Discussion on tools people can use to promote sustainability
Answer the following questions as thoroughly as possible, referring to your course materials and outside sources as needed. (You are expected to do research to support your to answers.) Your answer to each numbered question should be between 250 and 800 words.
- The case study that begins on page 320 of Miller and Spoolman (“U.S. Environmental Laws and Regulations Have Been Under Attack”) discusses forces that act against environmental regulation as well as the political and economic tools people can use to promote sustainability. Some have argued that we allow corporate entities to act irresponsibly in relation to the environment because most people are dependent in some way on these entities for their livelihood. (That is: If Company X provides your paycheck, you may be reluctant to criticize its policies.) When this occurs, our economic system works against our own best interests. Explain why you agree or disagree with this point of view. If you agree, what might be done to prevent this from happening? After considering this question, take a look at the list of tools for influencing environmental policy (“What Can You Do?” page 321, below) Which types of action might you be willing to participate in?
- Some environmental advocates from developed nations have suggested setting aside land in biodiversity-rich regions of developing nations for preservation. This would curtail development such as land clearing for development or logging. Leaders of nations that are the focus of this plan have sometimes accused its authors of neocolonialism. Write a response to this claim, agreeing or disagreeing, while refuting the opposing position. In your response, discuss the following aspects:
- The practicality of sustainability for emerging economies
- The impact on the indigenous peoples in those nations
- The ethical implications of this policy (Do more developed nations have a right to ask for this sacrifice? Should the United States and other more developed countries provided poorer countries with compensation for making these sacrifices? That is, do more-developed countries have an ethical responsibility to aid and assist developing countries to avoid the environmental mistakes already made by the developed countries?)
- Consider the following quotations from The Ecology of Commerceby Paul Hawken:
“What misleads citizens in the richer nations is that we in the industrialized North are very well provided for indeed: with some notable exceptions, we either don’t see, don’t experience, or choose to ignore the impact our lives have. It is difficult for us to imagine that the ecological principle of carrying capacity can significantly affect us. Between the advertisements for Eddie Bauer, Jeeps, the suburbs, and the mall, we assume that we’re not taking too much from our environment, or we would see more signs of stress and deterioration around us. Our comfort and abundance is the foundation for the great differences we see in public debate and private discussions about the environment. . . . We confuse our rate and ability to consume with the capacity of living systems to provide for those wants.”
“Those who argue that we need to grow our way out of ecological problems do not acknowledge a profound and troubling contradiction: If the population of China lived as well as the population of Japan or France or the United States, we would endure untold ecological devastation. Even as we invoke economic pieties to justify multinational expansion and ‘freer’ trade policies, the actual result of helping the world raise itself by its bootstraps has been the opposite: By 1990, the lowest quintile in the world income had become twice as poor when compared to the top quintile than it was in 1960. The benefits of global expansion are highly concentrated in the northern countries, and in the hands of corporations and their owners. . . you cannot grow out of a problem if it is embedded in the thing that is growing, or as the Somalians say, you cannot wake up a man who is pretending to be asleep.”
Write a response to these claims, agreeing or disagreeing, while refuting the opposing position.