions to the Climate Crisis by Tim Flannery
BIll McKibben previews
Climate change: a very short introduction
Environmental fiction: a reading list to save the world (Bookriot)
No is Not Enough: Resisting Trump's Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need by Naomi Klein
Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist by Bill McKibben
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert
This Changes Everything: Capitalism versus the Climate by Naomi Klein

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Contributors

Gary Wedgewood
Gray Fogo
Kathryn M.
Molly Carico
Phil

Up@dawn the podcast

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This podcast (you can subscribe at iTunes) includes posts from my blogs and additional spontaneous musings, usually related to our course content

Delight Springs

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Not just for April anymore

Environmental Ethics Links

2121-What our cities could look like (Natl Geog)
24 reasons to choose hope (Climate Reality)
350.org (Bill McKibben's "global movement")
Al Gore's optimism (TED)
America's first offshore windfarm
Bjorn Lomborg
Callenbach's (posthumous ) Epistle to the Ecotopians
Can Dirt Save the Earth? (nyt mag Apr'18)
Carbon Capture, by Jonathan Franzen
Cli-fi (climate fiction)
Cli-fi blog by Dan Bloom
Cli-Fi REPORT: 50+ academic & media links:
Cli-fi-best books sel. by Dan Bloom
Climate & environment in nyt
Climate Debate Daily
Climate science videos: It's okay to be smart
Daily Climate
Dot Earth (Andrew Revkin's climate blog)
E.O. Wilson calls for a "grand retreat"
Eco-fiction
Embarrassing Photos of Me, Thanks to My Right-Wing Stalkers-Bill McKibben
English village leads in climate action
Food & climate Q&A
GOP candidates on climate change
Green burial
How Haslam in reshaping TN environmental rules
How to reduce your carbon footprint (nyt)
How to talk to a climate skeptic (Grist)
How trees "talk" to each other
In defense of hope (& Rebecca Solnit)
IPCC Intergovernmental panel on climate change
Jimmy Kimmel vs. climate deniers
Jy16 ottest month ever
McKibben's stalkers
Michael Chabon's "Omega Glory"
Myths about global warming and climate change
Orion ("America's finest environmental magazine")
Podcasts on environmental issues
Prescription: Play Outdoors
Real Climate
Reversing course on Trump's environmental damage (nyt)
Stewart Brand's Whole Earth (Guardian)
The Climate of Man, by Elizabeth Kolbert
The Conversation/environment: "academic rigor + journalistic flair"
The Dying Sea, by Dana Goodyear
The End of Ice, by Dexter Filkins
The Great Oasis, by Burkhard Bilger
The Overstory by Richard Powers, rev by Barbara Kingsolver
These five cuisines are easier on the planet (nyt)

Food Ethics

	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

"Small changes to combat climate change"

A Guide to Becoming a Tree Hugger

Eat More Plants to Improve Health, Combat Climate Change

Infographic We all want to help the planet. But how?

15 Tips to Make Your Home More Green

The Top Green Home Building Techniques

The Green Guide to Downsizing: How to Modify Your Home for More Eco-Conscious Living

Incorporating ‘Green’ Into Your Business Practices

Culinary Resources for Vegetarianism

5 Steps To Become An Eco-Friendly Pet Parent

jennifer@publichealthlibrary.org

Bioethics

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“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

Drunk

"Solvitur ambulando"

Peripatetics

The original peripatetics were Aristotle's students at the Lyceum, back in the day. Legend has it that they didn't sit indoors in orderly rows like students nowadays, but instead roamed the grounds in small groups, walking-and-talking philosophy. I like their style, apocryphal or not.It’s a model we’ll emulate when the weather is nice enough, outdoors. They're also why I'm developing a Study Abroad course that will involve walking and talking in England beginning in the summer of '17. Stay tuned for more info on that.

Previously

FALL '24. AUG 27 Introductions: Who are you? Why are you here? What do you consider to be YOUR environment? How does that relate to nature, the climate, and society? Do you think most college-age students are concerned about the present and future condition of the environment? Are you optimistic /pessimistic/melioristic about the future?... AUG 29 EE preface, 1-2 (Origins, Earth System). GT 1.1--1.4 (thru Civilization and Extinction). WW I (Cascades)... == FALL '22. Final presentations are concluded, final reports should now all be posted. If you've neglected to post, or have been unable to do so, email it directly to me - phil.oliver@mtsu.edu... Have a good break. Hope to see you in a future class. If you're graduating, good luck. Keep in touch! ...Your author status remains intact, feel free to continue sharing environmental content if you wish. Exam OPTION due DEC 2, along with final report BLOG POST complementing your presentation (but post an early draft if you'd like potentially constructive feedback)... NOV 29 EXAM (covering questions posted since OCT 13-audio review coming soon, watch this space) OR (1) your posted review of Ministry for the Future and response to KSR's view from 2071, or (2) a posted essay on what you consider the two or three best ideas in MF and Regeneration, or (3) a posted essay on the Sunrise Movement and whether you think the rising generation will adequately engage the climate crisis... FINAL REPORT PRESENTATION Liam.... Re: REPORT PRESENTATIONS-unless you've heard otherwise from me, you received all 25 available points... AUG 23 Introductions-Post your response to these questions, interpreted any way you like: Who are you? Why are you here? What do you consider to be your environment? How does that relate to nature, the climate, and society? Do you think most college-age students are concerned about the present and future condition of the environment? Are you optimistic about the future? Read and comment on your classmates' introductions... AUG 25 Wendell Berry (WB) -37 (Intro, A Native Hill)... 1.13pc;">

DEC
T 8 Final blogpost due ("Write your script for Message From the Future III, after reviewing I & II (and Bill McKibben's view from 2050, if you like...")

Post earlier draft for potentially-constructive feedback... How to embed links etc. -- please avoid URL addresses in the body of your post.

If you've not yet done so, please post your semester's point total(excluding midterm & final) ASAP (or email me directly).
==
Remote Office Hours Fall 2020: MW 4-5, TTh 4-5:30. Call or text (615) 525-7865 during these times (not at other times, please), indicate if you wish to arrange a private Zoom session. Syllabus 2020

W 25 - Ed Craig, video & discussion. Last Day of Class-post your final weekly essay, comments, and points total (not including blog post scores) by Wednesday night, so you can have a thankful holiday.

Thanksgiving

Listen to Zach: video on when speaking, at least--please dress (and aim your camera) appropriately... audio on except when there's excessive ambient noise/conversation/coughing in your neighborhood.

When posting your weekly summary, please include an updated grand total of how many points you think you've earned all semester so far.

Looking for more comments from you all, please. Much as I enjoy asking questions, I more enjoy your responses.

Please post your weekly essays, comments, and online activity summaries by Thursday midnight each week (I need Fridays to catch up!)... But I hope you'll not wait 'til the 11th hour, we need the benefit of your wisdom prior to and (thence) during class.

If we ever have a prolonged interruption of broadband service during class, try re-connecting via phone.
==
Remote Office Hours Fall 2020: MW 4-5, TTh 4-5:30. Call or text (615) 525-7865 during these times (not at other times, please), indicate if you wish to arrange a private Zoom session.
==
Environmental Ethics (PHIL 3340) returns to MTSU as a remote course (due to the COVID pandemic) Fall 2020. We will NOT meet in Peck Hall 206, the original classroom designation. Most of our online activity will happen here (not on D2L) and on Zoom, MW 3-4 (meeting ID & password tba, via email and later in this space). Syllabus 2020... Introductions...

OLD QUESTIONS:
W 26 EE 1-2 Questions... M 31 EE 3-4 Questions... W 2 Questions... W9...

ZOOM at 2:30 pm MW. Recordings available on request.
==
Required Texts: Environmental Ethics: A Very Short Introduction by Robin Attfield; Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? by Bill McKibben; On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal by Naomi Klein; The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here by Hope Jahren

Recommended: The Ethics of Climate Change: Right and Wrong in a Warming World by James Garvey; Losing Earth: A Recent History by Nathaniel Rich; The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells

Old announcements:
M 14 - Hope Jahren (HJ), The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here - Part One (-p.23). Questions

==

It's been brought to my attention that one of us has been "reported... and investigated" for a remark posted on our site and presumably passed along to investigators by another of us. (I can't believe we're being randomly monitored.) The remark in question, though rhetorically excessive, was in context clearly not literal and did not merit reporting or investigation, or really any external attention whatsover. I'm sure the matter will end there, and I'd prefer to not bring it up at all... but the unfortunate lingering consequence is that at least one of us now "no longer feel[s] comfortable sharing my opinion in class." That's more than regrettable, it undermines our academic freedom. I would like to trust that, going forward, we'll all appreciate the value of free and uninhibited expression in class. Keyword: trust.

W 26 EE 1-2. Zoom at 3 pm-Recording (Passcode: Fj0BR+DQ) (see Tuesday's emailed instructions [which I understand will be found in your D2L mail] or request from phil.oliver@mtsu.edu).. Look for my questions, and pose (& comment on) your own. (I'll always post questions pertaining to the assigned readings, and encourage you to do the same.)

IMPORTANT UPDATE: I gave you guys the wrong Meeting ID... (no wonder I got emails indicating that people were waiting for me at all hours!) - Check your Tuesday morning email for the correct ID. Sorry about that. jpo

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Sunday, November 6, 2022

The World’s Peatlands Are Climate Bombs Waiting to Detonate

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Peripatetics