Busy Times in Biosphere 1

While I promised you a blog every week, I just started both of my jobs this week and have been terribly busy. To make up for my lack of work on the project, I'm posting this video:

My Environmental Worldview

A significant portion of my last week has been spent reading about different environmental worldviews, and I felt it important to determine my own. The majority of my beliefs align with the ecocentric Deep Ecology worldview, however I find the foundations of this worldview to be too philisophical or based in musings on ethics. My conclusions are based mostly on utilitarian reasons. You might call it a ecocentric worldview driven by anthropogenic goals. (If your looking for something to contrast Deep Ecology with, check out the human-centered Wise Use movement.) The process of sifting, sorting, developing, accepting, and rejecting various worldviews was difficult, and the result is most definitely a working collection of opinions. I sought to answer the following three questions:

• What is the value of life? Nature as a whole? Human life? Nonhuman life?
• How am I connected to the earth and other living things?
• What's my role and responsibility as a human being?

Here were my answers:

On the Scale of the Entire Earth
Beliefs:

1. Nature provides the resources and conditions necessary for all life.
2. These resources are limited.
3. We, humans, are a part of nature. We depend on nature for our continued existence.
4. The flourishing of all life on earth depends on the interdependence, richness, and diversity of life forms, as well as life-supporting regulatory systems.

Enacted:

• We must use resources efficiently and sustainably for ourselves and all other species, acknowledging the sun radiation as the only continually renewed resource.
• We should try to understand and work with the rest of nature to help sustain the ecological integrity, biodiversity, and adaptability of the earth's life-support systems.
• When we alter nature to meet our needs or wants, we should carefully evaluate our proposed actions and choose methods that do the least possible short and long term environmental harm.

On the Scale of Our Species
Beliefs:

1. We need the earth, but the earth does not need us.
2. We are one species among many, with equal rights to life.
3. As a member of the human species, my highest priority is our preservation.
4. As stakeholders in ecological integrity, humans should work to preserve the interdependence, richness, and diversity present in the world.
5. Only to satisfy vital needs should this preservation be sacrificed.
6. Better earth care is better self care.
   
7. Some current human behavior patters are causing damage to the world, negatively affecting the lives of both humans and nonhumans.

Enacted:

• We should work to preserve as much of the earth's raw genetic variety as possible, because it is the raw material for all future evolution and genetic engineering.
• We have a right to defend ourselves against individuals of species that do us harm and to use individuals of species to meet our vital needs, but we should strive not to cause the premature extinction of any wild species.
• The best way to protect species is to protect the places where they live and restore places we have degraded.
• It would be better for humans, and much better for nonhumans, if there were a substantial decrease in the human population.
• Western society could benefit from an ideological shift away from quantity and towards quality.
  
• No human culture should become extinct because of our actions.

On the Scale of the Individual
Beliefs:

1. Those who subscribe to these points have a responsibility to directly or indirectly attempt to implement necessary changes.
2. Our existence depends on learning to cooperate with one another and with the rest of nature.

Enacted:

• We should not inflict unnecessary suffering or pain on any animal we raise or hunt for food or use for scientific purposes.
• We should use no more of the earth's resources than we need.
• We should work with the earth to help heal ecological wounds we have inflicted

Unfortunately, much of our life, and the means on which our (my) life is supported, is determined by the system (economic, social, cultural) in which we live. The best we can do is seek to change that systems to align more closely with our own viewpoints, and from day to day engage in behaviors representative of those beliefs, no matter how minor they may seem.

We need to nurture, reassure, understand, and take care of one another. We need to have fun and take time to enjoy life. Everyday, we should laugh and enjoy wild nature, beauty, friendship, and love.

A Beginning

As strange as it sounds, the sky really does seem bigger here. Perhaps living on top of the Continental Divide, the surrounding land falls away around me, pulling the sky down with it. But that cannot be, for the Rocky Mountains encase my view - the earth reaching up to the sky. Regardless, that cobalt sky will be the spectator of my next adventure, the peeks will be my playground.

This past September came and went strangely for me, as I felt something begin without me. The academic pattern, now gone, itched at my mind, like the ghost feeling of an amputated limb. I was home, welcome and unwelcome, moored but adrift, happy but discontent, altogether a place, both in time and space, of inaction and contemplation. Gradually, I realized that it was time for action, time for some new experiences, time for some adventure, and like Lewis and Clark, I moved West. Of course, my covered wagon was a steel plane compressing months into hours.

So here I am: Breckenridge, Colorado – or Breck in local lingo. And what the hell am I doing here? Active relaxation: primarily snowboarding and working a restaurant job I’ve yet to acquire. However, as most of you know, I’m not one to let my brain sit idly. Throughout my life, I’ve sought intellectual challenge and though I’ve paused my institutional education, I still seek to explore the world.

To that end, I’ve created a project. Everyday, I will be spending an hour or two reading articles, books, watching videos, and movies, and taking notes. At the end of each week, I’ll spend a couple hours processing and digesting the notes, formulating my thoughts into a semi-formal article. The blog builds a measure of accountability into the project, ensuring that I keep myself on track, my mind engaged, and my writing regular. To have you on the other end will motivate me on lazy days. Whatever level of interaction you wish to offer will be appreciated: comments on ideas, writing style, ideas for further investigation, added information on the topic, video responses, topics you might enjoy reading about. You may suggest anything. You may criticize anything. I may respond, react, change in response, or I may not. Regardless, your interaction will only improve the success of the blog. Your role, as the reader, is to keep me accountable for continued work. And my role, as writer, is to keep you engaged, through research and writing.

You may be wondering the content of my blogs. Most generally, I’ll be gathering data about nature, people, systems, cycles, economics, politics and government, psychology, the media, religion, motivation, leadership, team building. Within these topics, I’ll be emphasizing their significance to sustainable development. I aim to flesh out and provide structure to my knowledge of sustainability, as well as possible careers in sustainability. And finally, the more self interested focus: what next for me? How can I join the sustainability movement? Grad school? A move towards a career? A new exploration?

Well, that’s about it for now. I hope you’re intrigued enough to return next week for my first non-introductory article. I’ve posted some links on the side panels of books, websites, and videos I’ll be watching. I encourage you to check them out yourself.

Learn something new this week.

-Trevor Harrison