Zoom recordings, August-September 2020

 Mon 24th Recording (Passcode: 7w**R36*)

Wed 26 Recording (Passcode: Fj0BR+DQ)

Mon 31 Recording Passcode: W8X.m55@

Wed 2, *TwG8QFX

Wed 9, PJ5W#Y?@

Mon 14, S1E.ycx#

Wed 16, =Jin2&6K

Mon 21, 0cB+4jk#

Wed 23, !vsU7zC#

Mon 28, iq37bp$0  concluding Jahren

Wed 30, =mW1bdcK

Should We Bring Back the Minimalist Movement?

     For the record, I only have an outsider's perspective on the minimalist movement. But I have noticed that the movement seems to have died down in the last few years, after gaining tons of popularity. I have some suspicions as to why. I noticed that somewhere along the way, the minimalist movement took a turn for the worst, turning into an interior design trend very quickly. Like any fad, it didn't take too long for another trend to take over (specifically the farmhouse chic trend). Unfortunately, this shift in focus seems to have missed the mark of what I think was the original intention of the movement—to simplify one's life in our modern, materialistic world. 

    I wonder if it's time to bring this movement back, but this time holding true to what minimalism is really all about. After all, simplifying our lives may be one of the most powerful ways to combat climate change. But could a movement like this, without the trendy furniture, really capture the interest of the masses? Is there a marketable way to sell a philosophy to the American people, that doesn't involve merchandise? I sure hope so, because it would be really nice to see our country reevaluate our "more, more, more" mindset and find contentment with what we already have, not only externally, but internally as well. 

    At its height, did the minimalist movement appeal to you? What does simplifying your life mean to you? I’d love to read what all of you have to say!

----

Weekly Summary:

9/30 Wrote this blog!

9/29—Commented on Questions Sep 28

9/29—Commented on Questions Sep 28

Grand Total: 30 points

Thoughts on Last Nights Debate

 Sadly, our world's environmental problems were not talked about much in last night's Presidential Debate.  It was referred to maybe once or twice, but was quickly redirected by President Trump to the cost of the Green New Deal. President Trump stated that the Green New Deal would cost 100 trillion dollars, this cost is more accurately presented as 50-90 trillion, but either way is a lot of money. However, Biden claimed that he would be implementing his plan not the Green new deal.  Which is a 10 year plan costing 1.7 trillion dollars, a considerable difference in price than the Green New Deal.  

This morning on twitter Trump reposted a tweet claiming that Biden does support the Green New Deal because of his statement on his website, 

"Biden believes the Green New Deal is a crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face. It powerfully captures two basic truths, which are at the core of his plan: (1) the United States urgently needs to embrace greater ambition on an epic scale to meet the scope of this challenge, and (2) our environment and our economy are completely and totally connected."

I think the important distinction in this statement is the word "framework" I believe that these two core truths are very important so it was necessary for Biden to cite where his ideas for his plan came from. In my opinion, the difference between these two candidates is professionalism.  Not only in giving credit where credit is due, but revering professional opinions on topics like environmental issues. President Trump seems to disregard the science behind environmental issues and even blamed the fires in California on not keeping the forests clean enough. I am not sure what exactly he meant by this but he quickly redirected blame onto California's care for their forests in last nights debate. 

Debate casualty

Opinion: Among the debate casualties: Serious discussion of climate change https://t.co/jkwUdgX7wl (via @latimesopinion)
(https://twitter.com/latimes/status/1311339524363087872?s=02)

How low can he go?

No hyperbole: The incumbent's behavior this evening is the lowest moment in the history of the presidency since Andrew Johnson's racist state papers.
(https://twitter.com/jmeacham/status/1311127092453613568?s=02)

Unadmirable

Foreign policy was not mentioned. But the impact of that debate on US prestige and soft power around the world may be profound. No one admires our president or our political system this morning.
(https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1311176409713446912?s=02)

Twilight of Democracy

Good news

More than 175 miles of river habitat was just protected for a colorful little fish called the trispot darter in Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee. #SavingLifeOnEarth
(https://twitter.com/CenterForBioDiv/status/1310988423088529417?s=02)

2050: a daydream

LISTEN. Today in Environmental Ethics, we'll begin the transition from Hope Jahren's Story of More to Bill McKibben's Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? 

To that subtitle's scary rhetorical question, last night's "debate" debacle might frighten some with the growing likelihood of an affirmative reply. If this is a game, can we really be in the late innings already? The season just got started. Today at least I'm retreating to those green fields of the mind, in hopes of greening my resolve for the climate fight and the political fight of our lives just ahead... (continues)

==

2050: The Fight for Earth -- TIME, September 2019

Hello From the Year 2050. We Avoided the Worst of Climate Change — But Everything Is Different

Let’s imagine for a moment that we’ve reached the middle of the century. It’s 2050, and we have a moment to reflect—the climate fight remains the consuming battle of our age, but its most intense phase may be in our rearview mirror. And so we can look back to see how we might have managed to dramatically change our society and economy. We had no other choice.

There was a point after 2020 when we began to collectively realize a few basic things.

One, we weren’t getting out of this unscathed. Climate change, even in its early stages, had begun to hurt: watching a California city literally called Paradise turn into hell inside of two hours made it clear that all Americans were at risk. When you breathe wildfire smoke half the summer in your Silicon Valley fortress, or struggle to find insurance for your Florida beach house, doubt creeps in even for those who imagined they were immune.

Two, there were actually some solutions. By 2020, renewable energy was the cheapest way to generate electricity around the planet—in fact, the cheapest way there ever had been. The engineers had done their job, taking sun and wind from quirky backyard DIY projects to cutting-edge technology. Batteries had plummeted down the same cost curve as renewable energy, so the fact that the sun went down at night no longer mattered quite so much—you could store its rays to use later.

And the third realization? People began to understand that the biggest reason we weren’t making full, fast use of these new technologies was the political power of the fossil-fuel industry. Investigative journalists had exposed its three-decade campaign of denial and disinformation, and attorneys general and plaintiffs’ lawyers were beginning to pick them apart. And just in time.

These trends first intersected powerfully on Election Day in 2020. The Halloween hurricane that crashed into the Gulf didn’t just take hundreds of lives and thousands of homes; it revealed a political seam that had begun to show up in polling data a year or two before. Of all the issues that made suburban Americans—women especially—­uneasy about President Drumpf, his stance on climate change was near the top. What had seemed a modest lead for the Democratic challenger widened during the last week of the campaign as damage reports from Louisiana and Mississippi rolled in; on election night it turned into a rout, and the analysts insisted that an under­appreciated “green vote” had played a vital part—after all, actual green parties in Canada, the U.K. and much of continental Europe were also outperforming expectations. Young voters were turning out in record numbers: the Greta Generation, as punsters were calling them, made climate change their No. 1 issue.

And when the new President took the oath of office, she didn’t disappoint. In her Inaugural Address, she pledged to immediately put America back in the Paris Agreement—but then she added, “We know by now that Paris is nowhere near enough. Even if all the countries followed all the promises made in that accord, the temperature would still rise more than 3°C (5°F or 6°F). If we let the planet warm that much, we won’t be able to have civilizations like the ones we’re used to. So we’re going to make the changes we need to make, and we’re going to make them fast.”

Fast, of course, is a word that doesn’t really apply to Capitol Hill or most of the world’s other Congresses, Parliaments and Central Committees. It took constant demonstrations from ever larger groups like Extinction Rebellion, and led by young activists especially from the communities suffering the most, to ensure that politicians feared an angry electorate more than an angry carbon lobby. But America, which historically had poured more carbon into the atmosphere than any other nation, did cease blocking progress. With the filibuster removed, the Senate passed—by the narrowest of margins—one bill after another to end subsidies for coal and gas and oil companies, began to tax the carbon they produced, and acted on the basic principles of the Green New Deal: funding the rapid deployment of solar panels and wind turbines, guaranteeing federal jobs for anyone who wanted that work, and putting an end to drilling and mining on federal lands.

Since those public lands trailed only China, the U.S., India and Russia as a source of carbon, that was a big deal. Its biggest impact was on Wall Street, where investors began to treat fossil-fuel stocks with increasing disdain. When BlackRock, the biggest money manager in the world, cleaned its basic passive index fund of coal, oil and gas stocks, the companies were essentially rendered off-limits to normal investors. As protesters began cutting up their Chase bank cards, the biggest lender to the fossil-fuel industry suddenly decided green investments made more sense. Even the staid insurance industry began refusing to underwrite new oil and gas pipelines—and shorn of its easy access to capital, the industry was also shorn of much of its political influence. Every quarter meant fewer voters who mined coal and more who installed solar panels, and that made political change even easier.

As America’s new leaders began trying to mend fences with other nations, climate action proved to be a crucial way to rebuild diplomatic trust. China and India had their own reasons for wanting swift action—mostly, the fact that smog-choked cities and ever deadlier heat waves were undermining the stability of the ruling regimes. When Beijing announced that its Belt and Road Initiative would run on renewable energy, not coal, the energy future of much of Asia changed overnight. When India started mandating electric cars and scooters for urban areas, the future of the internal-combustion engine was largely sealed. Teslas continued to attract upscale Americans, but the real numbers came from lower-priced electric cars pouring out of Asian factories. That was enough to finally convince even Detroit that a seismic shift was under way: when the first generation of Ford E-150 pickups debuted, with ads demonstrating their unmatched torque by showing them towing a million-pound locomotive, only the most unreconstructed motorheads were still insisting on the superiority of gas-powered rides.

Other easy technological gains came in our homes. After a century of keeping a tank of oil or gas in the basement for heating, people quickly discovered the appeal of air-source heat pumps, which turned the heat of the outdoors (even on those rare days when the temperature still dropped below zero) into comfortable indoor air. Gas burners gave way to induction cooktops. The last incandescent bulbs were in museums, and even most of the compact fluorescents had been long since replaced by LEDs. Electricity demand was up—but when people plugged in their electric vehicles at night, the ever growing fleet increasingly acted like a vast battery, smoothing out the curves as the wind dropped or the sun clouded. Some people stopped eating meat, and lots and lots of people ate less of it—a cultural transformation made easier by the fact that Impossible Burgers turned out to be at least as juicy as the pucks that fast-food chains had been slinging for years. The number of cows on the world’s farms started to drop, and with them the source of perhaps a fifth of emissions. More crucially, new diets reduced the pressure to cut down the remaining tropical rain forests to make way for grazing land.

In other words, the low-hanging fruit was quickly plucked, and the pluckers were well paid. Perhaps the fastest-growing business on the planet involved third-party firms that would retrofit a factory or an office with energy-efficient technology and simply take a cut of the savings on the monthly electric bill. Small businesses, and rural communities, began to notice the economic advantages of keeping the money paid for power relatively close to home instead of shipping it off to Houston or Riyadh. The world had wasted so much energy that much of the early work was easy, like losing weight by getting your hair cut.

But the early euphoria came to an end pretty quickly. By the end of the 2020s, it became clear we would have to pay the price of delaying action for decades.

For one thing, the cuts in emissions that scientists prescribed were almost impossibly deep. “If you’d started in 1990 when we first warned you, the job was manageable: you could have cut carbon a percent or two a year,” one eminent physicist explained. “But waiting 30 years turned a bunny slope into a black diamond.” As usual, the easy “solutions” turned out to be no help at all: fracked natural-gas wells were leaking vast quantities of methane into the atmosphere, and “biomass burning”—­cutting down forests to burn them for electricity—was putting a pulse of carbon into the air at precisely the wrong moment. (As it happened, the math showed letting trees stand was crucial for pulling carbon from the atmosphere—when secondary forests were allowed to grow, they sucked up a third or more of the excess carbon humanity was producing.) Environmentalists learned they needed to make some compromises, and so most of America’s aging nuclear reactors were left online past their decommissioning dates: that lower-carbon power supplemented the surging renewable industry in the early years, even as researchers continued work to see if fusion power, thorium reactors or some other advanced design could work.

The real problem, though, was that climate change itself kept accelerating, even as the world began trying to turn its energy and agriculture systems around. The giant slug of carbon that the world had put into the atmosphere—more since 1990 than in all of human history before—acted like a time-delayed fuse, and the temperature just kept rising. Worse, it appeared that scientists had systematically underestimated just how much damage each tenth of a degree would actually do, a point underscored in 2032 when a behemoth slice of the West Antarctic ice sheet slid majestically into the southern ocean, and all of a sudden the rise in sea level was being measured in feet, not inches. (Nothing, it turned out, could move Americans to embrace the metric system.) And the heating kept triggering feedback loops that in turn accelerated the heating: ever larger wildfires, for instance, kept pushing ever more carbon into the air, and their smoke blackened ice sheets that in turn melted even faster.

This hotter world produced an ongoing spate of emergencies: “forest-fire season” was now essentially year-round, and the warmer ocean kept hurricanes and typhoons boiling months past the old norms. And sometimes the damage was novel: ancient carcasses kept emerging from the melting permafrost of the north, and with them germs from illnesses long thought extinct. But the greatest crises were the slower, more inexorable ones: the ongoing drought and desertification was forcing huge numbers of Africans, Asians and Central Americans to move; in many places, the heat waves had literally become unbearable, with nighttime temperatures staying above 100°F and outdoor work all but impossible for weeks and months at a time. On low-lying ground like the Mekong Delta, the rising ocean salted fields essential to supplying the world with rice. The U.N. had long ago estimated the century could see a billion climate refugees, and it was beginning to appear it was unnervingly correct. What could the rich countries say? These were people who hadn’t caused the crisis now devouring their lives, and there weren’t enough walls and cages to keep them at bay, so the migrations kept roiling the politics of the planet.

There were, in fact, two possible ways forward. The most obvious path was a constant competition between nations and individuals to see who could thrive in this new climate regime, with luckier places turning themselves into fortresses above the flood. Indeed some people in some places tried to cling to old notions: plug in some solar panels and they could somehow return to a more naive world, where economic expansion was still the goal of every government.

But there was a second response that carried the day in most countries, as growing numbers of people came to understand that the ground beneath our feet had truly shifted. If the economy was the lens through which we’d viewed the world for a century, now survival was the only sensible basis on which to make decisions. Those decisions targeted not just carbon dioxide; these societies went after the wild inequality that also marked the age. The Green New Deal turned out to be everything the Koch brothers had most feared when it was introduced: a tool to make America a fairer, healthier, better-educated place. It was emulated around the world, just as America’s Clean Air Act had long served as a template for laws across the globe. Slowly both the Keeling Curve, measuring carbon in the atmosphere, and the Gini coefficient, measuring the distribution of wealth, began to flatten.

That’s where we are today. We clearly did not “escape” climate change or “solve” global warming—the temperature keeps climbing, though the rate of increase has lessened. It’s turned into a wretched century, which is considerably better than a catastrophic one. We ended up with the most profound and most dangerous physical changes in human history. Our civilization surely teetered—and an enormous number of people paid an unfair and overwhelming price—but it did not fall.

People have learned to defend what can be practically defended: expensive seawalls and pumps mean New York is still New York, though the Antarctic may yet have something to say on the subject. Other places we’ve learned to let go: much of the East Coast has moved in a few miles, to more defensible ground. Yes, that took trillions of dollars in real estate off the board—but the roads and the bridges would have cost trillions to defend, and even then the odds were bad.

Cities look different now—much more densely populated, as NIMBY defenses against new development gave way to an increasingly vibrant urbanism. Smart municipalities banned private cars from the center of town, opening up free public-transit systems and building civic fleets of self-driving cars that got rid of the space wasted on parking spots. But rural districts have changed too: the erratic weather put a premium on hands-on agricultural skills, which in turn provided opportunities for migrants arriving from ruined farmlands elsewhere. (Farming around solar panels has become a particular specialty.) America’s rail network is not quite as good as it was in the early 20th century, but it gets closer each year, which is good news since low-carbon air travel proved hard to get off the ground.

What’s changed most of all is the mood. The defiant notion that we would forever overcome nature has given way to pride of a different kind: increasingly we celebrate our ability to bend without breaking, to adapt as gracefully as possible to a natural world whose temper we’ve come to respect. When we look back to the start of the century we are, of course, angry that people did so little to slow the great heating: if we’d acknowledged climate change in earnest a decade or two earlier, we might have shaved a degree off the temperature, and a degree is measured in great pain and peril. But we also know it was hard for people to grasp what was happening: human history stretched back 10,000 years, and those millennia were physically stable, so it made emotional sense to assume that stability would stretch forward as well as past.

We know much better now: we know that we’ve knocked the planet off its foundations, and that our job, for the foreseeable centuries, is to absorb the bounces as she rolls. We’re dancing as nimbly as we can, and so far we haven’t crashed.

If Not Morality, How About Money?

Discussion Question: Which has a stronger appeal, morality or money? I want to draw your attention to an article in today’s NYT. The title: How Coal-Loving Australia Became a Leader in Solar/Embracing rooftop solar panels to save money, homeowners have made the country a powerhouse in renewable energy. It shows that people, with state (not federal) support, are supporting solar and reducing fossil fueled power usage, because, as one person put it, “People are doing that because they want to save money.” It’s economics; increase the cost of fossil fuel usage (a carbon tax), subsidize renewable energy production. 

Perhaps a little sign of hope?

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/29/business/energy-environment/australia-rooftop-solar-coal.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage 

Wall-e's future is now

The future is here! https://t.co/XDKuMPzhC3
(https://twitter.com/euthyphro/status/1310959544600801285?s=02)

BE A GRETA

I think I’ve said it before, perhaps in class discussions, that it seems like so much of what I read is about the physical effects of climate change and ways to address the crisis, but not as much about the ethics of the problem. Yesterday I asked Dr. Oliver whether he knew Greta Thunberg’s view on the spiritual relationship we have with nature. I took to Google to see what I could find out. I didn’t find anything after a limited search, but I did find out how powerfully she redirects the focus on the problem from science to ethics.

One article I read included the following: “Political leaders tend to dodge questions of ethics in their policymaking and global debates on climate change…. Climate policy often focuses on “practical” considerations like efficiency or political feasibility. U.S. climate negotiators in particular have for decades pushed back against ethically grounded differentiated responsibilities and resisted top down mandatory emissions cuts, seeking a more politically palatable option: Voluntary emissions cuts determined by each country. And some legal scholars say a climate policy based not on ethics but on self-interest might be more effective.”

https://theconversation.com/youth-climate-movement-puts-ethics-at-the-center-of-the-global-debate-123746

Well, Greta Thunberg is a giant challenge to that approach. Even if you have seen it before, I encourage you to watch her short speech at the U.N. against the background of what we have been discussing. Here is what one writer said about the speech:

Aristotle claimed in his writing on rhetoric that speakers are effective in persuading their listeners if the speaker exhibits three qualities: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos.

Speakers exhibit ethos if they convince listeners that the speaker is motivated by what is right or wrong, not by self-interest. Greta Thunberg effectively communicated by her choice of words, rhythm, and emotions that she was motivated by the moral indefensibility of governments that have refused to do what is necessary to avoid climate change harms given the facts she stated in support of this conclusion.

Effective speakers demonstrate some passion about the injustice that is motivating him or her. Greta Thunberg’s display of anger was palpable and supported by the facts she relied upon.

In an effective speech, the speaker’s claims and conclusions are clear and logical. The facts which motivated and supported the premise of her speech, namely that governments’ responses to climate change are morally repugnant, were clearly stated.

https://energyindemand.com/2019/10/17/lessons-to-be-learned-from-greta-thunbergs-speech-to-the-un-climate-summit/

Often things I hear bring lyrics of old songs to my mind. I cannot watch Greta without hearing Whitney Houston singing “I believe the children are our future….” Just watch this TED talk, meet Greta, and see if you don’t agree. [16 years old!!] (And Betty Mae, I think you’ll like her last words.)

I have come to believe, as budding environmental ethicist, that we must begin every conversation about the climate crisis by framing it as a moral issue that we have a moral, not just a practical, responsibility to address. Be a Greta.

Weekly Participation Summary

09/29 This post

09/29 Posted If Not Morality, How about Money?   

09/28 Comment on Spinoza, environmentalist?

Week Six Point Total – 5

Six Week Cumulative Point Total – 30

 

Free digital subscription to the NYTimes

https://libanswers.mtsu.edu/faq/169834

Koch-financed anti-transit

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A team of political activists huddled at a Hardee’s one rainy Saturday, wolfing down a breakfast of biscuits and gravy. Then they descended on Antioch, a quiet Nashville suburb, armed with iPads full of voter data and a fiery script.

The group, the local chapter for Americans for Prosperity, which is financed by the oil billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch to advance conservative causes, fanned out and began strategically knocking on doors. Their targets: voters most likely to oppose a local plan to build light-rail trains, a traffic-easing tunnel and new bus routes.

“Do you agree that raising the sales tax to the highest rate in the nation must be stopped?” Samuel Nienow, one of the organizers, asked a startled man who answered the door at his ranch-style home in March. “Can we count on you to vote ‘no’ on the transit plan?”

In cities and counties across the country — including Little Rock, Ark.; Phoenix, Ariz.; southeast Michigan; central Utah; and here in Tennessee — the Koch brothers are fueling a fight against public transit, an offshoot of their longstanding national crusade for lower taxes and smaller government.

At the heart of their effort is a network of activists who use a sophisticated data service built by the Kochs, called i360, that helps them identify and rally voters who are inclined to their worldview. It is a particularly powerful version of the technologies used by major political parties.

In places like Nashville, Koch-financed activists are finding tremendous success.

Early polling here had suggested that the $5.4 billion transit plan would easily pass. It was backed by the city’s popular mayor and a coalition of businesses. Its supporters had outspent the opposition, and Nashville was choking on cars.

But the outcome of the May 1 ballot stunned the city: a landslide victory for the anti-transit camp, which attacked the plan as a colossal waste of taxpayers’ money.

“This is why grass roots works,” said Tori Venable, Tennessee state director for Americans for Prosperity, which made almost 42,000 phone calls and knocked on more than 6,000 doors... (nyt 6.19.18, continues)

==

The Koch brothers hate public transit. But they can’t always stop projects in their tracks.

The infamous Koch brothers have bankrolled climate deniers, propped up polluting industries, and even tried to turn the black community pro-fossil fuel. But, as a recent New York Times story shows, the billionaire conservatives have been steadily exerting pressure against public transit as well.

Americans for Prosperity, a conservative lobbying group funded by the Koch family, has rallied against public transit works across the country. With a mix of political ads and door-to-door campaigning, the organization managed to get a transit tax increase shot down in Little Rock in 2016. Koch-linked groups have successfully watered down legislation in Indianapolis and blocked efforts in Florida.

This spring, the organization financed conservative activists in Nashville, Tennessee, to oppose a mass transit referendum. The plan would have increased the city’s sales tax in order to fund a light rail system, eight new bus lines, and 19 transit centers in the city. The anti-transit campaigners knocked on 6,000 doors and made 42,000 phone calls, all while repeating the anti-tax party line. The referendum, once a sure bet, failed, with almost 64 percent of voters rejecting it. Public transit experts were disappointed, but unsurprised... (Grist, continues)

Happy days are here again

Chairwoman Mary (she prefers Tsarina) has prevailed on me to host a bi-weekly Virtual Happy Hour via Zoom, starting Friday and recurring every other week. Hope y'all can make it.

Happy Hour is back!

Announcing a recurrently convivial gathering of MTSU philosophers, co-philosophers (students), and friends of MTSU philosophy, every other Friday at 4:30 pm beginning this week on Zoom: OCTOBER 2, 16, 30, NOV 14... Email me for the Meeting ID and Passcode. Come when you can. Spirits not provided, other than the spirit of Philosophy (and Religious Studies).

Cheers!

Spinoza, environmentalist?

 LISTEN. In Environmental Ethics today we finish Hope Jahren's Story of More, after first turning to Spinoza in CoPhi. 

Jahren's last lines, in her Acknowledgements, have me thinking she may just be a Spinozist. She thanks the anonymous graffiti-ist who inscribed our species' indictment for excessive energy consumption on  "the electrical box at the corner of Blindernveien and Apelveien with: 'We worship an invisible god and slaughter a visible nature--without realizing that this nature we slaughter is the invisible god we worship.' It got me to thinking," she concludes... (continues)

“The word ‘God’ is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weaknesses; the Bible a collection of venerable but still rather primitive legends...” Einstein does not refer here to God as a cosmic designer. Rather, he expresses his lifelong disbelief in a personal god—one that controls the lives of individuals. In 1929 Rabbi Herbert Goldstein sent him a telegram asking “Do you believe in God?” In response Einstein made an even clearer distinction between the awe humans feel when faced with the vastness, complexity and harmony of nature, and the belief in a god that monitors ethical behavior and punishes the wicked. He admired the Dutch Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza, and wrote: “I believe in Spinoza’s god, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a god who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.” SciAm

Sir David Attenborough

Sir David Attenborough on optimism in the face of climate change: "What good does it do to say, 'Oh, to hell with it, I don't care.' You can't say that. Not if you love your children. Not if you love the rest of humanity — how can you say that?" https://t.co/oIPdRJ4yOE https://t.co/pGiyt3dyFw
(https://twitter.com/60Minutes/status/1310366353178669056?s=02)

Questions Sep 28

 Finishing The Story of More

• Sunday was the anniversary of the publication of Silent Spring. Would you agree that Rachel Carson's message to young people (see below) needs desperately to be heard today?
• There's nothing nobler than a good dog, is there? 147 (Have you read or seen Call of the Wild?) Is there an environmental lesson in the human-canine relationship?
• Global sea level has risen 7+ inches since 1880, more than half of that in the past 50 years. 149 Why is so much discussion around this issue presented as hypothetical?
• "The ocean's creatures have been thrown for a loop by this warming of seawater..." 150 For instance, nyt reports,  Ocean Heat Waves Are Directly Linked to Climate Change-The “blob” of hotter ocean water that killed sea lions and other marine life in 2014 and 2015 may become permanent. COMMENT?
• "The people benefiting from the use of fossil fuels are not the people who suffer the most from its excess." 151 How do we make them beneficiaries feel the suffering?
• "I can't turn on my computer without hearing about climate deniers... as if winning an argument accomplishes something  in and of itself." 153 Is there no point in arguing with misinformed people? 
• Is there something tragic about the fact that species are going extinct almost more quickly than we can look them "in the face"? 157 Or is that just a cruel fact of life?
• We're on track to be a third of the way to the 6th mass extinction in 2050. 160 Will we be part of it? Can we get most people to care, if we're not?
• "We still have some control over our demise..." 161 How much longer can we say that?
• Hope's dad believed in a better world "because he loved me..." 163 Parents have an obligation to believe in a brighter future, she thinks. When we "devote ourselves to hope and love even our most fantastic dreams will eventually come true." Agree?
• Is carbon capture and storage worth pursuing?164 Fertilizing plant growth on the ocean's surface? 165 Blocking the sun? 166
• What are the chances of achieving E.O. Wilson's "half earth" proposal? 167
• Are you willing to forgo four out of five plane rides, use mass transport more, postpone the purchase of a new vehicle, ...? 168
• Would scaling back to Switzerland c.1965 make us happier? 169
• Are you prepared to vote for candidates who propose consuming less and settling for present levels of growth? Are there any such candidates on the horizon? Might you be one?
• Are you actively degrading the earth as much or more than the people you argue with? 170
• Do you know and work with people who care about these issues?
• "What will you do with [your] extra decade of life...? 172
• Are we at risk of paralysis and "lazy nihilism" by repeating the self-incriminating facts of how we've poisoned the earth?
• Is the story ahead unwritten?
• What one issue are you willing to sacrifice for? 178
• Do your possessions (or your desired possessions) contradict your values? 180
• A question better posed in July: "Can you go without A/C for more days of the year? 187
• Are you surprised that you could in theory, with relatively minor sacrifices, reduce your home electricity use by 70%? Will you try?
• Anything in the catechism (191f.) surprise you?
• Can we save the EPA? 201
• Ed: Is Hope a Spinozist? 208

Silent Spring

On this day in 1962, Rachel Carson published "Silent Spring" at immense personal risk and against immense backlash, as she was dying, catalyzing the modern environmental movement by refusing to keep silent. Her poignant message to posterity—that is, to us: https://t.co/CfaHnkENSm
(https://twitter.com/brainpicker/status/1310237933450989568?s=02)

Phil Oliver

@OSOPHER

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5h

Your generation must come to terms with the environment...face realities instead of taking refuge in ignorance & evasion of truth...a grave and sobering responsibility, but also a shining opportunity....to prove [humanity's] maturity and its mastery—not of nature, but of itself.

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Brain Pickings

@brainpickings

· 5h

On this day in 1962, Rachel Carson published "Silent Spring" at immense personal risk and against immense backlash, as she was dying, catalyzing the modern environmental movement by refusing to keep silent. Her poignant message to posterity—that is, to us: https://brainpickings.org/2019/04/12/rachel-carson-scripps-college-commencement/

The Age of Electric Cars Is Dawning Ahead of Schedule

Battery prices are dropping faster than expected. Analysts are moving up projections of when an electric vehicle won’t need government incentives to be cheaper than a gasoline model.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/20/business/electric-cars-batteries-tesla-elon-musk.html?smid=em-share

Political Insulation and Environmentalism

Should the EPA be independent of the executive branch? Does the civil service generally need greater insulation from politics? 

All political entities will, by their very nature, suffer from political partisanship.  Any office that has an affiliation with the government will still be attached the superstructure of government.  On a humorous level, comedy show Parks and Recreation highlight how even the remedial aspects of government are infused with political tension. An innocent zoo promotion becomes the catalyst for a controversy over gay marriage.  A time capsule and the Twilight novels becomes a flashpoint in the community.  Throughout, the show, we see the different characters and interest groups of Pawnee, IN clash over minor policies and initiatives. 

Politics is the process of group decision-making.  Civil services have been delegated power by the people to regulate for the interests of people--classical idea of a social contract between the government and the people.  So we have a fork in the road.  One, we either insulate civic entities from politics (and thus separate it from people, i.e. the "group" in "group decision making").  This would address the issue of partisanship at the expense of establishing a fundamentally un-democratic institution.  Alternatively, we remain in the status quo and allow partisanship to influence critical environmental policies.  

The EPA can only regulations which build upon Congressional statues.  For example Congress passes the Clean Air Act of 1970 which requires the EPA to reduce green house gases.  The EPA would come in to establish and enforce specific regulations to carry out the statutory objective.  They are inherently a part of the executive branches since they are tasked with, well, executing the law.  For better or for worse, the EPA is tied to the executive branch of government.

However, there is something to be said for limiting direct presidential oversight.  The laws regulating political participation and partisanship are shoddy at best.   There is the outdated Hatch Act originally enacted in the late 1930's), but that pretty much just prevents civil servants from sponsoring or participating in campaigns (1).  The Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998 was enacted to protect congressional oversight of nominations and offices.  However, President Trump has utilized the act to install "acting" members of the government without congressional oversight (2).  If the installment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court means anything, it indicates that partisanship has infiltrated every aspect of our government.  The EPA is not an isolated incident; it is the symptom of a systemic problem.  

Now we get to the heart of my argument: change will NEVER be initiated by governmental big wigs.  The superstructure of society inevitably suffers from inertia.  Partisanship will always be present in the EPA.  The true path to reform will be found in educating the public.  In the tradition of Rawls's political liberalism, we have to find a common ground that all factions can agree upon to serve as the foundation.  That is, public opinion must fundamentally shift to solidarity on the front of environmentalism before we see a unified, bipartisan support for environmentalism.  Case in point, public awareness of environmental issues was heightened after the Cuyahoga River in OH burst into flames.  Responding to public outcry, President Nixon pushed for reforms and established the EPA to address these issues (4).

In conclusion, one can definitely make a case for policy reform that would insulate civil services from partisanship.  However, that is a system-wide issue, not unique to the EPA.  If we want the government to united for the cause of the environment, we must first unite the public.  How does one go about that?  We must mind a common ground, a common interest that spans both sides of the aisle to unite the public on environmentalism.  

1. https://people.howstuffworks.com/epa.htm (not the best source, but easy to understand).

2. https://osc.gov/Documents/Outreach%20and%20Training/Handouts/A%20Guide%20to%20the%20Hatch%20Act%20for%20Federal%20Employees.pdf

3. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/14/nepotism-partisanship-us-civil-service

4. https://www.epa.gov/history/origins-epa

Eco-Friendly cars

 

Purely-electric cars are not sustainable, in my opinion, because they cost more than traditional cars and the maintenance fees for an electric car are also higher than traditional cars as well.  Instead, I think that hybrid cars are a much better solution in today’s society.  First off because they do use a gas engine, they can travel much further than an electric car without having to refuel.  Secondly the more rural areas of our country would also be more receptive to a hybrid vehicle than an electric one as well.  I would also contend that the hybrid would just be better accepted on a general scale because most people consider it a more middle choice than a pure electric car.  Although there downsides to hybrid which from the fact that according to a study done by the US Department of Energy hybrid car production does make more greenhouse gasses and use up more fossil fuels during their production in comparison to a regular car.  Of course, that environmental impacts made by hybrids does outweigh this because a conventional car does use up more energy to operate and makes more greenhouse gasses than a hybrid

            There is also the point that no one is talking about the waste from the batteries inside electric cars either.  According to NewsScientist that today’s lithium-ion car battery were not designed for recycling, because of that they are not easy to recycle.  This issue also arises from the unfortunate fact that standardization among batteries between carmakers has not been done nor will in any reasonable time.  The NewsScientist article also points out that there is no strategy currently for dealing with the waste from car batteries and that this oversight could be environmentally disastrous for the future.

 

I responded to Stuart McLean and Heather Faulkner

I should have 18 points

Vote early

This is an important fact to share: most states—and every swing state except Pennsylvania—allow early in-person voting, from right now (Michigan, Minnesota) to starting October 24th (Florida). So vote early!
https://t.co/WjmsWlFPGW

Please RT.
(https://twitter.com/KBAndersen/status/1309282579263229952?s=02)

Here's a Little Optimism!

   Our last Zoom discussion about our government's role (or the lack thereof, currently) in fighting climate change was interesting, but at times a little depressing. I agree, there are a lot of reasons to be frustrated with the political system we have, since it seems to fail us so frequently. But, I want to argue that a revolution/civil war is not where our focus should be at all.

    As all of you know, one of the biggest barriers to passing environment-friendly legislation is the fact that our politicians are heavily influenced by their donors. However, I don't think a revolution is necessary to solve this problem, especially when we consider how popular grassroots campaigns are becoming. I'm also hopeful that our two party system will shift into a balanced three or four party system soon, since I think Americans are getting tired of voting "against" rather than "for" political candidates. 

    Making these changes will take time, and quite a lot of work. However, I do think that Americans are capable of making it happen. If you're not feeling optimistic yet, I would encourage you to check out these 2020 polls from the Pew Research Center, indicating that the majority of Americans (67%) think that the government is not doing enough to reduce the effects of climate change. Now, if we can just get our politicians to make decisions that represent the majority of Americans, we are in the clear!

    My point is that we are making progress, however slow. It is important that in this pivotal moment, which I believe we are in, we don't set ourselves back with extreme, pessimistic language. That is not how I think we will bring more people together on this issue. I don't think the conversation is over yet, and I certainly don't think America is either. Let's make the system we already have work for us! I'll get off my soapbox now... what do you think? 

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Weekly Summary:

9/24 Wrote this blog!

9/23 Comment on “Questions Sep 21-23”

9/23 Comment on “Questions Sep 21-23”

Grand Total: 25 points