Gotta have friends

Our social/communal world is also our environment.

Happy to lead off the Fall Honors lecture series. https://t.co/lfjWkc4lmx

— Phil Oliver (@OSOPHER) August 22, 2022

Why Learn

 LISTEN. Mark Edmundson, author of Why Teach, Why Read, and Why Write, answers his own questions:

"By coming up with fresh and arresting words to describe the world accurately, the writer expands the boundaries of her world, and possibly her readers’ world, too. Real writing can do what R. P. Blackmur said it could: add to the stock of available reality." 

And by natural extension, teachers attempt to expand their students' stock of reality.

At convocation yesterday, Andrew Forsthoefel told our new students that he'd expanded his own stock of reality when he set out on his trans-American walk and listened to the stories of scores of Americans. In the process he learned a great deal about who he was. He grew up... (continues)

 

(Andrew begins speaking at about 38")

PFAS

	CBS Sunday Morning 🌞 ⁦‪@CBSSunday‬⁩ Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (known as PFAS) are long-lasting compounds that are showing up in soil, ground water, drinking water sources, even rainfall, and have been linked to cancer, liver damage, thyroid disease, and other ailments. cbsn.ws/3PErEzs pic.twitter.com/s8y9a0Pq0q   8/21/22, 8:30 AM

Survivor of White House Lightning Strike Embraces Third Chance at Life

…She said she learned years ago to focus on gratitude from the examples of her Aunt Melinda, who had recurring bouts of cancer for 12 years, and her Uncle Les, who had cancer for nine years. They both died from their illnesses, but during treatment they would always talk about how grateful they were to still be alive.

"I've always had that from them, but since this has happened to me, the part that I've learned is to just take on life without fear of failure," she said... nyt

Self-study

The students are coming. Maybe one or two will glance at my American Studies sign, somebody’s got to figure this country out. pic.twitter.com/SGUyJvJvS2

— Phil Oliver (@OSOPHER) August 19, 2022

Consider a minor... 

Peripatetic prof

The recipient of the Career Achievement Award at #MTSU spoke of walking around our campus and experiencing it as our students do. Good advice. Scholars sit too much. https://t.co/CszhWhzQjn

— Phil Oliver (@OSOPHER) August 19, 2022

After Citizens United

The Political Climate

…How did caring about a drowned or desiccated future come to be a partisan issue? Perhaps the simplest answer is money. A report put out two years ago by the Senate Democrats' Special Committee on the Climate Crisis noted, "In the 2000s, several bipartisan climate bills were circulating in the Senate." Then, in 2010, the Supreme Court, in the Citizens United decision, ruled that corporations and wealthy donors could, effectively, pour unlimited amounts of cash into electioneering. Fossil-fuel companies quickly figured out how to funnel money through front groups, which used it to reward the industry's friends and to punish its enemies. After Citizens United, according to the report, "bipartisan activity on comprehensive climate legislation collapsed." (Continues)

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/22/how-did-fighting-climate-change-become-a-partisan-issue

Either/Or

LISTEN. Kierkegaard's disjunctive title, and his existential pessimism, have new life in Elif Batuman's novel of academia from the perspective of a Harvard co-ed for whom every new experience and encounter is an occasion for extended ruminative puzzlement. 

I like to read something just before a new semester to displace my usual ways of thinking about Higher  Education. Batuman's narrator/protagonist Selin, a first-generation student of Turkish heritage, definitely sees school and life from an unfamiliar perspective... (continues)

==

Thinking today of a beloved former "non-traditional" student, the late suffrage scholar Don Enss. https://t.co/z2nBpvGd0Z

— Phil Oliver (@OSOPHER) August 18, 2022

Against carbon capture and storage

Every Dollar Spent on This Climate Technology Is a Waste
Subsidies in the climate bill will lock in carbon capture and storage, which will sustain fossil fuels.

The technology called carbon capture and storage is aptly named. It is supposed to capture carbon dioxide emissions from industrial sources and pump them deep underground. It was a big winner in the climate provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress last week and signed into law by President Biden on Tuesday.

What the technology, known as C.C.S., also does is allow for the continued production of oil and natural gas at a time when the world should be ending its dependence on fossil fuels.

The Inflation Reduction Act does more to cut fossil fuel use and fight climate change than any previous legislation by expanding renewable energy, electric cars, heat pumps and more. But the law also contains a counterproductive waste of money, backed by the fossil fuel industry, to subsidize C.C.S. (continues)

Thomas Berry

Thomas Berry "sought a broader perspective on humanity’s relationship to the earth in order to respond to the ecological and social challenges of our times." No relation to Wendell (nor to Chuck), except in spirit...

“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.” (Thomas Berry, “The American College in the Ecological Age,” in The Dream of the Earth, 89).

“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, 98).

“We come into being in and through the Earth. Simply put, we are Earthlings. The Earth is our origin, our nourishment, our educator, our healer, our fulfillment. At its core, even our spirituality is Earth derived. The human and the Earth are totally implicated, each in the other. If there is no spirituality in the Earth, then there is no spirituality in ourselves.” (Thomas Berry, “The Spirituality of the Earth,” in The Sacred Universe, 69).

More Thomas Berry... 

And Wendell again, on 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

Message From The Berry Center

Greetings Phil,
>
> Thank you for reaching out and for the kind words! I'm happy to pass them along to the office here. Best of luck with the semester, it sounds like a great class! Many thanks again to you down there south of the border.
>
> Ben Aguilar
> Director of Operations
> The Berry Center
> 111 S. Main St. | PO Box 582
> New Castle, Kentucky
> (502) 845-9200
> benaguilar@berrycenter.org

>> On Aug 15, 2022, at 7:52 AM, Phil Oliver <mail@berrycenter.org> wrote:
>>
>> I teach Environmental Ethics at Middle Tennessee State University. This semester, which begins a week from today, we're reading "The World-Ending Fire" and focusing on the generational transmission of responsibility and care for a sustainable habitat for all life. I'll encourage my students to support and emulate your work. Thank you!

Established in 2011, The Berry Center is a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing focus, knowledge and cohesion to the work of changing our ruinous industrial agricultural system into a system and culture that uses nature as the standard, accepts no permanent damage to the ecosphere, and takes into consideration human health in local communities.

When we consider these objectives, the remarkable accomplishments of three Kentuckians stand out. The works of author Wendell Berry, his father, lawyer and farmer John M. Berry, Sr., and his brother, state senator and lawyer, John M. Berry, Jr. reflect a single vision: a state and a nation of prosperous well-tended farms serving and supporting healthy local communities. The speeches, letters, manuscripts and articles of these men, especially as they pertain to agriculture in the state of Kentucky and the nation, are held and studied at The Archive of The Berry Center for study and dissemination...
Wendell Berry’s The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, published in 1977, awakened a national and global conversation on the dire state of agriculture. The Berry Center was launched in 2011 to continue this conversation and preserve the legacy of Wendell Berry’s work and writings...

Our work seeks to provide solutions to essential issues that are rarely in public discourse and certainly not reflected in agricultural policies. “What will it take for farmers to be able to afford to farm well?” and “How do we become a culture that supports good farming and land use?” These are just a few of the questions that The Berry Center is addressing. We believe that the answers—while firmly rooted in local work—are central to solving some of the world’s most pressing problems including the devastation of natural resources and biodiversity; rapid onset of climate change; economic and social inequities; and the collapse of healthy farming and rural communities.

Visitors from all over the world travel to The Berry Center to visit our archive and neighboring Agrarian Culture Center and Bookstore and learn about our agricultural programs. Located in the handsome 1820 Oldham House in downtown New Castle, Kentucky, we are becoming a principle destination for historians, researchers, students, and agrarian leaders seeking information and history that is difficult to find or even unavailable.

Wendell Berry on Delight

 ...as a Force of Resistance to Consumerism, the Key to Mirth Under Hardship, and the Measure of a Rich Life

"I have always had a quarrel with this country not only about race but about the standards by which it appears to live," James Baldwin told Margaret Mead as they sat down together to reimagine democracy for a post-consumerist world. A generation later, the poet, farmer, and ecological steward Wendell Berry — a poet in the largest Baldwinian sense — picked up the time-escalated quarrel in his slim, large-spirited book The Hidden Wound (public library) to offer, without looking away from its scarring realities, a healing and conciliatory direction of resistance to a culture in which our enjoyment of life is taken from us by the not-enoughness at the hollow heart of consumerism, only to be sold back to us at the price of the latest product, and sold in discriminating proportion along lines of stark income inequality... (continues)
Maria Popova

And see

Bloom: The Evolution of Life on Earth and the Birth of Ecology
How flowers gave rise to life on Earth and made possible the human consciousness that came to see a world “thronged only with Music.”

==

I love what Wendell said here in December 2016, at around the 44-minute mark, about hope and happiness.

==

Berry: “In order to make ecological good sense for the planet, you must make ecological good sense locally. You can’t act locally by thinking globally.” What makes sense for Port Royal, Kentucky, may not make sense for Abilene, Texas, much less Manhattan, Nairobi or Beirut. One size does not fit all, and one knows the size that fits only if one knows what one is measuring, up close and in detail. "When Losing Is Likely-Wendell Berry’s conservative radicalism"-The Point

More on WB at aldaily...

Coal!

110 years ago today. pic.twitter.com/95zKkgMR1a

— Joe Sanberg (@JosephNSanberg) August 14, 2022

VOTE!

 Register to Vote here

Important Election Dates for Fall 2022:

Constitution Week at MTSU this fall is Sept. 12-16, 2022. Since Sept. 17, actual Constitution Day, falls on a Saturday this year, MTSU is hosting its Constitution Week activities the days prior. Details to follow.

 

To boost and encourage student voter registration and active voter participation, MTSU is again competing in the all-Tennessee-university State Voting Challenge (which we have won every year) and the Conference USA Voting Challenge (which we have yet to win), in direct competition with WKU. National Study of Learning Voting and Engagement data inform us that 64% of MTSU students voted in 2020, below the national university-student participation average. Growth is our objective. Please help our students understand the importance and urgency of the interim election cycle, help them get registered, and incentivize them to get to the polls during Early Voting.

 

Every student needs to develop a personal Voting Plan, of where to vote, thus where to register, and calendaring when to vote. So please Ask Every Student their plan. Remember that in Tennessee students must vote in the county in which they are registered. And students actually vote in the county where they sleep at night M-F. With a Tennessee Driver’s License, it’s easy for non-commuting students to re-register online in Rutherford County where they can vote in person if they live here. Out-of-state students with a passport who live here can also vote here, registering on a paper form. American Democracy Project is ready to assist every student in every way possible.

 

Thank you for taking seriously your responsibilities as citizens in our participatory democracy. The pattern set in college lasts a lifetime.

American Democracy Project for Civic Learning

University Honors College, Box 267

#MTSUVotes

amerdem@mtsu.edu

mtsu.edu/vote

 

 

 

 

Syllabus 2024

 PHIL 3340 - ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS - TTh 4:20-5:45 pm, Honors Building 116

Fall 2024-under construction

The online syllabus is a perpetual work-in-progress, always check under "NEXT" in the top right on our main page for late revisions and updates. It's best not to rely on a version printed early in the semester, changes are inevitable.

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu. 300 James Union Building (JUB).

Office hours 2024: T/Th 11-1 & by appointment & via Zoom (link available on request)... (615) 898-2050, (615) 525-7865 only during office hours please

We'll use this site, NOT D2L, for online discussion and support.

Eventually we'll all become "authors" on this site, to post reports etc. Meanwhile, post your thoughts, research discoveries, and questions in the "comments" spaces (which appear below each post).

Philosophy, whatever else it is, is an open-ended conversation among ourselves and with philosophers of the past, and anticipating those of the future. Please participate in the conversation (far more than a grade is at stake).

TEXTS

REQUIRED for Fall 2024:

• Erle C. Ellis, Anthropocene: A Very Short Introduction (EE)

• Paul Hawken, Regeneration (PH)

• William MacAskill, What We Owe the Future (MacA)

• Bill McKibben, ed. American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau (McK)

• Greta Thunberg, The Climate Book (GT)

• David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth (WW)

RECOMMENDED (we read these last time):

• Bill McKibben, The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened

• Wendell Berry, The World-Ending Fire

• Kim Stanley Robinson, Ministry for the Future (KSR)

• Sunrise Movement, tba

IF YOU'RE CURIOUS about the philosopher whose name I frequently mention:

• William James (WJ)

                       

• William James : Writings 1878-1899 : Psychology, Briefer Course / The Will to Believe / Talks to Teachers and Students / Essays (Library of America)

• William James : Writings 1902-1910 : The Varieties of Religious Experience / Pragmatism / A Pluralistic Universe / The Meaning of Truth / Some Problems of Philosophy / Essays (Library

• 
  

Feel free to use etexts and audiobooks, when available.

IMPORTANT DATES Fall 2024

• August 27 – Classes Begin

• September 2 – Labor Day Holiday - No Classes/University Closed

• Sep 5 - assign midterm report topics

• Sep 19 - midterm report presentations begin

• Oct 10 - Exam 1

• October 14-15 – Fall Break - No Classes

• Oct 31 - Select/assign final report topics

• Nov 5 - final report presentations begin

• November 27-29 – Thanksgiving Holidays - No Classes/University Closed November 24-26

• Dec 3- Last class, Exam 2

• Dec 6 - Final blogpost (final draft) due (post earlier for constructive feedback). See note below on * Deadlines.

* Deadlines. Due dates are firm. Extensions are possible in the event of illness or some other unavoidable or extraordinary circumstance, but must first be authorized by me. jpo

==

A note on the texts. My pedagogical goal is always to encourage students to stretch and reach further, and never be in a position to say "I'm bored, there's nothing to read." So...

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. (If you don't get to all the McKibben texts in American Earth this semester, I hope you'll put them on your reading bucket list. They're classics you should want to read.)

I'll provide pre-exam audio reviews indicating which texts to review most attentively. Your requested/assigned report presentation date/topic* should coincide with one of your reporting date's scheduled topics.

AUG

27 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?

29 EE preface, 1-2 (Origins, Earth System). GT 1.1--1.4 (thru Civilization and Extinction). WW I (Cascades).

SEP

3 EE 3-4 (Geologic time, Great Acceleration). GT 1.5--1.9 (thru biggest story). WW 41-64 (Heat Death, Hunger). McK Introduction, Thoreau.

5 EE 5-6 (Anthropos, Oikos). GT 2.1--2.7 (thru Dangerous Weather). WW 65-84 (Drowning, Wildfire). McK thru Walt Whitman. Select/assign midterm report presentation topics/dates

10 EE 7-8 (Politikos, Prometheus). GT 2.8--2.14 (thru Fresh Water). WW 85-102 (Disasters, Drain). McK thru John Muir. Select Midterm report presentation topics/dates.

12 GT 2.15--2.19 (thru Biodiversity). WW 103-125 (thru Plagues...). McK thru John Burroughs.

17 GT 2.20--2.24 (thru What Happens...). WW 126-154 (thru Systems). McK thru Henry Beston.

19 GT 3.1--3.7 (thru Food & Nutrition). WW 157-188 (thru Crisis Capitalism). McK thru Donald Culross Peattie. Midterm report presentations begin.

24 GT 3.8--3.14 (thru Winter...). WW 189-225 (thru History After Progress). McK thru Aldo Leopold.

26 PH -33 Foreword... Oceans. GT 3.15--3.20 (thru True Cost...). WW 226-265. McK thru E.B. White.

OCT

1 PH -61 Forests. GT 4.1--4.5 (thru Persistence of Fossil Fuels). McK thru Rachel Carson. Midterm report presentations continue.

3 PH -93 Wilding. GT 4.6--4.9 (thru Drawdown Technologies). McK thru Lynn White Jr.

8 PH -115 Land. GT 4.10--4.14 (thru Mapping Emissions). McK thru Garrett Hardin.

10 Exam 1.

17 PH -147 People. GT 4.15--4.17 (thru Future Electric). McK thru Joseph Lelyveld.

22 PH -169 The City. GT 4.18--4.22 (thru Myth of Recycling). McK thru Wendell Berry.

24 PH -191 Food. GT 4.23--4.27 (thru Perception Gap). McK thru Amory Lovins.

29 PH -213 Energy. GT 5.1--5.5 (thru Changing Diets).GT 5.6--5.9 (thru Practical Utopias). McK thru Wes Jackson.

31 PH -255 Industry, Action + Connection, Afterword. GT 5.10--5.14 (thru Lessons from the Pandemic). McK thru William Cronon. Midterm report presentations conclude.

Select/assign final report presentation topics/dates

NOV

5 GT 5.15--5.21 (thru Mending...Earth). McK thru Terry Tempest Williams. Final report presentations begin

7 GT 5.22 (Hope... What Next?). McK thru Ellen Meloy.

12 MacA Part I-The Long View. McK thru Jack Turner.

14 MacA Part II-Trajectory Changes. McK thru David Quammen.

19 MacA Part III-Safeguarding Civilisation. McK thru Sandra Steingraber.

21 MacA Part IV-Assessing the End of the World. McK Barbara Kingsolver, Michael Pollan.

26 MacA Part V-Taking Action. McK Paul Hawken, Rebecca Solnit.

THANKSGIVING BREAK

DEC

3 Last class. Exam 2 (NOTE: Exam 2  is not a "final exam," it is the exam covering material since the first exam.) 

6 Final blogpost (final draft) due (post earlier for constructive feedback).

See note above on * Deadlines.

==

EXAMS. Two objective-format exams based on daily questions, each worth up to 25 points.

*REPORTS. Midterm presentation (10 minute presentation + two discussion questions), final presentation & blog post (10 min, 1,000+ word post. Worth up to 25 points each. Your requested/assigned report presentation topic should be related to one of the class topics on your presentation date.

PARTICIPATION. Participation includes attendance, your full and attentive presence in class, and posts, comments (etc.) to our site prior to each class. No points formally allotted, but steady participation earns strong consideration for a higher final grade. (Hypothetically, for instance: say you earned a total of 88 points (of a possible 100) on the exams and reports. If you did not participate consistently and well, your course grade would be B+. If you did, it would be A.)

SCORECARDS. Because your professor is a baseball fan, we'll track participation with baseball scorecards adapted to the purpose. Come to class to get on 1st base. Post pertinent comments and questions for discussion prior to class to advance to 2d & 3d base.To come home and "score" post a pertinent research discovery, something we wouldn't have known from the day's assigned reading. Good places for quick online philosophical research include the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the Philosophical Dictionary, and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy… For environmental research, let us know what you’ve found to be useful. 

Keep a detailed and dated log of your posts and comments, so you can document your participation if need be. Always include your section # with your posts.

==

"Solvitur ambulando"... the art of walking

A NOTE ON THE BLOG POST FORMAT: Midterm & final report blog posts should include appropriately-bloggish content: not just words, but also images, links, videos where relevant, etc.

A NOTE ON WORD COUNTS.1,000 is a minimum. Write more, if you've got more to say. Write a tome, if you've got one in you. But your main goal in writing for our course is always to be clear, to say what you mean, and to say things your classmates (and I) will want to respond to. Think of your weekly blog posts not as "papers" but as contributions to a conversation. And again, do think of them as blog posts, with links, graphics, videos. etc.

==

Watch this space for updated info on the university's and our department's FREE tutoring service... and learn how to study, get help with understanding difficult course material,  receive better test grades, or simply improve your grade point average.  Tutoring is available in study skills and learning strategies that includes sessions on time management, notetaking, when and where to study, and memory principles.  Tutoring is also available in over 200 courses including biology, history, computer information systems, physics, math, psychology, chemistry, economics, recording industry, and many more.  The central location for tutoring is the Tutoring Spot, located in Walker Library, but is also conducted at various other campus sites.  For available tutoring opportunities, visit http://mtsu.edu/studentsuccess/tutoring.php#on .  For questions, call the Tutoring  Spot at 615-904-8014.

Dr. Cornelia Wills

Director of Student Success

Middle Tennessee State University

P. O. Box 500

Murfreesboro, TN 37132

Telephone:  615-898-5025

http://mtsu.edu/studentsuccess/index.php

==

Title IX

Students who believe they have been harassed, discriminated against or been the victim of sexual assault, dating violence, domestic violence or stalking should contact a Title IX/Deputy Coordinator at 615-898-2185 or 615-898- 2750 for assistance or review MTSU’s Title IX website for resources. http://www.mtsu.edu/titleix/

==

Writing Center

The Margaret H. Ordoubadian University Writing Center serves all MTSU students, from freshmen to PhD candidates, on writing from any discipline, and in any genre. [website...] We have a brand new  digital class visit, a brief introduction to the UWC, which can be embedded in any D2L shell for your students.  

Tutoring sessions begin August 24th, and this semester, students will have two choices for online writing support: ​

• ​Live Chat: students to use their mic and camera and meet tutors in real time to work on a shared document; 

• Document Drop: students upload their text and assignment sheet, identify specific feedback needs, and receive tutor feedback through email. 

​We also support writers through course-specific or assignment-specific workshops. The UWC administrative team has worked closely with faculty in diverse programs and departments, such as Biology, Anthropology, and Professional Studies, to create workshops and writing support for students in those courses. Please email Erica Cirillo-McCarthy, Director of the UWC, at erica.cirillo-mccarthy@mtsu.edu if you are interested in talking about ways the UWC can support writers in your class.

==

Register to Vote here

==