| A. The State of the
Environment |
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The following selections describe the
damage that has been done to the world, and examines the rate at which people are
destroying their environment.
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Reading 1. Eight Myths About the
Environment
http://www.soulutions.com/soulu_env1.html |
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Here are a few commonly held views
about the environment that distort our ability to appreciate environmental problems. |
Reading 2. Global Environmental
Outlook: Overview
http://grid2.cr.usgs.gov/geo1/exsum/ex2.htm |
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This is the summary of the 1997
report from the United Nations Environmental Programme, Global Environmental Outlook-1.
The full report details the state of the environment in different regions and countries of
the world. This overview begins by noting that there has been significant progress
in recognizing environmental problems and in slowing the rate of environmental
degradation. But, as the report notes, just slowing the rate of environmental
destruction is not enough. |
| Reading 3. Environmental Trends (from Which World?) http://mars3.gps.caltech.edu/whichworld//explore/trends/trendsenv.html |
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The Environmental Trends page from
Which World? provides a good summary of what is happening to our
environment. There is an overview of trends in energy consumption, in pollution, in
water usage, and land scarcity |
Reading 4. Environmental Trends (From
Rachel's Environment and
Health Weekly)
http://www.rachel.org/bulletin/bulletin.cfm?Issue_ID=508 |
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While concern for environmental
destruction goes back at least until the nineteenth century, the modern environmental
movement traces its origins to the 1960s when authors such as Rachel Carson in her
book, Silent Spring,
began warning of an ecological catastrophe. The movement has had some success in
convincing governments to enact environmental legislation. The question is, has it
made a difference? This report concludes that despite 20 years of substantial effort
the major industrial nations have failed to reverse the trends of environmental
destruction. |
Exercise 1. The Environmental Scorecard
http://www.scorecard.org/ |
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Local politicians and media don't
often publicize instances of environmental pollutants in their communties. But at
this site from The Environmental Defense
Fund you can get a list of local polluters and what they are adding to the
environment. Just type in your local zip code and get the information. |
Reading 5. 1998
Global Temperature Highest by Far
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/dec98/1998L-12-21-04.html |
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The earth's global temperature in
1998 will be the highest since 1860, according to the World Meteorological Organization
(WMO). Through October, new monthly temperature records have been set in each
of the past 18 months, and are responsible for unprecedented droughts, floods and
storms around the world. One of the biggest factors in the increase in greenhouse
gases in the U.S. is the shift by largely educated Americans to gas guzzling utility
vehicles (see Global
Problems and the Culture of Capitalism, p. 266). |
| B. Consumption and the
Environment |
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Three factor's contribute to
environmental destruction: population, technology, and consumption. Of the three,
consumption has received the least attention, probably because it is the most difficult to
do anything about. But the need for ever increasing consumption in the culture of
capitalism is arguably the single greatest cause of environmental degradation. It is
the need and desire for more "stuff" that stimulates the development of
technologies that degrade the environment, and, while population is often cited as a cause
of environmental problems, it is clearly the slowest growing countries that cause the
greatest problems. Even the destruction of environments in developing countries (e.g. the
destruction of rainforests) is a consequence of the economic demands of the wealthier
members of our planet. The following selections all address the issue of consumption
as a factor in habitat destruction.
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| Reading 6. Population and
Consumption: Redefining Happiness http://www.nwf.org/nwf/international/pop/consume.html |
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We noted in the readings on
population, that more damage is done to the environment by members of rich countries than
by members of poor countries. This brief article from the National Wildlife Federation explains the
costs of our consumption patterns to the environment, as well as to children and families.
There is recognition, also, that the present population of the world cannot sustain
the standard of living enjoyed by the wealthy countries, and that, even if population does
not increase, the rich must re-evaluate their consumption-based culture. |
Reading 7. Revisiting Carrying Capacity:
Area-Based Indicators of Sustainability
http://dieoff.com/page110.htm |
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"The fundamental question for
ecological economics,"says William E. Rees in this article, "is whether
remaining stocks of natural capital are adequate to sustain the anticipated load of the
human economy into the next century." Rees uses the idea of "carrying
capacity" to make the point that our way of life is not sustainable. But his
use of the term (unlike many others) takes into account the high consumption lifestyle
characteristic of the culture of capitalism. He defines "carrying capacity" as
"the maximum rates of resource harvesting and waste generation (the maximum load)
that can be sustained indefinitely without progressively impairing the productivity and
functional integrity of relevant ecosystems wherever the latter may be located."
He argues that many countries are already vastly exceeding their carrying capacity,
existing largely by drawing on the resources of others or of future generations; as he
puts it, "so-called 'advanced' economies are running massive, unaccounted, ecological
deficits with the rest of the planet." Thus if the present population of the
world were to all to enjoy the lifestyle of North Americans (to which they all aspire), we
would need an additional two planets Earth. Gandhi had the same insight over 50 years ago; a
reporter asked him if he wanted India to take the same path to industrialization as
England. "If it took tiny England half the world to reach its level of
development," asked Gandhi, "how many worlds would it take India?" |
Reading 8. Ecological
Footprints of Nations
http://www.ecouncil.ac.cr/rio/focus/report/english/footprint/ |
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This report is based on one of the
questions posed by William E. Rees in the previous selection. "How large an
area of productive land is needed to sustain a defined population indefinitely, wherever
on Earth that land is located?" The report notes that There are approximately
1.7 hectares of land to support each person on earth; the problem is that in some nations
each person is using 8, 9 or 10 hectares of land to support his or her standard of living.
Thus the "ecological footprints" of some nations are far larger than that of
others. The report compares the ecological impact of 52 large nations,
inhabited by 80 percent of the world population, and examines the extent their consumption
can be supported by their local ecological capacity. Among other things it finds that
humanity uses over one third more resources and eco-services than nature can regenerate.
In 1992, this ecological deficit was only one quarter. |
Reading 9. Product
Diversity Surpasses Biodiversity!
http://www.theonion.com/onion3412/productdiversity.html |
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There is a bright side to our
consumption habits; according to this tongue-in-cheek report, there are now more consumer
products in the world than there are species of living things, and the gap is
growing. Check out the article and
the graph at The Onion. |
| C. Food and the
Environment |
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In Global Problems and the Culture of
Capitalism we emphasize the role of consumption in environmental devastation, using our
food habits to illustrate how our tastes in food have been culturally constructed to
maximize consumption. Meat (largely beef) and sugar--fat and sucrose--comprise the
major part of the American diet, to the detriment of our health and the environment.
The following selections discuss the consequences of our taste for beef, and the
environmental problems that rise from the production of a by-product of sugar--rum.
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Reading 10. Warrior
for a Healthy Planet
http://www.consciouschoice.com/issues/cc116/howardlyman.html |
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The American taste for beef, we
argue in Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism, is environmentally destructive.
Meat-centered diets, as Sidney Mintz has noted, are very unusual; most
cultures center their food tastes around some carbohydrate prepared in some distinct
fashion (bread, pasta, tortilla, etc), adding spices, vegetables, and meat as side dishes.
We also trace the development of the American taste for beef, noting the role that
government took in fostering that taste. In this article James Faber explains the
dangers of our beef consumption to our environment, to our health, and to the animals
themselves. |
Reading 11. The Relationship Between Rum
and the Environment
http://www.american.edu/projects/mandala/TED/rum.htm |
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In Global Problems and the Culture
of Capitalism we trace the evolution of our taste for sugar, and discuss the negative
environmental impact of sugar production. One of the byproducts of sugar is
molasses, which is then used for rum production. Rum, in fact, figured almost as
strongly in the so-called triangular trade route from Africa, to the Americas, and to
England. This article describes some of the environmental affects of rum production
in Puerto Rico, where it is one of the staples of the economy. |
| D. The
Resistance to Environmental Action |
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Can environmental destruction be reversed
or even reduced in the culture of capitalism? Polls indicate that for Americans
environmental safeguards are at the top of their list of priorities, and even conservative
politicians are getting on the environmental bandwagon. However some claim that it
is impossible, given the values and cultural priorities of the culture of capitalism, to
halt the destruction of the environment, let alone ever reverse it. The accumulation
of goods, wages, and profits will, they say, never be sacrificed to save the
environment. The following selections indicate why this may be so.
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Reading 12. Ecology and Capitalist Costs of
Production: No Exit
http://fbc.binghamton.edu/iwecol.htm |
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This essay by Immanual Wallerstein
offers an excellent overview of the role of environmental pollution in our society, and,
more importantly recognizes a historical dimension to the problem that is lacking in many
critiques. From Wallerstein's perspective, environmental degradation is not simply
a byproduct of our way of life, it is an intrinsic part of it. The implication is
that, other than radically changing the way we live, there is not that much that we can do
about it. He begins with what he calls two elementary features of historical
capitalism: the first is the need for perpetual growth in production and constant
geographic expansion, and, the second is the fact that one source of capitalist profit
comes from passing the environmental cost of production and consumption on to the larger
society, the developing world, or future generations. This is what Wallerstein calls
the "dirty secret" of capitalism. |
Reading 13. The Gathering Storm:
Corporations and Climate Change
http://www.corpwatch.org/trac/feature/climate/indexa.html |
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Imagine if
hurricanes were named after corporations rather than people; headlines might read
"Exxon rips through the Caribbean"; "Shell devastates Florida."
That's the prospect discussed at
Corporate Watch in this article. The implication of the article is that
corporations will do anything they can to retain the right to pass on the environmental
costs of business, or to undermine any attempt to hold them responsible for environmental
degradation. The article discusses the latest public relations campaign by some
corporations to undermine the Kyoto Protocol to reduce the environmental affects of
carbon emissions. |
Exercise 2. Greening Earth Society
http://www.greeningearthsociety.org/ |
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One of the points made in Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism is
that corporations have enormous resources with which to pursue a strategy to convince the
public that corporate actions, regardless of the social, political, or environmental
costs, are in the public's interest. To illustrate, check out this Web site of
the "Greening Earth Society"; they explain that, not only is global warming not
a problem, it is actually good for us. Their motto is: "Greening Earth
Society believes that humankind's industrial evolution is good, and using fossil fuels to
enable our economic activity is as natural as breathing." Before you begin exploring,
however, here is what Wayne Grytting had to say about this in his Newspeak newsletter:
A new environmental organization has moved to the
forefront of groups trying to educate the public about global warming. While most groups
stay fixated on negative consequences like flooding and disease, The Greening Earth
Society has chosen to focus attention on the "positive aspects of a rising level of
carbon dioxide" in the belief that "nature is growing stronger, bigger, greener
and more resilient as a result of what we humans are doing to promote our own
growth." The GES has special access to all the latest information because it shares
offices and officers with the Western Fuel Association (and who should know more about
global warming than coal producers). The Greening Earth Society arguably has one of the
better environmental mottoes—"humankind is a part of nature, rather than apart
from nature." That’s why they understand that using fossil fuels is "as
natural as breathing." (That is, if you still can breathe.)
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Exercise 3: All You Can Eat—EWG
http://www.foodnews.org/ |
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Finally, since the corporate world
assures us that what they do is good for us, they shouldn't mind your finding out what
kinds of pollutants they're feeding us. At this site provided by the Environmental
Working Group, you can calculate the type and quantity of pesticides you consumed
today. All you need to do is fill in what you ate, and they'll give you the
information. Bon Appetite, as they say. |
Additional Internet
Resources on the Environment |
