I'll admit that the data and material we have seen can be a bit of a downer. What we humans have we done to the planet, intentionally and unintentionally, has inevitably caused some major ecosystem disruption and irreversible change.
Is this all bad though? Can we "fix" it? Create a cleaner and more eco-friendly world?
What about The Green Revolution?
We are at the dawn of what some are calling the largest revolution on the planet. There are more people waging for change than ever. We don't have to live in a dirty dystopian future! What gives you hope about our future here on planet earth? What have you learned, seen, experienced, that has made you take action is some way, however small... however big...?
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Image from Fritz Lang's 1927 silent, 'Metropolis'
Bill McKibben, Activist, researcher, and author of the National Bestseller 'Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future' and creator of 350.org, refers to himself as "a professional bummer outer", though his bestseller is anything but. A must read.
What is dystopia?
Top 50 Dystopian Movies of All Time
Weekly Statement #13
ReplyDeleteFor my final (!) blog entry, I’d like to discuss Professor Trumpey’s house project briefly, and then somehow contextualize some of the themes of this class in regards to my own future career. While what we have learned in class can be unsettling, I've always been an optimist and think that there definitley seems to be a growing trend towards change, Trumpey's house being a good example.
I agree that whole house project looked entirely daunting. Building every single component of the house with minimal professional help is a task in and of itself, much less going the extra mile making the entire house energy efficient and from local materials. It got me wondering how to make a project like this more feasible for a homeowner with less environmental knowledge and gusto. The size of the project would probably be much smaller for an average two person family, I doubt that many of us would need a large wood shop or housing for farm animals connected to our houses. Additionally, I think that adopting even a few of the building techniques from Professor Trumpey’s house plan would be beneficial while constructing new buildings. While it might be hard for an individual to mill their own lumber, it could be feasible to use a nail-free construction, or make walls from hay bales and adobe, or use local stones to minimize the use of concrete. With all of the research and expertise Trumpey has after this project, I feel like it would be a great launching point for a ultra-green construction company. I have no idea what his life goals are, but that seems like the natural outcome from such an intensive project.
On a different note, since this class addresses issues that can be looked at across disciplines, I’ve been thinking about what some of the information I’ve learned can do for my own future plans, how I can hope to take some action on more than a personal level. Specifically, I’m planning to go to seminary after graduation in order to become a pastor in the Lutheran church (quite the leap from art, I know). There are ways I see what we're learning about fitting into that context.
I know some of the staunch atheists reading this will probably roll their eyes, but hear me out. The camp I work at in the summer is in the middle of about 36 acres of birch, red pine, and maple forest. This past summer especially, we’ve used our location to teach our campers about environmental stewardship. For teaching that, we primarily used a verse in Genesis where God grants people “dominion” over the earth. While that verse has been used in the past as justification for detrimental practices such as clear cutting (viewing dominion in the same light as domination), newer versions use “responsibility” as a more accurate translation in the place of “dominion” (there are dozens of translations out there, some more accurate than others). It’s a growing attitude in more progressive parts of the church that if the earth is from God, than it is a gift that we should care for the same as we would any person. While this is a growing notion among leaders and teachers in the Lutheran church, I’m not sure if the attitude speaks for the church body as a whole (being an extremely large and diverse entity). I have yet to discern where my ministry will lead me, but I think that remembering many of the concepts in this class viewed through a Biblical lens would be an interesting an important avenue to take. At the very least, it will help inform some of the practices at whatever church I end up leading if I’m in a parish ministry. I suppose this stems from a personal belief that God doesn’t come down and fix things with a magic lightning bolt, that God only allows suffering in the world as long as we, the caretakers of the earth and each other, allow it to happen. Regardless of what you believe, I think its beneficial to keep in mind that the solutions to the problems we face won’t ever be found unless we get down and dirty and fix them ourselves.
WEEKLY STATEMENT # 9
ReplyDeleteJen Silverstein
I am in complete agreement that the material we cover in this class is very depressing. Most of the time the information makes me lose hope as apposed to being motivated. The reading we read at the very beginning of the course, the Jensen article, stuck with me the most of any of the readings so far. Jensen’s outlook on the world- “were fucked”. Jensen said that hope is what keeps up chained to the system and inevitably makes us more fucked because if we have hope, we lose sight of taking action. I am in agreement with Jensen. The statistics, graphs, and facts that have been provided to us this semester make me think it is very unlikely that the world as we know it will continue indefinitely. Overpopulation, lack of natural resources, pollution; just to name a few of the issues.
I also find the green revolution a bit funny because the “save the world” motto is really only “save the humans”. The world will rebuild itself after the humans are done messing it up. Nature completely takes over man made buildings and roads over time. We can see it happening all over Detroit’s empty buildings. Our attempt to save the world is really only an attempt to preserve our lifestyles.
I am not however, completely pessimistic. Saying that we are “fucked”, as Jensen would say, and stepping back to do nothing, would be a complete waste. The humans can preserve our planet and way of life if the green revolution really does take a dramatic turn for the better. I will do my part by recycling what I can, spreading the word, preserving water and food, buying locally, and making my own ecological footprint smaller.
Emerson Schreiner
ReplyDeleteWeekly Statement #9
I think I have hope for the future only because our inadvertent quest to destroy the planet is a fairly recent phenomenon. Human behavior has not ever been perfect, but it wasn’t always so destructive either, at least not on such a widespread scale.
I think human nature is as malleable as human survival needs it to be, and the fact is, we can’t continue polluting the earth and consuming its resources, and expect to stick around for very long. We weren’t always consumers, this is recent, and we don’t have to stay consumers either. And if we think purely selfishly, which we tend to, it will be in our best interests to change our self-destructive habits.
So, keeping a certain amount of historical perspective in mind gives me some hope. If I merely look at what I see around me, it’s much easier to assume that we’re done for. But if I think how dramatically different the world was 100 years ago, it reminds me that we can, in fact, change.
But it’s interesting that we seem to have such a strong interest in the post-apocalyptic genre. Especially recently, Hollywood has been rapidly pushing out “end of the world” scenario movies, and people seem to be interested. Maybe there’s something primal in them that’s missing in our day-to-day lives.
Does anyone else have a “zombie scenario” survival plan? Or do you ever look at the room your in and think, “gee, if zombies attacked right now, I wouldn’t really have a good heavy blunt object that I could crush the living dead with.” What I keep in my room is at least 50% determined by if it would be useful if zombies started taking over.
Or what’s with this 2012 business? It almost seems like we’re waiting for something to come along and wipe the slate clean. Like we want to start over, but can’t quit what we’re doing.
We need zombies.
Krista Boyd
ReplyDeleteWeekly Statement # 9
November 25, 2009
I have to agree with you when you say that the material that we have been presented with thus far in ADP is really depressing. It’s almost as if the world is going to end SOON unless we take action. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glade that I’m learning about our world in depth, but sometimes it seems like to me the information that we get 98% of it is bad, which too me feels a bit one sided. All I ever hear is the bad things were doing to mess up our ecosystem/ environment. And occasionally there will be some material on people that are doing good in world, but not much. Ok enough on that.
What humans have done and continue to do to this planet is bad. There is no good in it, but I feel that fixing the problems that we have with this planet is not going to be fixed overnight or in the next decade. The problems may not even be fixed in our generation. For example, the pollution problem in China that PROBLEM will not be fixed in this lifetime. I’m not saying that it can’t be fixed, but what I’m saying is that the problem is going to take a lot of money and TIME. I feel that we will not see an eco friendly system in a long time because people or should I say the government is not making the necessary changes to make it happen. For example, we are still dependent on foreign oil, the government is not forcing the car companies to produces eco friendly cars and the eco friendly cars that we do have out there are way too EXPENSIVE.
Everything revolves around money. How do you expect people to want to change if we have to pay money to do it? I hate mention it, but our economy is not the best in the world, in fact it sucks. For example, people are saying we need to stop using plastic bags and switch to eco friendly bags. Yeah I know that eco friendly bags are currently 99cents, but to someone who has a family to feed, what do you think the majority of people would do in that situation? Do you think they would buy eco friendly bags or use the FREE plastic multi use bags???? I know what I would do. I would use the free plastic bags. With that being said, there is hope for the future. I see more green ads and commercials, which is a good thing.
This shows that there are people out there that care about planet enough to take action. As for me, before I took this class, I never really thought about or knew that our planet was in this kind of condition. I know this is a small change for me, but I’ve started recycling paper in addition to the cans and plastic that I already recycle. I do all this outside of school. One step at a time, I keep telling myself.
There is no straight response to our problems. The reason why it is so hard to come to terms with a solution for our environment is because there is no universal answer. Each location and person has different needs or even environmental restrictions. We cannot apply one law across the board and expect it to be enforced successfully everywhere. It would be similar to enforcing a law of no plastic bags everywhere, but in some cases using a plastic bag may be less harmful to the environment that the other option, as even Professor Trumpey himself mentioned in class. If we had such universal laws, it would surely lead to a dystopia in a matter of time, full of unhappy people forced to apply laws that may not pertain or benefit them in any matter.
ReplyDeleteIn order to instigate appropriate changes, each region or area should create its own rules and laws that are environmental healthy. For example, setting up a quota would help. It would not matter what you would do to achieve that quota, as long as you maintained it. So for example, for one desert region, reaching that quote may include conserving water. Such a law would aggravate other areas that are plentiful in water. So instead their regulations would include perhaps not cutting down so many trees. To each their own to instigate change. The only problem now is that someone in the government needs to section off each region and create that environmental board that will create and enforce the regulations specific to them. This is idea was inspired by Portland, Oregon, that has its own regional board that makes decisions collectively.
I don’t think we need to jump to dystopia. The damage we have done is pretty depressing and even some of that is irreversible, but there is still a lot we can do to change it around. I think there is a misconception of us being able to “fix” things or “revert” them to the way they used to be. I do not think we can ever do that. What we can do however, is make our future environmentally stable. It will be different than we had or have now, but it will be green. Some species or natural surroundings may get lost along the way but it may have to be so for us to finally achieve the greater green for the upcoming years. Our children’s children may have to deal with our mess, but they should not have to say that we were ignorant and did not do anything about it.
For myself, whenever I go to a store and make a small purchase, I refrain from taking a plastic bag. I make sure to reuse old printed paper to write notes on or sketches, and I make sure to remember to switch off all the lights. I have always all my life recycled my aluminums and plastics as well as my paper. These are things that can be implemented across the board. If people started doing the small environmentally conscious things along with the ones that are regionally specific, we could completely avoid our doomsday dystopia and have a bright happier future to look forward to.
Week 10
ReplyDeleteI agree that the material we learn about in ADP 3 this year is pretty intense. I often find myself feeling guilty or depressed after completing an assigned reading. However, I also find myself scared learning that the world might be coming to “a near end” if everyone doesn’t take responsibility for their actions towards the earth.
Can we “fix” it? I think so. However, I don’t think it is can be an immediate change. Although ADP is a bit of a downer, I am thankful for the course. It teaches my generation, who grew up learning about new technologies and lived around an intense consumerism society, about the dangers that we contribute to environmental problems. Hopefully, the knowledge that we take from this class (as well as from all the culture shockers telling us what we’re doing wrong) will drive our generation to intentionally raise newer generations in a more eco-friendly world.
There is change being taken (slowly but surely), and I can see it happening around me. There are now trashcans that separate plastic, cans, paper, and trash so that we can recycle more efficiently. Those trashcans did not exist just a few years ago. Banks are going green and allowing us to check our bank statements online (the Internet is not such a bad thing if used for the right reasons). There are Green Books replacing the Blue books. Small changes are being made here and there. I do believe that the Green Revolution will prevent us from leading into dystopia. I think dystopia is a fictional thing, and that it only happens to communities that don’t care about the earth. The Green Revolution definitely shows otherwise since a lot is being done currently to create a cleaner world.
Connie In
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteConnie Huang
ReplyDeletePost # 11
The material we cover in class is very depressing and sometimes I feel hopeless. But nevertheless I think there is hope of becoming a cleaner and friendlier world. The amount of reusable bags you see in every grocery store is a perfect example of how people are being encouraged to go green. 5 years ago there weren’t too many people using reusable bags but every time I go to the store I see at least 4 people using them. I even started using them myself. Perhaps people feel more educated when they’re going green or a sense of camaraderie because they’re part of a force trying to improve the environment.
In a way going green is labeled as something cool to do nowadays. There is a lot of pop culture icon promoting going green. And with the start of this green revolution kids are more exposed to it more than any other generation before. I believe if these ideas and green thinking are taught to kids the greener the planet will become. For example, if a kid grows up always using reusable bags when his or her parents go to the store they will probably use them when they grow up.
Joe Trumpey’s house gives me hope that we can make the world a better place. It was astonishing hearing about the design and the order of process in building his house. I think his house is a great source of inspiration for others to make their home greener even if its simply changing their light bulbs to eco friendly ones.
The rise in hybrid cars also gives me hope. I see a good number of hybrid cars on the road in the past 2 years than ever before. I’ve even seen Prius taxis. The Prius is also a great example of companies taking the initiative to go green. The Prius uses LED lights and can even use solar panels as the power source for air conditioning.
The rise in LED light technology gives me hope. LED’s has a lower energy consumption, longer life, faster switching and greater durability. 7 years ago I had never even heard of LED. Improvements in LED technology have skyrocketed as well. LED lights are now used in all the streetlamps in downtown Ann Arbor. More LED lights are also sold in store. LED’s are also being used in traffic signals.
I have hope that the world can go green as long as the consumer keeps demanding companies and products to be green. If there is a high demand for a greener products the more eco safe products there will be.
I think in a sense, although we’ve placed ourselves in a very deep pit environmentally wise, we have a chance to pull ourselves together because of all this knowledge and technology that we have now that societies and civilizations did not have before. Sure, we’ve created a lot of problems by the introduction of technology, but there are also positive things we can do with the technology we’ve invented. For example, the invention of using solar powered energy using solar panels. Civilizations did not have this in the past, and therefore, if the world were to have a collapse in energy in the past, they would be at a disadvantage in comparison to us. Also, as mentioned in a previous reading, with the greater amount of knowledge granted for women, the more opportunities in the work world for them, and the fewer children they give birth to. Knowledge is the key to helping the world today. If everyone knew or understood that making babies should not be the top priority of everyone’s day and life, our population would not be sky rocketing at such an alarming rate as it is right now. Although there are couples nowadays who refrain from producing so many babies, there are other couples that produce up to 8 or even 9 children. In the end, the number of babies averages out and the population only continues to grow. This sky rocketing population growth should make us more aware about the straining amount of resources we are using, with water being one of the most at risk resources.
ReplyDeleteFor example, water can only replenish itself naturally so fast, but with increasing population using the same amount of water available, there will not be enough water to go around for everyone. In addition to that, there are many pollutants damaging the water as we speak. For example, fertilizer runoff, and the trash that factories dump into the water contaminates it so that it comes down again as acid rain. This acid rain slowly disintegrates plants and other living organisms, along with our buildings, sculptures, etc. I think that, although there are so many bad situations that we’ve created for ourselves, there are many opportunities for ourselves to fix these mistakes step by step. Instead of maybe advertising for sex, money, and consumerism, perhaps market for a greener world. When other developing countries see this happening in the western, developed world, they may want to strive for that standard of living as well. Also, reducing our use of toxic materials, and persuade the government or reform the government so that it is not in favor of the major corporations, and allow for people and corporations to have equal say in decisions. Everyone should try to make the world a slightly better place, but certainly continue to live a normal life, just make minor adjustments. These changes will take time to settle in and allow for a better environment, but in the long run, it may save us.
Post #11
Daisy