My goals with this assignment are a) to encourage you to read conscieiously and critically, b) to harness your collective mind powers to provoke fruitful class discussion and c) to create an exam in the process, one that allows you to demonstrate the intellectual growth the talks and readings inspire in you.

How do we achieve these things? One way would for you to simply formulate a question about some significant aspect of one of the readings and then answer it.

For example, I could see someone looking at the readings for next week and asking, “What are the most important reasons for optimism (or pessimism) about the future you find in Wendel Berry’s “Conservation is Good Work”? The same could apply to any of the other pieces.

You are not required to come up with a question that addresses all of the readings together. That would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it?

But you could also use some important concept from the readings as a point of departure to talk about the world as you know it.

For example, how does your experience with some particular sort of “sustainable development” either support or contradict the criticism of sustainable development found in “The Shaky Ground of Sustainable Development”?

You are also welcome to formulate other sorts of entries that are consistent with the goals I spell out above. You are a creative group of people with wide varieties of life experience–let’s keep this class interesting!

ESE 311, Spring 2014

Notes on Blog post 1

SOURCE OF PROBLEMS:

Human Nature

People do not think or plan far enough into the future to avoid catastrophic problems

human nature doesn’t allow for significant foresight

very little effort is made to lessen our impact even with the knowledge we have

Western civilization is pushing towards obtaining more freedom and with an increased amount of freedom and individuality comes more conflict.

it seems we will never learn [re concern for fuel efficiency when gas prices are high and lack of when they’re low]

People’s demand continues to increase and the more they attain the less they’re safisfied.

Culture

our society is very materialistic

our current society is consuming more our of our resources beyond replenishment due to innate, built-in structures

a broken political system which hampers environmental causes

most environmental issues arise from . . . social system

lack of concern for the natural world arises from the separation of humans and wilderness

evolving media focusing on superficial entertainment

the mindset of society

Awareness (lack of)

Once people in first world countries see the damages that global climate change can cause to their cities, farms, and homes, they’ll be more open to . . ..

people’s “little bubbles” are beginning to burst

Increasing human impact

increasing population

POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS:

Human nature:

Human perseverance and ingenuity have been able to handle most every problem so far and I an confident that with the right attention even fracking can become a clean(er) practice.

CULTURAL/POLITICAL

Democratic reform at state and local scale

campaign finance reform, lobbying reform, and term limitations

Technology

improvements in technology will correct many of the errors we had before and can stabilize any damages

something will be able to be built which reduces CO2 in the atmosphere.

technology in the future will be able to produce enough food for an expected growing population.

Raising awareness

teach people . . . and people will become environmentally conscious.

people are going to have to learn

better understanding à more effort

increased awareness younger generations

better educated the people, the more policies and awareness that can be widely accepted and followed

proper education

as younger generations become more aware of how important it is to conserve the environment and people begin to take small steps towards sustainable living

Relocation and other adaptation

Populations might have to migrate but such instances have happened throughout history

Misc Examples:

Tone: Biodiversity will continue to decline; utrification, desertification, rising sea levels and the plethora of other environmental hazards aren’t just probably going to happen if we continue down this path – they are inevitable.

To be honest, I do not really think there are any insurmountable environmental obstacles to human society, despite the plethora of issues facing us today.

Difficulty of deciding on outlook: She and I both agreed that some things will be better, and some things worse . . .. Emily sees a somewhat dim future.

This is a test.