This week we are introducing ourselves and discussing the article "I Pollute, Therefore I Am" by Dr. Stanley Fish which can be found here. Click "comments" to see the discussion!
Quote of the week:
"Only when the last tree has been cut down,
Only when the last river has been poisoned,
Only when the last fish has been caught,
Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten."
- Cree Prophecy
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ReplyDeleteHey all! So its Laura, I think we all know at least names. I am a sophomore/junior majoring in IR, concentrating regionally on Africa, topic to be determined. next spring I will hopefully be going to study abroad in Kenya. I am from Staten Island, New York where we once had a garbage dump so big you could see it from satellite pictures. Also New York City itself is very dirty, so I think those sparked my interested in the environment. I am hoping to get a better understanding of the issues we are facing and see how internationally people are responding. And I hope to share my experiences with everyone, having seen green aspects in other countries through organizations, one in particular As Green as it Gets, an organization supporting sustainable agriculture in Guatemala. So I can't wait to get these discussions going!
ReplyDeleteTIP: proof read before hitting post..
The article, "I Am, Therefore I Pollute," I found funny and relatable. I think that Fish speaks the inner thoughts of most people. Most people want to do what the can for the environment, even if it is just using fluorescent light bulbs, but then get absent minded regarding other areas. And although he has his wonderful wife to remind him of his actions, he resents it. I find myself feeling that way at times because I don't want to follow every antidote for environmental change. Instead, like most, I do what I feel comfortable with, which is the minimal.
ReplyDeleteI feel as if it is very difficult to change every aspect, want or desire of your life because I have grown up ignorant of the environmental challenges we face. So it makes me think about the discussion of children and there ecological footprint. I think that education is the best policy and if we want to make some changes that kids should be taught from a young age to be aware of their surroundings and as for now, considering this is a pressing problem, I think if each person just does a little here and there it will be sufficient, because we can’t except everyone all over the world to follow suggestions to the ‘t’, that would be unrealistic.
And another point Fish brings up is, it is expensive to change your lifestyle to fit a green one. For instance, if you want to solar panel you roof you are looking at 25 grand. Or even changing school buildings, SIS prime example number one, takes money.
Also the reducing your carbon footprint scheme by planting a tree for a certain number of miles you fly or getting these certificates stating you did something green, I find useless. It is just a false sense of security. The tree planting may be a start, but even in regards to green certified courses here at AU, how green are they? I still get handouts every other class and I am expected to print out readings, so who does that really help? the teacher who feels better as a person and more productive and yet is deluding himself/herself.
I felt as if Fish particularly spoke to me on the car issue. I drive an SUV, which I love and is pretty decent on mileage, yet once it is time to get a new car I would still want an SUV. This selfishness I recognize as a problem, especially when Fish said, “I just want to inhabit it as comfortably as possible for as long as I have.” Considering everyone has different comfort levels, one cannot expect to live consistently like that until resources no longer allow it, because this is a collective problem and we have to recognize that just like we are connected to other nations through economics and globalization, we all occupy this one planet, our own territories are not planets within themselves, we cannot colonize like before, this is the only one. And it is for this reason we try to follow pro-environmental policies, even if at the moment we resent the inconvenience it creates.
Laura, I really enjoyed your post. I thought you spoke honestly and critically about your own lifestyle.
ReplyDeleteMy upbringing is a little off the grid (literally and figuratively) from many other American University students. I grew up in Vermont, a state known for its progressive social and environmental policies. My father is a farmer, but during my childhood he was an independent logger. My father built our log cabin by hand. We had electricity but no indoor pluming until I was about 7 and no hot water until much later. We had an outhouse and a big tin bath tub that my mom would heat kettles of water for my brother and I to take baths. We always had a really large and diverse garden in the summer and for as long as I can remember we’ve had chickens for both eggs and meat. We bought the rest of our meat from the farmers down the road. I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 11 mainly because of the trauma of our family run executions of those birds. My dad would cut the heads off and my mom would tie the headless birds upside down for my brother and I to pluck before she cleaned them up for freezer storage to be eaten throughout the winter. All of my clothing was second hand. This lifestyle was both a combination of choice of my groovy mother and old-fashioned father and by financial necessity. But for my brother and I it was just our life in the woods. We had ponds to swim and fish in, fields to play tag and baseball in, and woods to explore and build forts in.
So these are my foundations, being somewhat sustainable and living a somewhat simple life in the woods of Vermont has embedded in me at least a small amount of ecological and environmental awareness.
When my parents divorced and my mom remarried a middleclass engineer during my adolescence my lifestyle shifted to that of a more average American. Meaning we had a gas stove, running hot water, and ate more food from the grocery store than from our back yard. I also became more average in my desire for things: I thought the Mall was a beautiful place. So for a few years I fell off the nature wheelbarrow.
When I was 19 I went to Nepal and lived in a small village for three months. It was here that I was reminded of what living simply meant and how much I liked it. They ate what they grew in their back yards, bathed in the nearby river, wore their clothes until they fell off, and had fun playing games in their fields and swimming and fishing in their river.
Last spring I spent the semester in India and was reminded of the tragedy of the commons-so many people and so much trash. There is virtually no sanitation system or sense of civic responsibility to keep common areas clean. They have their reasons but it makes you stop and think about how effectively America both hides its consumption and has implemented some strong steps in the right direction for recycling. Anyway I’ve been going on for far too long. I’m looking forward to hearing everyone’s thoughts, opinions, and experiences.
PS- Although I very rarely visit Malls anymore, I still love ”things” and would always prefer to take a hot shower than a bucket bath and who are we kidding an outhouse verses a porcelain pot: no question!
Helllooooo all!
ReplyDeleteHmmm...what do I want to you guys to know about me? Well first of all, when I walk around on campus for whatever reason I have a tendency to zone out and not look at people around me (probably because I'm usually already running late to somewhere I need to be). So if I ever don't say hi, its because I don't see you, so just trip me or something! Haha. I am from NJ outside of Philadelphia. Nothing too exciting.
Right now I'm getting my applications for law school together and studying for the LSAT I'm taking September 26th. So yeah, that's about all I'm doing right now. It's pretty stressful, but hopefully it'll feel great when everything's submitted by October 1st!
The thing that got me to first consider registering for this class was the fact that SIS requires that I take a class outside of my area of specialization (international development). But, I decided on this class rather than all the other options because I want to specialize in either environmental law or tax law in law school. I've taken a few accounting courses, which has a lot of parallels to tax law, but I've never taken an environmental course. Unfortunately, I've spoken to several lawyers about environmental law, and they said that more often than not, the people you defend are the bad guys. So I guess that's definitely something to think about if I want to sleep at night.
As for the "I am Therefore I Pollute" article, I totally agreed with Laura's comment on Fish's article. HILARIOUS. I definitely agree with him about the difference between supporting a cause ideologically and supporting in via your everyday actions. I also think it's an argument that is obvious. I don't think I have ever met someone who believes that the environment and its degradation does not matter in any way and is against environmentalism. However, so many people are unwilling to actually support the concept of living green to a point where it hits your pockets hard.
I feel like living "environmentally friendly" in the modern-day U.S. is something that has become trendy and in vogue. Although I previously said that supporting an idea theoretically is much different than supporting it through your actions, I believe that living "environmentally friendly" centers around one's support for its concept. In other words, living environmentally friendly means that you take the environment into account regularly, whether its consciously or subconsciously. Even if you don't personally make the grand gestures to buy an expensive hybrid, for example, doing the little things, like opting not to buy water bottles, sorting your recyclables, and not leaving your car running when you're not driving, can also qualify someone as living environmentally friendly.
My interest in the environment is relatively new – I came to college with many ideas and interests but no definite plan as to what I would study and especially what I wanted to be when I grew up. In the successive semesters I discovered a knack for economics and a growing interest in the environment after taking some preliminary classes. I was particularly grabbed when first learning more about coral reefs and their dreary current predicament. Since then I have been leaning more and more toward have a career in the environmental field, hopefully with a concentration on the ocean and preservation (although I am not sure there will be many jobs that pay well or even at all, considering how little people usually are willing to open their wallets to environmental concerns).
ReplyDeleteI had what I think is a relatively typical American childhood, growing up in middle class, suburban New Jersey. I guess I was aware of being environmentally friendly: we recycled, I was always told not to litter, and routinely participated in the one day a year my town set aside to clean up downtown parks and green areas. So the perspective I come from is similar to that of Stanley Fish, author of I Am, Therefore I Pollute.
I have to say that I agree with Fish, and I actually enjoyed how bold he was in stating how he was opposed to integrating eco-friendly measures into his own life, while supporting them in theory. I happen to think that this is an opinion shared by many people in rich countries and especially by people used to high levels of consumption and not in the habit of conserving through methods like obtaining alternative energy sources, biking instead of driving to work or school, and buying locally-grown foods. I think many people, myself included, subscribe to the small measures that are compatible with their current lifestyles and mentioned by Fish such as turning off lights in empty rooms. I do, however, think that people underestimate how much energy they use and just how big their impact on the environment is. I, myself, was surprised to find out how big mine was when taking the online quiz (4.3), when I consider myself to be a relatively environment-conscious person, and not consuming in extreme excess.
This discussion of making grand gestures versus taking small measures in the name of environment brought me back again to the population arguments that we were discussing in Tuesday’s class about how McKibben suggested that it would be easier for Americans and other citizens of affluent countries to simply have fewer children than to alter their lifestyles.
I think that there is also something to be said about how someone mentioned earlier about how here in wealthier countries, we are better at hiding our waste: it is neatly picked up from our curbside twice a week and carted off to a trash dump or land fill, usually not near to where we live (causing the carbon footprint to grow still further); whereas in poorer countries, people live adjacent to giant trash piles and actually rummage through it, using it as a source of income if they can find scraps of something that they can sell.
So compared to you guys I suppose I’m relatively boring. I’m from a suburb of Hartford, Connecticut, where I grew up loving schizophrenic New England weather, the now-defunct Hartford Whalers of the NHL, a series of pet hamsters, and the large tracts of state forest situated near my house that were part of the State green belt. Hiking, swimming, and playing horrible pranks on my friends in these woods instilled in me an appreciation of nature that I didn’t really notice until I moved to urban DC.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first came to college, I intended to major in some form of international relations since that seemed like the most out-there thing I could major in that was still acceptable to my stereotypically Jewish mother, who is likely still disappointed that I will not be a doctor. Anyway, after taking a few environmental classes, I found that’s where my interest really was, and now I’m an environmental studies major in CAS. When asked what exactly I will do with this major, my general answer is “I don’t know, probably spend a lot of time playing in the dirt.” Since most of my classes focus on the more science-y aspects of the environment, I’m hoping to gain insight into how environmental problems are dealt with outside the scientific community, and to enjoy a class that has very few numbers and equations with lots of squiggly lines.
Despite our vastly different upbringings, I think we are all in firm agreement with Stanley Fish – engaging in “environmentally friendly” activities at extreme inconvenience is not something we do on a regular basis. Even as a self-proclaimed “environmentalist” I would not do half the things that Mr. Fish’s wife implored him to do. Now, I have a bit of an issue with the tone of the article – while clearly meant to come across as a light-hearted jab at the resounding cries of the environmental movement (Fish directly cites Greenpeace, one of the worst offenders), he ends up sounding entirely whiney.
This is easy enough to look past, as he brings up a very valid point. Trying to change the consumption habits of a nation at the level of the individual is not only fruitless, but also counterproductive. Change needs to be enacted at the state level, allowing the continuously shifting forces of the global economy to “green” the average American lifestyle. Who was it Fish actually did listen to when it came to a matter such as turning off the lights? President Lyndon Johnson. Not his wife, not his mother, not Greenpeace. With infrastructure change comes cleaner energy, and with increasing costs of oil comes impetus to drive cleaner cars and consume less meat. It’s a slow process, but over time a true cultural paradigm shift will occur. Surely there will always be holdouts – Laura might never decide to give up her SUV, but that’s not a problem. SUV’s are much cleaner now than they were even a decade ago. Now, at home I drive a Prius, so if I might be called a hypocrite then let it be so.
Regardless of how loudly environmental groups like Greenpeace shout at us to change our habits, that is not how wide-scale change will occur. When Professor Nicholson expressed criticism of the Green Teaching certification, I was happy he pointed out some of the flaws in the rating system, as that is exactly the issue being addressed here.
Fish asks, “but what can you do when faced with the dictates of someone else’s religion?” The answer is simple: rail against it. The environmental movement will find much more success if it moves away from what can best be described as the “green fad” – a marketing ploy built upon this insistence of individual action.
Last, there is one thing that Fish neglects to do that is a good idea for all Americas – wear one’s seat belt (especially in that SUV)!