The Environmental Deficit: Hawken's Blessed Unrest

Since the early 20th century the environmentalism movement has migrated from the struggles of consumers versus producers, or saving the planet as a whole as shown by Donald Worster in Nature’s Economy to a more socio-economic view based on urban growth and industrial health. Robert Gottlieb’s book Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement argues that as society goes so too does the environmental movement. As the emphasis on working environments and commercial goods we buy including food changes so too does the environmental movements. It did not matter whether it was large politically prominent environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club or the Audubon Societies or any other numbers of local grassroots

Writer, William Blumenfield, in his Huffington Post article, “ Environmental Justice a Form of Social Justice,” details the perceptive and political fallibilities of the Republican party in regards to their courses of action towards environmental justice aims. His inclination is to convey the err in their claims and capitalistic objectives, and to promote his ideology that social justice cannot occur without there first being strives to combat against environmental degradation. He develops a strong, but misplaced, pathos throughout his article, devoid of purposeful facts, resulting in a weak argument seemingly based on his resentment towards the Republican party. Blumenfield’s argument is weak in the fact that is argues based on unapologetically tearing down the other side instead of advocating his point while respectfully pointing out the flaws of conflicting views.

The world is consuming more than it can produce. In order to produce the amount that we use, requires a lot of waste to be made. Industrial production produces industrial waste. With the amount of waste being produced it is effecting the environment, especially the water and food supply. Everyone is a polluter and everyone abuses the environment.

In the introduction of Andrew Light and Holmes Rolston’s book , Environmental Ethics: An Anthology, the authors explain the basic concepts of ethics: more specifically environmental ethics, and how they apply to everyday life. The main concepts discussed include moral agents, moral patients, anthropocentrism, weak or broad anthropocentrism, indirectly morally considerable, and directly morally considerable. These concepts are the foundations to the environmental ethics that Light and Rolston wrote about; however, in regards to the short story written by J. Lanham titled: “Hope and Feathers: A crisis in birder identification,” the two terms most predominately relating to the text are moral patients and moral agents. Lanham, in this text, describes the epitome of what it means to be a good moral agent, as interpreted by Light and Rolston, where others failed.

The environment is constantly being sacrificed for food production, toxic dumps, wood distribution, military testing, and other things such as these. And as usual, the root lies in profit. The corporations can’t afford to be concerned with the future well being of the earth and it’s dwellers. Also, environmental pollution can be connected to racism and classism because it is the poor communities that are used for toxic dumps and prisons, and it’s the poor people who work in the factories that require having contact with harmful chemicals and technologies, and generally the poor communities consist of people of color.

Main Point 1: Us humans have overpopulated the earth and will continue to grow if actions aren’t took. We had a population approximate to 7.4 billion people living on earth in 2016. It takes about 40 years to increase the population by 3 billion. Earth can only hold 10 billion people max. Therefore, we will overpopulate the earth around 2040. We need to conquer another planet however, not all planets have the basic elements to sustain life.

Economic analysis that weighs all costs and benefits of a particular model must include environmental considerations. That is to say, the potential for short-term economic losses caused by conservation in the present, should be measured against the dividends that conservation will pay in the future (Nordhaus, 2007). If the earth is truly our most valuable commodity, then analysis under these conditions should recognize that if a “dollar value” were placed on environmental sustainability, more often than not it would outweigh any initial monetary loss resultant of the implementation of more sustainable practices.

Something I learned that I did not know before I took this PBA is the 4 environmental themes. I probably did know this in the past but it’s a refresher. The 4 environmental themes were Geography, Society, Economy, and Transportation. In addition I was educated new Vocab. The words that were new to me was Industrial revolution, which is when machine started taking over for building man-made objects. The cotton gin, which was a machine that Eli Whitney made. There are many more words I

Until recently, many of the environmentalist policies of the Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard have been quite moderate, such as encouraging children to turn off their game consoles when not in use. On the government-run Clean Energy Future homepage, the website proclaims: "Switching off video game consoles when not in use could save households up to $150 a year enough to buy several great new games." The website provides a link to tips for ordinary consumers about how they can save money on energy costs through conservation efforts. This is environmentalism marketed from a self-interested perspective. The message is that people can save money and save energy at the same time. While this is a helpful promotional campaign in some respects, it is also somewhat inaccurate, given that many of the measures that must be taken to save the planet will likely be more costly and result in the consumer having to give up certain things and to pay more money for others. Organic food and hybrid cars, for example, cost more than standard-grown food and standard vehicles.

Concept of capitalism can be difficult to understand. It is commonly identified by economist and political philosophers as a system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated in the free market in exchange for a profit (Galbraith, 1952). The economical/social system determines the structure of production, the allocation of inputs and outputs, and consumption of goods. Capitalism remains popular in America because it values freedom, much like the people in our country. This is true because it allows individuals to set their own plans and pursue their own goals; in addition, one can decide what career they would enjoy most, thus creating an incentive and reward for achieving ones ambitions. In a free market, everyone

The average human being, multiplied by the Earth’s population, would need to have about four Earths just to supply enough resources (Footprint Calculator). Thinking of people around the world, the people of the United States seem to take a lot of their life for granted. Many people when they hear of the polar ice caps melting wave it off and either don’t believe in it or believe it is not their problem. Well it is their problem and if we don’t jump on the issue soon we will not be giving our future generations much of a life. This brings me to the idea of sustainability. A simple description of the word means that what we have today we will also have tomorrow, next week, next year, or even the next lifetime. Although that is the modest version sustainability is much, much more than just that. Sustainability is derived from three main parts of the human life: environmental, social, and economic. Each being just as important as the other. Environmental is the most well-known aspect of sustainability in human life, but both social and economic take their place in keeping this Earth sustainable.

White’s thesis in The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis states that in order to confront the expanding environmental crises, humans must begin to analyze and alter their treatment and attitudes towards nature. The slow destruction of the environment derives from the Western scientific and technological advancements made since the Medieval time period. “What people do about their ecology depends on what they think about themselves in relation to things around them” (RON p.7). Technology and science alone will not be able to save humans until we adjust the way of thinking and suppress the old ideas of humans power above nature. Instead, we need to learn how to think of ourselves as being

in an effort to solve problems, which can be seen with the Clean Water Act.

compromises with the rest of the world but to keep up date and to form

According to Mintzberg, the environmental school of thought is a strategy dealing with the forces outside the organization. Unlike the other schools in his book, Strategy Safari, the environment plays a central role in the strategy formation process alongside leadership and the organization where the organization becomes subordinate to the external environment. The environmental school assumptions are that during the formative period of the organization the company shapes itself in response to the environment, but after that period is increasingly unable to respond to the environment. Moreover, the organization long term survival depends on the early choices made during its formative period. Over time, Mintzberg states, leadership becomes