Environmental Ethics: Questions Nov 9-11

Saturday, November 7, 2020

Questions Nov 9-11

We still need to schedule Nov 16-18. If no one chooses to report on those dates, I suggest we crowd-source our content: let's each find a book, article, website, or video (etc.) to share, write about, and discuss.

Nov 11

Have we just experienced four years of a "shock doctrine" presidency? Are more shocks in store? 235
"Trump represents a crisis that could echo through geologic time." 236 Will his administration's environmental legacy be of that scale? Or will its termination mitigate that impact? (See "legacy" article...)
Will Trump have been the crisis "sparking progressive transformation" that "catapult(s) us forward"?
Do you agree that "simply resisting" is inadequate, that "we also need a bold and forward-looking 'yes'"? 237
Is the wave of youthful activism represented by Greta (and Stuart's 8th-graders) more a resistance movement or a Yes movement?
Is neoliberalism the principal source of our problems? (see article...)
Do you agree that we have a "gig and dig economy"? 240
Can you suggest a better motto than "Leave the oil and gas in the ground, but leave no worker behind"? 241
Can an American politician run effectively on a platform of making reparations to the Global South?

What do you think of Losing Earth? [NYT Mag] Should we take a closer look next week?
Was Nathaniel Rich right or wrong about the late 80s ("the conditions for success could not have been more favorable"... “Nearly everything we understand about global warming was understood in 1979.”? 243f.

Is "human nature" our biggest climate problem? Or is capitalism? 245, 247, 250
What do you think of Time's "Planet of the Year"?
If "meeting the challenge of climate change would have required imposing stiff regulations on polluters while investing in the public sphere to transform how we power our lives, live in cities, and move ourselves around," are we more or less prepared to meet that challenge now than we were three decades ago? 249
Do you agree that "a new form of democratic eco-socialism" is our "best shot at collective survival"? 251

Do you agree that Puerto Rico's woes are due mostly to "decisions made by people working for powerful interests" and not "acts of God"? 255
Will we now have a "timid Democrat in the White House"? 260
Are we ready for "a more probing conversation about the limits of lifestyles" devoted to consumerism? 264
How do we get our issues out of "silos"? 268
Has Hollywood yet made a responsible and constructive environmental film? 274
Will we need something like a WPA Federal Art Project to "reframe" the way most people think about the scale of change required to meet our climate/social justice challenge? 276
What do you think of the "postcards from the future"? Can such short films change hearts and minds?
What do you want to read and discuss next? More Wendell Berry? The Long Now? Or should we each just find something and share it?

Nov 9

We last met under a cloud of uncertainty about the election outcome and its consequences for the "human game." Is it yet possible to declare "a single, overarching lesson" that begins "Never underestimate the power of _____"? 191
Do you recall your post-election state of mind four years ago? In retrospect, did subsequent events meet your expectations or confirm your fears?
Do you expect to see a substantial "redistributive agenda" vigorously pursued in the years ahead? 192
Will the nation finally turn a corner on racism and misogyny, post-Trump? 192
Do you expect the Biden-Harris administration consistently to apply the Black test? Did the Obama administration? Will Congress be any less recalcitrant? 194
Is intersectionality really possible? Can all crises be prioritized equally? Or is this a rhetorical symbol?

Thoughts on the discovery of a new Australian coral reef?

4 comments:

Heather FaulknerNovember 12, 2020 at 10:43 AM
Will Trump have been the crisis "sparking progressive transformation" that "catapult(s) us forward"?

It remains to be seen. But, I hope so because then at least something good can come out of it. The record high voting turn out this year at the very least shows more and more Americans are finally choosing to include themselves in the political process. That is a good thing. Whether or not we are close to big progressive changes, I don't know. The voting turnout this year also highlighted just how divided we still are as a nation. Whether or not change will happen at this point will probably be determined by Biden's ability to unite people and bring science back into the conversation.
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Heather FaulknerNovember 12, 2020 at 10:46 AM
Are we ready for "a more probing conversation about the limits of lifestyles" devoted to consumerism? 264

I want to say yes, but in reality I don't think we are actually ready for that message to be received with serious consideration by the American people. Our culture revolves around the here and now, and I'm not sure what it will take to get us to shift focus on the future.
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Kimani ChurnNovember 14, 2020 at 1:27 AM
Will the nation finally turn a corner on racism and misogyny, post-Trump? 192

To answer if the nation will finally turn a corner when it comes to racism and misogyny, I would say yes. We still have a long road to travel ahead of us now that Trump is out of office but I do believe that his presence served the purpose of exposing these type of issues on a deeper level especially for those who really believed that issues like racism were long behind or that it had gotten better throughout our history. Now, it is time to actually begin to deal with it, hopefully with the proper leadership in place that can help aid in the process instead of making it worse.
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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

Saturday, November 7, 2020

Questions Nov 9-11

4 comments:

Peripatetics