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Sustainability

POLS 319 Class 10: Capitalism P. Brian Fisher. Sustainability. Story of Stuff. Annie Leonard, Story. Speth , Bridge at the Edge of the World. Speth , A Bridge at the Edge of the World.

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Sustainability

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  1. POLS 319 Class 10: Capitalism P. Brian Fisher Sustainability

  2. Story of Stuff • Annie Leonard, Story

  3. Speth, Bridge at the Edge of the World

  4. Speth, A Bridge at the Edge of the World • Thesis: environmental movement has failed to prevent continuing ecological deterioration. World faces a global environmental crisis that requires remaking modern civilization. • It is a failure that reaches many spheres of national life—economic, social, political, and environmental. America can be said to be in crisis in each of these four areas. • Deep, systemic change is needed to transition to a new economy, one where the acknowledged priority is to sustain human and natural communities.

  5. What Crises? • Economic: Great Recession brought on by Wall Street financial excesses has stripped tens of millions of middle class Americans of their jobs, homes, and retirement assets and plunged many into poverty and despair. • Social: extreme and growing inequality has been unraveling America’s social fabric for several decades. A tiny minority has experienced soaring incomes and accumulated grand fortunes, while wages for working people have stagnated despite rising productivity gains and poverty has risen to a near 30-year high. • Environmental: driven by excessive human consumption and waste and a spate of terrible technologies, is disrupting Earth’s climate, reducing Earth’s capacity to support life. • Political: reflected in governmental paralysis and a democracy that is weak, shallow, and corrupted—”the best democracy that money can buy”.

  6. Changing Environment

  7. SpethVid • SpethShort Intro

  8. Solutions • New Consciousness: [quoting Vaclav Havel] “we must develop a new understanding of the true purpose of our existence on this Earth … new models of behaviour and a new set of values for the planet.” • New Politics: “environmental politics cannot succeed with only a narrowly defined environmental constituency.” • Environmentalists must collaborate and connect with diverse communities and support their causes “not just to build the case for reciprocal support, and not just because the objectives are worthy, but also because environmental goals will not be realized unless these other causes succeed.” • These other causes are the causes of “union members, working families, minorities and people of color, religious organizations, the women’s movement and other communities of complementary interest and shared fate.” Causes through “domestic political reforms, the liberal social agenda, human rights, international peace, consumer issues, world health and population concerns, and world poverty and underdevelopment.”

  9. Critiques • general leftist social agenda under cover of environmentalism? • Blames the wrong sector—not environmentalists fault, but the political and economic institutions? • Environmental problems are less severe today—than “in earlier days of contaminated water supplies, choking coal-dust laden fogs, deforestation, etc.” • Is Capitalism really the problem? How we use capitalism? Guns vs. people who use them?

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