Lecture VideoClass Research Resources and Assignments
Week 13
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Lecture Video
Environmental Ethics - Where can we go from here?
| American Consumerism | |
 US consumer confidence soars Tuesday, 26 March, 2002, 21:47 GMT Figures showing strong consumer sentiment have buoyed hopes of a rapid recovery for the US economy. US consumer confidence rose to an index figure of 110.2 this month, from 95.0 in February, the Conference Board, a New York-based business group, said. Wall Street analysts had expected an index reading of 98. The March figure, the highest since August, helped shares higher, with the benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average rising 151 points in early trade. The tech-weighed Nasdaq added 30 points By close the Dow Jones had eased back to 10,353, up 71 points, with the Nasdaq 11 points higher at 1,824. Luxury vs. Necessity Talk of the Nation, 17 April 2002 Guests: James Twitchell * Professor of English and Advertising, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL * Author, Living it Up: Our Love Affair with Luxury (Columbia University Press, 2002) Juliet Schor * Professor of Sociology, Boston College * Author, The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need (Basic, 1998) Mary Pipher * Author, The Middle of Everywhere: The World's Refugees Come to Our Town (Harcourt Brace, 2002) They now have day spas at J.C. Penney's and cashmere bedspreads at Kmart. Luxury items are no longer just for the rich. According to some economists, luxury spending in the United States has been growing four times faster than overall spending. But what's behind America's love of luxury and what does it say about us? |
| Avoiding troublesome ethical issues | |
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A leading example of the "denying the evidence" school of argumentation
-- one which calls into question the tacit complicity of academic institutions
in this kind of "feel good mood music" and "environmental greenwashing"
-- is provided by the recently published work of Bjorn Lomborg.
Cambridge University Press has published the book by this Danish statistician,
and sought to promote it through an online course that it offers for free
as part of the Fathom
-- The Source for Online Learning system. See: The Skeptical Environmentalist From: Cambridge University Press | Taught By: Bjørn Lomborg In an age of mounting human consumption and depleting natural resources, it seems as though our responses to the impending environmental crisis are too little or too late. But is this picture of doom an accurate representation of reality? Bjørn Lomborg, a statistician from the University of Aarhus, Denmark, maintains that it is not. In this free seminar, Lomborg draws from his book from Cambridge University Press, The Skeptical Environmentalist, and puts forth the grounds for his argument. Far from being pessimistic about the state of the world, he holds that we have every reason to be optimistic about the future. This seminar outlines some of the controversial arguments and provides commentary from the author. This "distance learning course" -- offered in conjuction with Columbia University and a whole range of otherwise quite respectable universities and research institutions -- presents the very same interviews about the book that are posted on the Cambridge University Press publicity and sales pages. See: http://uk.cambridge.org/economics/lomborg/video.htm and particularly: Video Clip 1: Bjørn
Lomborg outlines the reasoning behind his ideas expressed in The Skeptical
Environmentalist. Video Clip 2: Bjørn
Lomborg discusses the issues surrounding non-renewable resources. Video Clip 3: Bjørn
Lomborg talks about the issues surrounding air pollution. Video Clip 4: Bjørn
Lomborg describes the Greenhouse Effect and discusses issues surrounding
the Kyoto Agreement.
There has been a range of debate for the last 2 years in Denmark on this issue: See: Some replies from Danish scientists to a contrarian http://www.au.dk/~cesamat/debate.html Because most of the points he is making in this book are not new or so partial and incomplete in the scope of the range of issues that need to be discussed, many are asking why both Cambridge University Press and the BBC have "fanned" the fires of this non-controversy. Clearly the Press and the BBC stand to gain from the sales and viewership (audience) it can generate from this, but it is a sad day when these otherwise reputable institutions seem to be driven by this kind of commercial imperative. Got to admit it's getting better Tuesday, 21 August, 2001, 11:02 GMT 12:02 UK What sort of world will we leave to our children? Probably a cleaner, healthier one than we inherited, says academic Dr Bjorn Lomborg, author of the controversial new book The Skeptical Environmentalist. In the first of three-part series focusing on claims made in the book, Dr Lomborg explains why we should chill-out about global warming. Europeans willing to back President Bush's rejection of the Kyoto climate control agreement are pretty thin on the ground. Dr Lomborg,
you've got to be kidding Bjorn Lomborg's
wonderful world Should
we care less about the environment?
E.O. WilsonTalk of the Nation January 14, 2002 Guest: Edward O. Wilson Research Professor in Biology at Harvard University Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for On Human Nature and The Ants *His latest book is called The Future of Life (Knopf, 2002) Bjorn Lomborg Associate Professor of Statistics at the University of Aarhus in Denmark author of The Skeptical Environmentalist (Cambridge University Press, 2001) Greg Smith Musician, composer and film producer The new Talk of the Nation theme What treasures of the natural world are we about to lose forever? Newly discovered plants and animals whose potential benefits are still unknown are being threatened by human activity. Neal Conan talks with Edward O. Wilson about his book, The Future of Life, about how to save the Earth's biological heritage. On the issue of "junk science," non-science and pseudo-science consider the problems discussed in the following piece, which deals with our culture's persistant attempt to deny the evidence:
In the face of these kinds of swirling debates it is sometimes hard for Americans to locate themselves, yet citizens in other countries -- particularly those that are critical of the Bush-Cheney stance on the Kyoto Climate Change accords, like Britain and Australia remain quite critical of the Bush-Cheney stance. Before September 11, 2001 they were beginning to organize against the U.S. stance. See particularly: and - News Report of Australian
Senator, Bob Brown.* * *
As for the future, in condsidering environmental problems from an ethical
perspective, it is best to "keep your eye on the ball," that is, keep
the eco-system as a whole in view as you make judgments about particular
strategies of action within it. Lester Brown's new volume, Eco-Economy: Building and Economy
for the Earth outlines a credible range of alternatives for
restructuring our consumer society. You may want to track the
future publications of his newly created: Earth
Policy Institute as well. [ At stake is the large but subtle task of changing the public metaphor from one based on the fanciful image of the continuous expansion of consumer society to one based upon restoring balance in an ecosystem that by our own actions we did not create, we cannot control and we should not destroy. There are, of course, many economic, social and political dimensions to this transformation. Ultimately, however, this transformation is a moral transformation based on new and compelling images of community, system, authority, change, agency and time.
As you can tell from the course, I feel strongly that it is our ethical
obligation to generate those images and help to engineer the moral transformation
that will be required for human survival in this complex, fragile and
holy wonderful world in which it is our privilege to live. |
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