Lecture 2 Wednesday January 26, 2005

On the Search for a Root Cause

 

Announcements:

 

(1)  Class email list is up and running but we need to add your names. More details later.

(2)  Notetaking: lectures.

(3)  Two handouts today

 

I. Introduction

 

Bjørn Lomborg’s book.

 

Jeffrey Ellis’s article, “On the Search for a Root Cause” drawn from William Cronon’s edited anthology Uncommon Ground.

 

Dr.. Sallie Balunias

 

Ellis offers the climate change debate as illustrating certain tendencies to attribute environmental problems to a “root cause.”

 

Excerpt from Ellis on p. 257.

Balunius controversy compared to Bjørn Lomborg’s book controversy

 

II. Key themes from Ellis article

 

1)    Ehrlich—Commoner debate

 

2)    Deep Ecology vs Social Ecology debate

 

3)    Basic divisions of environmental thought and ideas that will recur:

Anthropocentrism

Biocentrism

Ecocentrism

Theocentrism

Deep ecology vs. shallow ecology

 

4)    Themes that come up in these debates:

Primitivism

Eco-fascism

Misanthropy

EarthFirst! and Dave Foreman

 

III. The Ehrlich Commoner debate discussed

 

Paul Ehrlich—The Population Bomb

Barry Commoner—Science and Survival

 

Ellis examines the tendency to essentialize the environmental predicament by examining the works of both individuals.

 

IV. The deep ecology, social ecology debate

 

Deep ecologists e.g., Arne Naess and social ecologists such as Murray Bookchin.

 

Charges of misanthropy and eco-fascism

 

V. Comparing the controversies

 

Ellis comments, “Halting population growth, democratizing the technological decision-making process, restructuring society along nonhierarchical lines, and altering people’s basic world views are not, by any means, simple solutions to the many deeply complex ecological problems that confront us.”

 

Controversies discussed in Ellis compared to Lomborg controversy and current controversy over the leadership of the Sierra Club