Environmental Ethics: Final report presentations

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

Final report presentations

We'll do two or three presentations per class. I've tentatively filled out the schedule, most of you haven't indicated a preference. You can swap with someone else if they're agreeable, just put that in the comments space and give me a heads-up. There were no volunteers to go first on November 5 so we'll have to do three presentations in a couple of classes.

Presentation to be complemented with a final report blog post due Dec.6. Everyone will need to sign up as an AUTHOR on this site, in order to post, before then. Post an early draft for constructive feedback or to use in your presentation. The blog post should summarize your presentation, and elaborate on it. Include relevant links (instead of footnotes/bibliography) to sources.

NOV 5 [Don't forget to vote!]

Greta Thumberg, The Climate Book (GT) 5.15--5.21 (thru Mending...Earth)
Bill McKibben, American Earth (McK) thru Terry Tempest Williams

NOV 7

GT 5.22 (Hope... What Next?) - Eli Miller
McK thru Ellen Meloy - Alex Wiseman

NOV 12

William MacAskill, What Do We Owe the Future? (MacA) Part I-The Long View - Aidan Haines
McK thru Jack Turner - Gray Fogo

NOV 14

MacA Part II-Trajectory Changes Christina Guest
McK thru David Quammen - Audrey Lewis
... - Eli Miller

NOV 19

MacA Part III-Safeguarding Civilisation - Eli Kersey
McK thru Sandra Steingraber - Nathan Ruppel
Quammen, "Earth's biological limits" - Chelsie Gordon

NOV 21

MacA Part IV-Assessing the End of the World - Katherine Welch
McK Barbara Kingsolver, Michael Pollan - Jonathan Keith

NOV 26

MacA Part V-Taking Action - Martin Stricklin
McK Paul Hawken, Rebecca Solnit - Molly Carico
Gary Wedgewood

6 comments:

Gray FogoOctober 30, 2024 at 7:55 PM
Gray Fogo- Nov 12th on the spirituality of nature referencing the words of David Abram and Linda Hogan in American Earth.
ReplyDelete
Replies
Katherine WelchNovember 2, 2024 at 2:19 PM
Katherine Welch - Nov 21 MacA Part IV with a focus on Chapter 9 "Will the Future Be Good or Bad?"
ReplyDelete
Replies
AnonymousNovember 3, 2024 at 11:01 PM
Jonathan Keith- November 21 McKibben- Michael Pollan- The Omnivore's Dilemma
ReplyDelete
Replies
Christina GuestNovember 4, 2024 at 12:57 PM
Christina Guest- Nov 14th MacA Part II Trajectory Changes
ReplyDelete
Replies
PhilNovember 4, 2024 at 6:33 PM
I've tentatively filled out the schedule, most of you haven't indicated a preference. You can swap with someone else if they're agreeable, just put that in a comment and give me a heads-up. There were no volunteers to go first, and I didn't want to give anyone super-short notice... so we'll have to do three presentations a couple of classes later.
ReplyDelete
Replies
Chelsie GordonNovember 5, 2024 at 9:28 AM
Chelsie Gordon- November 14 referencing David Quammen Planet of weeds and focusing on "Earth's biological limits"
ReplyDelete
Replies

Add comment

PHIL 3340 scheduled to return to MTSU Fall 2026... DEC 6 Final blogpost (final draft) due. Post earlier for constructive feedback... Posting will close after Dec.6. If you are unable to post, send your report directly to me - phil.oliver@mtsu.edu - and include footnotes to all terms you intended to link... 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

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

Final report presentations

6 comments:

Peripatetics