The environment shapes humans, and humans shape the environment

Paul Harrison’s three ‘revolutions‘:

• Neolithic
• Industrial
  • Each saw problems of resource depletion and pollution
  • Not to mention a six-fold increase in the number of humans in the last two centuries
  • ‘extensive’ versus ‘intensive’ strategies that accompany growth
• Third (Peak oil and Global warming)? What next? A long emergency? Business renaissance? Clean coal? More of the same?

Human societies co-evolve with their environments

• the POET model
• Explaining ‘sociocultural evolution’ . . . what is the role of the environment, energy, resources?
• Diamond’s film (Guns, Germs and Steel): Does environment explain how societies develop, why some ‘advance’ and others much more slowly, if at all?
  • A way to avoid value judgments: How to explain the pace of change?

Kolbert, humans and climate change

• Understanding societal ‘collapse’
• Climate change and human presence
• Anthropogenic ‘forcings’
• Human’exemptionalism’ — the belief that humans are somehow exempt from natural laws–which societies can afford such luxury?
• Humans and the ‘sweet spot’–some things are within our control, some things, apparently, not

The ‘resource process’

1. 1. Discovery–All resources are socially defined;
   2. Cultivation/extraction-the raw material–in the case of agriculture, we cultivate.
   3. Transportation–this entails getting it from the source;
   4. Processing-what does it get turned into? For whom? Where? In the case of petroleum, it goes to refineries, and heating produces different grades of fuels. Timber may go to pulp or sawmills, minerals to smelters and mills, crops to food processing plants, mills, water through some sort of treatment facility. We’ve come a long way since Henry Ford’s era.
   5. Distribution-getting it out to consumers.  How do we get the refined product(s) out to the consumer markets? Take the case of Iowa Beef Processors (which may be vertically integrated multinational food conglomerates … ).
   6. Transformation-Matter, like energy, can’t be created or destroyed (shipbreaking, electronics, plastic and the elusive Pacific Gyre). Just transformed.
   7. Keep in mind–each step of this process requires massive amounts of energy and resources–and produces massive amounts of waste–just to move the process along.

‘Functions’ of the environment (for humans)

1. A stock of resources (minerals, forests, air, water, topsoil, smart phone apps)
2. A place to live (villages, towns, cities, continents . . . . planet)
3. A place to put waste (backyard, landfills, national forests, oceans … planet)
4. Historically, humans have separated these uses to some extent (that is, to the extent they have thought about living in particular places on the planet, rather than the planet)

Feedback loops

• What’s the key environmental difference between industrial and pre-industrial societies?
• Role of globalization (does it lengthen the environmental feedback loop?)
• Role of energy ‘surplus’ in societal change
• Scarcity?
• Risk

Some principles

• 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics — and ‘human exemptionalism’
• Nothing ever goes away (Commoner).
• Everything is related to everything else.
• Sooner or later, wittingly or unwittingly, we must pay for every intrusion on the natural environment (Commoner).
• There is no free lunch.
• If humans don’t take care of the planet, the planet will take care of humans (Loveock).
• Mother Nature bats last (anonymous).