Environmental Ethics: Questions NOV 19

Friday, November 15, 2024

Questions NOV 19

MacA Part III-Safeguarding Civilisation. McK thru Sandra Steingraber

MacA Part III-Safeguarding Civilisation - Eli Kersey
McK thru Sandra Steingraber - Nathan Ruppel
... - Chelsie Gordon
[Make-up] McK thru David Quammen - Audrey Lewis

MacA

Who conceived Spaceguard? Who imitated it? How effective is it? 106-7
How uncommon are pathogen escapes? 109 Are they a serious concern? 112-3
How is the Planet of the Apes scenario related to the Fermi Paradox? 117-19
What question is more pertinent than why Rome fell? What good came out of that? 123-4
What are some 20th century examples of human resilience? 126-7
Is MacAskill pessimistic about the worst-case nuclear scenario? 129-131 How about climate change? 134-6
In light of the election, do you share MacA's "best guess"? 141
Why does progress become harder to achieve? 151 How might civilization avoid "stagnation"? How might it last a long time? 156-8 Under what conditions might stagnation trigger extinction? 162

McK

Janisse Ray engages what culture long ignored by environmentalists? 898
The absence of what practice has devastated gopher tortoises? 902
How do junkyards resemble/illustrate ecosystems? 904-5
How long did Julia Butterfly Hill occupy Luna? 907
By what analogy does Hill describe her "movement"? 912 Why wouldn't she come down to escape the storm? 915 What did she learn from Luna's "voice"? 917
What evangelical notion did Calvin DeWitt apply to environmentalism? 919 What are his three principles? 920f.
What shouldn't you eat? 924
What does abad mean? 926
Sandra Steingraber has spent her career investigating what? 929
What was Rachel Carson's big point? 930
Who's at the top of the food chain? 931
What are some effects of exposure to Dioxin? 938

3 comments:

Chelsie GordonNovember 19, 2024 at 9:28 AM
I have always loved what Julia did, and honestly if I didn't have three children I would do things like this myself.
Julia says, "People are always shocked that I’m an introvert, but I’m an extreme introvert. I remind people, like, how long do you think an extrovert would have lasted by themselves in a tree in the middle of nowhere? Only an extreme introvert could do what I did, but then the trees told me when I was up there, they said, “Julia, just like when you go to a new country, you need a translator, nature needs translators…We’ve been communicating since the beginning of time, and people have forgotten how to listen, and they’re going to listen to you, so we need you to do this.”
I think she is a good person with the most wholesome intentions and we could really use more awareness like hers.
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Katherine WelchNovember 19, 2024 at 4:07 PM
What are some 20th century examples of human resilience? 126-7

An example described by MacAskill is the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. After the blast that killed around 140,000 people, "shadows" of those people were left behind. One person, thought to be the woman Mitsuno Ochi, left a shadow on the steps of the Bank of Japan. This led to the creation of an exhibit titled the Human Shadow of Death. Despite the hardship the city faced, people restored power in some areas within a day, and areas, like the Bank, reopened.
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AnonymousNovember 19, 2024 at 6:56 PM
Janisse Ray engages with the folks up in southern Georgia. Due to lack of controlled burns those who are interested in gopher tortoises can see an impact. Julia Hill occupied the tree for 738 days.
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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

Friday, November 15, 2024

Questions NOV 19

3 comments:

Peripatetics