Story of Stuff

This website has a video on the story of stuff. In short it describes the consumer cycle from extraction to waste and all the fixings in between. The perspective is of the shock-type environmentalism.

The Tesla

Here is the website for Tesla Motors, manufacturers of a new high-end electric sports car, named for Nikola Tesla. Here is an ABC News profile of the car itself. And here's a Netscape video piece on the car and the company.

L.A. Times Interview: J. Craig Venter

In this Q&A Venter describes the possibility of using genetically modified organisms to create new fuel sources.

an excerpt:

"We're trying to design cells that produce unique renewable fuels. We have one of those in extensive testing now that could be one of the first green jet fuels. Hopefully there'll be hundreds of these. With this breadth of biology, we have the capability of probably making any chemical out there. It's not hard even to imagine gasoline or octane that we put into our tanks. Bacteria can make that."

yet another piece on Nordhous & Shellenberger...

In this profile, which hails the Break Through authors as "the bad boys of environmentalism," Nordhaus even works in a reference to our old friend Thomas Kuhn. And, of course, here's the link to their blog.

Three Gorges Dam

This article on the environmental impact of the Three Gorges Dam provides an interesting post-script to J.R. McNeill's discussion of ambitious dam-building projects in Something New Under the Sun. And this article highlights the growing use of small scale hydroelectric power in the U.S.

Innovators in Green Technology: Profiles of Fuller, Brand, & Lovins

To supplement our discussion yesterday, here are some profiles of Buckminster Fuller, Stewart Brand, and Amory Lovins.

Go Nanosoloar

In this article, an environmental news website details the power of Nanosoloar technology. When I read this article it immediately reminded me of the potential for humanity to overcome the limitations of natural resources with new technologies (for example, the nitrification process or genetically modified crops) and as of now this new technology promises to be environmentally and economically friendly-a combination that could produce positive results.

NYT: Challenges to Both the Right and Left on Global Warming

This article describes an emerging consensus on the reality of global warming and the changing debate on what to do about it.

Great Pacific Garbage Patch (Part Deux)

This is a great video for the non-believers.

P.S. Thank you for the articles Ayora, guess I was wrong (maybe...).

Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Here is an article from the San Francisco Chronicle that describes the GPGP, an enormous pile of garbage located between San Francisco and Hawaii weighing 3.5 million tons and twice the size of Texas!

Radioactive Nimby: No One Wants Nuclear Waste

Here is an article from today's New York Times exploring the chief unresolved challenge to nuclear energy: where to put the waste. In the American southwest, plans to store radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada have run into serious opposition, and other examples of the Nimby (Not In My Back Yard) drama are being played out around the world.

GreenTechMedia.com

Here is a site dedicated to news about venture capital and green technology.

New Information Technology meets New Energy Technology

In this column Thomas Friedman considers the broad possibilities of a convergence between the I.T. and E.T. sectors. This article about a solar powered I.T. center in India is a specific example of this convergence.

Edward Abbey

Here is a short video on Edward Abbey to supplement this week's handout.

Scientist skeptical of global warming

In an article by CNN, recently published Oct 24, 2007, there is a reference to a scientist by the name of Dr. Patrick Michael's who is skeptical of the severity of global warming on Greenland's' ice sheet; indirectly this assumes that he is also skeptical of how damaging anthropogenic sources of carbon are on the global warming trend. Another researcher by the name of Willie Soon (Bio and selected works) is a climate change "skeptic" as well. He works for the Harvard Smithsonian Center in Astrophysics, and has for some years criticized the largely agreed upon anthropogenic origins of global warming. In an article by NewScienitst it is noted that Soon receives funding for his research from Exxon-Mobil, which is analogous to Professor Deese's comment on cancer research and the tobacco industry in the late twentieth century. I recommend any one who is interested in this topic of science, skeptics, and global warming see this website.

TVA

This movie is reminiscent of the nuclear fallout film we watched in class. While it is long, its message centers on how area famers in the 1930's were convinced of the benefits they could enjoy from technology. I can't find the button to make a hyperlink.

Duck, and Cover

I think Bert is a stupid name for a turtle, but he has a valid message, so we should all listen. We can all learn from this government propaganda turtle.

Death to Weeds (1947)

This film acts as propaganda by the Dow Chemical Company for the safe use of 2,4-Dow herbicides, highlighting the effectiveness of the herbicides and the ease of application. It also suggests that any golf course (obviously teeming with human activity) would greatly benefit from 2,4-D spraying. Rachel Carson wrote of the dangers of herbicide use in Silent Spring, and the Rachel Carson Council Inc. website has cited surprisingly recent complaints concerning the detrimental affects of 2,4-D specifically.

"The Animal Poison Control Center (APCC) received approximately 100 calls during the late 1980s on adverse effects in dogs associated with the phenoxy herbicide 2,4-D (Beasley, V.R. & H. Trammel)...In humans, symptoms of 2,4-D poisoning can be coughing, burning, dizziness, temporary loss of muscle coordination, fatigue, and weakness with or without nausea (Kamrin, M.A.), as well as vomiting, and severe, or migraine headache (personal communication, Haugen, C.)" (Rachel Carson Council Website).

Rain for the Earth Part I (1937)

This film produced by the U.S. Federal Works Agency in 1937 gives an account of the effects of the Dust Bowl in the American Great Plains; it gives a face to the name and history of this American environmental disaster.

"Atomic Energy: A Force for Good"

This film was produced by the Christophers in 1955 to promote atomic energy. Although the Christophers were a lay Catholic society that had been established just a decade earlier, they had a remarkable budget and resources to make this film. Produced by Jack Denove, whose credits included TV's Cavalcade of America, the film was written by bestselling author Eugene Vale, directed by Robert Stevenson, and starred Paul Young as the skeptical rancher who learns to embrace the Atomic Energy Commission's plan to construct a nuclear facility for "producing fissionable materials" in his small western town.

they pave paradise, they put up a parking lot!

as long as it wasn't on farmland, pinchot probably wouldn't have cared!

Rachel Carson

Here is a concise bio of Rachel Carson to supplement this week's reading.

A New Essay from Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger

It costs nothing to log on and read this essay, though you may have to view a short ad. Here's a short excerpt:

Stop your sobbing

Doomsayers like Al Gore and Jared Diamond aren't doing the environment much good. To save the earth, we need to stop blaming and start celebrating ourselves.

By Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger

Oct. 09, 2007 | Rachel Carson opened "Silent Spring," her 1962 polemic against chemical pesticides in general and DDT in particular, with a terrible prophecy: "Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth."

"Silent Spring" set the template for nearly a half century of environment writing: wrap the latest scientific research about an ecological calamity in a tragic narrative that conjures nostalgia for Nature while prophesying ever worse disasters to come unless human societies repent for their sins against Nature and work for a return to a harmonious relationship with the natural world.

Eco-tragedies are premised on the notion that humankind's survival depends on understanding that ecological crises are a consequence of human intrusions on Nature, and that humans must let go of their consumer, religious, and ideological fantasies and recognize where their true self-interest lies.

Grounded in a tradition of eco-tragedy begun by Carson and motivated by the lack of progress on the ecological crisis, environmental writers have produced a flood of high-profile books that take the tragic narrative of humankind's fall from Nature to new heights: Sir Martin Rees's 2003 "Our Final Hour," Richard Posner's 2004 "Catastrophe," Paul and Anne Ehrlich's 2004 "One with Nineveh," James Kunstler's 2005 "The Long Emergency," James Lovelock's 2006 "The Revenge of Gaia," and Al Gore's 2006 "An Inconvenient Truth," to name just a few.

For the most part, these environmentalist cautionary tales have had the opposite of their intended effect, provoking fatalism, conservatism, and survivalism among readers and the lay public, not the rational embrace of environmental policies. Constantly surprised and angered when people fail to behave as environmentalists would like them to, environment writers complain that the public is irrational, in denial, or just plain foolish. They presume that the failure of the public to heed their warnings says something meaningful about human nature itself, attributing humanity's disregard for Nature to desires like the lust for power and concluding that, in the end, we are all little more than reactive apes, insufficiently evolved to take the long view and understand the complexity and interconnectedness of the natural systems on which we depend.

Kunstler begins "The Long Emergency" by quoting Carl Jung as saying, "People cannot stand too much reality." In fact, it was T.S. Eliot, not Jung, who said "Humankind cannot bear very much reality." But the attitude of such doomsayers recalls something Jung actually did say: "If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool."

Environmental tales of tragedy begin with Nature in harmony and almost always end in a quasi-authoritarian politics. Eco-tragic narratives diagnose human desire, aspiration, and striving to overcome the constraints of our world as illnesses to be cured or sins to be punished. They aim to short-circuit democratic values by establishing Nature as it is understood and interpreted by scientists as the ultimate authority that human societies must obey. And they insist that humanity's future is a zero-sum proposition -- that there is only so much prosperity, material comfort, and modernity to go around. The story told by these eco-tragedies is not that humankind cannot stand too much reality but rather that Nature cannot stand too much humanity.

Carson begins "Silent Spring" by narrating a "Fable for Tomorrow," describing a bucolic American town "where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings." She imagines Nature to be something essentially harmonious and in balance. But long before there were humans, volcanoes erupted, asteroids hit Earth, and great extinctions occurred. Throughout the animal kingdom there is murder and gang rape, even among the much beloved and anthropomorphized dolphin. Indigenous peoples, for their part, cleared forests, set massive fires, and overhunted, massively altering their environments. They engaged in agriculture, war, cannibalism, and torture.

To imagine Nature as essentially harmonious is to ignore the obvious and overwhelming evidence of Nature's disharmony. To posit that human societies should model themselves after living systems that are characterized as Nature, as environmentalists often do, begs the question: which living systems? Even if the Earth heats up to such an extent that every last vestige of humankind disappears, there may still exist living systems, just not ones that can sustain us. ...

FOX News on Global Warming

This report describes global warming as a positive trend, because it will make arctic oil reserves more accessible. To provide some relevant background information, Brave New Films produced this retrospective on FOX coverage of this issue.

Environmental History Movies

Here is a website address for a listing of movies related to environmental history. It is provided by the history cooperative; it is journal article from the journal Environmental History.

http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/eh/12.2/marson.html

Arctic Sea Ice: 2003 to 2007

This interactive map tracks rapid changes in the Arctic over the previous four years. Also, here is a website from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign dedicated to monitoring changes in the cryosphere.

reminder

The book (or film) review is due during our specially scheduled class meeting on Friday, Oct. 5th. It should be 3-5 pages, or approx. 750 to 1250 words. As you critique your subject, you are encouraged to describe your personal response to it (the use of "I" is o.k. here) and to assess its relationship to some of the broader trends in the history of U.S. Environmentalism that we've surveyed class discussions and readings.

"The Death of Environmentalism"

This essay, published in January of 2005 by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, has been the focus of a heated debate among environmentalists (and their critics) ever since.

Here are a few selections:

We believe that the environmental movement's foundational concepts, its method for framing legislative proposals, and its very institutions are outmoded. Today environmentalism is just another special interest. Evidence for this can be found in its concepts, its proposals, and its reasoning. What stands out is how arbitrary environmental leaders are about what gets counted and what doesn't as "environmental." Most of the movement's leading thinkers, funders and advocates do not question their most basic assumptions about who we are, what we stand for, and what it is that we should be doing.

Environmentalism is today more about protecting a supposed "thing" -- "the environment" -- than advancing the worldview articulated by Sierra Club founder John Muir, who nearly a century ago observed, "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe."

Thinking of the environment as a "thing" has had enormous implications for how environmentalists conduct their politics. The three-part strategic framework for environmental policy-making hasn't changed in 40 years: first, define a problem (e.g. global warming) as "environmental." Second, craft a technical remedy (e.g., cap-and-trade). Third, sell the technical proposal to legislators through a variety of tactics, such as lobbying, third-party allies, research reports, advertising, and public relations. . . .


. . . Our thesis is this: the environmental community's narrow definition of its self-interest leads to a kind of policy literalism that undermines its power. When you look at the long string of global warming defeats under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, it is hard not to conclude that the environmental movement's approach to problems and policies hasn't worked particularly well. And yet there is nothing about the behavior of environmental groups, and nothing in our interviews with environmental leaders, that indicates that we as a community are ready to think differently about our work.

What the environmental movement needs more than anything else right now is to take a collective step back to rethink everything. We will never be able to turn things around as long as we understand our failures as essentially tactical, and make proposals that are essentially technical.

Hetch Hetchy Commercial

I found this off youtube during my search for visual representations of Hetch Hetchy Valley/Dam.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRnW3ijvXwE

Worth a look if you want to see the visual changes as well as see that the Hetch Hetchy preservation movement lives on today.

Heres is a link to the Restore Hetch Hetchy website: http://www.hetchhetchy.org/index.html

"The Purse Seine" and "Shine, Perishing Republic"

Here are two readings from the syllabus by the California poet Robinson Jeffers:

"The Purse Seine"

"Shine, Perishing Republic"

Timeline of Environmental History

This timeline can be a very useful resource, especially as a starting point for your term paper research.

The World Without Us

Last week in class, someone brought up The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. Here is a review.

Two blades from one origin

I looked into the origin of the frequently stated "two blades of grass from where one grew before" statement in our readings (I have seen it Worster's book where Thoreau uses the statement to support polytheism, and in the Marsh article)

The origin is from Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver Travels" (publ. 1726). In the book a character, King Brogdingnag, says "Whoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and would do more essential service to his country then the whole race of politicians put together" (see JSTOR article, review of" two blades of grass": http://www.jstor.org/view/10711031/ap040106/04a00180/0)

White, Linneaus, and Thoreau

As a supplement to the Donald Worster readings this week, here are some good online sources for Gilbert White, Carl Linnaeus, and Henry David Thoreau.

Keep America Beautiful PSA, 1971

Here is a video link to the famous "Crying Indian" public service announcement of 1971, one of the most famous, and parodied, spots in television history.

Welcome to HI 570

HI 570
U.S. Environmentalism
Fall, 2007
Boston University
R. S. Deese

Course Goal: To trace the development of American environmental thought, culture, and politics from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century. The primary theme of this course will be the evolving relationship between conceptions of progress and nature in American history, as reflected in what historian Donald Worster has called the “imperial” and “Arcadian” strains of modern ecological thought. This course will begin with the publication of Man and Nature by George Perkins Marsh in 1864, and survey the major developments in American environmental thought and politics through the Gilded Age, Progressive Era, New Deal, Cold War, and the post-Cold War decades. Students will be required to write two book reviews, give one class presentation, and write one 15-20 page research paper. The reading assignments for each week, including handouts, should be completed by every Thursday in order to assure an informed discussion. Attendance and participation will account for 20 per cent of each student’s final course grade.

Grade Breakdown:
20%: Class Participation
20%: Book Review 1 (due in class on 9/27)
15% Class Presentation (TBA)
20%: Book Review 2 (due in class on 10/25)
25%: Research Paper (due in class on 12/11)






REQUIRED TEXTS:

Carson, R. - Silent Spring: 40th Anniv. Edition (HM), ISBN 978-0-6-1824906-0
Cronon, W. - Uncommon Ground, (Norton), ISBN 978-0-3-9331511-0
Hays, S. - Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency, 59 (UCP), ISBN 978-0-8-2295702-7
Leopold, A. - Sand County Almanac, (Random), ISBN 978-0-3-4534505-9
McNeill, J.R. - Something New Under the Sun, (Norton), ISBN 978-0-3-9332183-8
Phillips, S. - This Land, This Nation, (Cambridge), ISBN 978-0-5-2161796-3
Sale, K. – The Green Revolution, (Ingram), ISBN 978-0-8-0901551-1
Worster, D. - Nature's Economy, 2nd (Cambridge), ISBN 978-0-5-2146834-3

Basic Ground Rules:


1. Turn off all cell phones, beepers, etc. before all class meetings begin.

2. Always come on time to all class meetings, and participate in all discussions. Please don’t be shy about speaking up in class discussions, and don’t be afraid to ask questions. Virtually all original scholarship begins by posing questions that others have overlooked or dismissed as simply not worth asking; therefore, the very question you might be afraid to ask because it seems naïve or unorthodox could well be the most interesting and groundbreaking question that anyone could raise. Don’t hesitate to ask it. Also, please remember that I am more than happy to field your questions and address your concerns via email, telephone, and during my regular office hours.

3. Always come to class prepared to discuss all readings for that week. When you do the assigned reading each week, be sure to underline passages that you see as important, and write down questions that you would like to raise in our section meetings and in my office hours.

Term Paper: For this course you will be required to write a 15-20 page research paper that explores the scientific, cultural, and political dimensions of a single environmental issue within a specific historical context. Your Student Presentation will be based on your research paper.

Regulations Against Plagiarism: Needless to say, the work you present must be entirely your own and all sources must be diligently credited in your footnotes and bibliography. Any attempt at plagiarism, representing the work of another person as your own, will be result in failure in this course and severe disciplinary action by Boston University. If you should need more information on this subject, consult the website of the History Department.



Week One

9/4: Introduction

9/6: George Perkins Marsh and the Gilded Age

Donald Worster, Nature’s Economy pp. 1-111

David Lowenthal, George Perkins Marsh, HANDOUT


Week Two

9/11: Pinchot, Muir, and the Progressive Era

9/13: Hetch Hetchy
Donald Worster, Nature’s Economy, pp. 114-253

Samuel P. Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency, FINISH.

Anne Whiston Spirn, “Constructing Nature” Uncommon Ground, pp. 91-113

John Muir, A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf, HANDOUT

Gifford Pinchot, Breaking New Ground, HANDOUT

Mary Hunter Austin, Land of Little Rain, HANDOUT

Week Three

9/18: The Natural and Technological Sublime

9/20: Reshaping Nature

Sarah T. Phillips, This Land, This Nation, FINISH

David E. Nye, The American Technological Sublime, HANDOUT

Julian Huxley, What Dare I Think?, HANDOUT

Robinson Jeffers, “Shine, Perishing Republic” & “The Purse Seine”: HANDOUT

Week Four

9/25: Dr. New Deal, Dr. Win the War, & Dr. Strangelove

9/27: Aldo Leopold and the Birth of Cold War Environmentalism

Donald Worster, Nature’s Economy, pp.256-338

Aldo Leopold, Sand County Almanac, FINISH

Mark Fiege, “The Sense of Wonder” Environmental History July 2007: HANDOUT

Ramachandra Guha, How Much Should a Person Consume? Ch. 6, HANDOUT


Week Five

10/2: The Atomic Age

10/4: Fallout

Donald Worster, Nature’s Economy, FINISH.

Aldous Huxley, selections from Ape and Essence and The Human Situation, HANDOUT

Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, HANDOUT



Week Six

10/9: Rachel Carson, Oceanographer and Naturalist

10/11: Reaction to Silent Spring

Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, FINISH

Aldous Huxley, Island, HANDOUT

Week Seven

10/16: The Quiet Crisis

10/18: Earth Day, 1970

Kirkpatrick Sale, The Green Revolution, FINISH

Stewart Brand, The Whole Earth Catalogue, HANDOUT

Shepard Krech, III, The Ecological Indian, HANDOUT

Press Clippings on Earth Day, 1970: HANDOUT


Week Eight

10/23: Ecofeminism

10/25: “Deep Ecology”

Carolyn Merchant, “Reinventing Eden” in William Cronon, ed., Uncommon Ground, pp. 132-159

George Sessions and Bill Devall, Deep Ecology, HANDOUT



Week Nine

10/30: The Monkey Wrench Gang

11/1: Something New Under the Sun

J.R. McNeill, Something New Under the Sun, pp. 1-117

Edward Abbey The Monkey Wrench Gang, HANDOUT


Week Ten

11/6: The Reagan Era and After

11/8: Earth Day, 1990

J.R. McNeill, Something New Under the Sun, pp. 118-227

Press Clippings on Earth Day, 1990: HANDOUT



Week Eleven

11/13: The End of Nature?

11/15: Post-Cold War Environmentalism

J.R. McNeill, Something New Under the Sun, FINISH

Bill McKibben, The End of Nature, HANDOUT


Week Twelve

11/20: Ecocriticism

11/22: The Trouble With Wilderness

Lawrence Buell, The Future of Environmental Criticism, HANDOUT

Ramachandra Guha, How Much Should a Person Consume? Ch.9, HANDOUT

William Cronon, “The Trouble With Wilderness” Uncommon Ground, pp. 69-90


Week Thirteen

11/27: “Everybody talks about the weather…”

11/29: Visions and Revisions; Student Presentations / Peer Review

Richard White, “Are You an Environmentalist, or Do You Work for a Living?” Uncommon Ground, pp. 171-185

Jennifer Price, “Looking for Nature at the Mall” Uncommon Ground, pp. 186-203


Week Fourteen

12/4: Student Presentations / Peer Review

12/6: Student Presentations / Peer Review

Susan G. Davis, “Touch the Magic” Uncommon Ground, pp. 204-217


Week Fifteen

12/11: All Term Papers Due in Class

Cronon, et al. “Toward a Conclusion” Uncommon Ground, pp. 447-459