Needs Revision

Reading to be done before Class: AE Article 1 "How many planets? A survey of the global environment pp. 2-18, The Economist; Article 6. "Globalizing Greenwatsh" Paemla Foster, New Internationalist, March 2004, Article 4 "Advocating for th Enviornment: Local Dimensions of Transnational Networks" Maria Guadalupe Moog Rodrigues, Enviornment, March 2004 and Article 8 "An Economy for the Earth," by Lester Brown. Re-read Muir from the first discussion if you wish.
Come to class with a basic familiarity with the following concepts and ideas: Sustainable development, eco-economy, environmental indicators and targets, human modification of the environment.

To prepare for class: With this discussion we come full circle back to many of the themes from our first discussion. Lester Brown outlines what it will take to build an eco-economy in which we humans "are a part of nature instead of estranged from it" (pg. 67 emphasis in the original). His is similar to the view of John Muir who sought to preserve the wilderness and was encouraged by the "growing interest in the care and preservation of forests and wild places in general" (Muir 1901: 1). What differs in the century that separates the two authors are their lists of what has been lost. Muir laments the transformation of the Central Valley of California "ploughed and pastured out of existence, gone forever" (ibid: 5). In contrast Brown laments the loss of the Aral sea, the glaciers in Glacier National park, and anticipates global warming. The challenges that we face today are greater both in scale and in complexity. In "Forget nature: even Eden is engineered," Andrew Revkin echoes George Marsh's (1864) discussion of how humans have dramatically modified the Earth. The satellite photos with the caption "Look What We've Done..." as well as the text of the article suggest again that the scale of modification has reached an intensity only barely dreamed of by Marsh (pp21-22). Revkin writes that "Scientists have concluded that humans not only now dominate the planet, but have also become the dominant driver of natural selection, the machinery of evolution" (pg. 23). In order to do something about these incredible modifications one of the most important tasks is to identify just how we have modified our planet. Thomas M. Parris's article, provides a detailed inventory of environmental indicators and targets that can be used to measure our progress in mitigating environmental impact on a global scale. Such information is necessary in order to organize efforts to preserve the environment.

All of the article, and in particular the first selection from The Economist raise fundamental questions about sustainable development. How can we sustain human needs, and indeed raise levels of economic development without destroying our environment? These articles collectively ask questions about whether our current course of human development on Earth is sustainable into the future? Can we fulfill our present needs without destroying the environment for our descendants? How? This is the primary question we will focus on in our discussion this week.

Questions to be discussed:

1. What is sustainable development? What makes it useful for framing debates about the environment? What difficulties exist with the term?

2. Is development possible without sacrificing the environment?

3. How have humans modified the earth over the past century?

4. Do you agree with the assertion that humans are now largely in a position of total control over the fate of the environment?

5. Is Lester Brown's vision of an eco-economy practical? What will it take to move towards a society in which humans are "a part of the environment?"

6. One hundred years from now, what will students reading these articles in a class on the the environment say about our attitudes towards the environment and the problems we face now?

7. Envision two scenarios for life in 2105; one in which we have addressed most of the environmental problems that we have discussed in this class and have achieved a state of sustainable development and one in which we have failed to address these problems. What will daily life be like? Where will people live? What will they eat? How will they get around? How will the economy be structured? Will life be dramatically different in these two future worlds?

Additional Works cited

• Marsh, George P. 1864. Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as Modified By Human Action. New York: Charles Scribner. pp. 35-48 The Destructiveness of Man and the next two sections
• John Muir. 1901. Our National Parks Chapter I The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West pp. 1-12.