Midterm #1 Flashcards
(62 cards)
What drives people to partake in acts to protect the environment?
Paradox: Link between concern and behavior is limited
What is the effect of economic growth, particularly capitalist economic growth, upon the environment?
Paradox: While capitalist growth and expansion are necessary components of contemporary economic organization and could be the means through which to solve our environmental problems, capitalist expansion and growth have historically been the principal cause of our environmental problems.
Jevon’s Paradox
Anytime we learn to use resources more efficiently, we just use more of the resources.
Jevon’s Paradox Example:
Fuel Efficiency: Cars nowadays have a higher mpg, but the increased use of cars over the last 20 years has offset any efficiency changes.
IPAT Formula
Environmental Impact= Population x Affluence x Technology
Materialist Construction of Nature Ex:
Settlers in New World: When the settlers from Europe came to the America’s for the first time, they believed that America was bountiful with deer and white pines. However, the only reason why it appeared this way was because while burning trees down for farming land, the white pines wouldn’t burn and local hunting laws and rights led to an abundance of deer. Overall, everything that the Europeans saw as nature was materially constructed by the Natives.
Ideological Construction of Nature Ex:
Lake Matoka: The area surrounding Lake Matoka and the grass on campus are technically no different from each other, but they are treated differently because how we perceive them from an ideological standpoint affects how we treat them.
If nature is socially constructed:
1) It’s existence is not independent of our knowledge
2) Therefore, nature cannot provide an independent foundation against which we test our knowledge claims
3) Even if an independent physical world exists, our empirical observations are still biased by our socially pre-constructed ideas of it
Social Construction of Nature as a political refutation:
Helps us falsify claims about the world
Ex: Bell Curve- Human IQ is naturally determined- but isn’t it determined by the environment???
Social Construction of Nature as a philosophical critique:
Different types of science (like scientific method, medicine, etc.)
Can come to the same conclusion with different methods
Can say that scientific philosophies are socially constructed
Social Construction of Nature
Seeing nature as socially constructed is politically progressive and empowering. In other words, such approaches allow us to see power structures and hierarchies that define nature and the natural ways that favor certain interests over others.
Other Side of Social Construction of Nature
Seeing nature as socially constructed could lead to the denial that nature and environmental problems are real. Such denial can be politically dangerous and cause us to not push science forward to solve our problems.
Critique of Pure Re-constructivists
1)Fail to represent the active of generative capacities of biophysical processes of nature.
2) Move two quickly from from concrete to universal and often fail to differentiate between different types of nature.
Failing to see differences between nature causes the public to overlook why nature comes to enter political and economic life.
The Treadmill of Production
The growing level of capital, or money, available for investment and the changing ways in which this money was and could be used led to a substantial increase in
1) the demand for products
2) the natural resources to make the products
3) pollution
The Treadmill of Production Formula
$ + Technology $$$$
The Environment in the Treadmill of Production
1) New technologies required more energy, more raw materials, and more chemicals.
2) Sunk capital: need to recuperate cost of technology drives producers to use it as much as possible.
3) Increases in production have historically led to increases in pollution.
4) As firms seek to maximize profits, they sometimes seek to change or manipulate policies that deter
their profit making capacities.
The First Contradiction of Capitalism
1) Arises in the relationship between business owners and workers.
2) Businesses attempt to maximize profit by getting the
most from their workers for the least amount of
money.
3) Workers produce lots of goods for little
compensation. As a result, businesses are unable to find anyone to buy the produced goods.
4) Results in a crisis of overproduction
Underlying Premise of Capitalism
Capitalism is inherently a crisis ridden form of socioeconomic organization.
The Second Contradiction of Capitalism
Focuses on the conditions/underlying necessities of capitalism
1) Material Inputs (Drive up cost of raw materials by using them so fast)
2) The reproduction of human labor power (Endangering health of profits by endangering the health of the workers)
3) Infrastructure (Businesses need infrastructure but often push for lower taxes and don’t contribute to infrastructure, which they need to make a profit)
How can we overcome the 2nd Contradiction and crisis?
New technologies and new supplies
Four ways to see Marx and the environment:
1) Marx was anti-ecological
2) Marx provided some ecological insights but was pro-
technology
3) Marx provided an analysis of ecological degradation in
agriculture, but this remained largely outside of his
main focus
4) Marx provided a systematic approach to nature and
environmental degradation
The Three Agricultural Revolutions
1) 16th to 18th Century:
-The Enclosure & Shift to Market Based Agriculture -Advances in crop rotation, manuring, drainage, and
livestock management
2) 19th Century (in particular 1830 to 1880):
-Move towards industrial agriculture -Advancements in soil science and rise of fertilizer
industry
3) 20th Century
-Move from animals to machines
-Large scale agriculture (green revolution, feedlots, etc)
Malthus and Ricardo’s Views on Nature and the Environment
Ignored human impact
No social construction
Population increases-> decrease in agricultural productivity
Over time, land deteriorates and soil productivity falls to the point where everyone starves
Marx and Engels’s Views on Nature and the Environment
Soil productivity could be improved by a change in human nature
Maintained the importance of the relationship between humans and the soil
Soil productivity= socially constructed
