We Believe

Call it a pet peeve, but I hate when one person attempts to speak for an entire nation, group, or tribe.

Perhaps it happens as a matter of shorthand, but Oren Lyons (Barry Lopez, "The Leadership Imperative," page 205- 213) falls right into that trap. He says "We believe that everything is made by a Creator" (209). Oh really? So there's no place for atheism in Native American cultures?

That's just one example of the "we" statement, although there are plenty more throughout the essay. Some of the time the "we" refers to Native Americans from times long ago (like before the European invasion), and sometimes it refers to the current generation. So, not only is he speaking for everyone living today, but he's speaking for all of those that lived throughout hundreds of years of history.

Does being born into a tradition make you a spokesperson for that tradition? Does it make you the authority on that tradition's history? Does it give you the right to speak for all?

Maybe I'm just being sensitive here, but...

Virtual, non-authentic experiences

Lowell Monke's "Charlotte's Webpage" (pages 194-204) suggests that too much technology isn't good for the souls of little boys and girls.

And here's something to consider: if you're overexposed to a "similated world," you risk becoming dead to the real world. You risk losing all sense of connection, your sense of place.

Basically put, technology is way too powerful for human beings to use sensibly, especially little boys and girls with undeveloped brains.

Computers come with a cost, one that Monke describes as "a Faustian bargain." Wow.

Again, I understand the points Monke is making, although I do feel that he's being a bit over the top. Do kids need more experiential learning opportunities? Sure. Is too much exposure to technology, especially computers and gaming systems, harmful? Well, maybe. But maybe not to the extent that Monke suggests.

I was saddened to learn that many schools have eliminated recess. I cannot imagine how a school can eliminate the milk break at 10, the lunch break at 12, and the afternoon respite at 2. Seriously. Kids gots to play. And schools that don't get that are more of a threat than schools that spend money on technology.

Love It before You Know It

David Sobel's "Beyond Ecophobia" (pages 181-193) begins the Reverence section of The Future of Nature.

It's hard to disagree with what he's saying, but let's be careful. He seems to suggest that we should insulate kids from the realities of the big bad world, and I guess I disagree.

I do agree that it's important to get kids outside, to give them an appreciation for nature before asking them to "save" the world; but I don't think it's necessarily an either/or question. And really, neither does Sobel.

When I attended grade school in the early 1980s, I distinctly remember a lack of science in the curriculum. We would do Math, Reading, and social sciences every day, but we only did science once a week. Is this because our tiny little minds couldn't handle science? Couldn't handle theories and so on?

Sobel also warns about "curricular brainwashing." What is that? When does something move beyond education to brainwashing? When does something become "activism"? And when do kids lose the ability to choose and decide for themselves?

All important questions, and this is a good article to help get the discussion started.

Protecting Human Stories

William Cronon's "The Riddle of Apostle Islands" (pp. 167-177) is about protecting human stories. It's about the silliness of federal regulations, and it is against creating illusions of "wildness." I get all that, but I still find it difficult to get very worked up about the author's main thesis. And, judging by the author's own language -- "Why does this bother me so much?"-- Cronon seems to acknowledge as much. He knows people probably aren't going to care as much as he does about this topic.

I like the concept of "rewilding," and there certainly is value to making it clear that people have, for example, changed the landscape of the Apostle Islands. What we see, Cronon points out, isn't virgin wilderness. It's been "touched" by man, and there's no reason to try to imagine otherwise. In fact, clinging to the idea of the virginal can have dangerous consequences. True enough, but if I were going to visit the Apostle Islands, I'd probably be there for nature -- not for the cultural experience.

Do I care about Bill and Anna Mae Hill, and who planted the apple trees fifty years ago? Not really, but maybe that's just me. Like Cronon, I don't see the value in expunging their existence from the historical record, but I also don't see a lot of value in going out of our way to save evidence that they existed...

A Vinyl Killer

Sandra Steingraber ("The Pirates of Illiopolis," pp. 268-283) is making an appearance at RCTC tonight, which prompted me to skip ahead in The Future of Nature to read her article.

Illiopolis is a small town between Decatur and Springfield, about 90 minutes from the town I grew up in. It's a pretty boring part of Illinois, actually, but it sure must have been a hoping place a few years back when the PVC plant blew up...

Is there more cancer in the community? Apparently no one has bothered to check. Is vinyl a dangerous product to make? Apparently so, but no one seems to care enough to do much about it.

The article mentioned the accident at Graniteville, South Carolina. This one killed a few people, and shut down the local community college for a week. I know, because I worked there at the time. Graniteville is South Carolina's version of Illiopolis: poor, run-down, and overlooked.

You know why no one cares about PVC and cancer and small town America? The short answer is money. Places that house chemical plants don't have any. The makers of chemicals have all the political pull.

And nobody ever bothers to think that the product they're walking on is dangerous.

Look Here

John Landretti's "On Waste Lonely Places" (pages 154-159) suggests that the place we're looking for is right where we are. We just have to be willing to look.

The problem, Landretti notes, with National Parks is that we feel a certain reverence for them, but then what gets removed is reverence for our own plot of ground.

Landretti comes off as a wanderer in this piece, so it's not as though he's suggesting that everyone should just remain in place. It's fine to travel around, but pay as much attention to your journey as you do the destination. And, don't come home needing a vacation from your vacation. That may only blind you to the neglected, but important "book nobody reads" (158).

Anyone want to go camping at the nearest Clover Leaf this weekend? Sounds like a lot of fun to me. :)

The Prostitution of Tourism

Like many of the articles in this book, I thought Alison Hawthorne Deming's "The Edges of the Civilized World" (pages 143-153) was trying to have it both ways. But perhaps Deming acknowledges this best when she says, "Each one of us is at the center of the civilized world and on its edge" (page 150).

The article reminded me of my first real trip outside the United States. In 2001, my wife and I visited the tourist trap of Dunns River Falls in Jamaica. About 200 mainly white tourists held hands with each other and the native guides as we climbed the Falls to the top.

Once at the top of the Falls, the tourists had to walk through a maze of shops in order to get back to the minivan. I was in graduate school, and we didn't have any money for trinkets, but the sellers were aggressive, even to the point of blaming us for not making it possible for their children to have any Christmas presents that year.

When they saw us, they saw rich Americans, and we were rich, comparatively. The whole experience saddened me, though. There are a lot of gated "resorts" for foreigners in places like Jamaica, but I have little interest in going to a country and not seeing the country. Then again, what does it say about a place so desperate for money that it prostitutes out its best locations. Are tourists no better than johns?

Niagara's Lie

Ginger Strand's "Faux Falls" (pages 131-142) looks at the "collateral damage" caused by hydro-electric power.

The article notes that 7% of electricity in the United States comes from hydro, whereas 70% comes from burning fossil fuels. On the surface, hydro doesn't seem to have any nasty byproducts.

Strand's article makes it clear, however, that where there's a cheap source of electricity, pollution will follow -- i.e. through the build up of factories along the river banks.

And something that I hadn't realized before: This is where Love Canal happened.

Can Niagara be blamed for Love Canal? That's a bit of stretch to me; Strand's point, though, is that actions have consequences. Niagara Falls is now a "man-made" tourist trap, and we have the power to literally turn off the falls. Ironically, tourists might be the only thing that "saved" the Falls.

Morality and Economics

Is coal really the "the liver of Mother Earth"?

I may be too white to understand that line of thinking, but I'm not too white to agree that we must start infusing some morality into our capitalist system.

Judith Nies' "The Black Mesa Syndrome" (pages 117-128) provides a sickening historical account. Basically, $100 billion dollars in coal is hiding under the ground -- ground controlled by Indians. Nevertheless, what the white man gives, he also takes away (as soon as he finds out its worth something).

Lawyer John Boyden plays the villian in this story, and I have no doubt that he thought he was doing the "right thing" by representing both the interests of the Hopi and Peabody. Of course, he got richly rewarded for doing the right thing, to the tune of at least 2.7 million dollars.

And after all, isn't this a question of "greater good"? Who cares what happens to a few thousand Indians if white capitalists get stinking rich, and if Phoenix and Las Vegas get the energy and water they need?

And one final question: Why are megacities allowed to exist in deserts? How stupid are we to have allowed this to happen?

For more on this story, the following links might be useful:

http://www.blackmesais.org/

www.sheepdognationrocks.blogspot.com/

The Global Warming Experience

One possible problem with Rush Limbaugh is: he talks about things of which he has no direct experience.

Charles Wohlforth's "On Thin Ice" (pages 107-116) goes to the source, the Inupiat. These are the Eskimos of the Barrow, Alaska region, and they are the ones with direct experience as it pertains to global warming.

There's a difference between first-year ice and multi-year ice: only the latter can support a whale carcass. And as the nature of ice continues to change, the fact is, a people's way of life will have to change as well.

People adapt, even Eskimos believe it or not, and it's interesting to read about what some consider to be "true whaling." What the Inupiat have that hopefully will never change is a deep respect for the environment of which they are apart.

Radioactive Rochester?

Hope Burwell's "Jeremiad for Belarus" (pages 78-90) reminded me about how little I really know about the world.

Chernobyl is in Ukraine; that I knew. But I didn't know that Belarus is the country that has paid the biggest price for the 1986 accident.

I didn't know that the area in Belarus effected by fall-out is equal to 2/3's the size of Iowa.

Belarus is a poor country, and apparently no one in the international community cares about its people. Burwell documented that thousands, if not millions, of people are continuing to be slowly killed by Chernobyl as the world turns a blind eye. These are people that still live in the contaminated zones because they don't have anywhere else to go.

This is a country dying, and no one seems to care.

The only way the author can make us care, it seems, is to suggest that the same thing could happen here, in the United States. If the Duane Arnold facility in Iowa went Chernobyl, for example, the fallout would reach good old Rochester, Minnesota.

Sleep easy tonight. :)

Conservation Refugees

Mark Dowie's "Conservation Refugees" (65-77) shows what happens when conservationists put their own interests and agendas ahead of people.

Does protecting a place mean that the people should be removed? Or, if not removed, what happens to the people that live in the areas we would like to see protected? Do they become somehow "indentured"? Good questions raised in this article.

I was very surprised to learn that there might be as many as 14 million conservation refugees world-wide. Dowie is careful to explain the difference between the terms "conservation refugee" and "environmental refugee," too. The former is a human-made problem, while the latter is simply has natural causes -- floods, fire, etc.

Overall, I'd have to say that I'm enjoying the articles in the "Refugee" section of the book much more than the "Action" section.

How about you? What articles have you read that you like? That you plan to include in your classes this Fall?

Being Human (in a Good Sense)

The interview with Van Jones -- "A Licence to Be Human" (page 53-61) -- was my favorite article from the Action section by far.

Jones talks about stepping back from the "us vs. them" duality. Yes, people get passionate about issues, but people also get blinded by anger, which he describes as "a messay fuel" (54).

Solving the world's problems requires looking in as well as looking out. How many people attack George W. Bush for his administration's policies? Well, at least half the country. But how many people take the time to see that Bush is a scapegoat for problems that we all are partially responsible for?

I loved Jones's message that we need "a wiser kind of warrior" (56) and that we're not always David against Goliath -- and that sometimes, we need to figure out a way to secure Goliath's help rather than fight him.

This is a brillant interview, full of insight...

All or Nothing?

B.K. Loren's "Got Tape" (pages 43-52) is the personal story of one community standing together as one to stop a SuperTarget from destroying undeveloped land.

Question: why does it take a crisis for people to act? Loren notes that during the process, they learned that to keep the people working together, they had to "quit fighting against something, and begin fighting for something" (49). Fine, but why did it take the threat of SuperTarget for them to learn this lesson? Here's some undeveloped land: of course someone is going to want to do something with it. Why not act before that "evil" someone steps forward?

Question: why couldn't a shopping center be a part of a nature setting? Does it have to be one or the other? I've visited a lot of places that have strict zoning standards -- how big the signs are in front of stores, what the building are made out of, etc.

I hate sprawl as much as anyone, and I hate bulldozing down all the trees to put in parking lots, but perhaps there's a third way? After all, people have to shop. Maybe instead of "protecting" 100 acres of undeveloped land, we should "protect" all land and the way that it's developed. Just a thought.

Enemy of My Enemy

On the surface, unions and environmentalists don't have a lot in common; Laura Paskus's "The Union Makes Them Strong" (pages 32-42) does a nice job showing that blue-collar and green-collar folks actually do have a lot in common -- if only a common enemy.

Is the future of Green in the hands of unions? Perhaps so, because the underlying issue is jobs. Going green will take a lot of money, but with the money will come jobs. That's the key point. And these jobs could be union jobs, which would be a real shot in the arm to unions, which have seen memberships on the decline for decades.

Interesting to note, too, is just how far ahead of the game Europe is. Europe has set environmental goals and standards, and they are seeing real growth in green jobs. America, however, continues to subsidize oil companies in the billions while spending on renewable energy only receives support in the millions.

What will it take to change the direction of America's energy policy? Perhaps it will take Green and Blue working together.

The Death of Hope

Derrick Jensen's "Beyond Hope" (pages 27-31) argues that hope is an impediment to action. The only people willing to act are the people that have gone beyond hope, that have taken responsibility into their own hands, and who have shed the crippling influence of society.

If you look at the definitions of "hope" and "optimism," you find that their meanings are very similiar:

Hope (n)-- "A wish or desire accompanied by confident expectation of its fulfillment"

Optimism (n) -- "A tendency to expect the best possible outcome or dwell on the most hopeful aspects of a situation"

I strongly disagree with Jensen's basic premise. In reality, he's just a pessimist who sees the world as gasping its last breath, with his mission to bring it back to life.

For all of the Earth's problems, it's not gasping. An exaggeration of the problem helps no one, and neither does looking through a pessimistic lense.

Jensen denies the distinction between "false hope" and "hope," but there is a real difference. The idiom "hope against hope" means "To hope with little reason or justification," but that's not what hope means. And hope doesn't mean that you are giving up the right to act.

In fact, people act from hope, and I'd much rather act from hope than despair. Action and hope are not opposites, and hope does not equal powerlessness.

Even in this political cycle, politicians have mocked Barack Obama's audacity to promote the idea of hope.

Perhaps Jensen was right in one regard. Perhaps he and his supporters really are dead, and that's not the compliment he would have it to be.

Corporate Personhood

Jeffrey Kaplan's "Consent of the Govern" (pages 14-26) provides a history of how corporations have developed the rights of "personhood" over the last 100+ years. I haven't studied that issue much and don't really have a position on it, other than to note that Kaplan seemingly would like to go back to a time when corporations dissolved every-so-often -- so that they wouldn't have time to amass money and power (15).

The article also promotes the idea that local governments are somehow more "pure" than state or federal governments (or international organizations). Why? Maybe because people tend to care more about their immediate living areas than they do about other states, regions, or countries.

I'm not intentionally trying to find fault with every essay, but here's what I have trouble with in this essay: the idea that a local government can thumb its nose at state or federal law. In other words, some local governments have said that corporations are not "persons" in their districts (20). Again, this sounds kind of dangerous to me. Who else might they claim are not persons? Or what other rights might local governments take away if they had such authority?

Kaplan's article expresses the idea that people should have a real say in governing themselves. Unfortunately, he seemingly fails to realize that state and federal officials are, at least in theory, elected by the people. And any international trade agreements go through a ratification process. In other words, the people do have a voice at all levels. Kaplan would argue that the Corporate "person" has too much power at higher levels of government. That makes me wonder, why are real people so powerful at the lower levels? What would stop Corporations from running local governments? And what stops real people from running state and federal governments?

Human-centered Environmentalism

Maybe I shouldn't be surprised, but should the main concern of Environmentalism really be about what's best for humans? Let me explain:

Peter Sauer's "Reinhabiting Environmentalism" (pages 5-13) seems to pine for the good old days of the 1960s, before the Vietnam War caused everything to derail. Now, Sauer says, "movements" fight against one another, when in reality, they should be working together. I'm sure that makes sense, but I'm still a bit concerned about how human-centered the agenda seems to be. Sure, it's a good thing to be concerned about humans, but what's wrong with setting aside land for conservation, for protecting species, etc.? Does such an approach really limit total "buy in"? Is such an approach really inappropriate or off the mark?

Maybe the most interesting portion of the essay is the doctrine of the "precautionary principle" (12). Boy, I don't know about that one, though. I'm trying not to get too political here, so forgive me in advance, but didn't President Bush utilize his own doctrine of the "precautionary principle"? Acting in advance sure sounds good, but the consequences of following such a principle could be dangerous, couldn't they??

First Impressions

Not much time to write, but I did have a chance to read through the Acknowledgements and Introduction.

Emerson Blake's Acknowledgments details how the articles in the book are organized into six specific sections: 1) Action, 2) Refugees, 3) Boundaries, 4) Reverence, 5) Monsters, and 6) Native. Nothing too controversial here. Blake cites the purpose of the book as providing articles that "point toward a fuller understanding of the world and the possibility of the future" (vii). Make sense to me.

Barry Lopez writes the Introduction, and the language becomes a bit more charged. On page ix, he quickly suggests that we receive a "daily message" that "we don't know" everything. That, I think, is an important acknowledgement to make. On the following pages, though, Lopez makes some pretty definite assertions: 1) business is bad, 2) government is bad, and 3) civic groups are good.

The problem is: he sounds as though he believes business and government have no role in developing solutions to environmental issues. This fails to acknowledge that people run businesses, and people are elected to government offices. These same people may be involved in "social movements" too. Can't businesses and government encourage or lead social movements?

An interesting line: "Civic society has no staff, no address, no nation, no religion, no stake in commerce or policy making" (xi). First, I'm not sure that statement is entirely true, and second, even if it is true, what does it mean? Sounds very organic, but it also echoes of the ultimate goals of Marx. Am I wrong on this?

As you read, feel free to post your own impressions. If you want contributor status to make your own posts to this forum, please let me know.

Bret