video--origins of environmental history, history
What environmental issues concern you today?
- destruction of habitat
- housing developments replacing forests and farmland
- water pollution, health concerns and other issues
- will we run out of fossil fuels
- can we develop alternative energy sources
- global warming (mostly due to fossil fuels)
- drought--caused in part by global warming
- depletion of underground water (aquifer) in some places
- disposal of waste--earth, water,
air, oceans
- air pollution
- food
- how to produce enough
- are we wearing out the land
- farmland is being lost
- overfishing
- impact of chemicals used in farming (both on nature and on people)
- new high tech farming techniques
- we need to be concerned with the long term effects of things that look cheap and convenient
- learn from what didn't work to find better solutions
- go back in part to older techniques?
- can we prevent problems instead of reacting only after it becomes a crisis?
- weigh our needs as humans
with those of the environment
- climate change
- species extinction
- species introduction
(Johnny Appleseed, Michael Pollan Botany
of Desire)
- eathquakes
- natural resources
- natural limits
- geography
- how did wilderness come to
be something we valued?
- movement of people--rural to cities to suburbs to ???
- natural parks becoming tourist attractions
What would happen if we wrote history from the point of view of nature instead of human beings? (parallel to social history being written from the point of view of poor people.
changes of our ideas about nature
- coming to appreciate
wilderness
- went from seeing nature as
something to exploit to seeing it as something to preserve and protect
- wanting to prevent extinctions
- new idea that nature has the right to exist for its own sake, not just for human convenience
There is a political story--the history of laws and regulations
- pollution control
- establishes and runs national parks
- other government agencies
- political activism
technology
- given us more control over nature eg. build dams to prevent floods
- automobile
- can get to natural places
- spreads out human settlement
- pollution--lead and other
poisons, carbon that contributes to global warming, oil spills, noise,
acid rain
- convenience and isolation
from the environment
- using up natural resources--oil, rubber
- sometimes there is an easy technological fix for a problem, but often not
- gas used in refrigerators and airconditioners contributed to damage to the ozone layer
- chemists invented a gas that works better and doesn't harm the ozone layer
- but other problems can't
be solved so easily
- changes in entertainment--nature deficit disorder
- how technology changes how
we experience nature
let's go a step deeper:
can we divide the world into human beings vs. nature?
- no because human beings are part of nature
- how do you decide what is natural?
- all natural products--what they mean by natural
- invasive exotics--plants that are natural someplace else but not here
- we may decide to consider something natural that is very much manmade--lawns
- not recently synthesized by human beings
- restoration
ecology--recreate natural ecosystems by human action
- there is no clear dividing
line between humans and nature