1 in 100

That's how many doctors and climate experts will advise you to "wait and see." But they don't have a waiting list.

A 'Good' Anthropocene?

Branding matters, say sustainability advocates.

['Anthropocene'] brings the Human and the Natural together into a single temporal and spatial unit: the planet as defined by human activity (and interactivity with it). It is, in this sense, like “globalization” but larger, with ecology now woven into this global frame. For environmental humanists (among others) it lends the credibility of science (geology!). For earth scientists, it expands their purview to include the human. These are all clear gains and make the term worth supporting and working with. Any effort to bridge the “two cultures” divide in a way that recognizes both human agency and material reality is a good thing...

Exploring Academia's Role in Charting Paths to a 'Good' Anthropocene - NYTimes.com

Cosmos on the climate crisis

We might, unfortunately, be one of those "civilizations that self-destruct," in Tyson's words. Here's Tyson's big statement about it: 

TYSON: In one respect, we're ahead of the people of ancient Mesopotamia. Unlike them, we understand what's happening to our world. For example, we're pumping greenhouse gases into our atmosphere, at a rate not seen on Earth for a million years. And there's scientific consensus that we're destabilizing our climate. Yet, our civilization seems to be in the grip of denial, a kind of paralysis. There's a disconnect between what we know, and what we do...

"Cosmos" Explains How Global Warming Threatens Civilization as We Know It | Mother Jones

Environmental Ethics and Sustainability

Coming to MTSU, Fall 2014-

Beyond Activism: Environmental Ethics and Sustainability

(PHIL 3340-001, Environmental Ethics MW 02:20 – 03:45 JUB 202)

The modern environmental movement has been with us in one form or another at least since the first Earth Day in 1970, if not longer. (Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, 1962, is another significant modern marker.) It has achieved undoubted success in elevating the awareness of many to our profound obligation (in Carl Sagan's memorable words) to "preserve and protect the Pale Blue Dot, the only home we've ever known." 

And yet, many "friends of the Earth" find themselves deeply frustrated by encounters in the wider culture with apathy, indifference, ignorance, misinformation, and hostility concerning environmental issues, and dire reports like that of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC):

Climate change is already having sweeping effects on every continent and throughout the world’s oceans, and the problem is likely to grow substantially worse unless greenhouse emissions are brought under control... ice caps are melting, sea ice in the Arctic is collapsing, water supplies are coming under stress, heat waves and heavy rains are intensifying, coral reefs are dying, and fish and many other creatures are migrating toward the poles or in some cases going extinct... 

In this course, we'll ask what it may take to move the conversation beyond passionate but still-relatively-marginal activism, towards a more widely shared understanding that everyone has a vital stake in fashioning truly sustainable ways of living on Earth.

One answer: work to enlist community leaders and campus power-brokers, including university presidents, as allies in the public battle for hearts and minds. We'll look for practical ways to "think globally and act locally" on our own campus, and beyond. 

Required texts:

• Bill McKibben, Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist - "Sometime in the course of the past decade I figured out that I needed to do more than write—if this fight was about power, then we who wanted change had to assemble some. Environmentalists clearly weren't going to outspend the fossil fuel industry, so we'd need to find other currencies: the currencies of movement. Instead of money, passion; instead of money, numbers; instead of money, creativity... But if you've built a movement, you've eventually got to put it to work. And now 'eventually' had come. Education needed to yield to action..."
• E.O. Wilson, The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth - "Forget about life's origins, Wilson suggests, and focus on the fact that while nature achieves "sustainability through complexity," human activities are driving myriad species into extinction, thus depleting the biosphere and jeopardizing civilization. Wilson deplores the use of religious belief (God will take care of it) as an impediment to conservation..."
• Environmental Ethics: An Overview for the Twenty-First Century [Paperback] Robin Attfield 978-0745652535 ...advocating biocentric consequentialism among theories of normative ethics and defending objectivism in meta-ethics. The possibilities of ethical consumerism and investment are discussed, and the nature and basis of responsibilities for future generations in such areas as sustainable development are given detailed consideration. Attfield adopts an inclusive, cosmopolitan perspective in discussions of global ethics and citizenship, and illustrates his argument with a discussion of global warming, mitigation, adaptation and global justice. The revised edition features a new chapter on climate change, new treatments of animal issues, ecofeminism, environmental aesthetics, invasion biology and virtue ethics, and new applications of the precautionary principle to fisheries, genetic engineering and synthetic biology. The glossary and bibliography have been updated to assist understanding of these themes. The text uses a range of devices to aid understanding, such as summaries of key issues, and guides to further reading and relevant websites. It has been written particularly with a view to the needs of students taking courses in environmental ethics... $25.19

Possible additional texts:

• Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History - If extinction is a morbid topic, mass extinction is, well, massively so. It's also a fascinating one. In the pages that follow, I try to convey both sides: the excitement of what's being learned as well as the horror of it. My hope is that readers of this book will come away with an appreciation of the truly extraordinary moment in which we live."

• John Ehrenfield, Flourishing: A Frank Conversation about Sustainability - "Present-day efforts at sustainability, and indeed society's foundational values themselves, have been corrupted and subverted by utilitarian values that turn them into a marketing pitch. In drifting toward unsustainability we have lost our vision... 'Sustainability still has not entered our consciousness, in spite of the torrent of its use and that of its distant cousin,green'..."

• Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2014: Governing for Sustainability - "Citizens expect their governments to lead on sustainability. But from largely disappointing international conferences like Rio II to the U.S.’s failure to pass meaningful climate legislation, governments’ progress has been lackluster. That’s not to say leadership is absent; it just often comes from the bottom up rather than the top down. Action—on climate, species loss, inequity, and other sustainability crises—is being driven by local, people’s, women’s, and grassroots movements around the world, often in opposition to the agendas pursued by governments and big corporations..." 

• Carl Herndl, Sustainability: A Reader for Writers - "focuses on the timely and vital subject of sustainability, examining the latest research on economics, society, resource planning, and the environment. It takes on key issues including climate change; food, water, and soil; energy and resource management; and trash. The articles embody a range of experiences, ideas, and strategies-from scientific research and engaging questions to poetic reflection and powerful arguments."

• Ecological Ethics [Paperback] Patrick Curry 978-0745651262 ...He discusses light green or anthropocentric ethics with the examples of stewardship, lifeboat ethics, and social ecology; the mid-green or intermediate ethics of animal liberation/rights; and dark or deep green ecocentric ethics. Particular attention is given to the Land Ethic, the Gaia Hypothesis and Deep Ecology and its offshoots: Deep Green Theory, Left Biocentrism and the Earth Manifesto. Ecofeminism is also considered and attention is paid to the close relationship between ecocentrism and virtue ethics. Other chapters discuss green ethics as post-secular, moral pluralism and pragmatism, green citizenship, and human population in the light of ecological ethics. In this new edition, all these have been updated and joined by discussions of climate change, sustainable economies, education, and food from an ecocentric perspective.

  This comprehensive and wide-ranging textbook offers a radical but critical introduction to the subject which puts ecocentrism and the critique of anthropocentrism back at the top of the ethical, intellectual and political agenda. It will be of great interest to students and activists, and to a wider public... $23.38 
• Environmental Ethics: An Overview for the Twenty-First Century [Paperback] Robin Attfield 978-0745652535 ...advocating biocentric consequentialism among theories of normative ethics and defending objectivism in meta-ethics. The possibilities of ethical consumerism and investment are discussed, and the nature and basis of responsibilities for future generations in such areas as sustainable development are given detailed consideration. Attfield adopts an inclusive, cosmopolitan perspective in discussions of global ethics and citizenship, and illustrates his argument with a discussion of global warming, mitigation, adaptation and global justice. The revised edition features a new chapter on climate change, new treatments of animal issues, ecofeminism, environmental aesthetics, invasion biology and virtue ethics, and new applications of the precautionary principle to fisheries, genetic engineering and synthetic biology. The glossary and bibliography have been updated to assist understanding of these themes. The text uses a range of devices to aid understanding, such as summaries of key issues, and guides to further reading and relevant websites. It has been written particularly with a view to the needs of students taking courses in environmental ethics... $25.19

• Ecotopia Emerging by Ernest Callenbach (1981) This prequel to Callenbach's classic Ecotopia is a multi-stranded novel that dramatizes the rise and triumph of a powerful American movement to preserve the earth as a safe, sustainable environment. The story springs from harsh realities: Toxic contamination of air, water, and food has become intolerable. Nuclear meltdowns threaten. Military spending burdens the economy. Politicians squabble over outdated agendas... 978-0960432035 

• Future Primitive: The New Ecotopias (1997) by Kim Stanley Robinson (Editor) Ernest Callenbach's classic novel Ecotopia sparked a movement that is growing rapidly around the world. Ecotopians embrace high technology as a a tool for preserving and living gently within the natural environment of Planet Earth... Kim Stanley Robinson has gathered here in this volume bright tales... 978-0312863500

• The Bridge atbther Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability by James Gustave Speth 0300151152 How serious are the threats to our environment? Here is one measure of the problem: if we continue to do exactly what we are doing, with no growth in the human population or the world economy, the world in the latter part of this century will be unfit to live in. Of course human activities are not holding at current levels—they are accelerating, dramatically—and so, too, is the pace of climate disruption, biotic impoverishment, and toxification. In this book Gus Speth, author of Red Sky at Morning and a widely respected environmentalist, begins with the observation that the environmental community has grown in strength and sophistication, but the environment has continued to decline, to the point that we are now at the edge of catastrophe.
  
  
  Speth contends that this situation is a severe indictment of the economic and political system we call modern capitalism. Our vital task is now to change the operating instructions for today’s destructive world economy before it is too late. The book is about how to do that.                                                                                                                                                            For more info, contact Dr. Phil Oliver - phil.oliver@mtsu.edu.

IPCC's new report

Here comes trouble.

Climate change is already having sweeping effects on every continent and throughout the world’s oceans, scientists reported on Monday, and they warned that the problem was likely to grow substantially worse unless greenhouse emissions are brought under control.

The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations group that periodically summarizes climate science, concluded that ice caps are melting, sea ice in the Arctic is collapsing, water supplies are coming under stress, heat waves and heavy rains are intensifying, coral reefs are dying, and fish and many other creatures are migrating toward the poles or in some cases going extinct... (continues)

Panel’s Warning on Climate Risk: Worst Is Yet to Come - NYTimes.com

How Smart Are Plants?

"When most of us think of plants, to the extent that we think about plants at all, we think of them as old—holdovers from a simpler, prehuman evolutionary past. But for Mancuso plants hold the key to a future that will be organized around systems and technologies that are networked, decentralized, modular, reiterated, redundant—and green, able to nourish themselves on light. “Plants are the great symbol of modernity.” Or should be: their brainlessness turns out to be their strength, and perhaps the most valuable inspiration we can take from them." Michael Pollan: How Smart Are Plants? : The New Yorker
==

The Farm's Ecovillage

Life on The Farm, kinda laid back & kinda shrinking. But they run something called the Ecovillage Training Center. Good field-trip prospect!

 • Ecovillage Training Center (www.thefarm.org/etc): A “total immersion school for sustainability,” the training center offers hands-on learning in permaculture design, natural homebuilding and energy conservation. Founded in 1994, it is set among The Farm’s 5,000 acres of protected woods and serves as a living laboratory. The eco-hostel is undergoing a two-story expansion to accommodate more visitors. The village is open to the public.

The Farm, home to free spirits for 42 years, is at a crossroads | The Tennessean | tennessean.com

Too soon to despair

Not long ago, I ran into a guy who’d been involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement, that great upwelling in southern Manhattan in the fall of 2011 that catalyzed a global conversation and a series of actions and occupations nationwide and globally. He offered a tailspin of a description of how Occupy was over and had failed. 

But I wonder: How could he possibly know? It really is too soon to tell. First of all, maybe the kid who will lead the movement that will save the world was catalyzed by what she lived through or stumbled upon in Occupy Fresno or Occupy Memphis, and we won’t reap what she sows until 2023 or 2043...

Tomgram: Rebecca Solnit, What Comes After Hope | TomDispatch

Creating Passionate Environmentalists

At about 300 colleges across the country, young activists worried about climate change are borrowing a strategy that students successfully used in decades past. In the 1980s, students enraged about South Africa's racist Apartheid regime got their schools to drop stocks in companies that did business with that government. In the 1990s students pressured their schools to divest in Big Tobacco. 

This time, the student activists are targeting a mainstay of the economy: large oil and coal companies....

College Divestment Campaigns Creating Passionate Environmentalists : NPR

Fear itself

the climate that worries me most is the climate of fear, the belief that our current trajectory leads inevitably to total disaster. This belief discourages constructive action, and can result in irrational acts by people in despair, individually, or as nations, willing to do anything to derail the juggernaut we are told is carrying us, inevitably, to destruction. Unlike environmental problems, it is less clear to me how we change this. But at least, those of us in science, social science and the media can seek to craft solutions and enlist engagement, rather than feeding fear. With hope comes action. 

-Peter Kelemen

An Earth Scientist Explores the Biggest Climate Threat: Fear - NYTimes.com

Places humanized, not conquered

My hope, for all future generations, is that they will have (in addition to sunshine, fresh air, clean water, and fertile soil) a somewhat slower pace of life, with plenty of time to pause, in quiet places . . . haunted places—everyday, accessible places, open to the public—places that are not too radically transformed over time... 

Aaron Sachs, Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition

Delight Springs

Gun control is an environmental issue

There's no point in preserving a habitable climate for a species so passively complicit in the murder of its own children. The time for "meaningful action" on the senseless proliferation of assault weapons in this country is long past, but all we've got is now.

Adam Gopnik on #Newtown: The people who fight...to make guns available are complicit in the murder of those children: http://nyr.kr/Z6u6UZ 

Bill McKibben ‏@billmckibben

Am recalling all the days i dropped my daughter off at kindergarten, and the atmosphere of complete trust. Just too sad for words

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3hBill McKibben ‏@billmckibben

Crazed horrible knifeman in China wounds 22 at elementary school. Wounds. http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/14/world/asia/china-knife-attack/index.html …

Knights of the Green Table, UNITE!

Before anyone gets too comfortable in their Christmas slippers, I'd just like to say, ummm, well, don't!

Seriously, anyone interested in having a meeting about our previously discussed organization, and any causes/groups/activismy stuff, can contact me on here, or...by my other email, wsp2692@aol.com

Similarly, my number is 615-900-7368, I don't answer for numbers I don't know, however, if you leave me a voice mail, I will check it.

I don't hope you have a good break!
Breaks are for the weak!
MAY IT BE PRODUCTIVE!

Naomi Klein

"So, yeah," she said, "it's important to build local alternatives, we have to do it, but unless we are really going after the source of the problem" — namely, the fossil-fuel industry and its lock on Washington — "we are gonna get inundated."

For McKibben and Klein, going after that source means, to begin with, going after the industry's business model and its very legitimacy. To that end, they've used the sold-out national tour, which ended on December 3 in Salt Lake City, to help launch a student-led divestment campaign calling on universities to stop investing in fossil fuels. As of early December, that effort had already spread to more than 150 campuses around the country, including more than a dozen in New England. The point of divestment may not be whatever economic leverage it can wield over some of the richest companies on Earth, but instead a kind of moral leverage, as a rallying point for a broad-based movement — committed to mass protest and nonviolent direct action — that aims to delegitimize what McKibben calls a "rogue" industry and its lobby....

'I'd rather fight like hell': Naomi Klein's fierce new resolve to fight for climate justice - News Features

This Is Morgan Speaking.......

This is Morgan speaking.  Any use of the pronoun I refers to Morgan and not to Professor Oliver.  Our views are very different, please do not mistake mine for his.  Thank You-

Final Blog Post Over Our Personal Ecotopia

     Being the cynic that I am it was difficult to take Ecotopia seriously.  Harder still was trying to come up with my own version of Ecotopia.  Some much within the book frightened me.  Their negative view on producers, wealth, and private property, their lack of difference to a Higher Power, as well as the destruction of the nuclear family and their rearing of children all made me shudder.  And of course their flippant use of abortion and complete lack of value given to human life in all its forms was disgusting.  Not to mention their silly emotional outbursts and amoral sexual practices both of which just plain got on my nerves.  But in spite of all this I do appreciate the author's efforts to use imagination and out of the box thinking to present the reader with other avenues of thinking, another possibility to life.
     Seeing as all semester I have read and discussed the materials given in the course, I want to extend a challenge to all of you to practice the same willingness to examine views outside your own.  While I have no personal Ecotopia, or any desire to invent one, Ecotopia did remind me of another author who put forth an ideological vision of what man and society is and what it could be.  In my favorite book, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand presents her vision of the ideal man.  Her novel could be seen as a direct response to the quote from Ecotopia that, "...mankind...was not meant for production..." ( pg. 47 Kindle version).  I dare all of you to read her novel and then think for yourself as to which principles hold more truth.  In hopes to tease you toward such ends I will leave you with a passage from Atlas Shrugged.


"Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to  live- that productive work is the process by which man's consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one's purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, of remaking the earth in the image of one's values- that all work is creative if done by a thinking mind..."  from Atlas Shrugged

And one more just cause...

"So you think money is the root of all evil?...  Have you ever asked what is the root of money?  Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them.  Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value.  Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force.  Money is made possible only by the men who produce.  Is this what your consider evil?"   from "The Meaning of Money"  from The New Intellectual by Ayn Rand

Let us eat cake

I stopped by @PresidentMcPhee's house yesterday afternoon, with a couple of colleagues, for his annual campus holiday reception. He met us at the door and instantly remarked on what a nice conversation we had the other week, when he visited our Environmental Ethics & Action class to discuss the ACUPCC. (Let's keep pushing on that!)

And then he directed us into the parlor, where the baby grand piano was groaning under the weight of a cake designed to resemble this humble Carolina abode:

Whatcha think, Scott? Maybe next year we can persuade him to order up from Aramark an Earthship cake?

Happy holidays, everybody! Keep the faith!! JPO

==

P.S. Speaking of cake...

A timely note from Josh's Students for Environmental Action:

Since this is finals week and everyone is stressed out, we are replacing our regular meeting with a Pancake Party!! So this Wednesday at 4:00pm we are meeting at Josh Moore's apartment (University Gables apt 1132) to have delicious pancakes and possibly talk about some stuff for activity fee and next semester. Even if you have no intention of working on anything and you just want to come relax and eat some pancakes, do it! We just want to see your lovely faces and feed you pancakes! Here's a link to the facebook event so you can RSVP!

Also, just a reminder to everyone to please fill out this short interest survey to let us know what you want to do in the spring semester. Respond by Dec 19th at the very latest, but the sooner the better so we can start putting things in motion. Take the survey here...

Let's be active.

My Own Private Ecotopia -- A final "presentation"

I planned on giving my final presentation on Earthships. They keep popping into my mind as an intriguing concept, something beautiful and unique. But I realize that this is the inherent problem. It is the problem with Earthships, the problem with Ecotopia, and the problem with climate change. They are all intriguing concepts, but that is where they remain.

We seem to have backed ourselves into a perceptual corner. I touched on some of these ideas when talking about Beyond Civilization and hate to be redundant, but I cannot seem to avoid the overwhelming feeling that all of these things, and many more, are not actually solutions because they reside in the same inherently flawed system that produced the issues in the first place. The “answers” and debates are all based on some version of an adversarial hierarchy.  That must be focused on, or at least maintained in awareness, to make any action effective.

Ecotopia only works in the long term if the people within it are different, not just acting different, but thinking and being different. The geopolitical reality imposed by hypothetical secession is only a means of reinforcing the ideas which come into practice once the people change. That means that any scenario can be theoretically successful if we can manage to create, or more accurately empower, significant and authentic change within the individual. Personal individual change may not occur fast enough to save us from the crisis of climate change.  But I believe speed is not the most critical factor in this equation. I think what we should focus on is the type of change.

Change that is defined by the same programs that lead us to crisis is not the answer; it is only a stop gap solution.  We must push ourselves to be the best and truest versions of ourselves.  If we can identify in that way, see ourselves and each other in that way, as fellow humans connected through and to everything around us in a common interest, namely that of Life, then all we must do then is act accordingly towards our own individual best interests.  This isn’t as new age as it sounds. It is just the logical extension of the idea that if some of us fail, none of us succeed. Unfortunately, those who are currently the greatest failures environmentally are the most successful by our societal criteria of wealth and consumption. They have been strongly reinforced by the very people they are failing. Fortunately, perception change is much more effective utilized through a bottoms up approach than a top down one. A top down approach is based only on power and the rewards and punishments which it can provide. When something is changed from the foundation it is based on need and can be made as a conscious choice.

I know, all this is easier said than done, but if this can not save us, perhaps we were not meant for survival. Or perhaps, as I think in my cynical moments, we do not deserve to survive as a species after the way we have behaved. If it is true, that we have waited until it is quite literally too late, then our extinction, or at least the end of life as we currently know it, is something that we will have to come to terms with. Whether we accept it or not, those terms will be enforced. Earth will continue creating life, no matter what we choose, we just may not be a part of the plan.

I know that sounds brutally harsh but we have reached a point in history where mere survival should not be enough. Simple awareness of these issues, and this I feel is true for really any important issue, is not enough. This is especially true when things like acculturation prevent us from even being aware that we are unaware. We have forgotten that these things are merely first steps.  There is much to be done and an almost infinite amount of ways to act. Any action away from the culture of maximum harm is a start. We can only hope that the cumulative effect results in an overwhelming snowball. One way or another, life will not be the same.

I've really enjoyed this class. The discussions were excellent and consistently surprising. I would like to thank you all for being a part of it and showing that education can function in such a stimulating and respectful manner. This has not always been my experience.  I am quite happy to be graduating on this note. I hope this is not the last we all hear from each other. Good luck to you all.  
-- Scott

A few links of interest in closing:

http://earthship.com/  

https://www.facebook.com/groups/331645193563218/    
--Facebook group for Earthship Biotecture TN

http://tinyhouseblog.com/     -- I just think these are neat

https://www.facebook.com/groups/334993393195494/?fref=ts    
-- Facebook group for Rosewater, a community I am a part of that is more theoretical than geographical at this point. But who knows what the future may hold. Feel free to join us.

Carlin Shows Remorse

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLRQvK2-iqQ
 Start at 01:00-02:00.
Perhaps some conflict with his environmental bit?

Political Portraits

     President McPhee gave our class some very important advice- vote.  So often younger constituents do not vote or even recognize the importance of local elections.  Someone once said that all politics are local and as we came to find out in our pursuit to join the Presidents Climate Commitment, politics are fundamental to achieving our goal.
      In light of this discovery I would like to present a short biographyof our local representatives, shared areas of environmental concern, and possible angles in which to approach them in order to gain their support for our cause.
     We shall begin with our State Representative Joe Carr representing District 48.  Joe Carr is a Republican and a graduate of our great school Middle Tennessee State University with a BS in Behavior Psychology.  His previous experience includes much work in sales and sales management, and a venture in entrepreneurship successfully building and selling his own company.  He is from a farming background and grew up in Lascasses.
     Representative Carr currently sits on the following committees; the Commerce Committee, Small business sub-committee, State & Local Committee, and the state sub-committee.
     I did not find many environmental concerns in Rep. Carr's current favorite issues.  His big issue is illegal immigration which is difficult to parlay with the environment.  However I believe his connections in the small business community could be exploited for our purposes.  One of our classroom favorite corporations, General Mills, has a Yoplait Yougart Plant located here in Murfreesboro.  A possible corporate sponsorship with General Mills could be mutually beneficial and could appeal to Rep. Carr's interests.  I would suggest seeking a contact from their local public relations office and building a relationship there.
     A much more hopeful connection could be made with our local State Senator Bill Ketron representing District 13.  He too is a graduate of Middle Tennessee State University receiving a BS in Political Science and History.  In 1991 he was given the distinguished alumnus award and he was a founder of and still is actively involved with the Blue Raider Athletic Association.  His daughter is also a student at MTSU.  All of this involvement with the University can be built into a positive relationship with the environmental movement on campus and maybe even an ally for those solar panels on the football stadium Julianne has been advocating!  His previous experience was in the insurance industry.  Sen. Ketron sits on several very important committees such as the Finance, Ways and Means Committee, State & Local Committee, Transportation Committee, Ethics Committee, and is Chairman of the Fiscal Review Committee.  As President McPhee reminded us budgets are important.  Sen Ketron sits on the Committee responsible for taxes, revenue and appropriations.  He could be a powerful alley indeed.
     While politics can be a bitter pill to swallow for the environmentally minded, the reality remains that it is necessary to start somewhere and that somewhere is within the current political structure.  By making friends with and reaching out to our current representatives we can build powerful relationships and build bridges to a brighter future for all of us.  This sounds like a win-win to me.

Ecotopia and the American Dream: Final Test Blog

One of the factors I ran into while writing my presentation on "My Ecotopia" was realizing that in many ways it cannot logically exist unless everyone thinks like I think. What fits in my Ecotopia may not be apart of Morgan's Ecotopia or Willie's Ecotopia. Perhaps in some ways this is why some parts of Callenbach's 70's-esk Ecotopia seem so jarring and incompatible to our mentality today. This why I would like to focus this blog on a much broader explanation of a eco-perfect world by designing a new scale of social consciousness. Actually this model is not my invention but merely a design from the hard questions that Van Jones asks in Rebuilding the American Dream. Perhaps this scale can make Ecotopia more in the realm or probability and provide a more progressive implementation without sexist assumptions and Ridiculous "Soul Cities." This scale would allow social memes to be reconsidered through a new type of social equation cutting out some of the excess of argument when it comes to environmental argument. The first part of this process would be 1) Allowing for little to no time spent on arguing against Climate Deniers. I believe that in science, minority or dissenting views are important to the integrity of science but when it comes to the science of climate control we cannot afford to up hold something for its own sake. In the words of scientist R.C. Lewontin, science is used in two major ways, to explain nature and to change it. We cannot afford to just explain the science of global warming, its time to change it. 2) We must turn our efforts for change from arguing with climate deniers to those who simply choose to ignore climate change. Although many might claim that overcoming denial is the first step to consciousness, I claim that the climate complacent are an even harder battle to win in the fight for environmental consciousness, not to mention that this category of thinkers represents the general population of thought. We must consider this train of thought as worse than those who simply deny the science of climate change. The lack of progressive change in the environmental movement has not been because of the lack of science by the lack of compassion. So how do we fix this problem? 3)(Not to get all Principe on you but...)We must begin to admit that mass consumerism, the birth of the corporation, and the modern concept of the American Dream has completely broken down our sympathy for our neighbor and the environment in which everyone resides. The breaking down of the meme of the American Dream is crucial to how progressive we will become as a society. We can no longer think in terms of the American dream as individualized comfort. Instead we must find ways to redirect the sense of success to personal character within a community and not social status through material possession. The scale for finding the dream of Ecotopia would be less jarring if we looked at these factors as well this last important factor. One of the places where Callenbach seems to fail is on the true belief that the citizens of Ecotopia perceived social issues and environmental issues of equal importance and one in the same. Although this sense of social freedom seems to be evident in the way that Ecotopians speak and fight with one another, it is contradictory in the explanations of Soul Cities, the War Games, and other gender reversals that occur throughout the book. Why would choosing to live in exclusive groups or act in exclusive ways be conducive to a world where the primary concern is the environment (an environment which also includes society) Just food for thought I suppose. In many ways this leads us to wonder whether or not our eco-perfect environment can exist as long as there is a distinct line between us and them, rich and poor, black and white, etc. Instead maybe there can only be one distinction in the human race, the willing and the unwilling, in order for us to achieve a sustainable world.