Anthropology and Environment
Lectures
In the early years, I used this class to teach the ‘academic’ topics being produced by anthropology and environment (A&E) researchers (common property, TEK, environmental movements, political ecology, etc) and to introduce the ideas of systems ecology (primarily from HT Odum, Buzz Holling, and others). But in recent years, I recognized the need to include the many topical environmental issues that impinge on all of us. Those topics include, of course, global warming, species extinctions, tropical forest loss, ocean acidification, chemical pollution, etc. And I felt the need to introduce two topical subjects of importance for Taiwan. Those are ‘net-zero emissions’ and the UN ‘SDGs’. Some ppts have been dropped, but they remain in my graduate class, Environmental Anthropology. I did continue, however, to give the students much of the basic understanding of our biosphere and our place therein. Here is my original syllabus introduction to the class:
People, culture, and nature form one system, one vast, miraculous, interdependent, evolving, and synergistic system that spans the globe. We are all utterly dependent upon this culture-nature system to sustain us, feed us, and provide us with the energy and materials to build and sustain our societies and ourselves. In this class, you will gain a thorough understanding of our self-organized system of culture and nature. You will learn about ecosystems, natural resources, and the human place within nature. When we finish you should have a much deeper understanding of the concept of sustainability, and what it will take to live more simply and peacefully with the world of the 21st Century. We all must learn to act responsibly to sustain the natural world so that it will provide for us and for the generations that follow us. That environmental awareness is what we strive to attain in this class.
Introduction
Movies – Energy Blind, Part 1 (6:03), Three Seconds (4:18), How Wolves Change Rivers (4:33), The Story of Stuff (21:22)
Taiwan Net-Zero Emissions, Central Government Net-Zero Plan
In recent years, the topic of ‘Net-zero by 2050’ became the mantra from the central government - the idea that drastically reduced emissions combined with new carbon sinks can lead to a ‘net’ of zero carbon emissions for Taiwan. We used this very simple ppt to begin to debate that goal. But I did not want to simply denounce the net-zero plan. I wanted the students to begin to come to their own understandings for themselves. So I gave them a list of topics to choose from (all promoted by the central government) and produce very short ppts for the next week. Including these and more: Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS), Hydrogen Energy Generation, Circular Economy, Energy Storage, Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs), F-gasses, Carbon Pricing (carbon tax, cap-and-trade), etc. In our next class, we could then begin to deconstruct these ‘solutions’, which continued throughout the semester.
These next two ppts introduce the students to energy sources. I begin with energy resources that are imported and produced in Taiwan. This ppt includes the hydrocarbons, but it also includes nuclear and hydrogen, which are currently produced with large hydrocarbon inputs.
Movies: Hydraulic Fracturing (6:37, linked), Fracking – Opportunity or Danger (5:03, linked), Fracking on 60 Minutes (13:20, linked)
This ppt introduces the so-called renewable energy sources. These include solar, hydro, wind, biomass. I introduce environmental accounting (emergy) for evaluating the ‘sustainability’ of these resources, all of which require continuous maintenance and fossil fuel inputs, which have led some people to label them ‘rebuildable’ and not renewable.
Movies – People’s Planet 4 – What Price Nature?
Wood Again?, Wishful Thinking, Minerals
Several important new issues emerged during this class year, which led to the creation of these three short ppts. As fossil fuels were in short supply in Europe, there was talk of cutting and using wood again for fuel. A couple pipe dreams for energy sources are being seriously proposed: fusion and deep geothermal. The demand for new renewable resources requires us to look closely at the minerals that they require.
This lecture introduces the class to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). ‘Sustainable development’ originally focused on threats to our life-sustaining natural environment. But the SDGs produced by the UN are a hodgepodge of initiatives, many fantasies or moonshots of the Global Left. Others promote neoliberal economic solutions. Taken together, the original intention of sustainable development is diluted and obscured, and environmentalists are distracted. This is my impression. I wanted the students to discover some of these ideas on their own. So I created an in-class project.
I asked my students: Do the goals relate to one another? Is there logic in the order? If their purpose is to achieve sustainable development, what is sustainable development? How could we make sense of this? My answer for the students: With cognitive science! I had the students do ‘pile sorts’ to discover the semantic logic of the cultural domains within the SDGs. The second half of the ppt contains some of my best slides related to sustainability, energy, and the elephant in the room – SDG 8, Economic Growth!
The second ppt is a short presentation that more directly criticizes some of the SDGs by proposing alternative solutions to the issues that they pose.
What is the ‘Environment’? (Part 1)
These next three ppts ask and answer the question, What is the Environment? They are essentially a ‘systems ecology’ mini-course.
Movies: Earth Systems Interact (5:49, linked), An Introduction to Heat (4:09, linked), Taiwan Had Some Volcanoes (0:59, linked), Earth Continually Changes (5:34, linked)
What is the ‘Environment’? (Part 2)
Movies: How Ecosystems Work (3:23, linked), All About Soil (12:52, linked), Succession (2:33, linked), Black Tears of the Land
What is the ‘Environment’? (Part 3)
Movies: The Dirt on Decomposers (3:18), The Phosphorus Challenge (2:28, linked), The Phosphorus Problem (3:34, linked), Regenerative Agriculture (3:56, linked), Population, Community, Ecosystem (2:21, linked), Populations Biotic Potential (2:57, linked)), Interactions in Communities (2:40, linked)
People, Culture, Nature (Part 1)
These next two ppts are essentially a ‘human ecology’ mini-course.
Movie – Guns, Germs, and Steel (50 min, linked) or QUIZ
People, Culture, Nature (Part 2)
Movies: Extinction Rebellion (1:59, linked), Overpopulation: The Human Explosion Explained (6:39, linked), People’s Planet 3 – Feeding 9 Billion, From the Ground Up (13:14, linked)
The Rise and Fall of Complex Societies
After learning about the environmental limits and determinants of human society of the last 10,000 years, we now address the question of collapse. Have societies in the past collapsed due to environmental limits, and what does that say for our future?
Movies – Why Societies Collapse (19:47, linked)
After all of the gloom and doubt in many of the ppts of this class, I now begin four weeks of positive thinking and responses. This ppt is the history of environmentalism, beginning with ‘the Great Stink’, and the work and ideas of Thoreau, John Muir, and so on. It ends with a look at environmentalism in Taiwan.
Movie – Black Tears of the Land (60 minutes)
This ppt introduces the ‘planetary problems’ and the concepts of resilience, stability, and Holling’s adaptive cycle. Proposed solutions are top-down.
Movies: Thermokarst Lakes (1:22, linked), Planetary Boundaries (20 min, linked), The Doughnut (1:26, linked)
This ppt introduces sociological movements as bottom-up solutions to our world predicaments. They include bioregionalism, permaculture, ecovillages, and transition towns. It ends with an appendix that includes all of the permaculture principles.
Movies – In Transition 1.0 (49:39, linked)
This final ppt follows the work of Gerry Martin on tipping points for what he calls problem-focused activism. Of the other bottom-up initiatives, this approach has produced maybe the most real results, as seen in the videos.
Movies: - Apo Island (7:28, linked), City Gardens (12:23, linked), Rainwater Harvest (11:26, linked), Pesticide Trap (17 minutes, linked)