Environmental Ethics

Sunday, November 1, 2020

At what point in the next decade should we decide that it's too late to "change our behavior"? 109

I do not think we should ever decide that it is too late to change our behavior. I think if there is only a small amount of people that are still fighting and can inspire others to do the same, we still have a chance.

I think giving up is not really an option in this case anyway, it is not sufficient to just sit back and wait for us to destroy the planet. There is still a chance that we will be able to save the planet or at least make it survive just a little bit longer. In the next decade, I think the ignorance of countries' leaders will continue, it will take more than that to really get everyone on board with this, but eventually the importance and the generations to come will have a great impact on this topic as well. The Greta’s and other environmentalist start early and will be able to make change soon.

Agreed, a decade is still long and if we do not make significant chances to our overall lifestyle and laws right now, we will probably not be able to make a big impact anymore in 10 years. I do believe though, that there will also be more technological advancement, that can help make environmental-friendly projects and process more efficient and affordably and therefore, more attractive to people. I think the key is, to obviously get more people to truly care about the environment and for the people that do not want to change their mind, to make things SO attractive that they want to choose the environmentally friendly version. There will never be an agreement from everyone, so I think we should use that to our advantage and just make the best choice for the environment, the best choice for the company/customer/human there is. Whatever field of work or part of life it is, I think there is always room for improvement.

Total Points 55, notes in the comments

5 comments:

PhilNovember 2, 2020 at 7:28 AM
Your response is very much in the spirit of Wendell Berry, Carolin. "We don't have a right to ask whether we're going to succeed or not. The only thing we have a right to ask is, what's the right thing to do?"
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Carolin EngelhardNovember 5, 2020 at 8:00 PM
Total Points: 55
Comment to Heather and Kathryn! +2
This essay +3
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Kate PhillipsNovember 5, 2020 at 9:52 PM
I loved everything you had to say here in your post. I often feel that many people have lost hope in trying to do anything about our situation, or simply just said there is nothing we can do about it. However what you have said in this post, to me, is how everyone should feel about the consequences we are facing. I liked how you mentioned the future technological advances that will be made and how those will impact our way onto the right path. Something that I think most people don't think about is what is yet to come, in a good way.
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Chris TroupNovember 6, 2020 at 2:06 PM
I agree that we shouldn’t give up just yet. Even if it can be hard to affect change on the national level, there is still plenty that can be done on the state or community level. There are many states that aren’t waiting to be told to change but are being proactive in pursuing green energy.
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Stuart McLeanNovember 6, 2020 at 3:01 PM
Its the little things in life. With materialism innately driving most humans in the world we forget what truly matters. The codes of conduct that once thrived in indigenous cultures to protect the sanctity of our earth are quickly being eradicated by humanities manifest destiny. When earthquakes shatter cities, rising ocean waters threaten modern life and deceased marine life wash up to beach shores can we hear mother nature telling us that she needs help. If only humanity can live their lives with the the little things in mind will green paint be added to the palate of the bigger picture.
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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

Sunday, November 1, 2020

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Peripatetics