Environmental Ethics: State of Fear

Wednesday, October 10, 2018

State of Fear

Posted for Rosemarie Kuenn

State of Fear is a novel by Michael Crichton that falls into both the genre of Cli-Fi as well as the genre of Action-Thriller. The book opens with a group of men discussing and acquiring mass amounts of technologically advanced weapons. They seem to be using these weapons to aid themselves in collecting information on extreme weather and the story that lies ahead begins to be hinted at when the data they are collecting seems to have suggestions of having been tampered with to make the data appear more extreme. They kill several people in this pursuit and are then labeled as extremists. We then meet our main character, a man named Peter Evans who is a lawyer based in L.A. (where every book concerning climate change apparently takes place). His most valued client is the filthy rich George Morton who makes his money through the National Environmental Resource Fund (NERF). This group is currently attempting to sue the U.S. government for the rising sea levels they have caused that resulted in massive amounts of damage to Vanutu. As Peter further investigates this group he finds this group may have ties to the extremists from the beginning. The group informs Peter on their views on global warming and then he meets Dr. John Kenner, a professor of “geoenvironmental engineering” who also has vague ties to the government. The two of them as well as two of Peter’s girlfriends pursue the extremists and are currently trying to track them down in Antarctica. During their journey they take breaks to discuss the “truth” about climate change—that it doesn’t really exist and that it’s just a guise by activists to keep the mass enslaved by their own fear, hence the title of the book.

This novel is hugely controversial and is largely criticized as spreading false information about global warming. Experts have repeatedly listed examples of statements in Crichton’s novel that just aren’t true and lack scientific support. He attempts to support his arguments with several charts and graphs and has clearly done a lot of research for this work but apparently still has two many holes for his argument to be believable. Nevertheless, he still makes some valid points about who we should trust and presents them in a somewhat entertaining action novel.

Quiz questions:

1.What does NERF stand for?

2. What is Dr. Kenner a professor of?

3. Where are the extremists currently located at?

4. What nation is NERF suing the U.S. on behalf of?

5. What is Crichton’s “truth” about climate change?

Discussion questions:

1.What standards should we use to decide who to trust?

2.Should we interpret facts of science ourselves or leave it to the experts to interpret them and then inform us?

3.What are some other conspiracy theories and what makes them so unbelievable?

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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

Environmental Ethics

Wednesday, October 10, 2018

State of Fear

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Peripatetics

	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