Sustainability Freshman Inquiry

Feb. 15, 2010

Jeff Fletcher

Logistics• PSU Recycles Service Project

– HW 3, Data Now Online; make your own pie chart?– On Wednesday PSU Recycles coming to mentor sessions– If you missed Sunday’s PSU Recycles Activity—See me– Best time for this Sunday (2/21)? 1:00 pm again?

• Optional Field Trip on a Friday?– Rebuilding Center

• Due Today– Read Collapse Prologue, Ch. 1 (p. ix - 75)

• Reading guide on Daily Log

• Read:– Collapse Ch. 2 for Wednesday– Read your chapter for next Monday (2/22) (Take Notes!!)– On Monday (2/22) we will go to Library (Room 160)

• Today– Questions about Carbon Footprints (example abstract now in Daily Log) – Tragedy of the Commons (prizes!)– Wrap up Kolbert– Collapse Prologue

We Made the Papers• CURRENTLY (2/15/2010) Vanguard (2/10/2010)

Review: Is The Temperature Rising?

• Raft analogy– Two questions

• How far to waterfall? • When should we get out of the water?

– First question scientific; second political– Problems:

• Skepticism and reluctance to claim facts is inherent to scientific research

– Similar to Evolution: “it’s just a theory”

• Tragedy of the Commons or Prisoner’s Dilemma

Temperature Rising (continued)• Thomas Malthus: “gigantic inevitable

famine”– Lily pond after 100 days

• Need to understand that science is not exact, but sometimes we still need to act– The Lessons of Montreal Protocol (1987) in

dealing with the Ozone Hole• Periodic reviews to adapt to new results• Requirements change if evidence changes

Consumerism

• Story of Stuff– Questions

• Does the video overstate anything?• Can you think of alternative ways of addressing these

issues?

• Critique– Story of Stuff, The Critique Part 3 of 4

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgLrZc7cws8• Does it deal with the central argument of a linear throughput

on a finite earth

– Part 4 of 4• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XeW5ilk-9Y&NR=1

Catastrophe Chapter 9

• Last 15 years China economy doubled– Spring term will look at alternatives to Gross

Domestic Product (GDP)– How do we help developing countries skip

ahead (like cell phones)• By example? By assistance?

– Carbon capture and storage?

Catastrophe Chapter 10• Typical reaction of industry—same with Ozone

– Resist– Claim needs global action, so we can’t do anything that would

hurt competitiveness (the Tragedy of the Commons argument)– Maybe it’s a good thing or doesn’t matter

• With Ozone “easier to get a tan”• CO2 good for plants

• With Ozone we may have been lucky, but what about CO2?– Already set in motion, longer lag times, harder problem requiring

MUCH more change in human behavior• Development of Human Society Result of Stable Climate

– Last 10,000 years (from 8,000 BC to present)• Last quote is good description of Tragedy of the

Commons

Catastrophe Afterward

• Hurricane Katrina– Power of hurricanes has on average doubled

in last 30 years– Everything that happened in New Orleans

was predicted by experts, but policy makers did not listen

• The never got out of the raft

Collapse

• How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

• I met a traveller from an antique landWho said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert. Near them on the sand,Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frownAnd wrinkled lip and sneer of cold commandTell that its sculptor well those passions readWhich yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.And on the pedestal these words appear:"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"Nothing beside remains: round the decayOf that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,The lone and level sands stretch far away.

• Ozymandias (Percy Shelley 1817)

New Orleans 9th Ward

Is New Orleans a modern day Collapse?

New Frontline program on New Orleans recovery—one family’s storyhttp://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/katrina/view/

Think about Collapse

• The context of the book• The thesis of the book• The contribution of the book• The method of investigation • The “power” of the results • The influence of the paper • The applicability of the results • Summary of the technical development • Details of any examples

Collapse Chapter Assignments• Chapter 3: The Last People Alive: Pitcairn and Henderson Islands• Chapter 4: The Ancient Ones: The Anasazi and their Neighbors• Chapter 5: The Maya Collapses

Chapter 6: The Viking Prelude and Fugues• Chapter 7: Norse Greenland’s Flowering• Chapter 8: Norse Greenland’s End• Chapter 9: Opposite Paths to Success • Chapter 10: Malthus in Africa: Rwanda’s Genocide• Chapter 11: One Island, Two Peoples, Two Histories: Dominican

Republic and Haiti• Chapter 12: China, Lurching Giant• Chapter 13: "Mining" Australia

Quiz Discussion

• 1) In your own words, explain what Diamond means when he uses the term "collapse"

Possible Answer

• Explain what Diamond means when he uses the term "collapse"

• “…a drastic decrease in human population size and/or political/economic/social complexity, over a considerable area, for an extended time.” (p. 3)

Quiz Discussion

2) List some of the reasons Diamond gives to support the claim that "any people can fall into the trap of over-exploiting environmental resources…" (p. 9)

Possible Answer

• List some of the reasons Diamond gives to support the claim that “Any people can fall into the trap of over-exploiting environmental resources…" (p. 9)

• (p. 9-10)– Resources seem inexhaustible at first– Signs of resource depletion are hidden in normal (yearly or

decade scale) fluctuations– Difficult to get people to exercise constraint on sheared

resources (tragedy of the commons)– Complexity of eco-systems makes it hard to predict long term

consequences of individual actions

Quiz Discussion

3) On page 11, Diamond writes, "I don’t know of any case in which a society’s collapse can be attributed solely to environmental damage: there are always other contributing factors.” List the 5 sets of contributing factors that Diamond identifies.

5 point framework

1. Damage that people inadvertently inflict upon the environment. (11)

2. Climate change (12)3. Hostile neighbors (13)4. Decreased support by friendly neighbors (14)5. The society’s responses to its own problems …

[which] depend on its political, economic, and social institutions and on its cultural values.(14)**

**Always a significant factor (p. 11)

Question

• Describe a major controversy confronting efforts to understand past collapses.

• HINT: Think about Diamond’s opinion on the people from these past societies? – Were they bad stewards of the land? – Were they ideal managers living in harmony

with the environment? – How do they compare to people today?

Possible Answers (p. 8-10)• Managing environmental resources sustainability has always been

difficult. • Resources initially seem inexhaustibly abundant, signs of incipient

depletion become masked by normal fluctuations in resource levels, • difficult to get people to agree in exercising restraint (tragedy of the

commons), • complexity makes consequences hard to predict. • Non-literate people had less access to past information. • Neither ignorant bad managers who deserved to be exterminated or

dispossessed,• nor all-knowing conscientious environmentalists who solved

problems that we can’t solve today. • They were people like us.

Question

• What is “ecocide”?

• Diamond groups the processes of past “ecocides” into 8 categories. List them.

Possible Answers• What is “ecocide”?

– Unintended ecological suicide (p. 6)– large scale mortality or death caused by environmental problems

• Diamond groups the processes of past “ecocides” into 8 categories. List them (p. 6).1. Deforestation and habitat destruction, 2. soil problems (erosion, salinization, and soil fertility losses), 3. water management problems,4. over-hunting,5. over-fishing, 6. effects of introduced species on native species, 7. human population growth,8. increased per-capita impact of people.