Environmental Ethics: Questions SEP 17

Saturday, September 14, 2024

Questions SEP 17

GT 2.20--2.24 (thru What Happens...). WW 126-154 (thru Systems). McK thru Henry Beston...

Why are insects important? 110 Do you find them "fascinating and beautiful"?
What's happened with pesticides since Silent Spring was published? 111 Are you a user?
In Paul Ehrlich's analogy, we're close to what? What can be done about that?
Why is phenology ("the study of the timing of biological events in the life cycles of plants and animals, and how these events are influenced by the seasons and climate") important? 113 Any comment on George Santayana's seasonal philosophy?)
What uncharted territory are we fast heading into? 115
What do we need to do to avoid a "positive" tipping point (which would be a negative development) in the global carbon cycle? 117
What is permafrost and what have we only recently learned about it? 118
There's no doubt that what methane event is underway? How can that be mitigated? 121
If we're lucky, sea-level rise will be what? 124 Should we feel lucky?
Climate change is a what? 125 Whether it bends towards climate justice is up to who?

Before fossil fuels, nobody what? 126 Coincidence? Or a plausible causal connection?
How do worse-case scenarios compare to the Great Depression, in terms of GDP? 128, 135 Is it prudent to plan for the worst, when making economic and public policy?
What is the cost of trans-Atlantic flight, measured in Arctic ice? 131 Will you think about that before booking your next trip to Europe?
What U.S. city presently enjoys optimal annual average temperature for economic productivity? 132 Does this correlate with other lifestyle features there you find either desirable or not?
Why is the U.S. more vulnerable to climate impacts than any country but India? 133 What will it take to get more Americans to appreciate and act on this?
Why is a 3% greater likelihood of conflict due to climate change not trivial? Warming of 4 degrees might have how many more wars? 136-7 Would that be trivial?
Why can't we see the threat of escalating war very clearly? 140 Was Senator Harris right to ask the CIA director-nominee whether his climate denial would influence his national security policies (as she details in The Truths We Hold)?
How does Guatemala illustrate how climate impacts can cascade into violence?
According to U.N. estimates, there may be how many climate migrants by 2050? 146
What did Sheila Heti say about child-bearing? 149 Do you agree with the spirit of DW-W's comments on that?

McK

What do you think of the latest McKibben substack column about the sudden rise of solar sustainability (below)?
What prevailing attitude towards nature did Gifford Pinchot exemplify? 172 [No surprise, considering his employer in NC.] Is it still the prevailing attitude? Do you share it?
What "stupidly false adjective" did he indict? 174
For what did he say we must make ourselves responsible? 179-80
With what did William Hornaday see nothing wrong? 181
What did Dreiser say is not up for discussion? 190 Was he wrong? Should it be?
What did Gene Stratton-Porter say about the country's resources? 192
Please post your discussion questions in the comments space below

And remember,

I encourage you to read this MTSU student's Environmental blog...

Kathryn Modine is a MALA (Master of Liberal Arts) student working on her capstone project, a new environmental blog called Interconnected Planet. I encourage you to read and possibly comment on her first and subsequent posts. When you comment on her blog please share that comment with us here too, and give yourself a base on our scorecard when you do.

5 comments:

Chelsie GordonSeptember 15, 2024 at 10:57 PM
I enjoyed reading her blog and found it very meaningful. I commented, "Science can change the world and is a cumulative and collective endeavor that plays such a vital role in our everyday lives. Separating science into individual disconnected boxes as if only one discipline will be able to decipher the code and work out the solution to our ecological problems is folly and you have stated this beautifully."
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Eli MilerSeptember 16, 2024 at 11:05 PM
I find that insects pretty much 'carry' the entire world on their backs. They are small yet so mighty having so much to do and hold in the balance of life, I find them very beautiful and amazing. I try to not be a user of pesticides but frankly when it comes to mosquitos I have no mercy. Much has happened since the publishing of Silent spring, chemical pollution has gotten much worse, for the insects and for us. Paul Ehrlich says we are close to a catastrophic failure as a plane would succumb to if its rivets were removed.
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Aidan HainesSeptember 17, 2024 at 4:14 PM
I’m not huge on insects, but I recognize their importance to the environment as ecosystem engineers. Some of them could be considered traditionally beautiful but I think their beauty comes from their importance to the earth.

Some questions of my own:
How important do you find it is that we act quickly on climate change? Could we reverse the effects of climate change just as we’ve amplified them?

(Relating to last class) What ideas do you propose that we hold countries accountable for global emissions? Is it even possible?
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SEP 24 GT 3.8--3.14 (thru Winter...). WW 189-225 (thru History After Progress). McK thru Aldo Leopold... SEP 26 PH -33 Foreword... Oceans. GT 3.15--3.20 (thru True Cost...). WW 226-265. McK thru E.B. White... Midterm report presentations continue... Good News: keyshop says I now have access to the building after 4:30. So, we can look forward to going out again...when it's not too hot or too loud... 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, September 14, 2024

Questions SEP 17

I encourage you to read this MTSU student's Environmental blog...

5 comments:

Peripatetics