Global Environment Day 1 use globalenvironment102 gmail com allow 24 hours for response Exam 1 Feb 12 Value 25 Exam 2 March 12 Value 25 Exam 3 April 16 Value 25 Reaction Papers 25 Extra Credit available towards exams Final Exam optional May 13th All exams multiple choice Exams are roughly 40 questions half definitional and half synthetic thinking Reading Assignment Chapters 1 and 2 1 20 15 1 22 15 Global Environment Day 2 Jan 29 Feb 19th March 5 April 2 April 20th Research Forums due Environment Thought Why do we think about the environment like we do Why do we think about the environment like we do when i say we I mean the Western World and more specifically the US While this is an oversimplification an argument can be made that the US perspective has been and is being exported globally Judeo Christian Origins Wilderness was a place of savagery confusion the margins of civilization Religious significance to the way we talk about wilderness Jesus in the Wilderness And immediately the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness And he was there in the wilderness for forty days tempted of Satan and was with the wild beasts and the angels ministered unto him Mark 1 12 13 King James Bible This sets up two things a stark division between between people and the wilderness deeply religious consequences for how we interact with the wilderness Colonialism Romanticism and the Industrial Revolution Something happened in the early 19th century which changed the way people thought about the environment Railroad Industrialism Taming Wilderness in the Colonial and Industrial Periods Wilderness Movement settle homesteads People start changing their perspectives on wilderness Westward expansion development of railroads Industrialization Middle Industrial Period Frederick Jackson Turner Cities towns farms The frontier has gone and with its going has closed the first period of American History Frederick Jackson Turner People began to worry that wilderness was being lost Painting capture wild landscapes sublime sublime in this sense meant a place where one could be in the direct presence of God Thomas Moran and William Henry Jackson took pictures of wild landscapes Tourism very popular Wilderness became a place to connect with God to treasure and to preserve Wild places were being visited by people all over the country Niagara Falls Catskills Adirondacks Yosemite Yellowstone Yosemite became first wild parkland Yellowstone the first true national park Conservation and Preservation Preservation John Muir vagabond Figure head of preservation movement Sierra Nevada No description of heaven that I have ever heard or read seems half 1872 Yellowstone National Park Yellowstone Model sights of wilderness that should be preserved 1916 National Parks Service 1872 First National Park Hetch Hetchy 1906 earthquake highlighted the need for an additional water source for San so fine Francisco Struggle gave voice to a new wilderness preservation movement Muir wrote Dam Hetch Hetchy As well dam for water tanks the people s cathedrals and churches for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man Hetch Hetchy Today Preservation efforts failed in that particular struggle but the controversy sparked a movement Currently is the primary water source for San Francisco and surrounding municipalities Provides 80 of the water for 2 6 million people 167 mile long journey Many ways of talking about the environment National Park national treasure Urban Parks were established during the same period for similar reasons Preservation of wilderness Also a class dimension to the movement Parks movement was also connected to other environmental controversies in this period especially having to do with water quality During this period space was categorized in new ways Cities were categorized as spaces of economy Parks were categorized as spaces of wilderness nature Fairmount Park 1868 Goldengate Gate Park 1870s Central Park 1857 Lincoln Park 1860 Other 19th Century urban water controversies Conservation Movement Focused on managing natural resources for active use not preservation 1891 Forest Reserve Act Presidents can set aside lands for protection as 1898 Gifford Pinchot appointed head of Division of Forestry later USFS Roosevelt 1901 1909 responsible for the establishment of many parks and national forests national forests 1907 Angry northwestern congressmen lead fight to rescind Forest Reserve Act Roosevelt sets aside 16m acres then signs it National Preservation utilitarian use 1907 many activists trying to take away preservation Dust Bowl 1930 1936 highlights the consequences of a less than careful use of natural resources caused by severe drought lack of crop rotation plowing methods that produced high yields in the short term but degrades soil capacity in the long term coincided with the worst depression the world has ever known A number of artistic works emerged at this time in response to the dust bowl which helped bring attention to environmental concerns beyond wilderness and bring attention to an already growing group of politically radical voices in OK and other southwestern states connected environmental concerns to class concerns Woody Guthrie s Dustbowl Ballads John Steinbeck s Grapes of Wrath Perspective changes on conservation of nature Woody Guthrie This Land Is Your Land Pollution Events 1950s and 60s A series of crises came together during the 1960s that helped to reinforce an oppositional framing of human activity and environmental quality Humans were in this oppositional relationship with nature London s Killer Fog 1952 Urban Pollution Eutrophication Lake Erie 1965 severe agricultural runoff increased use in fertilizer and nitrogen Nutrients lead to growth in algae Dead zones Widely Published Accounts of Environmental Degradation Silent Spring Use of DDT as a pesticide as a widespread in the US from the end of WW2 until 1972 when it was banned from agricultural use Widely Published Accounts of Environmental Degradation three there are more main stories published widely and hailed as the origins of the environmental movement Silent Spring Common Property Dilemma Tragedy of the Commons Assumptions of the Tragedy of the Commons Argument Actors herders are rational The resource is limited it has a fixed carrying capacity Actors don t communicate with one another They interact only with environment not with each other Herder Choices Choice 1 Increase your own herd benefit personally but burden the land