Blog Entry #1

READING SUMMARIES AND CRITICAL THINKING QUESTIONS

1. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

In the excerpt of the prologue to Jared Diamond’s book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond discusses the concept of societal collapse, as well as the causes of it. Diamond starts by defining the concept of collapse as “a drastic decrease in human population size and/or political/economic/ social complexity, over a considerable area, for an extended time”, and continues on to distinguish collapse from decline in stating that collapse is a more serious form of the latter. Diamond then lists a few historically significant societal collapses, and introduces the concept of ecocide as a suspected factor in bringing them about, identifying 8 major categories in which the processes which bring about ecocide may be sorted, namely: “deforestation and habitat destruction, soil problems… water management problems, over-hunting, overfishing, effects of introduced species on native species, human population growth, and increased per capita impact of people.” Diamond outlines that most past collapses tend to follow the sequence of first, an increase in population growth;  second, ecocide by one or more of the above 8 processes; and third, a decrease in human population/social complexity resulting from the adverse effects of ecocide. The prologue then goes on to claim societal collapse as a result of ecocide is a very real threat to today’s society, and mentions that the main environmental problems that could lead to it’s manifestation are the 8 categories of ecocide previously mentioned, as well as 4 new ones: human-caused climate change, accumulation of poisonous chemicals in the environment, energy shortages, and the human-induced exhaustion of the Earth’s full photosynthetic capacity. Diamond then discusses our society’s differences from past societies that have collapsed,  differences which in some cases could make us more – and in others, less – vulnerable. Diamond also emphasizes the importance of trying to distinguish those features which made some societies in the past able to tolerate ecocide’s adverse effects while others perished, recognizing that not all societal collapses were caused solely by environmental degradation issues, and outlining his “five-point framework” of potential contributing factors that he applies in assessing causes of ecocide: “environmental damage, climate change [both human-caused and natural], hostile neighbours, friendly trade partners… and the society’s responses to its environmental problems”. In the close of the excerpt of Diamond’s prologue, he asserts that he recognizes that ecocide/ environmental degradation is not always a cause of societal collapse, and establishes his position between the “environmentalist” and “non-environmentalist” camps, citing his opinion that the only way to solve today’s environmental problems is to see them for what they really are, and for the two camps to work cooperatively toward solutions.  

Critical Thinking Question # 1: Are societies that damage their environment doomed to collapse? Is ours?

No, not all societies that damage their environment are doomed to collapse, and ours is not necessarily doomed to collapse, either. No matter what the environmental, social, economic, or political state of a country may be, its inhabitants always have a choice in their own actions, and in a democratic society like our current Western society, we also have a choice to make it known to government officials the issues that we find most pressing, and what we want to be most quickly and thoroughly addressed on a national or even international level. Because of this, I believe that even for a society that has damaged their surrounding environment to the point where some natural resources may never be able to be recovered, careful planning and serious dedication to the goal of remediation – on both the individual and government levels – can restore at least some degree of environmental health and sustainability. In addition, as Diamond mentioned, societal collapse rarely occurs as a result of environmental damage alone, and if the severity of climate change, the healthiness of relationships with neighbouring societies, the existence of friendly trade partners, and the society at risk’s responses to its environmental problems are all favourable to saving the society at risk’s complexity and population, then societies that have damaged their environment are certainly not doomed to collapse. This does not mean, however, that the threat of collapse should not be taken seriously.

2. Human Carrying Capacity

The selection taken from Joel E. Cohen’s book How Many People Can the Earth Support discusses the Earth`s carrying capacity as both a very important and complicated subject, opening with a case study concerning the hypothesized trends of population rise and decline that occurred on Easter Island between the years of ­­­the proposed approximate time of the first inhabitant’s arrival in 400 A.D, to the time the book was written, around 1995.  Cohen describes evidence for the civilization’s potential past features, such as the rise and fall of the apparent importance of the moai (giant statues) in the island’s culture, apparently decreasing between 1720- 1774,  as well as evidence which hypothesizes some past critical environmental resources (such as the dominance of a particular tree for making rope and canoes). Cohen then includes a description of a model explaining the reasons for Easter Island’s population rise and decline proposed by academics Paul Bahn and John Flenley, which is based on similar data to that which Cohen has presents in the first part of this excerpt. This model describes a direct relationship between the environmental degradation of the island through resource extraction by the inhabitants and increased population growth, which in turn leads to a shortage of these resources and social unrest, reducing the island’s population through the occurrence of events such as warfare and famine. Cohen poses Bahn and Flenley’s idea that Easter Island’s population rise and decline is a microcosm which provides a model for the rest of the planet, and then launches into describing the difficulties of determining a carrying capacity model for the earth, citing the relationship between individual human lifestyle choices and individual constraints for resource use, the intrinsic assumptions and estimates about the consistency of those lifestyles that make the creation of such a model possible, as well as the interconnectedness of today’s individual societies through global trade,  which makes the Earth’s carrying capacity unequal to and far more complicated than the summation of individual local carrying capacities around the word. The excerpt of Cohen’s novel then closes with an analogy to the precariousness of the world’s increased population and associated increased use of the Earth’s resources to the relative danger of falling associated with a man who is in different states of motion: relaxed and laying down, relaxed and standing, walking at a leisurely pace, or running. Cohen states that as the world’s population has grown, the world’s mechanism of equilibrium has shifted from that of a “passive equilibrium regulated by the environment” (a man laying down, before man cultivated the use of fire) to that of a dynamic, unstable, dangerous equilibrium, which demands a high level of control over the environment, emphasizing that the world’s human carrying capacity is not at all a static concept.

Critical Thinking Question # 2: In what sense does the Earth not have a single carrying capacity for human beings?

The Earth does not have a single carrying capacity for human beings in the sense that no model for carrying capacity can possibly consider all the possible different lifestyle choices and combinations/proportions of particular lifestyle choices for every individual on the Earth at one time. The demands of individuals are constantly changing at every second of every day depending on things such as major life events, political unrest, or domestic and international policies, and the choices an individual or group of individuals make that affect their impact on the world’s natural resource reserve are dynamic and directly reflect these changes. In addition, the availability of the world’s natural resources is another constantly changing factor that affects the Earth’s carrying capacity, and, in reality, it is impossible to predict all of the Earth’s total resource availability with true certainty. The number of choice-dependent, unpredictable, and essentially uncontrollable factors that goes into calculating the Earth’s carrying capacity does not make it practical, nor realistic, to come up with on particular number for carrying capacity for human beings on the Earth.

3.Tragedy of the Commons

In the excerpt taken from Garrett Hardin’s essay The Tragedy of the Commons, Hardin begins by defining the concept of “no technical solution problems” as problems which are not solvable through methods developed with natural science alone, but instead demand a change in human morals, values, or expectations associated with what might be considered an acceptable solution for the problem in order for the problem to be considered “solved”. Hardin goes on to classify the world’s population problem, and the seemingly dominant want for a solution to be reached without compromising current lifestyles by taking away privileges, as one such problem.  He describes what he calls “the tragedy of the commons” by first citing what he believes to be the prominent societal belief (popularized by scholar Adam Smith) that “an individual who ‘intends only his own gain,’ is, as it were, ‘led by an invisible hand to promote...the public interest’” as problematic. Hardin goes on to demonstrate the problem in this societal belief through the set-up of a hypothetical scenario involving a public pasture open to all farmers, where the benefits of an individual farmer’s increase in cattle population is felt wholly and completely by him, whereas the negative affects of an individual’s cattle population increase are felt only fractionally by each farmer, but eventually compound to harm the overall health of the pasture. Thus the gain of an individual, instead of benefiting the commons as is the expected/inherently believed outcome as per the ideas of Smith, leads to tragedy and ruin of common resources. Hardin further emphasizes his point by highlighting similar tragic occurrences reflected in the health/ effectiveness of much of the world’s oceans, farmland, and national parks, as well as the phenomenon of pollution, and the tendency of an individual to be short sighted in thinking the costs of purifying their own wastes before discharging them into the environment is of higher cost than their simply discharging them without purification. In order to preserve the world’s resources in light of the Earth’s population problem, Hardin suggests privatization of property and resources, and in order to slow/prevent further pollution Hardin suggests laws and taxes to be put in place; Hardin also addresses the fact that the prevalence of privatization may, in fact, contribute to the mentality that pollution is economically wise, as there is often the misconception that adversely affecting another party’s resource will not have negative affects on one’s own. The concept of the tragedy of the commons –and its association with the overpopulation of the Earth as a result of the freedom of individuals to decide how many children they will have in a world with finite resources – is also addressed, and it is noted that normal population suppressors which would prevent overpopulation, such as limited food supply, are often bypassed when it concerns human populations due to things such as social welfare policies. Hardin demonstrates that even this seemingly basic right/freedom (to be able to decide how many children one wants) should be questioned in its validity when addressing the Earth’s overpopulation issue, and notes issues with the mere encouragement of child limiting attitudes rather than the actual implementation of actual child limiting policies, such as the potential accidental increased prevalence of the idea that having many children is a good thing world-wide (due to a growth in the fraction of the population that would come from many-children families), which would be opposite of the desired effect. Hardin claims that the best way to curb the world’s overpopulation issues and to solve the tragedy of the commons is to create solutions/laws/regulations that can be willfully accepted by the world at large, and to let social pressure help to reinforce the actions outlined by these solutions. He notes that the social tendency is to hesitate on implementing reforms that aren’t perfect in favour of pre-existing imperfect “status quos” due to society, in general, not understanding that choosing not to act to create change – may that change turn out to be a positive one or negative one – is in fact, in most cases, a negative action in itself, and encourages the unbiased comparison of reforms with status quos. In closing Hardin discusses the need for society at large to realize the necessity of downsizing what they believe to be their stake in the commons, making reference to the fact that as Earth’s population problem grows, more and more restrictions are needed to be placed on society’s access to the commons, and although in some cases this seems to impose on our rights as humans, in most cases these restrictions actually tend to lead to more social order and an overall increase in security for society. The excerpt from Hardin’s novel ends with emphasizing the need to take away the freedom to breed (not to merely propagandize the notion of having a reproductive conscience, as he re-articulates this will lead to a “disappearance of all conscience in the long run”) so that the health/abundance of our planet and its resources may be preserved/restored.

Critical Thinking Question #1: Why should people not have as many children as possible?

People should not have as many children as possible because this practice is contributing to the global overpopulation issue, which in turn is inhibiting the quantity, quality, and sustainability of the Earth’s natural resources to support life. It is especially important that people should not do this in present times as opposed to old, as social welfare policies prevalent in much of today’s societies and the popular belief that all people have a right to not only life, but a certain quality of life, allows for children to survive even if parents/families/communities don’t necessary have the wealth or resources to support them. Normally a lack of resources to sustain life would act as a population suppressor, however, recent advances/innovations in science, globalization, and resource extraction methods, coupled with the belief that everyone has the right to live, have allowed for the world’s population to reach its current, extremely high number. Therefore, if society wants to maintain the ability of the Earth to continuing providing the resources for life to its inhabitants, it is important to get the world’s overpopulation issue under control, and choosing to have less kids as opposed to more could certainly help with this effort.

ACTIVITY REFLECTION

In this Ted Talk, a man named John Francis discusses his life as an environmentalist. From first giving up driving in motorized vehicles when he was a young man after witnessing an oil spill, to his decision (after extensive arguments concerning the environment) to give up speaking for one day, how that experience morphed into 17 years of silence, and what it was like to talk again. Francis describes his 17 years of silence spent painting, writing in his journal, reading, walking, listening, playing the banjo; earning a bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and P.h.D in environmental studies, as well as the extremely helpful people in the environmental studies community that he met in doing so. He says that his main message, the most important thing that he learnt in his 17 years of silence, was that the environment does not just constitute of birds, trees, and endangered species, but the environment includes/ is humans and how we treat each other. Francis encourages everyone, as individuals, to treat eachother kindly, to be unafraid to break out of whatever “prison” we may find holding us back in our lives, and to make changes so that we can reach our full potential, both as individuals and a society when it comes to dealing with the issues that may face us.

My impression of John Francis’s speech was that it was very inspirational. It really makes one think about the difference/change that one person can make through their individual choices. It also says something interesting about the kindness of people, that if a group of people really believe in a cause/ what someone is doing, they’ll do everything they can to help that person/cause. I also found what Francis said about listening very interesting, because I think there is probably a lot of truth to the notion that most people really don’t listen to everything someone else has to say before formulating their own response. I believe that Francis makes a very good point when he says that communication would greatly improve if people really listened to one another, and I think this is especially true when it comes to dealing with environmental issues, as it does seem that discussions surrounding environmental issues usually involve two severely divided “sides” of environmentalists vs non-environmentalists/pro-economists.

IN-CLASS BLOG QUESTIONS

1. What promotes human connection to nature?

A human connection to nature can be promoted a variety of ways, depending on a specific individual and their world views/what their own, personal priorities are. A connection to nature may be formed for anthropocentric reasons, such as the pleasure/entertainment a walk in a park or a kayak down a river can provide, or enjoyment of the beauty of picturesque scenery. A connection to nature can also be made when one stops to appreciate all the vital resources that nature provides the inhabitants of our planet on a daily basis (air, water, food, shelter, energy, etc.) and the natural processes which purify and supply these resources for us; human connection may also form when an individual acquires economic gain from environmental resources (if, say, they work in the oil industry, or own a farm). Severe weather events that alter the course of an individual’s daily life, forcing them to think about their place in nature and the fact that sometimes, despite all of humanity’s technological and architectural advancements, we can still very easily be controlled and affected by the natural processes that are constantly occurring around us, may also promote a feeling of connectivity between humans and nature. This connectivity could also be promoted by traditional cultural or religious teachings which teach that the Earth and its resources are sacred and should be protected and cherished (a common theme in many different cultures all over the world).

2. What promotes disconnection from nature?

Disconnection from nature, like connection to nature, is something that can be promoted in many different ways depending on an individual and their lifestyle. Examples of some common, everyday features of life that may contribute to disconnect are:

·         highly urbanized cities in which the natural states of environments are paved over and dominated by the presence of humans;

·         the often remote location of national/provincial parks and other natural environment settings from densely populated cities, making it difficult for city dwellers to spend time in and expose themselves to the beauty of nature;

·          spending long days indoors (in office jobs, laboratories, buildings with little natural light), effectively making you “forget” about the natural world);

·         the constant possession of technology/access to information to distract you from nature even when you are immersed in it (such as browsing the web on your phone while sitting in a park, or talking on blue tooth while riding your bike);

·         highly developed methods of receiving the basic natural resources we need to live, which effectively make us forget that those resources come from the Earth (such as extensive water pipe systems in developed, urbanized cities as opposed to walking to a local well with a bucket and pumping water from a natural aquifer);

·         a generally poor public understanding of the importance of nature in sustaining all life (including human life) on Earth and the limited nature of our planet’s natural resources.

3. Is there danger to a growing disconnect from nature?

Yes, I think there is definitely a danger to a growing disconnect from nature on the global scale. As more countries industrialize and develop, and developed countries continue to innovate and develop further, it seems that they acquire more and more characteristics in keeping with the above list of disconnect promoters. As developing countries acquire “purchase power” more and more individuals obtain possession of technology which distracts them from whatever limited natural environments may be around them, and as cities expand and become more organized natural environments become fewer and further between, in turn making them more difficult to get to in order to be appreciated and enjoyed by people. In addition, as natural resource delivery systems are created in developing countries, there seems to be a larger and larger gap between nature and the human acquisition of resources, allowing society to forget about where these vital natural resources come from and that there is only so much on our planet. In industrializing countries, highly urbanized cities develop quickly, paving over the natural environment, and as their economies become wealthier more and more jobs requiring long days indoors are created. Overall, it seems, urbanization/ industrialization/expansion worldwide seems to have the effect of growing the human disconnect from nature.

4. Where do your Environmental Ethics Lie? Anthropocentric? Biocentric? Ecocentric?

Overall, I’d say that my environmental ethics lie under the category of “Anthropocentric”. In general, when I find myself deeply concerned about a particular environmental issue, the biggest cause for my concern seems to be the threat of some sort of negative consequence for the health of humans that the environmental issue potentially poses, rather than being limited to the health of the planet or the preservation of some sort of natural beauty. However, I do find those two things very valuable, and more often than not I do think that solutions in keeping with ecocentric, biocentric, or even deep ecology views are some of the best options when it comes to solving environmental issues. Although my primary concern for environmental issues is the preservation of human health, taking courses in the Environmental sciences as well as my exposure to nature and the media has shown me that the health of ecosystems and the preservation of diverse forms of life on Earth is directly linked to the health of our planet and its ability to provide humans with the resources that we need in order to sustain life. Therefore, although my main motives for interest in environmental issues and their potential solutions would probably be described as anthropocentric –I take an interest in preserving our Earth’s health and resources so that I, the rest of the world, and future generations can continue to enjoy them – I do not often find myself thinking that exploiting the Earth’s natural resources to the brink of destruction in the name of economic prosperity for humans is a justifiable or reasonable course of action. I suppose here, my environmental ethics become somewhat more ecocentric in nature, because my education and critical thinking has taught me that the Earth as a healthy ecosystem is more important to the preservation of human health than the temporary wealth of a country while they exhaust the stores of a resource and potentially harm the surrounding environment in doing so. I do not place the economic well-being of particular governments/societies before the well-being of other forms of life or ecosystems on Earth, but I do rank the preservation/improvement of the well-being of the health of humans as a race as my number one criteria for a good solution to an environmental issue. In this way, I suppose my environmental ethics are a blend of ecocentric, anthropocentric, and biocentric, depending on the issue at hand.