Environmental Ethics

Wednesday, November 25, 2020

The Pandemic and how I link it to the environment

I think this year and the ongoing pandemic have changed a lot of my views on people, and unfortunately a lot of them were not positive. I will probably try and get into this more in my Final Blogpost, as I have more space there but I kind of wanted to bring up Covid and link the attitude of some people to their blindness to the Climate Crisis.

This year like none before really showed how people respond to really visible and drastic obstacles. With the Environment a lot of people say that it is something that does not apply to them yet, they do not want to be bothered by changes in their everyday life to possible help out the environment and reduce their carbon footprint. A lot of these people have the same attitude when it comes to Covid. It is an inconvenience to wear a mask, they listen to sources that tell them that the virus is a hoax and it has not affected their life immensely enough to make them think otherwise. A lot of the people I know had Covid and since their had a mild reaction, they do not think it is harmful to anyone. If we ask someone who has lost both of their parents to covid, kids that are college students like us and all of a sudden their mom and dad is gone, they probably do not have the same opinion.

Obviously, I am generalizing with this but I do see a trend of people being selfish and taking life and earth for granted, just because they see that a little bit of their freedom could be taken away. They do not see the benefit, the greater good they do for society or the planet and I get to the point where I do not want to be around these people anymore. We need to start caring about others, as much as we care about ourselves and the people close to us and we need to give things the benefit of the doubt. Educate ourselves on topics and maybe consider more than just one news source...

I think in some way Covid is an invisible force that is endangering a lot of people and is still not taking seriously. Basically just like Climate Change just in a faster and more evident form, but still not big or important enough for people to care.

This is just kind of a dump of thought and I hope in my final blogpost I am able to elaborate or put it into a different perspective again.

4 comments:

Carolin EngelhardNovember 25, 2020 at 5:53 PM
This Essay (+3)
Comment on Patrick and Kathryn (+2)
Total Points: should be 70, if I counted correctly
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PhilNovember 25, 2020 at 6:33 PM
You're not wrong, Carolin, to notice the parallel between covid denial and climate denial (and science denial, more broadly). Let us hope that the inauguration of a US presidential administration that affirms and values science will begin to change hearts and minds. (And as Ed reminded us: hope is a verb.)
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Tyler BrooksNovember 25, 2020 at 8:41 PM
While I do agree agree with you Carolin that Covid is dangerous, but I disagree with exactly how deadly it is. Considering that compared to the people who have been affected by Covid and the number that have been killed by it, Covid itself is less deadly itself than the Flu which we get every year. I do agree with though like Covid people do underestimate climate change and how it will effect our society in general.
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Chris TroupNovember 27, 2020 at 2:55 PM
Its too bad that wearing a mask became politicized as a “taking away our freedom issue” because in the end it’s just recklessly endangering others. Every day, people make concessions to their personal freedom for the good of others, like not speeding in school zones, not running red lights, or not drinking and driving. People don’t object to these rules and realize that the safety benefits way outweigh any “minor inconvenience”. I mean people still DO these things, but everyone thinks they are reckless jerks. No one looks at a person running a red light and goes “that guy is taking a stand for personal freedom” they just think “that guy is going to get someone hurt or killed”. It sucks because wearing a mask is such a simple thing for most of us to do to keep others and ourselves safe, but people want to turn not wearing one into a political statement, or can’t be bothered to shoulder really minor levels of inconvenience for the good of everyone’s health. No one should be proud of not wearing a mask. They should be ashamed of how little regard they have for others safety. I hope people really take this situation we’re all in as a call to rethink their actions and priorities.
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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

Wednesday, November 25, 2020

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Peripatetics