Artificial Reefs

http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/05/17/us-subway-reef-idUSN1643767620080517

Old subway cars on the ocean floor serve as artificial reefs and provide protection from (nonhuman) predators for over-fished populations. It's been done elsewhere in the past, and seems to work pretty well. I wonder, though, how this might affect the predators.

While this is a good idea, patchwork like this may also pose the risk of prolonging the kind of action necessary to address over-fishing on the systemic level. It seems, at least, to be a worthy part of the larger solution.

A Narrow View of Growth

In class today we talked about short-sighted, artificial economic growth as measured by GDP. It reminded me of a report on China's so called "ghost cities", which are a result of GDP quotas set by the central government. There are an estimated 64 million vacant apartments, many of which overlook the slums of people who cannot afford the rent for these places. Bejiing alone has more unoccupied apartments than all of the United States.

The South China Mall, or "The Great Mall of China" (as in The Great Firewall of China--I mean *Wall) is supposedly the largest mall in the world, but is also the emptiest. I think this is the sort of thing opponents of Keynesian economics point to to discredit government intervention in the economy.

Some speculate that this is a housing bubble that will dwarf the one we had in the U.S., though I think China's hope is to move much of its rural population into these areas and actually use them.

So it is clear that while GDP is a way for countries to inflate their image, it does not necessarily correspond to net qualitative gain. It is reductively economic, and even then, in a narrow sense of the word. What it measures is important, but it's not the entirety of what an economy is, or what it should be serving. There are other indicators though, that when taken together, might get us closer to a more cohesive picture, like the Human Development Index, Genuine Progress Indicator, or more recently the Social Progress Index.

A Beautiful Moment in Time

You Are What What You Eat Eats Too

While it may be true that the vegan has the blood of mice on his or her bread, it doesn't gain us any ethical ground to retire the endeavor of conscientious eating altogether and go ahead and just eat the cow, chicken, or pig. In many cases, doing just that would lead to deaths of both cow and numerous field mice, if it is mice we are concerned with. 

It's easy to forget that we don't just consume an animal, we also consume all the resources that were required to bring the animal into being and render it a food product. The range of these estimates vary wildly, but even taken from the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, it requires 435 gallons of water and 3lbs of grain to produce one pound of beef (they don't say anything about how many mice must die, but I'm sure some do when harvesting the cattle-feed). The more common estimate is 2,500 gallons of water and 13 lbs of grain. 

This is not a very efficient way to get food calories, or to use a limited fresh water supply.

"36 percent of the calories produced by the world’s crops are being used for animal feed … and only 12 percent of those calories ultimately contribute to the human diet"

Rolston

At the heart of Rolston's argument is an assertion of what value is, and where it originates. This is no small task--it is to answer an entire branch of philosophy. "[T]here is value wherever there is positive creativity," he says. He is asking us to do something quite difficult, I think. To understand, feel, and respect the intrinsic value in a tree seems like it requires a long drawing-out of empathy and awareness, an extension we are not accustomed to making.

At this point I think I understand what Rolston is saying, find it compelling, but I am not yet able to feel the weight of it fully, and so have not been able to swallow his argument whole. It is something that will surely be referenced when we compare and contrast future readings, which will hopefully help clear our understandings of Rolston.

Time-Lapse of Every Nuclear Explosion from 1945 - 1998

For essentially being just a map with beeps and dots, this is pretty terrifying (due in part, I think, to the artist's suspenseful use of sound and silence, which is hauntingly musical--the months being the metronome). It's difficult to conceive the full scale of the environmental impact these 2,053 explosions have made.

                          


Every time a nuclear device is detonated, the Mayor of Hiroshima writes a letter protesting the test. The mayors have been doing this since 1968.

The Atomic Cafe

 
The documentary below is a sharp, darkly humorous window into our collective propensity for naivete and vacuous critical and moral thinking. It's apparent how directly it can effect our environment. Some salient moments:

"Watched from a safe distance, this explosion is one of the most beautiful sights ever seen by man. You're probably saying, 'so it's beautiful, what makes it so dangerous?'"

                                -- Army training video (watched from a safe distance)

"nackesackee, pretty as a picture...I let the bomb go--that was my greatest thrill" 

                                          -- Pilot on the bombing of Nagasaki


It's hard not to compare this sort of catastrophic enablism by an indoctrinated public to our current situation with the environment, among other things.

Dipping into Pragmatism

The most interesting ethical approaches surveyed in the first chapter to me were pragmatism and ecofeminism. Since Abbey has already written thoughtfully about ecofeminism on her blog, I'll contribute a few thoughts on pragmatism, though I'm sure we will delve into them both in greater depth later in the course.

One of my first thoughts when reading our book's summary of the approach was how similar it seems to Professor Silliman's multi-criterial value incrementalism, though with a less specific name (I'm curious to hear how he might differentiate the two). Philosophical pragmatism, perhaps more broadly, views thought as a functional tool for practical application. Like Professor Silliman's MCVI, it recognizes the need to account for changing environments and changing inputs into those environments when making philosophical judgments. It is an ongoing practice, requiring constant reassessment, and so is fundamentally dependent on the flow of experience, and the adaptation of those doing the experiencing--not abstract thought.

A common criticism of pragmatism is that it is anthropocentric, since it views thought as instrumental to our ends. But instrumental value and intrinsic value are not mutually exclusive. There is no reason that the inherent values of other creatures, other systems, or objects may not also be considered along with their instrumental value. It simply requires a broad awareness to attend the assessment.

Here is a relatively accessible essay on environmental pragmatism. The first part of chapter 2 is most relevant. In sum:

- We cannot talk about the environment without referring to our experience of that environment.
- Experience is not just subjective, but often objective. This is pertinent to ethical consideration.
- Previous ethical assumptions need to be extended, and likely transformed to meet new  environmental quandaries in ongoing determinations.
- Like ecofeminism, it is largely concerned with interrelations within and to ecosystems.


Why would a philosophical approach ever want to consider itself something other than pragmatic?

Introductory Post

Hello!

My name is Jon. I'm a philosophy major concentrating in law, ethics, and society. I look forward to many lively discussion threads.

Today in class, it struck me that both the action biocentrists advocate, and the action strict (informed) utilitarians advocate seem quite similar: we have to do more to prevent the destruction of the planet. So the opposing moral theories here call for the same response in practice. The same can't be said for our lifeboat scenario if J.S. Mill and Kant were in our counsel ("eat Sebastian to save us all", and "don't eat Sebastian, he is infinitely valuable!", respectively). But it seems for the sake of advancing the conservational agenda in the political arena, the most effective arguments for environmentalism are going to be based on the planet's direct and indirect instrumental value to us. Regardless of whether we ought to view our planet and its life systems as inherently valuable, its stability is a moral obligation to our own species -- on the most massive scale conceivable, really -- because we are helplessly dependent on its good health.


“What's the use of a fine house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?”--Thoreau