Our Earth
Everyone Lives Downstream from Someone : Impacts of an Expanding Dairy Industry on Biodiversity
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Cornelius Benjamin Tyson
Driven by the pursuit of profit and global market forces, there is a trend among farmers of converting traditional practices with historically low biodiversity impacts to high-intensity farming with extreme biodiversity impacts. This study examines how these forces caused prices for dairy products in Asia (China in particular) to rise significantly in recent decades. Consequently, many New Zealand dairy farmers have converted traditional dryland sheep and beef farms with fairly benign impact on biodiversity to intensive irrigated dairy operations with serious deleterious effects on biodiversity (i.e., excessive siltation, nutrient overload, high bacteria counts). Many consider water quality in many areas of New Zealand to be in crisis because of these changes. Additionally, land conversions to dairy often involve removal of forested lands causing a loss of carbon entrapment negatively affecting targets for C02 emissions. The root cause is increased demand on a global scale precipitating increased supply on a national scale without due consideration of how this affects biodiversity and quality of life in local communities. Sachs states that biodiversity includes the variability of life within a species, the diversity of species within an ecosystem and their various relationships, and the diversity of species across ecosystems (Sachs, 2015 pp. 448-449). Biodiversity impacts from farming can be viewed at the farm-ecosystem level and on a broader regional landscape scale. As ecosystems comprised of water, air, soil, plant and animal life, often connected by waterways, do not recognize national boundaries, the impacts of farming cross national borders. Everyone lives downstream from someone.
Is Sustainability Survivable?
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kevin S Rickman
Sustainability has become central to our efforts of solving environmental issues, but we must reconsider if it is viable or merely a comfort blanket. In this paper I argue that sustainability has taken too shallow an approach to our current plight. To reframe arguments for sustainability, I proffer the claim that we must look at what I have termed survivability in order to become more thoroughly aware of the need for change in many areas of our lives both as individuals and as a species. My focus in this paper will be on the rates of survivability of large groups of people if their agricultural support is suddenly removed, and I will take the island of O’ahu as the main example. In O’ahu, I show how the structure we have on this island is beyond self-sustainability, how rates of survivability would look if forced to become self-sustaining, and potential outcomes. Afterwards, I draw heavily from the Zhuangzi--an early Daoist text--to show how our perspective on the world has allowed us to reach this point. I also show how passages in the Zhuangzi can remedy our ways of thinking so that we may confront the situation we are in as open-mindedly and honestly as possible. From this, perhaps, discussions of the need for more sustainable practices will carry more weight in other areas of life such as political decisions on one end of the spectrum and personal habits on the other.
Totem and Technology: Consciousness, Nature, and Constructions of Self
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session E.H. Rick Jarow
Since Descartes, the Western notion of "Self" has been tied to a teleological view of time and history and the notion of a subject that is separate from the natural world. In the past few decades, notions of an approaching "singularity," in which technology and humanity completely interface have captured the cultural imagination. Are we heaed for a Utopia or a Dystopia? At the same time, "Shamanic" and "Earth-based" cultures that have a divergent view of the human subject and its place in the natural world have come to the fore, challenging the anthropocentric notion of humans existing “above” the natural world. This paper examines three views of self: The Western Cartesian view, the "Shamanic, Earth Based" view, and the contemporary neuro-scientific view to see if, beyond obvious antagonisms there may be an emerging synthesis that can integrate human society and the natural world in paradigms that allow for both ongoing scientific innovation and a panoramic eco-awareness of nature, chronolgical time, and timeless time.
Road Pricing Resistance: Car Politics in Copenhagen
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kevin Smiley
Copenhagen, Denmark, a paragon of the sustainable city, is a likely candidate for emergent policy practice aimed at sustainability and urban social change: congestion charges for cars in central city areas. But the city has not adopted congestion charges, having shelved plans in 2011 after an initial, near-successful push to adopt them. Using a mixed methodological approach, I identify how and why Copenhagen did not adopt congestion charges. Pairing quantitative and qualitative findings, two intertwined conclusions are raised. First, widespread support for further car restrictions (both in the survey data and in a governing coalition in 2011-2012) can unravel in a political context where right-leaning parties are firm in their opposition. Even though about half of right-leaning party voters support a car restriction measure, all major right-leaning parties are wholly opposed to such measures. Second, sustainable cities may continue to be undermined by scalar disjunctures. While Copenhageners may be broadly in support of the measure, the decision in this case rested with the national government. In these ways, a just, sustainable city can be thwarted by the outsized influence of right-leaning political parties operating through misplaced governance mechanisms.
