Environmental Ethics: Preservation

Thursday, September 3, 2020

Preservation

When talking about Sustainability usually think of green technologies such recycling, wind power, or solar panels because most people only think about Sustainability in terms of the environment. Which are good goals to help future generations, unfortunately not a lot is said about helping the current and near future generations like the poverty or helping end world hunger. According to our book the UN tried to tackle this issue in 2015 which took many different forms, one of which was trying to tackle poverty by addressing what they thought of as gender inequality. I personally think that by ending the Oligarchies that we have in certain industries that we could decrease poverty in the United States. For instance, if the United States ended the Oligarchy in the Entertainment industry not only would they create new jobs which would increase wealth, but it would also force companies to lower in order to stay competitive.

https://www.justice.gov/atr/antitrust-laws-and-you

Another concern that I have is ecological preservation, which I think our national parks services are doing a good job at, but unfortunately not a lot is said about Marine conservation. This is quickly evident when you think about the BP oil spill in 2010 and how even now marine life is still being harmed 10 years later according to National Geographic. Also, even I was not enthused when President Trump rolled back the safety regulations that Obama put in place to make sure another Deepwater Horizon happens again. Another thing is how the news media reports it or certain history books do not mention things like the Ixtoc oil spill that happens in the 80’s that severely damaged the ecosystem in the Gulf of Mexico just like Deepwater Horizon.

https://www.whoi.edu/know-your-ocean/ocean-topics/pollution/oil-spills/ixtoc-i-oil-well/

3 comments:

Tyler BrooksSeptember 3, 2020 at 10:39 PM
Weekly Essay
Commented on both Betty Mae's and Patrick's post
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Levi J.September 4, 2020 at 4:37 PM
I had a year in high school debate focused on United State Marine Natural Resource management. I recall that the state of Alabama has (had?) an interesting policy for how they manage the diminishing population of Red Snapper. The article I linked below is old, and I haven't seen updates to the topic since I initially researched it. But it is a fun read if you are interested in redneck solutions that kinda work.

https://reason.com/2001/10/01/reef-madness-2/
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PhilSeptember 5, 2020 at 6:58 PM
I can't imagine why the Ixtoc oil spill wouldn't have been widely reported, except that in 1979 we weren't quite attuned to the full environmental impact of oil spills. I'm pretty sure there was no media or historians' conspiracy involved.
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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/
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Thursday, September 3, 2020

Preservation

3 comments:

Peripatetics