The Ecological Crisis as a Crisis of Character

1. The Ecological Crisis as a Crisis of Character By Wendell Berry In The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

2. Outline • Split between what we think and what we do • Specialization • Failure of the system • Solutions

3. Split between what we think and what we do • Hypocrisy of conservation organizations • For individuals, our behavior is often a “practical” compromise, the price of modern convenience • Behavior of organizations and governments as result of private behavior

4. Specialization:the disease of the modern character • Specialists • Responsibilities abdicated to specialists 2 concerns: make money, entertain yourself • Yet, we are unhappy

5. Specialization:the disease of the modern character • Very little is done well, and no one can do anything for themselves • Community disintegrates

6. Failure of the system • Self-interest instead of cooperation • Problems are never solved • Institutional solutions are not solutions because they don’t get at the real causes. • We need private solutions in our own lives to become public solutions. • Rights versus responsibilities

7. How far our mindset has gone – lack of responsibility Degenerative Sustainable Regenerative From: Hemenway, Toby, “How Permaculture can Save Humanity and the Planet – but Not Civilization,” University of Minnesota, Jan. 7 2010.

8. Solutions… By living responsibly, we take back control and escape our dissatisfaction.

9. No more organized conservationists • Sierra Club: “…to explore, enjoy, and protect the nation’s scenic resources…” • We are not detached from nature.

10. Responsible conservationists Individuals can implement and enact the change we need http://www.norcalblogs.com/sustainable/2009/07/permaculture-guild-farming-rou.html

11. The Ecological Crisis as a Crisis of Agriculture By Wendell Berry In The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

12. Outline • Critique of conservationists • Participation with nature • Importance of wilderness • Where we are now • Critique of Richard E. Bell, former Assistant Secretary of Agriculture

13. Conservationists’ traditional approach • Terrarium View of the World • Land as a possession, an object • Divide land into categories…

15. http://decideforyourself.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/tar-sands.jpghttp://decideforyourself.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/tar-sands.jpg

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19. A fertilized lawn? http://www.nutrigreenlawncare.com/services

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21. Participation with Nature • “I belong to the chain of being too, as a participant not an observer (nature is not television!) and the question isn’t to use or not to use but rather how to use.” • David Budbill Instead, conservationists unnecessarily efface themselves.

22. Importance of wilderness • Memory of our cultural roots • Humility – to submit rather than to conquer • To preserve wilderness for comparison

23. Kindly use? • Recognize that land is complex and diverse • Treating every part of land with intimate knowledge • Instead we have: • Householder to consumer • Farm to factory

24. “the substitution of energy for knowledge, of methodology for care, of technology for morality”

25. Former Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Richard E. Bell (under Secretary Butz): • “…true agripower … generates agridollars through agricultural exports.” • “Agripower should not be a political tool. Feeding people … is too serious a matter to be left to political manipulation.”

26. Bell (cont.): • “Years ago, farm operations were highly diversified, but today, farmers are concentrating on fewer and much larger crop or livestock enterprises…” • “Specialization and growth are aided by the ready availability of purchased inputs.” • Praises “economy of size” • Praises specialization

27. Bell (cont.): • “Agripower is, unquestionably, an even greater force than petropower in man’s survival in the future. Man can and has survived without petroleum, but he cannot live without food.” Conclusion: Agripower ignores the truth.

28. Conclusions • Estrangement of consumer and producer • Consumers eat worse • Producers farm worse • Institutionalization of waste – topsoil, water, fossil fuel, human energy

29. Conclusions • “Innocent” and ignorant consumers • unnecessary processing and packaging • waste tons of organic matter • Hypocritical conservationists – lifestyles have more impact than their organizations • Crisis of culture