Exam #1 (lit and class notes) Flashcards
1
Q
Science v Humanities: Science
A
- Facts = data
- Knowledge
- Application
-Nonhuman/nature - Objects of technology
- Problem solving
- Understand and solve
2
Q
Science v Humanities: Humanities
A
- Facts = ideas, feelings, & data
- Knowledge of human nature, culture, cultural production & arts
- Creation of new culture
- Understand by asking better/more difficult questions
- Recognizes that there are certain things that make life worth living
- Complicates and critiques science
3
Q
EH and compartmentalization
A
Compartmentalization of knowledge is a problem across fields, but EH works against it (even though it is sometimes necessary)
4
Q
Ideology
A
- Culture masquerading as nature
- Can dictate what kind of science does or does not happen
5
Q
When was there a general consensus amongst scientists that climate change was in fact happening?
A
- 1980s
6
Q
What is Kingston’s “A City Person Encountering Nature” about? When was it published?
A
- Published 1987
- The difference between perception and really seeing something
- Engagement and how perception is shaped
- Seeing as a trope (idea, symbol, metaphor)
- Nature is mysterious and also wild
- Even nature’s simplicity is extraordinary
7
Q
What were the creatures that Kingston’s speaker was fascinated with in “A City Person Encountering Nature”? What creatures did she take her son to see?
A
- Nudibranchs
- Crabs (with no eyes)
8
Q
What was the first popular book on climate change?
A
The End of Nature by Bill Mckibben
9
Q
What percentage of scientists agree that climate change was caused by humans?
A
99%
10
Q
Greenwashing
A
- A marketing ploy by companies to make you think their practices and products are ‘greener’ than they are
- Spreading doubt where none exits; such as fossil fuel companies funding the NIPCC
11
Q
What nations are most affected by climate change?
A
poor island nations
12
Q
What is GDP?
A
gross domestic products
13
Q
What is the hardest evidence we have of climate change?
A
ice core samples
14
Q
What other physical evidence of climate change can we look at?
A
insurance records provide evidence through risk assessments
15
Q
When did industrialization begin?
A
- 1780s in England
- first factories went up in the US in 1812-1813
16
Q
What would happen if we stopped emitting green house gases right now?
A
We would still see a rise in the Earth’s temp. because of half lives, exponential effects, and solar refraction
17
Q
What is Earth First!?
A
a radical wing of the Sierra Club
18
Q
What is journalism supposed to be?
A
disinterested
19
Q
What is environmental discourse?
A
points to the social processes that construct knowledge and meaning in terms of nature; challenges the idea that science is an unbiased, objective account of reality
20
Q
Climate Change A-J
A
- A: Arrhenius created the first climate model in 1895
- B: Blah, Blah, Blah; world leaders talk about climate action but never make any change
- C: Capitalism: Companies continue using fossil fuels because it makes them money; climate change is a product of capitalism
- D: Despair
- E: Electrify Everything
- F: Flight; planes that run solely on electricity
- G: Green Concrete; carbicrete; concrete production accounted for 80% of carbon emissions in 2021
- H: Hope
- I: Inflation Reduction Act; 1st real climate legislation make it through congress
- J: JOBS; cutting emissions creates jobs & money
21
Q
Climate Change K-T
A
- K: Kilowatts: Americans use 11k Kilowatts of energy every year; atmospheric imperialism
- L: leapfrogging; India could leapfrog straight to electric energy instead of using fossil fuels
- M: Math; aggregate emissions; CO2 budget for 3degreesF will run out by 2030
- N: Narratives; climate narratives center around doom & gloom; we need stories that motivate action
- O: Objections; Valclav Smil argues that positive narratives about climate change are presumptuous; amazing work has been done toward climate change, but almost no progress has been made
- P: Power; de-carbonizing & democratizing the US power grid
- Q: quagmire; new solutions come with new problems
- R: Republicans; 0% of registered republicans believe climate change is a problem
- S: Shortfall; Only 5% of 128 countries have taken 1st steps to reaching net zero emissions
- T: Temperature
22
Q
Climate Change U-Z
A
- U: Uncertainty
- V: Vast
- W: Weather; 2020 had 22 weather related disasters that caused more than $1billion in damage; the number rises every year
- X: Xenophobia; climate change’s highest costs will be borne by those who contributed least to the problem; 21million people are displaced by climate change each year
- Y: You
- Z: Zero; the hoover dam is ground zero for climate change, it has been in a megadrought since 1998
23
Q
What genre is Climate Change from A-Z by E. Kolbert?
A
- Bestiary: an old genre (often real and mythological) detailing different animals
- educational, nature writing, science writing, history, interviews, & fieldwork
24
Q
What is PVC and how does it affect us?
A
- Polyvinyl chloride
- dioxin is created when you make/destroy PVC
- dioxin is a carcinogen
25
What do journalists bring to the environmental humanities?
firsthand accounts, personal fieldwork, and history to tell stories with
26
What did Arrhenius do?
developed the first climate model in 1895
27
What was finished the year after Arrhenius died?
The Hoover Dam
28
What is capitalism and what does it do?
- A system that functions with abstraction
- Goods/services are commodified (so are people)
- Sees nature as a resource/raw material
- Obscures/hides the interconnectedness of everything
- a system where someone inevitably ends up with power over others
29
What is ecology?
a system that studies interconnectedness
30
What did Adam Smith say about the market?
it is the invisible hand; the market is a natural process
31
Agential
everything makes changes/everything is an agent
32
What do the Environmental Humanities do?
- demonstrate/depict interconnectedness of time, space, and species
- shows the value of seeing and feeling; context for data and ideas
33
What genre are Death in the Open and The World's Biggest Membrane by Lewis Thomas? When were they published?
- creative non-fiction
- 1974
34
What is Thomas's Death in the Open about?
- nature has its own mechanism for removing dead things (scavengers/fungi)
- death is all around us but we can't bear to think about it all the time
- our bodies are ecosystems and things are born/die in them all the time
- assumes humans are sensitive and social animals but we are also ecosystems
- death IS in the open, we just don't see it
- "vast mortality"; life and death are the same thing
- tone: sadness/comfort
- death is a pre-condition for life, it unites us
35
What genre is Heaven and Earth in Jest by Annie Dillard? When was it published?
- creative non-fiction
- 1974
36
What is Thomas's The World's Largest Membrane about?
- The Earth as one organisms that respires
- Everything (air, water, Earth) is connected
- the atmosphere is the Earth's cell membrane
- goes from the biggest thing to the smallest
- describing a system/small being that is not totally closed
- Earth is semi-permiable like a cell membrane
37
What is Dillard's Heaven and Earth in Jest about?
- Minute observations of nature
- Observing the very small helps you think about the very large
- Changing perspective
- Interconnectedness is metaphysical as well as physical
- The sublime: awestruck, seeing anew; marriage of terror and beauty
- Dillard is emulating Thoreau's Walden Pond
- Thoreau, live deliberately; find out the ethical consequences of your choices
- Thoreau, practices being "awake" spiritually, philosophically, and politically
- Thoreau's real-o-meter: measuring reality and what really matters; what is/isn't true in culture
38
What is some key symbolism in Heaven in Earth in Jest?
- bloody pawprints/roses = love/violence, life/death
- mountains = eternity/afterlife
- creeks = the river of life
39
What kind of scholar was Annie Dillard?
A Thoreau scholar
40
What does IPAT stand for?
- Impact, Population, Affluence, and Technology
- Impact = Population x consumption/per person x impact/per unit of consumption
41
What is carrying capacity?
- The population of a species that can be supported by a particular habitat
- i.e. the number of humans the Earth's systems can support
42
What is the ICS Working Group and what are they doing?
- Industrial Control Systems Join Working Group
- they are working to change the name of our epoch from Holocene to Anthropocene
43
What is the Anthropocene and when was the word coined?
- Since the Industrial Revolution humans have so altered planetary systems that they make a new geological epoch
- It was coined in 2000 by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer
44
What are some defining phenomena of the Anthropocene?
- increased population growth and energy use
- accelerating greenhouse gas emission
- deforestation
- soil disruption
- migration pattern disruption
45
Wet-Bulb Temperature
Measures the effect of heat and humidity on the human body and what it can endure
46
Biostratigraphic Markers
- Rats, cats, and chickens are the largest biostratigraphic marker of humans
- 96% of all mammals are either domesticated or human; only 4% are wild
- 70% of all birds are chickens
- 300mil housecats vs. 3,000 wild tigers
47
What do Clark and Kerridge (textbook) say is an obstacle to fixing climate change?
- Human nature and evolutionary heritage
- we can't comprehend the scale, complexity, and speed of climate change
- we aren't built to understand the very microscopic/macroscopic issues that contribute to/come from climate change
48
Why is calling the new epoch "Anthropocene" cause for debate?
- because Anthropogenic means caused by humans, calling the epoch Anthropocene assumes that ALL humans are responsible for it, when in fact only 1-3% of the population are really to blame
- assuming that everyone is responsible obscures systemic inequity and reinforces inequality
- the question becomes: can we solve problems without creating/reinforcing inequality
49
Capitalocene
- Another name suggestion for the new epoch
- Names the exploitative, extractive relationships of capitalism as the cause of planetary destruction
- industrial-scale capitalism produces the wastes that stratigraphers use to identify golden spikes
50
The Plantationocene
- Another name suggestion for the new epoch
- Name sthe slave-dependent plantation system as the cause of planetary destruction, an older form of capitalism's exploitative, extractive relationships
- the plantation system was essential to European empire building and the "columbian exchange" thus connecting it to another golden spike
51
The Cthulucene
- Another name suggestion for the new epoch
- Invented by biologist Donna Haraway
- Rebrands the age with an aspirational identity, naming the ethical, co-creative relationships that will be necessary to cultivate
52
Dating the Anthropocene
- Colombian Exchange (conquest/colonization): 1610
- Industrial Revolution: 1760-1840
- The Great Acceleration/Global Capitalism: 20th century
- Radiation (plutonium/nuclear bomb): 1945
53
Golden Spike
- An area that serves as a marker of a global event in stratigraphic material (rocks, chemicals, and animals layered in Earth's crust)
- ex: the site of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs
54
Geoengineering
large scale systemic intervention of climate change such as Carbon Dioxide Removal or Solar Radiation Management
55
What is the Duck-Rabbit Paradox?
- The issue of "seeing" and simultaneously holding more than one belief in our minds
- we don't hold space to consider other perspectives
56
How does Attention relate to the Environmental Humanities?
- we live in a fast-paced society and therefore can miss a lot of things that are right in front of us
- arts and humanities require us to slow down and notice things
57
What is a simpler way to remember the Anthropocene?
It is the epoch in which human disturbance outranks all other geological forces
58
How many elephants do we learn it took to get the amount of tusks being burnt in Anthropocene (2018)?
10,000
59
When was the movie Anthropocene released?
2018
60
What is Anthropocene (2018) ultimately about? what is it doing?
- About industry/money
- it goes from one industry to another and tracks their ecological footprint
- Foregrounds nature despite the title; foregrounds the effects of human systems rather than the systems themselves
- The visual scale of the film demonstrates urgency/the size of the issue
- Much of what the film shows is uncanny
61
What percentage of Earth's forests have been cleared, degraded, or fragmented for human use?
85%
62
Who directed Anthropocene (2018)
Pencier, Baichwal, and Burtynsky
63
What are the two main critiques of Anthropocene (2018)?
- It aestheticizes destruction
- Its through line misses corporations and capitalism who are the real agents of climate change
64
What is the half-earth project?
a movement to concentrate human population to half the planet and leave the other half untouched; E.O. Wilson
