This entry was written in preparation for the second in a series of three videoconference meetings among Stanford students enrolled in the PWR 2 class "(R)evolutions in Environmental Rhetoric" and their CCR partners at Khabarovsk State Academy of Economics and Law in the Russian Far East. The focus of this videoconference is "Global Environmental Issues."
Josh: My independent research topic revolves around the blood donation system in America. Unfortunately, this topic does not fit neatly into any of the group categories , unless one defines environment more broadly than usual. David, Chris and I are working with the Stanford Blood Center, a local blood collecting agency, to create short videos that will be posted on YouTube to encourage Stanford students to donate blood. My independent research project, however, will approach this issue from a different angle. I would like to learn more about what motivates individuals to donate their blood to a common pool when they themselves will not necessarily receive any direct benefit from their actions. Does their decision stem solely from altruism, or are more complex factors at play?
While I dig deep into this field, I certainly anticipate running into many ethical and moral problems. While this might not exactly fall under the category of environmental ethics and values, there are still some connections. If environmental ethics is expanded to include the ethical reasons of sustaining and improving human life, then blood donations become a central part of the dialogue. After all, many injuries today which require blood transfusions, such as vehicle accidents, are caused by the same technological progress that has dramatically transformed methods of collecting, storing, and distributing blood.
QUESTIONS: In Aldo Leopold's The Land Ethic, Leopold suggests that our obligation to preserve the diversity of nature is not merely an economic one dealing with property but a moral and ethical one. How would you describe the relationship between nature and yourself? Is it one of equal stature, or is there a dominant partner?
Chris:
The Ethics of Driving a Car:
Most people living in California have no efficient way of getting to where they need to go other than driving an automobile. Not driving one would mean spending many additional hours each day in transit. Many people wouldn’t even know how to use whatever limited public transportation does exist. But, as we all know, cars emit a very large percentage of the total global warming emissions that darken our skies and warm our planet, a phenomenon that’s worsened many times over by the traffic produced when large numbers of people drive at the same time. Anyone who’s driven through Los Angeles knows about the extent of the problem. Not only are millions of people forced to sit in their stationary cars and breathe in exhaust for hours on end, but the inefficiency of the freeway systems in cities like L.A. has the potential to enhance total greenhouse gas emissions greatly.
These issues do not simply effect these cities, or even this nation. If an end is ever to be found for rising sea levels, increases in Hurricane intensity, and habitat destruction on a global scale, to what extent do individual human beings have a responsibility to stop driving? Is this a society’s problem that must be solved on a more universal scale, nationally or internationally, or should an end to pollution start from the ground up?
Jacob:
In the changing world where the issue of environmentalism is an ever-growing priority, I am interested in investigating why and how people take conservationist or environmentalist actions and what the actual impact of those actions is. There is a difference between the things with consumers talk about and consume in the name of environmental conservatism and the actual impact those things. By comparing popular conception (or misconceptions) and less societally influenced science, we can begin to understand the motivating factors behind peoples' actions. For example, a consumer might by a hydrogen fuel car, or even more commonly, a Prius. While both of these cars do produce less carbon dioxide, it sometimes ends up being at an even greater coast- the cost to produce, transport, store, and distribute hydrogen is outrageous. With regard to the Prius, if the driver will being doing a significantly greater amount of highway driving that city driving, then the hybrid technology will seldom be used and the only real difference from a conventional car is the extra weight of the motor and batteries which the car must lug around everywhere. By asking these questions, and examining these dissonances, we can come to make a more effective communion with our earth.
Jon:
The world's population is over 6.8 billion people. As you can imagine, as our population grows, we need to develop more and more land. We clear forests and fill in marsh land just to have more room to build houses and strip malls. More and more of what we call "nature" is being destroyed to make room for the exponentially increasing amount of people on this planet.
However, there is hope. While a century ago we felt that it was our duty to tame the wilderness around us, now humankind has started to look around us and realize that there are not many natural areas left that have not been developed. Our thoughts have turned from "taming" the wilderness to actually trying to protect what little we have left. In many places this effort takes the form of a "reclamation", or of restoring a wilderness spot to how it was before we arrived. Close to our university is a natural preserve called the Baylands that did just that. There was once a marina that held over 200 ships, and a couple buildings. However, when they decided to turn the area into protected marshland, they destroyed the marina and reverted the land back to how it previously was.
So the question i have to pose to you is this: What do you think of the notion of "restoring" a piece of land back to the wilderness it once was? Is it unreasonable to take land away from people in order to turn it into a "preserve"? Or do we have a natural obligation to the environment to reduce the amount of destruction we impose on it?
