Environmental Ethics: Message From The Future III

Wednesday, December 9, 2020

Message From The Future III

The other day, one of my kids asked for some help with their homework. It was for their history class. Their assignment was to pick one of the many movements/events/tragedies that occured in 2020 and to present it to the class. My child said to me, “I am not sure what to choose because there is so much that happened I can't even remember it all!” and then they proceeded to ask me what I remember from that year. Unfortunately, I remember it all.

It started with wildfires and possible wars with other countries, then from an extra week of spring break, to getting involved with the Black Lives Matter Movement, to the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, to still not being able to go about “normal” life in December because America couldn't get it together. This goes for Covid-19, politically, environmentally, everything really. But thankfully, we have moved on from that time to be where we are today.

Covid-19 took the world by storm. Killed millions of people and sadly, America was the last to get their act together. Unfortunately, what started as a deadly pandemic, somehow turned political. It was sad to see so many people be so careless when it came to keeping others safe. People having to be laid to rest in refrigerated trucks in parking lots while others decided it was okay to go to brunch. It was also so sad to see the government practically ignore the millions of people who were hurting from the pandemic. Many lost their homes, couldn't feed their families all while the government was just concerned about the economy. Luckily, after over a year of having to go through that, the government gave the people what they deserved. We finally went into a proper lockdown, people were given a correct amount of stimulus from the government in order to afford not going to work, no one was allowed to be evicted, and we all were able to wait patiently for a vaccine that luckily has proven to be effective. All of this was no thanks to the Trump administration however.

After Trump finally acknowledged Biden's victory of the 2020 elections, he vanished. Never to be heard from again. Although Biden was not what many of us had hoped for in the beginning of the election, he still was a move in the right direction from what we had previously had to deal with. After Biden we finally had our first female president, President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She really helped to get us to where we are today. Although the Green New Deal did not get the support that was needed, it however led to The New Green Deal which has helped our environment greatly. It is often hard to think back to a time when we all took the Earth for granted the way we did. I am sure to remind my kids that we are fortunate to have been given the opportunity to live somewhere so wonderful.

Along with environmental movements, after a while we finally started to rebuild a better system overall. Our previous system oppressed too many people. People of color, people of certain socioeconomic status, people of certain genders, overall just too many people. After a long hard fight that in reality lasted hundreds of years, we are finally moving in the fight direction. I have shown my kids some photos of what those times were like, specifically what fighting in 2020 looked like. I have included some in this letter to hopefully ignite something in you, whoever is reading this. A part of me is glad I had the opportunity to have seen that year for myself. As it was a turning point in the world's history. I once read a quote by Nikola Tesla that said, “you will live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension” That quote embodies what 2020 was like for so many and it reminds me of what humans have overcome.

I would like to end this letter by sharing a bit of advice to you. The future that is.

Love. That is the answer. It really is quite that simple. Whatever it is you or someone else is facing, that is the answer. And I know it sounds cheesy, but it has never seemed to fail me. Love those who surround you. Love the earth for what it has given to you. Just love.

A look into 2020:

2 comments:

PhilDecember 9, 2020 at 9:11 AM
It's not all we need, but we all need a lot more of it.
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NOV 14 MacA Part II-Trajectory Changes. McK thru David Quammen... If you want to post an EARLY DRAFT of your final report BLOG POST (for use during your PRESENTATION and for constructive feedback), you need to SIGN UP to become an AUTHOR on our site. Scroll to near the bottom of this page to see blog post instructions, under "Final report blog post"... NOV 19 MacA Part III-Safeguarding Civilisation. McK thru Sandra Steingraber... NOV 21 MacA Part IV-Assessing the End of the World. McK Barbara Kingsolver, Michael Pollan... NOV 26 MacA Part V-Taking Action. McK Paul Hawken, Rebecca Solnit...THANKSGIVING BREAK... DEC 3 Last class. Exam 2 (NOTE: Exam 2 is not a "final exam," it is the exam covering material since the first exam)... DEC 6 Final blogpost (final draft) due (post earlier for constructive feedback)... 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, December 9, 2020

Message From The Future III

2 comments:

Peripatetics