Identify a timeline and explain key developments on terms of one key event or concern for the environmental movement. For example:
· Global climate change
· The conservation of nature through national parks
· Protest at the development of nuclear power
· Protest at dam construction
· Oil spills
. Other environmental concerns such as fauna loss, loss of rainforest/biomes
Some of these activities will not take one full lesson. Move to next number in sequence.
1-2. The human relationship with nature
~ Identify that the human relationship with nature has changed over time.
3. The move to conserve and preserve nature - National Parks and such
4. Concerns regarding sustainability and limits to growth
5 - 6. Global environmental concerns - Climate change case study
The short story - Another road
~ Read and discuss story
~ Challenge the environmental claims made in the story
7. Outline assessment task
8-10. Research
11. Preparation of draft
12. Peer edit
13. Redraft
14. Submit.
Do humans have dominion (power) over nature?
SOURCE 1
Source 2
1. Both these bible texts speak to the human relationship with nature; which of the sources:
a. appears to give humans dominion or power over nature - in other words, humans are on top.
b. suggests that humans can learn from nature.
2. If humans have power over nature does this mean that we can therefore abuse nature? Explain why/why not.
Source 3.
The extract below is from a site which promotes the idea that Islam stresses that humans have an obligation to care for nature. This source contests the views of people such as Lynn White Jr., who wrote a paper on the historical roots of the ecological crisis.
For this reason traditional religions like Christianity, Judaism and Islam are held accountable as they supposedly espouse an anthropocentric (human-centered) reality. Writers like Lynn White Jr. see this as being the root cause for the ecological/environmental problems of today. He decries not only the dualistic nature of man’s relationship with nature but also the idea “that it is God’s will that man exploit nature for his proper end...” as “Man shares, in great measure, God’s transcendence over nature.” (White, Lynn. The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crises. Science, 155. 1967)[1]
Irshaan Hussain, Islam from Inside, MAN AND ECOLOGY: TOWARDS AN ETHIC OF ENVIRONMENT, Trustees or Tyrants [http://www.islamfrominside.com/Pages/Articles/Ecology%20Environment%20and%20Islam.html]
Source 4
3. What do sources 3 and 4 suggest is the Islamic view of the human relationship with nature.
Source 5.
‘Human nature is the other key facet of the world-view of Islam. Man fulfills a very important role in this cosmos. Although all things are made by God and identified with God in as much as their being created by Him, man enjoys a role as God’s vicegerent (his representative) having a freedom and far-reaching power latent within him. In the Qur’an God says He has breathed His spirit into man.
“When thy Lord said unto the angels: lo! I am about to create a mortal out of mire, And when I have fashioned him and breathed into him of My Spirit, then fall down before him prostrate.” (Qur’an 38:72-73)
This verse provides essential insights into man’s position and nature in this universe. Although he is a creation of God he is superior to the rest of God’s creation as he has within him the Spirit of God. In this way he is unique among the creations of God. It is only man to whom the angels are commanded to prostrate themselves.’
Irshaan Hussain, Islam from Inside, MAN AND ECOLOGY: TOWARDS AN ETHIC OF ENVIRONMENT, Trustees or Tyrants [http://www.islamfrominside.com/Pages/Articles/Ecology%20Environment%20and%20Islam.html]
4. Does source 5 suggest a similar role and power for humans over nature as did source 1? Explain.
5. Do you feel that humanity has fulfilled its contract with nature, as set out either in the bible or the Qur’an, in terms of human dealings with nature over history. Why/why not?
Source 6
According to the American Institute of Vedic Studies, 2014:
‘Western religious thought based upon Biblical traditions regards nature as something created by God. If nature is sacred, it is so as God’s creation. This is the basis of the approach to ecology in western religious traditions. They ask us to protect nature as God’s creation, but do not afford nature any sanctity of its own. However, they are generally suspicious of nature Gods and regard worshipping the Earth itself as a form of idolatry. That is why they have historically rejected nature based or pagan religions as unholy, including Hinduism.
The Hindu view of nature is based upon the Vedas, Upanishads and Vedanta and their philosophical views, as well as Hindu devotional and ritualistic practices. According to Hindu thought, there is no separation between the Divine and the world of nature. They are the two aspects of the same reality. The cosmic reality is one like the ocean. Nature or the manifest world is like the waves on the surface of the sea. Brahman or the unmanifest Absolute is like the depths of the sea. But it is all water, all the same single ocean.’
https://vedanet.com/2012/06/13/hindu-view-of-nature/
Source 7
Buddhism also suggests that nature and humanity are NOT separate entities, according to this source:
Buddhist attitudes to nature
Buddhism, in common with some other Eastern traditions, does not make the big distinction found in the West between “nature” and human beings. It is stressed that we are not set apart from nature (as is believed in Christianity), but that we are part of it. The doctrines of karma and of rebirth put the whole of human life in the context of an endless series of cycles, which resemble those which operate in the natural world (e.g. the water cycle, the food cycle). The Buddhist stress on impermanence reminds us that our bodies are subject to the endlessly-changing processes of nature, whilst beliefs about rebirth suggest that even our consciousness is recycled in relation to a new body. The form of things changes constantly, but certain basic patterns continue.
So, it should certainly not come as a shock to practising Buddhists to discover what environmentalists are now telling us. That is, that nature is not a boundless ocean of resources (the doctrine of impermanence should have made this clear), and the actions that we perform have an effect on the world around us. In the theory of karma the effects of our actions are in proportion to the greed and hatred which motivated them, so if our spoiling of the planet through stripping its resources and polluting it was motivated by greed, we are now beginning to experience the effects of that greed. The earth is our mirror...’
http://www.clear-vision.org/Schools/Students/Ages-17-18/natural-world/environment.aspx
6. How are Eastern traditions such as those of Hinduism and Buddhism different from those of ‘the west’?
7. Is there evidence in the modern world which suggests that religious views have little to do with what is happening to and has happened to the natural world since about 1945? Explain.
March 1, 1872 - The Worlds first national park at Yellowstone in the US is established.
Royal National Park
Australia’s first national park, was proclaimed on 26 April 1879, south of Sydney in New South Wales. It is now known as the Royal National Park. It was the second such park to be declared in the world, the first being Yellowstone National Park in the United States of America.
Originally named ‘The National Park’, it was renamed ‘Royal National Park’ when Queen Elizabeth II visited it in 1955.
In the early days of the park, it was used more as a place where residents of Sydney could come to relax and amuse themselves than for the conservation and study of native wildlife. A dance hall was even built there as late as the 1940s, and earlier, land was cleared for large areas of lawns and a train line was set up between Loftus and Audley, two towns within the Park.
(http://www.australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/national-parks)
1. According to these sources what has been the purpose of national parks and how has this purpose changed over time? Make specific reference to the sources in your response.
Read the texts below and write a definition of what sustainability (particularly ecological sustainability) and limits to growth mean.
Skwirk (http://www.skwirk.com/p-c_s-57_u-500_t-1363_c-5246/qld/sose-geography/environment-and-development-world-environments/exploring-the-issue/what-is-ecological-sustainability-) states:
Introduction
In 1820 there were around one billion people in the entire world. Today, that is less than the population of China alone. The world’s population has rapidly increased in the last 50 years, more than doubling to reach 6.5 billion people in the world today. While the population continues to increase, our access to natural resources stays the same. This means that there are now more people using the same amount of natural resources. The current rate at which humans consume resources and produce waste is unsustainable. The Earth will not be able to maintain this imbalance forever.
Defining sustainability
Sustainability is a concept which promotes equality between the people of today and the people of tomorrow. The idea of sustainability is to create a balance between our ecological, social and economic needs. Our needs of today must be taken care of in such a way that it does not negatively impact the needs of the next generations.
Ecological sustainability refers to the capacity of the biosphere to meet the needs of the present generation, without hindering future generations from being able to meet their needs. This means using our natural resources wisely in the short-term so that these resources are available in the long-term. Ecological sustainability relies on the fact that humans have the ability to exhaust (overuse) our natural resources, leaving nothing but polluted water and infertile soil for future generations. Ecological sustainability is the belief that all humans must use resources wisely and efficiently so that these resources never become exhausted or over-polluted...
Source of image- University of Michigan. Accessed via http://www.ecologicalfootprintproject.org.uk/images/foot1.gif
Limits to Growth
The 1972 book Limits to Growth, which predicted our civilisation would probably collapse some time this [21st] century, has been criticised as doomsday fantasy since it was published. Back in 2002, self-styled environmental expert Bjorn Lomborg consigned it to the “dustbin of history”.
It doesn’t belong there. Research from the University of Melbourne has found the book’s forecasts are accurate, 40 years on. If we continue to track in line with the book’s scenario, expect the early stages of global collapse to start appearing soon...
The book’s central point, much criticised since, is that “the earth is finite” and the quest for unlimited growth in population, material goods etc would eventually lead to a crash.
Source: The Guardian, 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/limits-to-growth-was-right-new-research-shows-were-nearing-collapse
(Previously published in Social Alternatives, Volume 31:1:2012)
IT was freezing. Wet snow began to fall. He felt the first flakes on his face, immediately turning to cold water running down and into his beard. Where it almost immediately froze again. He walked on, the sound of his boots changing as the snow fell. He felt his beard. Scattered with icy shrapnel. He needed shelter but the road he was walking ran across desolate high country flats. A white line disappearing north into the gloom that was thickening with the snow. Gum trees, many of them dead, stripped of leaves by the unseasonable new-seasonable prolonged cold. He wondered if it would now always be cold here.
He was alone, pulling a small trailer. He was wearing thin gloves. The cold was grasping his hands. He tucked one hand deep into one of the pockets he’d lined with torn up newspaper. He’d change hands in maybe five minutes, warm the other.
The slush was making the road heavy going, particularly with only one hand pulling. Every now and then he needed to turn and give it an extra hard pull with both hands. The trailer was his lifeline. No trailer… no stove, no food, no essentials. He wished he had a tarp; he could rig it and get out of the snow. But he didn’t have one. It had been too much weight and he’d thought he’d not need one. It had been hot further back. Just like they’d said, those soothsayers. He imagined them laughing. Irony. They would use that word with him. His English teacher had been fond of that word. But it was bloody ironic, what the old soothsayers had said coming true. He’d called them that. The soothsayers. All those pseudo scientists and the media and all the others who’d talked written spoken pronounced railed at promoted promulgated… a change: climate, habits, mindset. There’d been so many of them and he’d figured that it was some kind of mass delusion. So many of them. The ones he’d said were dupes, con men, spin doctors. People who wanted him out of his car and out of his home and not watching TV and living with scungy lights that flickered nonsensically and eating greens grown on local rubbish tips… And they’d been right. Bastards. He wondered how many of them were walking now or whether they’d already gone north towards the equator. Before the need to walk. Then again, there’d been talk of monstrous heat near Cairns. Of wholesale deaths of forests. Desiccated scrub, cassowary carcasses.
Exotic, far-away places came too soon to be close. He knew he was beyond merely cold now and always in the past you’d gone north for warmth. It had to be right.
He remembered feeling like it was all over so quickly. It had, hadn’t it, come so suddenly, really. A few years of wildly oscillating weather, of ever rising levees and old people dying from too much cold or too much heat and water shortages here and floods there, then the mad rush of an island nation for drier land. Then another. And another. The bombing that had to be done. Defences set up on coasts where all the mangroves are dying and the reefs all bleached and skeletal. He wondered when he’d suddenly started believing and knew when he did that it was too late now to change what was.
His boots were making a different sound. The road had become slush. They were getting wet. He might change them soon; he had another pair in the trailer. Not yet. The road simply went on and there was no break that he could see beneath a lowering sky, the road perhaps very gradually climbing. When he was a boy he’d come up here with his parents and he remembered that the road climbed to a pass. He tried to remember the boy in that car and the long slow unwinding of the road; tried to remember this country from before. Had there been copses of denser woods where the road cut a ridge line? He recalled the road, gently swooping away to fall and gently rise again to the next ridge line, the road gently swooping and climbing in this boy’s memory. Maybe it was a figment of his overheated imagination. It went a long way, this country. And all of it unpeopled. Dead now. All of them gone.
He wondered what someone would say if walking with him.
You’ve chosen the wrong way.
Maybe, he’d say.
There’s nobody here to help us.
I know – we’ll be okay.
We need to light a fire, otherwise we’ll freeze to death.
It won’t be any good out in the open. The wood’s all wet.
We need to try.
There’ll be a copse where the road drops down. At the next ridge line. Out of the wind.
So.
There’s a chance the wood will be dry and maybe with a bit of luck some trees still left alive.
Who cares about trees.
Who cares about trees? Would he laugh then and say, I do now. I’ll even hug one that’s still alive and got a bit of canopy, anything to stop that bloody snow wetting me down good and proper.
The snow was heavier now and it was nearly night-time dark. His feet were heavy. He could feel they were wet but he still had enough warmth in him to keep his feet alive. He had to stop. He needed shelter though.
We need shelter, the other voice said.
I know.
Like now.
Soon. There’s nowhere here. Soon.
He walked on and was swallowed by the darkness.
History knowledge and understanding
The intensification of environmental effects in the twentieth century as a result of population increase, urbanisation, increasing industrial production and trade (ACDSEH125)
The growth and influence of the environment movement within Australia and overseas, and developments in ideas about the environment (notion of ‘Gaia’, ‘limits to growth’, concept of ‘sustainability’, concept of ‘rights of nature’) (ACDSEH126)
The setting:
The writer sets the story sometime in the future but the date is left uncertain. The exact location of the story is also deliberately left ambiguous – though there are clues that the story is set in some part of Australia’s uplands. Is there real ‘history’ in here?
1. What do you understand has happened to the weather/climate based on this description in the opening paragraph — ‘by the unseasonable new-seasonable prolonged cold’?
2. How does this line ‘scientists and the media and all the others who’d talked written spoken pronounced railed at promoted promulgated… a change: climate, habits, mindset’ relate to events in our current times?
3. The writer uses details to try to give the story an authentic sense of time and place… Use clues in the text and research to help you complete the questions below. The first one has been done for you:
a. ‘Talk of monstrous heat near Cairns’ (paragraph 3) suggests to me that climate warming is the subject of this sentence. Research reveals that change will be more complicated than just warming – some places may actually become colder.
b. ‘Water shortages here and floods there....’ (paragraph 5) suggests to me that … Research reveals that …
c. ‘The reefs all bleached and skeletal …’ (paragraph 5) suggests to me that … Research reveals that …
d. ‘The mad rush of an island nation for drier land …’ (paragraph 5) suggests to me that … Research reveals that …
e. ‘The bombing that had to be done. Defences set up on coasts …’ (paragraph 5) suggests to me that … Research reveals that …
Beliefs and Values of the times
4. ‘What do you understand are the two key opposing positions regarding climate change in our times?
5. The first person narrator of the story refers to the scientists who rail at climate change as ‘pseudo’ – does this reveal he was once a climate change sceptic? Explain.
Material Circumstances of the times
6. How has the climate change of this story affected the world? Use details for the story in your answer.
History skills
Historical questions and research
Identify and select different kinds of questions about the past to inform historical inquiry (ACHHS184)
Evaluate and enhance these questions (ACHHS185)
Identify and locate relevant sources, using ICT and other methods (ACHHS186)
The research process
How did the writer research this story and what prior knowledge did he bring to the writing?
Prior Knowledge of climate change debates helped the writer frame the basic context of the story. But much of it needed to be researched – exact impact of climate change, debate over causes of climate change (are people the main agency?), and the possible impacts of change: all these were discovered through research.
1. Given that the curriculum asks students to investigate the ‘the intensification of environmental effects in the twentieth century as a result of population increase, urbanisation, increasing industrial production and trade’ what sub-questions would you ask to further enhance and refine the information you get about ‘the intensification of environmental effects’? Write two to three. [Hint: what environmental effect will you focus on? What factor (population increase, urbanisation, increasing industrial production and trade) will you focus on – or will you focus on all factors?]
2. The writer did most of his research on line; would ‘climate change and impacts’ be a good search string to begin with? Why or why not?
3. How could this search string be improved?
What the writer made up
The once-upon-a-time climate change denier character used in this story is fictional. The setting is also a fiction, though it is based on the writer’s knowledge of high country areas in Australia. Some of the story is also related to the writer’s reading of The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
Where did the writer get his information? (Bibliography)
· Australian government, Department of the environment, 2013, Climate change impacts in Australia, http://www.environment.gov.au/climate-change/climate-science/impacts
· Dr. Eugene Cordero, 2004, Climate Change Impacts, Intergovernmental panel on climate change, http://www.met.sjsu.edu/~cordero/met112/lectures/Met112lecture19.pdf
· NASA, 2015, Global Climate Change – Vital Signs of the planet, http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
· New Internationalist, No. 442, May 2011, Climate Change Denial, Busting the Myths, New Internationalist Australia, see https://digital.newint.com.au/
Identify and populate a timeline and explain key developments in terms of one key event or concern for the environmental movement. For example:
· Global climate change
· The conservation of nature through national parks
· Protest at the development of nuclear power
· Protest at dam construction
· Oil spills