Protecting the resource

So I was able to take an hour out of my day yesterday to view the Wings of Steel movie.

Wings of Steel is an esoteric, difficult climb on the left side of El Capitan in Yosemite.  After the first ascent in 1982, twenty-nine years elapsed before the route saw a repeat.  This film follows the second ascent team as they struggle up the wall over thirteen days.

But there is more to the story than climbing.  The "assault" on El Cap was not just human vs. rock.  It was human vs. human.

You see, the 1982 first ascent team were "outsiders" to the Yosemite climbing scene.   During the many days of their ascent, local climbers became convinced that the route was being put up in bad style; that the precious rock of Yosemite was being damaged and disrespected by climbers who had not paid their dues in this almost-sacred place.

What followed was a scapegoating of the FA party as unclean.  Apparently, "everyone" knew that the route was a travesty, and the climbers underwent various kinds of public shaming and humliiation.  For years.  "We had to protect the resource", says one of those involved to the movie camera.

If you want to know "who was right", you'll have to see the movie (or read Ammon's article in Rock and Ice or, if you have a few days to spare, read the 3473 posts on the original Supertopo thread...) and then form your own opinion. That's not where I'm going here.

You see, what this got me thinking about is how much we humans tend to form our community by setting boundaries and defining who is outside them.  Even those (perhaps especially those) who identify with a cause greater than themselves.

Is the environmental cause, which wants to protect the precious resources of this sacred place, going to  become defined by who it scapegoats?

Or by who it loves?

Who is Conservation For?

Interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, following up an important theme in conservation discussions (see my earlier post of Peter Kareiva here).  What gives value to the natural world?  Some intrinsic worth? Or the sum of the "services" it provides for humanity?  The Chronicle article personalizes this in terms of the contrasting careers and goals of two scientists, Gretchen Daily and Michael Soule.  It begins:

Once, Gretchen Daily only had eyes for the rain forest.
Eighteen years ago, as a young scientist on the rise, Daily arrived at a renowned research station in the hills of Costa Rica armed with nearly 100 shellacked plywood platforms. As a student at Stanford University, studying under the famed biologist Paul Ehrlich, she had seen how large birds, defying expectations, seemed to thrive on small bits of forest spackled in the area's coffee plantations, when theory predicted their demise. On her return, she planned to spread her feeding platforms in staggered densities to test that observation; local kids promised to monitor the mesitas.
But when the morning came, so did the bees.

Read the rest of the article here.

Of Math and Poopiness

So, I was on a panel yesterday at an all-day conference on "General Education" at Penn State. The panel members were largely faculty who regularly teach GenEd or "breadth" courses; I was included, I think, because though I have not yet taught such a course I am talking a lot about the MATH 033 (Math for Sustainability) project which will finally get going next year (yay!).

So I used my allotted to make a pitch that sustainability should be taught as a GenEd theme, and that sustainability is a quantitative matter, involving questions like "How much?" and "How long?"  As an illustration, I mentioned a question that I have heard Richard Alley ask: suppose that an automobiles excretions were solid and visible, like those of a horse - then which would be poopier, per mile of travel? Would our roads soon be covered with car poop, as they would certainly soon be covered by horse poop, supposing that the same number of people traveled by horse as currently travel by car?

It's a good question for getting a quantitative appreciation of the scale of carbon dioxide emissions; and I hope it helped us relax amid discussion of the important discussions of the purpose of education!

Afterwards, someone I had not met came up to me and said, "I really like the horse poop illustration. I could help you teach that part of your course."  And he gave me his business card.

I said "Great" - I think partnership in teaching will really improve this course.  But I wondered what this guy's academic field might be that specially qualified him to help me with this unit.  I took a look at his business card.

Professor of Equine Nutrition

I guess that would do it!

Photo by Flickr user safoocat, licensed under Creative Commons

Global Climate Change Negotiations

Reposting this really intriguing article by John Baez over at Azimuth.  He writes:

There were many interesting talks at the Interdisciplinary Climate Change Workshop last week—too many for me to describe them all in detail. But I really must describe the talks by Radoslav Dimitrov. They were full of important things I didn’t know. Some are quite promising.

Radoslav S. Dimitrov is a professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Western Ontario. What’s interesting is that he’s also been a delegate for the European Union at the UN climate change negotiations since 1990! His work documents the history of climate negotiations from behind closed doors.

Read the full article here.

Wanted: a theology of mining (part 4)

In my last post (#3) on "theology of mining", a while back now, I mentioned the theological and ethical questions that mining raises, and I wrote: "I hope that better qualified people than I am will get into this discussion!"

Well, it seems like someone was listening.  The Vatican news website today reports Pope Francis' message for a  day of reflection on the mining industry, which was celebrated on 7 September and attended by representatives of the world's most important mining companies, including the Anglo American, China Minmetals Corporation, Rio Tinto and Zamin Resources, as well as experts in the sector from within the Catholic Church, Caritas and Oxfam America.

The statement says: "The participants in this meeting are aware that, so as not to repeat grave errors of the past, decisions today cannot be taken solely from geological perspectives or the possible economic benefits for investors and for the states in which the companies are based. A new and more profound decision-making process is indispensable and inescapable, one which takes into consideration the complexity of the problems involved, in a context of solidarity. Such a context requires, first of all, that workers be assured of all their economic and social rights, in full accordance with the norms and recommendations of the International Labor Organisation. Likewise it requires the assurance that extraction activities respect international standards for the protection of the environment. The great challenge of business leaders is to create a harmony of interests, involving investors, managers, workers, their families, the future of their children, the preservation of the environment on both a regional and international scale, and a contribution to world peace."

My earlier posts in this series: part 1, part 2, part 3

(H/T Fletcher Harper for the link to the Vatican statement.)

Image from Flickr user Jeffrey Bruno, licensed under Creative Commons

More thoughts on math and sustainability

The blog "Getting to Green" is written by a university administrator who "pushes, on a shoestring budget, to move his university and the world toward a more sustainable equilibrium." Today's posting has some extended reflections on the importance of the quantitative aspect of understanding sustainability, which closely mirror my own. You can read it here.

I'm excited to report that my Math for Sustainability course was approved by Penn State's Faculty Senate, and will run for the first time next fall (Fall 2014): later than I had hoped, but the stately pace of university bureaucracy is hard to hurry.  The university put out a nice press release which has already brought me a couple of outside requests for interviews or information.  Here's the hook:

Quick, how many trips to the landfill does Penn State’s recycling program save each year? If I double the thickness of my loft insulation, how much energy will I save? How much might the melting of the polar ice caps amplify the effect of global warming?

After a semester in Professor John Roe’s Mathematics of Sustainability course, his students will know how to figure out the answers to these questions. Roe, and undergraduate research assistant Kaley Weinstein, are preparing a series of sustainability-related problems for a new general education course in mathematics. Their target audience: the student who is not going into science, mathematics or engineering.

You can read the rest here.
 

Thoughts on "Faith for Thought"

It's three weeks since the Faith for Thought 2013 conference, Seeds of Hope, and the rush of the day has subsided a little bit.  So I need to set down some thoughts about the event, trying to measure it against what we had hoped for, and to see what went well and what could be improved for any future iteration.

1. All the response we had was positive, and I think everyone who took part had a wonderful day.  The three main speakers - Lisa Sharon Harper, Richard Alley, and Ben Lowe - brought different insights into the central questions of faith, justice and creation care.  In between, the small-group breakout sessions gave people the opportunity to reflect, process, and engage more deeply.  At least one participant described the experience as "life changing".
2. I love the overall feel of the day, with its mixture of large and small groups, informal interaction, Byron Borger's wonderful book table, and the  way the whole event is framed by worship.
3. The number of participants was enough to give the day critical mass - and, in surveys, some said they liked the intimacy of the occasion - but it was many fewer than we had hoped, based on the experience of previous Faith for Thought events.  Related to this (at least in my mind) is the high proportion of survey respondents saying that already existing environmental concerns were among their main reasons for taking part in FFT.  In other words, we were reaching teh committed, but we were not as successful as we'd hoped in sharing the message that creation care belongs on the agenda of every thoughtful Christian believer.

Perhaps it is inevitable that a one-day conference comes across as an event for the already committed, especially in a world where overscheduled students often seem to measure out their available time in microsecond increments.  If so, we might need to think about shorter events which will motivate those who don't think of themselves as "green" to think a bit more deeply about the call to care for God's creation.