Environmental Ethics

Monday, October 26, 2020

Will the Democratic Socialist wing of the Democratic Party continue to grow? 30 Must it cultivate that affiliation in order to be effective in American politics, or has the time come for an effective 3d Party or Independent Party challenge?

Coronavirus has really shifted many people’s political ideologies. I noticed as soon as the pandemic hit, the ideas that were once radically socialist and labeled as communist were suddenly very popular amongst the american people. Things such as universal income, higher minimum wage, and free healthcare are now topics up for debate whereas just a few months ago people were calling Bernie Sanders and AOC fascists for trying to improve the lives of suffering americans. It is unfortunate that it has taken over 200,000 american lives for us to come to the realization that our government is not running as efficiently as it should. Even according to republicans we are now labelled the socialist party and they will compare politicians such as kamala harris to bernie sanders as if they are even comparable in terms of policy.

Across the country republicans are losing their seats to more and more democrats because the American people are sick of the government that has done nothing for them. This is because the democratic establishment has finally woken up and is actually taking advice from people like Bernie Sanders. The democrats are quickly realizing progressive policies are popular and get people to show up to polls. The Green New Deal was a joke just a few months ago and i doubt anyone thought it would get passed even by democrats, but now it is the foundation for Joe Biden's climate plan. So long as we keep applying pressure and replacing those who are in politics solely for their own gain then we have a good shot at being the country we have always said we are.

I don’t believe a third party is necessary and would only serve to waste more time in congress/senate. The republican party is growing more and more unpopular, and their representatives know this. This is why the republican party has essentially turned into the Trump party. His base may be small but they are a very loud minority. This is why Trump has the control he does, any republican who goes against Trump is forfeiting their chances for reelection. If we can just get past Donald Trump then I believe the Republican party will be no more, or at least a pathetic shell of what it once was. I have a lot of hope for the country if we can manage beating him and his goons.

4 comments:

PhilOctober 26, 2020 at 2:20 PM
I've seen lots of "RIP, GOP" headlines lately, maybe this election will indeed lay the ground for a reconstructed or replacement conservative/traditional party. Maybe the Greens will be effectively co-opted by the new and improved Democrats. In the long run, though, I'd sure love to see a multi-party coalition-style system in America, with multiple and shifting alliances along with proportional voting.
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Carolin EngelhardOctober 26, 2020 at 4:50 PM
I am totally agreeing with a lot that has been said here. I do think, that these topics need to get more attention and that this pandemic has done a lot to raise more awareness and make people see how important it is. People that are being called radical socialists in the US have opinions and dreams that are totally normal in other European countries. I really do believe that the US can get there and will.
Concerning is for me, that there are still enough people that listen to President Trump downplaying the pandemic and still not seeing a problem. At least we are seeing a slight change in opinion, just sad that it took a global pandemic to do that.
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Betty Mae MillerOctober 27, 2020 at 10:36 PM
Seeing the general shift in political beliefs and discussions have been made glaringly obvious by this pandemic. I also find it interesting the radicalization of people that has reached beyond Sanders and electoralism. With Bernie backing Biden, many of my peers (as well as this sentiment being echoed by several others I've seen), the American youth is becoming further dissolutioned. Not necessarily to the point of mass youth voting-boycotting, but the typical young adult, at least in my experience, is much less trusting of even progressives than I have ever seen.
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NOV 5 GT 5.15--5.21 (thru Mending...Earth). McK thru Terry Tempest Williams. Final report presentations begin... NOV 7 GT 5.22 (Hope... What Next?). McK thru Ellen Meloy... NOV 12 MacA Part I-The Long View. McK thru Jack Turner... NOV 14 MacA Part II-Trajectory Changes. McK thru David Quammen... 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

Monday, October 26, 2020

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Peripatetics