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Session 3: November 16, 2005
The Environmental Revolution: How We Have Changed our Environment and How this Might Change Us.
Objectives:
- Compare how humans have related to the environment in different ways throught history.
- Consider different examples of the impact we have had on our environment, which in turn impacts us.
Readings:
- Tenner: Why Things Bite Back - Chapters 4 - 7
- Kellert & Farnham: The Good in Nature and Humanity - read at least Chapters 1 - 4, 9, 14, 15
- Monsma: Responsible Technology, Chapter 7
Assignments:
- Read all the readings prior to coming to the class
- Post Focus Response 3 on or before November 19 .
- Visit the online TechnoTalk Discussion forum and Post a message at least two days during the week.
- Submit Project Synopsis by November 21.
- If you were absent, listen to the in class discussion and view the Models for Evaluating Technology ) that framed our discussion and view the "Environmental Revolution" video
- Everyone view the shorter video clips and the "PowerPoint" slides below that summarize some of the concepts from the readings etc.
- Volvo LCP story
- Twin Cities Mass Transit story
- Twin Cities "environmentally sound architecture" story - the met building
- Global Warming Clip
Contemporary culture is plagued by the passion to possess.
The unreasoned boast abounds that the good life is found in
accumulation, that "more is better." Indeed, we often accept
this notion without question, with the result that the lust for
affluence in contemporary society has become psychotic: it has
completely lost touch with reality. Furthermore, the pace of the
modern world accentuates our sense of being fractured and
fragmented. We feel strained, hurried, breathless. The complexity of rushing to achieve and accumulate more and more
frequently threatens to overwhelm us; it seems there is no es-
cape from the rat race.
Christian simplicity frees us from this modern mania. It
brings sanity to our compulsive extravagance, and peace to our
frantic spirit. It liberates us from what William Penn called "cumber." It allows us to see material things for what they
are-goods to enhance life, not to oppress life. People once
main become more important than possessions. Simplicity enables us to live lives of integrity in the face of the terrible realities of our global village.
Christian simplicity is not just a faddish attempt to respond
to the ecological holocaust that threatens to engulf us, nor is it
born out of a frustration with technocratic obesity. It is a call
given to every Christian. The witness to simplicity is profoundly rooted in the biblical tradition, and most perfectly exemplified
in the life of Jesus Christ. In one form or another, all the
devotional masters have stressed its essential nature. It is a natural and necessary outflow of the Good News of the Gospel having taken root in our lives.
Richard Foster, Freedom of Simplicity
Class outline and information from Nov 16, 2005
Models for Evaluating Technology ) framed our discussion from 5:30 - 7:00. If you were absent you can listen to the audio file of our discussion (available Friday Nov. 18)
Break for Cheesecake
The Environmental Revolution Video (available in Blackboard E-readings for those that missed class.
The Class Discussion (for those that missed class)
Everyone view the shorter video clips and the "PowerPoint" slides below that summarize some of the concepts from the readings etc. (available in the E-readings area of Blackboard)
- Volvo LCP story
- Twin Cities Mass Transit story
- Twin Cities "environmentally sound architecture" story - the met building
- Global Warming Clip
The "Slides" below summarize some of the ideas from the readings in Kellert and Farnham dealing with scales of our relationships with the natural environment and integrate the above clips into the context.
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Look at Mosquito,
which I made just as I made you;
She grazes blood like cattle graze grass.
Her strength lies in her wings,
and her power in the muscles of her thorax.
Her exoskeleton is like tubes of bronze,
and her limbs of chitin like iron.
She makes her proboscis stiff like a cedar,
with which she drinks her fill.
Mosquito is the first of the great acts of God -
only God as her Maker can approach her with an
up- raised hand.
JOB 40:15-19 (paraphrased entomologist's bible)
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Update: (1983) A hint of what such vehicles may be like is given in a recently developed prototype, the Volvo LCP 2000. It is an aerodynamic four-passenger car that weighs just half as much as today's models. Moreover, it has a highly efficient and clean-burning diesel engine. With the addition of a continuously variable transmission and a flywheel energy storage device, this vehicle could get ninety miles to the gallon. < link>
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Links to the video clip that we did not get time for
can be found in E-Readings in Blackboard.
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