Hopeless Boyle

I'm a fan of T.C. Boyle's fiction, but not his casual dismissal of "hope for our species." Like Nietzsche or Henry Adams, he overrates the meaningful purposiveness of previous generations and understates the achievements of our time.

"In previous generations, there was purpose; you had to die, but there was God, and literature and culture would go on. Now, of course, there is no God, and our species is imminently doomed, so there is no purpose. We get up, raise families, have bank accounts, fix our teeth and everything else. But really, there is utterly no purpose except to be alive.

Imminently doomed? What sort of time frame are we talking?
In “A Friend of the Earth,” I projected 2025 for the effects of global warming to really disturb us, but I should have cut that by 10 years. It’s so depressing. You read any environmentalist — there’s not a breath of hope for our species."

But then again... being alive and staying alive should elicit as much purposive behavior as we're capable of. For one thing, it inspires good writing.

T. C. Boyle, Doomsday Preacher - NYTimes.com

Your carbon footprint

Hello! I found this "carbon calculator" the other day and thought I would share. It shows what your carbon footprint is.

http://www.nature.org/greenliving/carboncalculator/index.htm

For the record

I (JPO) like Al Gore.

At least one of  us does not, however. She (ML) yesterday posted a link and a statement that I hope won't be misattributed to me (JPO).

That's because all posts to this blog, from all its contributing authors, are auto-tweeted under my avatar. So, let's all include our initials whenever making self-referential statements, such as ML's sarcastic "I am a dirty Capitalist."

After all,  I don't want the radical Greens or the Friends of Al to put a bounty on my head! (That's a joke, everyone.)

Also for the record: ML is not dirty. Not especially.

Happy Fall Break!

-JPO

And The Lord giveth....

This article explains exactly how Al Gore has benefited financially via the environmental movement and his insider relationships in the financial and political world.  Seeing as I am a dirty Capitalist the fact that the man has made money is of no consequence to me.  However, flying around on his jets telling the little people not to drive their cars, etc.. seems a little hypocritical to me.  The fact is we have to be critical of those on the opposite side of our political ideologies but we must be even more diligent  watching those who we admire.  The old saying still rings true that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and unfortunately that corruption can even touch those we look up to the most.

"...Just before leaving public office in 2001, Gore reported assets of less than $2 million; today, his wealth is estimated at $100 million...."

"...Fourteen green-tech firms in which Gore invested received or directly benefited from more than $2.5 billion in loans, grants and tax breaks, part of President Obama’s historic push to seed a U.S. renewable-energy industry with public money...."

Al Gore has thrived as green tech investor. Via The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/al-gore-has-thrived-as-green-tech-investor/2012/10/10/1dfaa5b0-0b11-11e2-bd1a-b868e65d57eb_story.html?wpisrc=emailtoafriend

Fair Evaluation

This article from Huffington Post seems relevant to our discussion yesterday.   It also quotes Bill McKibben and addresses the climate issues within Obama's Administration.  Enjoy!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/11/barack-obama-climate-change_n_1951965.html

Rage against the machine

and the fossil fuel industry it runs on.

"We’ll greet Bill McKibben first in Rolling Stone, where he wrote last summer:

 Pure self-interest probably won’t spark a transformative challenge to fossil fuel. But moral outrage just might – and that’s the real meaning of this new math. It could, plausibly, give rise to a real movement. 

There’s definitely lots to be outraged about. Mitt Romney said at the "debate," for instance, "I like coal." He doesn't understand or care, evidently, that "a coal-fired power plant doesn't need an accident to wreck the planet; it performs that task constantly." But at least it employs coal-miners, eh? Except when it kills them.

His energy plan is clear: He proposes North American energy independence through the proven strategy of drilling into any part of the continent that looks black or looks like there might be something black underneath it. Mexico oil, Canada oil, whatever. That’s Mitt’s plan.

So... what's our next step, class?

Up@dawn

Could Washington state elect the greenest governor in the nation?

They already did, in Callenbach's Ecotopia.

"All around the country this election season, we’ve got Democrats who don’t want to talk about climate change and Republicans who don’t even acknowledge that climate change is real.
But in the Washington state governor’s race, it’s a whole different ballgame. The Democrat, Jay Inslee, is a longtime, outspoken crusader for climate action and clean energy. The Republican, Rob McKenna, is one of a vanishing breed of Republicans who not only acknowledge that climate change is happening but support government action to fight it..."

Could Washington state elect the greenest governor in the nation? | Grist

Simple numbers

We're wrapping up Speth and turning to McKibben this week in Environmental Ethics. We should take another look at the former's "manifesto" and the latter's "new math":

"Our politicians are constantly invoking America’s superiority and exceptionalism. True, the data is piling up to confirm that we’re Number One, but in exactly the way we don’t want to be—at the bottom. These deplorable consequences are not just the result of economic and technological forces over which we have no control. They are the results of conscious political decisions made over several decades by both Democrats and Republicans who have had priorities other than strengthening the well-being of American society and our environment..." Gus Speth, America the Possible: A Manifesto

"When we think about global warming at all, the arguments tend to be ideological, theological and economic. But to grasp the seriousness of our predicament, you just need to do a little math. For the past year, an easy and powerful bit of arithmetical analysis first published by financial analysts in the U.K. has been making the rounds of environmental conferences and journals, but it hasn't yet broken through to the larger public. This analysis upends most of the conventional political thinking about climate change. And it allows us to understand our precarious – our almost-but-not-quite-finally hopeless – position with three simple numbers..." Bill McKibben, Global Warming's Terrifying New Math | Politics News | Rolling Stone 

And then let's get on with McKibben's Introduction in The Global Warming Reader: A Century of Writing About Climate Change, followed by Hansen's "Statement" and IPCC's "Summary"...

What Money Can't Buy

the Moral Limits of Markets by Michael Sandel asks

one of the biggest ethical questions of our time: Is there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale? If so, how can we prevent market values from reaching into spheres of life where they don’t belong? What are the moral limits of markets?

In recent decades, market values have crowded out nonmarket norms in almost every aspect of life—medicine, education, government, law, art, sports, even family life and personal relations.  [And don't forget the environment!]

Without quite realizing it, Sandel argues, we have drifted from having a market economy to being a market society. Is this where we want to be?

Good report topic possibility, if you're in the market...

What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets: Michael J. Sandel: Amazon.com: Kindle Store

Apocalypse soon?

"Paul Ehrlich gave a talk at Stanford titled “Can a Collapse be Avoided”? Ehrlich is a biologist but his interests spread to Economics and Technology as well. The “collapse” of his talk is the catastrophe that, according to most climate scientists, is rapidly approaching. He listed eight major environmental problems and briefly discussed each. Some of them need to introduction (extinction of species, climate change, pollution) but others are no less catastrophic even though less advertised.

For example, global toxification: we filled the planet with toxic substances, and therefore the odds that some of them interact/combine in some deadly chemical experiment never tried before are increasing exponentially every year. There is no known way to fix something like that. We know how to fix pollution and carbon emissions and so forth (if we wanted to), but science would not know how to deal with a chemical reaction triggered by the combination of toxic substances in the soil..."

Piero Scaruffi, The Biggest Problem of All: The End of the World is Coming?

And if you missed it:

Green homes tour

"hosted collaboratively by the Cumberland River Compact and the U.S. Green Building Council of Middle Tennessee, this weekend’s second annual Green Homes Tour of Middle Tennessee aims to inspire Middle Tennessee homeowners to make eco-friendly decisions when it comes to homebuying, building and renovation. Every home on the tour has been certified by a third-party agency to meet standards for energy efficiency, water savings, materials selection and indoor environmental quality..."

When: Saturday 10 a.m.-6 p.m., and Sunday noon-6 p.m. 
Tickets: $15, or $25 for a couple, to see all 12 homes. Purchase tickets online atwww.middletngreenhomestour.com, or at any home on the tour. 
Where: Start at any of the homes. 
• 510 S. Margin St., Franklin 
• 508 S. Margin St., Franklin 
• 501 Woodland Hills Drive, La Vergne 
• 301 Battle Road, Antioch 
• 205 Painter Drive, Antioch 
• 801 Lealand Court, Nashville 
• 208 Elmington Ave., Nashville 
• Urban Housing Solutions, 1200 Third Ave. S., Nashville 
• Ryman Lofts, 33 Peabody St., Nashville 
• 310 Van Buren St., Nashville 
• 1217 Kirkland Ave., Nashville 
• 2016 Valley View Road, Joelton 
Tips: Guides suggest bringing a camera, a place to take notes, and good walking shoes. Though you may not reach all 12 homes in one day, one ticket will last both days. 
For more information: 615-353-0272 or gwengriffith@gmail.com

Tour highlights green homes | The Tennessean | tennessean.com

Corporations are not our friends

"We’re looking into Speth’s proposals for transforming the corporation and moving beyond capitalism as we know it. Good luck to us all.

Appropriately, on the day of the first presidential debate between the incumbent and the challenger who contends that “corporations are people, my friend,” Speth’s Chapter Eight addresses the oddity of “how corporations became people” with 1st amendment rights and individual protections. It’s time for that to change, and also “time to get corporations out of politics.” It may thus perhaps not be the best time to seat a Company Man at the head of the table in the people’s boardroom..."

Chains, laws, stars, pushpin & poetry « Up@dawn

Michael Pollan ‏@michaelpollan

Hilarious Dwight Garner piece on the new breed of ethical hunters.http://nyti.ms/QGRpyu 

 Retweeted by Phil Oliver

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2 OctClimate Reality ‏@ClimateReality

Looking for new read, climate activists? Gus Speth’s “America the Possible” should be on your list! http://ow.ly/e7Sal 

Michael Chabon at The Library Tonight

I lucked up and found this announced in the paper yesterday!
Michael Chabon, whose name appeared on our last exam, will be speaking and signing his latest book tonight at the Nashville Public Library.  Here is the link with all the info:

http://events.library.nashville.org/cal/event/showEventMore.rdo

Global warming for kids

Morgan was wondering how to explain to her 11-year old why and how it is that CO2 is bad for trees. There are good and straigtforward kid-friendly explanations for that too. And some insulting ones like Global Warming for Dummies, Green Living for Dummies etc. But the videos might be better.

Barry Commoner, R.I.P.

“I don’t believe in environmentalism as the solution to anything. What I believe is that environmentalism illuminates the things that need to be done to solve all of the problems together. For example, if you’re going to revise the productive system to make cars or anything else in such a way as to suit the environmental necessities, at the same time why not see to it that women earn as much as men for the same work?”

Dr. Commoner’s diagnoses and prescriptions sometimes put him at odds with other environmental leaders. He is rightly remembered as an important figure in the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, a nationwide teach-in conceived by Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, and he himself regarded the observance as historically important. But Earth Day also illustrated the growing factionalization of a movement in which “environmentalism” comprised a number of agendas, all competing for attention and money, and could mean anything from ending the Vietnam War to growing one’s own cabbages."

Barry Commoner Dies at 95 - NYTimes.com

Tyson rebukes Dawkins

You are "Professor of the Public Understanding of Science,"not "Professor of Delivering Truth to the Public"...

RD: I gratefully accept the rebuke...



They do seem to get along well enough now.

Sorry for not participating lately!

Really sorry for not gettin' my blog on this past weekend/last week, but I've been practicing and on the road for a Debate Tournament which took place from Fri-Sun, and I just got back.

Good news is, I got the topic "Should we drill in Alaska for oil." I was the negative, and got to talk about a lot of the sustainable energy developments, natural energy shortage problems, and long term effects of oil consumption that I learned in class. Of course, I won it, thanks to you guys! (and Speths ridiculously pessimistic number predictions.) 

*On a side note, it was also the debate I won by the greatest margin, which makes me feel like I've actually been learning something for once, so yay.

The future will belong to the nature-rich

"Despite undeniable successes, environmentalism is in trouble: recent polls (many, not all) describe a public with diminishing regard for environmental concerns. What we need now is a new nature movement, one that includes but goes beyond the good practices of traditional environmentalism and sustainability, one that paints a compelling, inspiring portrait of a society that is better than the one we presently live in. Not just a survivable world, but a nature-rich world in which our children and grandchildren thrive.

Inchoate, self-organizing, this new nature movement is already beginning to emerge.

It revives old concepts in health and urban planning (Frederick Law Olmsted, Teddy Roosevelt, and John Muir come to mind) and adds new ones, based on recent research that shows the power of nearby nature and wilderness to improve our psychological and physical health, our cognitive functioning, and our economic and social well-being..." Richard Louv

FORWARD TO NATURE: The New Nature Movement Isn’t About Going Back to Nature, but Forward to a Nature-Rich Civilization : The New Nature Movement

More Speth Qs/Happiness is not for sale

Gus Speth’s Chapter Six 6 takes up one of my favorite topics (and courses), happiness. And Chapter Seven concludes with another manifesto to rival Speth’s, this one from Wendell Berry. [Backing off]

The clear message, if it can be heard above the cacophony of advertising and Jonesing in our frenzied consumer culture: the deep feeling of personal well-being and meaningful, purposive engagement in life cannot be bought, is not for sale. We must climb down from our hedonic treadmills, stop assuming that more is always better, start focusing on “things that would truly make us better off.” A sustainable planet, the precondition of real security, is the big one...

(continues at Up@dawn)

"Does economic growth make you happy?" Nope, says the TLS. "The case against making increased GDP per capita the overriding policy objective is that it doesn’t deliver the increased happiness or welfare if promises..."

More Speth questions (Exam #2, at the end of October, will begin with ch4):

• When (according to Darrin McMahon) did happiness become a right? (127)
• What was Jefferson's formula for happiness? What's happened to it?
• Why is the advent of Positive Psychology a good thing?
• What is "subjective well-being" and "flow"? Where is it highest? (130)
• What's happened to social connectedness, trust, and anxiety since the '50s?
• What is the hedonic treadmill? What are happiness "set-points"?
• What bearing do age, gender, IQ, education, work, family, health, and freedom have on happiness?
• What is Speth's objection to GDP? What are some alternative indices? (138f.) 
• [Your suggestions]
• [ch7]
• What's Speth's opinion of "the people who run corporations"? (167) What's his objection to "externalizing costs"?
• How big is Exxon?
• How do most Americans feel about corporations? (175)
• Why does Speth say "government action is needed"? (178)
• What's the central idea of the "corporation of the future"? (181)
• [ch9]

And for discussion:

• Is ours a manic, dysphoric society? Are Whybrow's and McKibben's analysescorrect? (137)
• How should we measure national well-being? Do you like the Happy Planet Index or Gross National Happiness? 
• What are the "real issues" and activities "that would truly make us better off"? 
• Are there lessons for our time, and for the future of (eg) biotechnology and bioethics, in Shelley's "Ozymandias"? (158-9)
• Would you sign Berry's Manifesto? Or add to it?
• Can corporations really be "green" and "socially responsible"? Does green consumerism do any good? (174f.)
• Do you reject any of Speth's six propositions? (194-5)

Lessons learned from the Occupy Movement

maybe we've learned that hitching activism to the news cycle is not such a promising strategy.

“Occupy Wall Street, Democratic Process and Lessons for November” will be the focus of the Thinking Out of the (Lunch) Box: Conversations with a Philosophical Flavor with David Wood event on Oct. 5.

Dana Nelson, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English and American Studies, will moderate a panel discussion with two Vanderbilt students and a Vanderbilt alumna involved in the Occupy movement and community organizing efforts. The event takes place at the Nashville Public Library, 615 Church St.

Each (Lunch) Box talk, which begins with lunch at 11:30 a.m., is hosted by David Wood, W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt and founder of the series...

(Lunch) Box talk: Lessons learned from Occupy Wall Street | News | Vanderbilt University