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Megan Coggeshall

Living Through the end of Nature: the Future of American Environmentalism - 1 views

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    Living Through the End of Nature by Paul Wapner presents a new way forward for environmentalism after the end of nature. Wapner argues that humans have altered the physical environment to such an extent that it can no longer be viewed separately from humans. Additionally, many argue that nature is just a social construction and never existed in the first place. Since popular environmentalism focuses on how humans can reduce their impact on nature, the end of nature presents a problem for the movement. However, Wapner argues that the end of nature will actually make the environmental movement stronger and more politically effective by making political debate less contentious and by focusing on the connections between people, landscapes, species, and narratives. Moving beyond nature will also soften the boundaries that currently exist, and protect the well-being of humans and the nonhuman world by focusing on opportunities that involve both, such as urban sustainability, social justice, poverty alleviation, and the rights of indigenous people. Overall Wapner's book is well argued and well supported by concrete examples. However, he continually presents wildness and wilderness in terms of otherness which leads the reader to question if he actually believes his own argument about the end of nature. Wapner provides good historical background of the environmental movement which makes this book useful for readers that are beginning to be interested in environmentalism, or potentially beginning students who would like to learn about different perspectives on the topic. I would recommend this book to almost anyone, though the academic style to Wapner's writing makes this book more appropriate for a classroom setting than for a popular audience.
Jim Proctor

Why I Am a Naturalist - NYTimes.com - 3 views

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    In ENVS 220, students discuss/debate the relative contribution to environmental studies of the sciences vs. the humanities; here is one position, dubbed naturalism, in which science is viewed as the only path to knowledge. As the author summarizes, naturalism "doesn't mean anyone should stop doing literary criticism any more than foregoing fiction. Naturalism treats both as fun, but neither as knowledge." To some, naturalism is just another word for scientism, but it's worth us asking: What would a naturalist environmental studies be like? In what ways would it be better/worse/different?
Julia Huggins

TED Shimon Steinberg: Natural pest control ... using bugs! - 0 views

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    Shimon is an entomologist who has made significant breakthroughs in "natural" pest control. The bio from the talk explains the idea like this: "Beneficial bugs are replacing the use of chemical sprays in greenhouse vegetables and open field crops, producing pesticide-free food and eliminating hazardous exposure of millions of workers in third world countries. These insects are shipped worldwide, where they go to work protecting thousands of hectares of greenhouses and open fields, in vegetables, field crops, fruit trees, ornamental plants and more." I put natural in quotes above, though, because first and foremost I'm a good for nothin skeptic. Secondly, while I'm all for getting rid of nasty chemicals, this solution just screams invasive species... which we always seem to lump into the "not natural" effects of humanity. Shimon, the speaker, justifies this solution by emphasizing that there's absolutely no genetic modification, and that the effects on the crops are all natural because the insects are natural. "All we do is give them the optimal conditions... in order to let them proliferate, multiply, and reproduce." It just doesnt click in my head. Manipulating conditions for one kind of species and exploiting them was how we got into this agricultural mess in the first place.
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    Aside from that though, the speaker actually makes some really good points and it's worth familiarizing yourself with the idea of "natural" pest-control, as we'll likely see more of it in the future. (If this speaker has his way at least.)
Jim Proctor

Study of Fish Suggests the Value of Uninformed Voters - 0 views

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    Puzzling headline, no? But truly, this was an important study involving golden shiners (a common minnow), and the conclusions the researchers reached concerned how "uninformed agents can promote democratic outcomes in collective decision problems," or in less technical jargon, how "ignorance can promote democracy." Certainly intriguing in terms of boundary-crossing between the natural and the human sciences! But not without dispute over its relevance to the world of human politics, as noted at the bottom of the article. Relevance to ENVS is clear: we welcome ideas that cross the natural/social sciences, but we subject them to scrutiny too. (And, we worry about ignorance as much as anyone else does.)
Julia Huggins

Leviathan Gas Discovery Could be The Mother of All Resource Curses | Green Prophet - 0 views

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    "Houston-based Noble Energy today confirmed that its Leviathan gas find under the water off the shore of Israel is easily the largest exploration discovery in its history, with an estimated 16 trillion cubic feet of natural gas" I'm not quite sure what to make of this discovery. This article certainly gives it a declensionist spin, and I'm not quite sure that I can come up with any alternate positive side. On another note, the term "natural resource" really bugs me.
Julia Huggins

Returning to the Caveman Diet - 1 views

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    Questions our assumption that there's a healthy or natural diet that humanity needs to return to. Another example of where we may be creating false divides between nature and culture.
Nathaniel Stoll

Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World - 1 views

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    Rambunctious Garden by Emma Marris is about a new conservation ethic. Marris argues that pristine nature as glorified and portrayed by the "wilderness cult" of the 19th century does not exist in modern day, and that it is futile for conservationists to try and attempt to rewind the clock of ecosystems back to some arbitrary baseline like "before humans arrived." In place of classic conservation, Marris argues for radical rewilding, assisted migration, novel ecosystems, and designer ecosystems. The book is geared towards a popular audience, and as such, it might be a bit elementary for environmental studies majors. That said, for the most part the argument Marris makes is still compelling, although perhaps not novel.
Micah Leinbach

The Economics of Biodiversity - 1 views

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    No light read, at 39 pages, but a good source for anyone doing research on the value of ecosystems from an economic perspective. My scant review of it indicates that it brings together a lot of different studies on the benefits people get from natural systems, and how much it would cost us to replace those with artificial systems. From the preface: "Applying economic thinking to the use of biodiversity and ecosystem services can help clarify two critical points: why prosperity and poverty reduction depend on maintaining the flow of benefits from ecosystems; and why successful environmental protection needs to be grounded in sound economics, including explicit recognition, efficient allocation, and fair distribution of the costs and benefits of conservation and sustainable use of natural resources." This report has been cited a lot lately in efforts to create some sort of system that would remove externalities from the pricing of all sorts of goods, and account for the costs of natural capital (i.e. the environment) in producing more or less everything. That would be a major environmental achievement, and social achievement in general.
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    A better read: http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Bright-Green/2009/1116/the-economics-of-ecosystems Summarizes the report well, and also puts out the big question: can we put a price on everything? I personally am frustrated by how often debates turn into a cost-benefit analysis about the "practicality" of an idea - and I say that as a fan of the field of economics. Should we be resorting to that to defend environmental things that we value, or are there larger ideas and principles at play? Do we weaken the strength of a principles-based argument with a practicality/economically based one?
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    We'll be discussing several issues connected to this in ENVS 160 come spring, not only related to the technical and political drawbacks of pricing ecosystem services, but also the naive notions of "natural" vs. "artificial" that it often presupposes. The whole exercise reveals about the very best mainstream environmental thought can deliver…which is not good enough, in many recent scholars' opinions.
Marko Demkiv

The Future is Here: Sherbourne Common « The Dirt - 1 views

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    The article talks about the new technologies used in planning of a Sherbourne Common in Toronto. The main improvement of this park is its water treatment infrastructure. It also raises topics of urban planning and how nature is integrated into cirties ("New nature is what we culticate in our cities"). 
Micah Leinbach

Natural Rights (for nature) in Law in Bolivia - 2 views

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    Impressive show by a nation, I wouldn't have expected this from anywhere.
Julia Huggins

12 Questions for Using Permaculture to Discover Food Freedom - 4 views

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    A succinct introduction to the idea of permaculture and why we need it. For those ENVS students who dont yet already know: There's a group of students working on putting in a permaculture garden/food forest on a plot of land right next to campus. If you're interested, read this for background and email me (jhuggins@lclark.edu) so I can tell you when and where our next meeting will be.
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    This link could stand a bit of analysis (and hope I don't step on muddy toes): who wrote it and why? We read at the bottom that the author "…is an expert in East Asian natural therapies and a certified permaculture designer." Can you think of anything more alluring to a person coming from a certain class background and interests than that?? When I saw how many ecovillages in Oregon survive by selling the idea of permaculture to (a certain class of) urbanites the whole allure seemed to take on a different spin. I'd strongly recommend Bob Goldman's course (and Bob himself) if you'd like to think a bit more broadly about contemporary alt agriculture, whether "perma-," "biodynamic," etc. Corporate agriculture is easy to criticize because, well, it's stupid, but we have to bring our same critical tools to bear in examining alternatives or we won't get anywhere.
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    I would have to agree with Jim; I think this link deserves some more scrutiny. I don't think it's realistic to ask authors to go into specificities on everything, but I felt Sunanda sort of offered stock answers to the permaculture clientele, without really commenting on the difficulties of implementing permaculture designs for any sort of larger scale food answer. He states at the end that "This integrated design system can produce healthy abundance without damaging the biosphere", but I'm really just unsure of what that might mean, or look like.
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    Not to worry Jim, my toes are calloused enough from spending time in the garden; they're not injured. I hope I don't in return step on any shiny black shoes (we wouldn't want to muddy them) when I say that I am skeptical of your skepticism. I, of anyone, understand the value of continuous questioning, but that is very different from pre-conceived assumptions of falsehood. I believe you have a misconception of permaculture. I wrote a reply that both addresses this and touches on some of my responses to Julie Guthman. It's much too long for a diigo post, but you can read it here: https://sites.google.com/site/envs220permaculture/
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    Well, sounds like we have a discussion going here! If you want, Julia, we can talk at length about it, but it's gonna be difficult to talk if skeptics are dismissed as not knowing what permaculture really is. If the heart of permaculture is "the idea that agriculture should harmonize with natural cycles," a Julie Guthman or a Bob Goldman or a JDP would probably say sounds good, what what sort of harmonization with what sorts of natural cycles? This is inspirational, but too vague to adequately describe the details of any agricultural technique -- a whole host of techniques far different from permaculture could make the same claim. And perhaps our difference concerns permaculture not as an agricultural technique (which Julie appeared to endorse in her brief remarks), but its e.g. class, religious, and political dimensions, so we'd probably need to broaden our discussion to include its full dimensionality. ENVS represents an inclusive approach: it's not the ecological dimension alone, nor other dimensions; it's as many dimensions as are significant. Others on this thread may or may not be interested in permaculture, but in general it's worth a broader conversation between faculty and students on proposed solutions to our ecological problems. We want to make sure that there's a healthy give and take and a healthy respect, which may lead to a broader understanding of why certain solutions don't necessarily enthrall all of us. (Anyone ready to reform the tax code, as Julie strongly recommended as one of her "ecological" solutions??)
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    Like Julia, my response is too long for Diigo (perhaps this a function we should write to them about changing?), but I've posted it as a Google Site (also like Julia): https://sites.google.com/site/envs220diigopermaculture/
Julia Huggins

Business ready to trade nature services - 0 views

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    "A global coalition of about 200 companies said yesterday (26 October) that it was ready to support the introduction of a price tag on ecosystem services, in the hope that a global biodiversity panel will lay the foundations for an offset mechanism to encourage trading of nature services." This group is called the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). The members are listed here: http://www.wbcsd.org/web/about/members.html
Micah Leinbach

A realist look at alternative energy - 1 views

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    I would consider this a must-read for those into the alternative energy side of things. While the energies it highlights aren't all new and exciting, the numbers game it plays is pretty key. This is no optimistic one-technology-solves-it-all piece, and it issues a key reminded that no alternative energy we have reaches the input/output energy found in oil. By my reading, key to getting into the next energy phase we should expect is energy reduction, and energy efficiency. Our efficiency numbers, both from a physics and an economics perspective, are awful. The guys behind the Rocky Mountain Institute wrote a book called Natural Capitalism, which offers some great insights into energy efficiency as it stands and as it could be, if anyone is interested in that side of things. One of my favorite aspects of increasing energy efficiency is how its good for economies and good for the environment - still, there is the worry that if it makes things too cheap, people will use too much (the book cites fuel efficiency standards that were so good the cost of driving dropped significanly, and so many more people drove than more energy ended up being used). There are tools to avoid that though. I digress, but still, an excellent view of where alternative energy stands as of now.
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    One such technology that leads to energy efficiency: http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Energy/2009/1231/No-more-power-lines
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    oh man oh man oh man. huge, invisible, underground networks that transmit electricity? sounds familiar... "I have long proposed that mycelia are the earth's "natural Internet." I've gotten some flak for this, but recently scientists in Great Britain have published papers about the "architecture" of a mycelium - how it's organized. They focused on the nodes of crossing, which are the branchings that allow the mycelium, when there is a breakage or an infection, to choose an alternate route and regrow. There's no one specific point on the network that can shut the whole operation down. These nodes of crossing, those scientists found, conform to the same mathematical optimization curves that computer scientists have developed to optimize the Internet. Or, rather, I should say that the Internet conforms to the same optimization curves as the mycelium, since the mycelium came first." -- Paul Stamets more: http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2008/07/natures-internet-vast-intelligent.html
Micah Leinbach

Vertical Farms: way of the future, or a true factory farm? - 0 views

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    Will Allen has become one of the patron saints of the modern alternative food movement, appearing in the White House, championing Michelle Obama's new programs, becoming the father of modern Urban Agriculture, and being named one of People's 100 most influential people (among other awards and achievements). He is really worth checking out. While I have been very excited to see ideas for vertical farms popping up everywhere from Milwaukee to Toronto to Chicago and beyond, my enthusiasm is beginning to lag. While vertical farms offer great potential for feeding people locally, consistently, cheaply (maybe), and in an environmentally friendly way, are these sometimes soil-less, urban high rises really just a factory farm for vegetables? If so, does it matter? I'm still in favor of them, so far, but I can't help but wonder if the food movement of tomorrow will be "ground-grown" or "grown in soil". I'd really appreciate thoughts and a discussion, if anyone is interested. While I see many positives in the economic/ecological realm of things, I'm less sold on the philosophy of the idea. Are "natural systems" methods still natural if they're in something we would not necessarily consider "nature" off-hand?
Micah Leinbach

Political corruption and environmental protection - 0 views

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    This has all the points of a common environmental confrontation in America - development focused governments and coorporations trying to cut down a forest that activists try to defend. But this is not in America, and while the forest is being defended, its not any sort of environmental group doing it. While primarily a political drama, I found this really interesting given that it is a group of citizens who don't seem to have any environmental concerns pitting themselves against violent political action simply because they value a local piece of forest. It seems so far outside the realm of our traditional American conception of environmentalism in action, lacking all the usual discussions (and players), but is still very real work on behalf of the environment. While this evidence is anecdotal, it is interesting how once natural areas start to get very scarce somewhere, people really start fighting for it. Evidence of an inherent value we place on natural environments? Cultural in origin? Both? I lean towards both, and after reading Richard Louv's "Last Child In the Woods" would really argue for an inherent psychological value of natural areas.
Julia Huggins

Stephen Hawking Asks, What Is Reality? - 2 views

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    So, we can (and should) address domestic poster-child questions such as "what is nature?", but let's not get complacent about the bigger questions: this article talks about the fact that the reality in which we're trying to sustain our existence may not even exist. What to do?
Sally Bernstein

In North Dakota, Wasted Natural Gas Flickers Against the Sky - NYTimes.com - 1 views

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    Gas companies resorting to flaring--questionable whether its efficient, or they are just lazy. It seems like the article is mainly trying to spark an interest by taking another view on an aspect of drilling for gas, and gas production. It seems crazy to partake in this, especially since the companies are too interested in the financial aspects than the practical. The product is expensive to bring to market which is why they burn it instead of take advantage of it. That seems crazy, especially now when gas production is such a popular and important topic.
Jim Proctor

In rural Oregon, middle-class life is slipping away - 3 views

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    Our ENVS 490 class this semester has examined a number of environmental conflicts in Oregon, many in its rural areas. This article discusses how serious the economic situation has become in these areas -- many of which were dependent on natural resource industries -- and includes an animated graphic to suggest that things have only been getting worse in the last few years.
Taylor Riso

Nature Unbound: Conservation, Capitalism and the Future of Protected Areas - 0 views

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    In this book, the authors discuss the use of protected areas for conservation and their ties to capitalism. The authors discuss the dualism in which many environmentalists view conservation and the preservation of protected areas as a means to halt the impacts of capitalism; however, they argue that capitalism permeates conservation practices. The authors argue that the forces of capitalism and conservation both "re-categoriz[e]" the environment. The boundaries between conservation and capitalism are not easily defined. I would recommend this book to someone who is familiar with the conservation and environmental movements. In addition, I would also recommend it to those who are familiar with the conservation movement and oppose it. I think they would gain some helpful insights about conservation that they may have not considered before.
Anna Foreman

Jasmin Sydee and Sharon Beder - Ecofeminism and Globalisation: A Critical Appraisal - 0 views

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    The idea of Ecofeminism is that the domination of women and of nature are intrinsically linked. Focusing on womens lives and roles in cultural society helps identify the ways in which their roles are similar to the environment under the umbrella of patriarchal capitalism. In this article, globalization is defined as an outgrowth of patriarchal capitalism. And the basic biological differences of our genders determines social organization.
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