Anthropocene
What are the 2 proposed dates for the start of the Anthropocene?
1) 1800 – 1945 (start of the Industrial Revolution).
2) 1945 - the Great Acceleration – vast uptick in population growth, and consumption and waste.
What are "commons"?
Commons: a shared resource. But commons are also defined by the social arrangement (or institution) that governs rights, access, and use of collective property (e.g., land, forest) or common pool resources like (e.g., fish, water, air).
What is a discourse? Examples?
Patterns of verbal or written communication that form cognitive frameworks and seek to influence understandings and values – to give meaning to something.– How we communicate about something shapes how we think about and act toward that thing; discourses have effects and can materially change something.
What is an environmental ethic?
Conventional or accepted beliefs regarding how our relationship with nature should be – that is our obligations toward non-human living creatures (e.g., other animals, plants, their living communities).
What is environmental injustice?
Environmental injustice describes a condition where unhealthful or dangerous conditions are disproportionately proximate to low-income and/or communities of color.
What is the Anthropocene?
a new geological epoch that signifies an age where the biogeochemical cycles of the planet are dominated by human influence
True or False: Garret Hardin argued that "all commons lead to tragedy".
True. Harden saw the "tragedy of the commons" as inevitable. Harden, therefore, favored privatization of the commons. But his conclusion was based on largely ahistorical analysis. “Common pool” or “common property” resources have been governed collectively in sustainable ways through local social institutions over millennia.
What does it mean to say nature is socially constructed? Examples?
It is not a universal concept. Ideas of nature and the natural reflect society. The idea of nature is profoundly social and always has a historical and cultural context. Nature is constructed both materially and discursively.
e.g: wilderness (as a form of wild nature) tends to be constructed as something separate from society.
What are the two guiding environmental ethics found in the Book of Genesis?
1. Humans are separate from and superior to nature; have an obligation to use and subdue nature. (Dominion thesis)
2. Responsibility to care for the earth. (Stewardship thesis)
Both views are Anthropocentric.
Who is considered the "father of environmental justice"?
Dr. Robert Bullard
What is the Planetary Boundary Framework? (3 key components)
1) draws on Earth System science and identifies 9 processes critical for stability of life on earth.
2) aims to quantify levels of anthropogenic change since pre-industrial baseline levels found in the Holocene.
3) delineates biophysical and biochemical systems & processes known to regulate the planet within ranges historically known and scientifically likely to maintain life support systems conducive to human welfare.
True or False: the atmosphere is not a global commons
False. The atmosphere is basically a commons shared by all people and countries. Incentives to free-ride by polluting and carbon loading is the ultimate commons puzzle.
What is a negative externality? Examples?
Externalities: effects not figured into the price of goods or services (can be positive or negative). Negative externality environmental impacts from economic activity that are not factored into the cost of a product, nor the price paid. “Privatizing the gain but socializing the cost.”
E.g., air & water pollution from factories
Gifford Pinchot was a Conservationist who argued for damning the valley. His view was utilitarian and stressed the "wise use" of environmental resources for human benefit.
John Muir was a Preservationist, who valued non-monetary considerations of nature. Wild nature should be left alone as much as possible. Wild places needed for spiritual reflection, rest.
Define structural racism.
Structural Discrimination (racism): social and geographic patterns of systematic exclusion, regardless of individual intent. Geographic focus is on aggregate outcomes and processes.
Discriminatory outcomes may not be intentional, but they are almost never random.
A policy or action is racist if it systematically and predictably affects certain groups disproportionately to their presence in the population
How has excessive phosphorous and nitrogen in freshwater and marine systems producing serious problems?
Runoff from excess synthetic fertilizers used in industrial agriculture pollutes bodies of water and creates hypoxic or "dead" zones, eutrophication
We need nitrogenous fertilizers to feed our 8 billion people, but we are essentially eating fossil fuel energy, and polluting our water ways and coastal seas in the process.
Unlike Hardin, Ostrom proved that the commons do not all end in tragedy. She used empirical research to illustrate successful collective action and institutional development for the management of common property system in various communities around the world.
What is the production of nature? Examples?
“Production of nature” is the idea that nature (our biophysical world) itself is made and re-made by capitalism through:
1) Commodification – transformation of nature, resources, environmental objects into something that can be traded
2) Consumption – those transformed objects devoured by society.
In this view, there is no such thing as pristine, untouched nature, separate from capitalist relations of production and consumption.
E.g.: GMOs, oil extraction in the amazon basin and alaskan arctic
What is "moral extensionism"?
Influence of Aldo Leopold’s thinking
Moral extensionism – an expansion of our ethical guidance to extend beyond humans to include land, plants, animals(communities), and see ourselves as part of a connected web of life.
Ecocentric ethic – ecological concerns should be considered along with human concerns together. “integrity” of a biotic community – ecosystem can take precedence.
Ecosystem health should be the moral compass informing how we use or preserve nature. (This is the key idea behind ecological economics)
What was redlining?
Federal policy in the 1930s to increase home ownership by facilitatingmortgage lending.
Involved over 200 color-coded maps of cities all over the US, that rated neighborhoods by loan “risk.” Areas in red were seen as "hazardous" and financial services were withheld from these neighborhoods.
The codes were both implicitly and explicitly based on race, class, as well as immigrant status, or religion (Jewish singled out for identification in some cities).