Defending, as I must, we humble foresters (such as Aldo Leopold and Gifford
Pinchot - both increasingly ecocentric with every new gray hair) I would NOT
put them in the same camp (as a group) as agriculturists.  Foresters are
educated in ecology as the basis for silviculture (true - manipulative),
within a paradigm of sustainable yield and multiple objectives (including
social and ecological).  Having had the displeasure of doing ag science at
the post grad level, my own experience supports the view that agriculture
didn't give a toss about society and the environment (or sustaining anything
in particular - long term planning was considered to be 3 years!!!!!) -
rather a single objective of maximizing production was all the agricultural
rage.  Generally forestry is both longer-term in its considerations, and
broader.

Generalisations I know.  I shall hunker down and await the return salvo.

Chris Perley

Actually, I have just read Wendell Berry's essay from A Continuous Harmony
called In Defense of Literacy - which is a propos to the discussion below of
the broad & long term perspectives as compared with those narrower
perspectives of men in white coats seeing the world in a petrie dish - or a
spreadsheet.

-----Original Message-----
From:	[log in to unmask]
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Volker Bahn
Sent:	Monday, 22 May 2000 13:07
To:	[log in to unmask]
Subject:	Re: Environmental education and PP, was Re: Fwd: Nowadays we
idolizenature

"Hi everybody,

I don't think that blaming disassociation of children and adults from nature
on environmental education is correct. As the article states the problem
usually is a lack of experiencing nature by being cut off (as in cities) or
by emphasizing theoretical education over hand-on experiences. The latter is
equally true for showing videos of the Amazon rain forest as teaching
biochemistry in biology to kids who can't tell a spruce from a fir (that was
my high school experience).
Concerning the big topic of fear and fear mongering:
Usually fear is something good that keeps us from doing stupid stuff.
However, it can irrationally turn into a phobia keeping us from doing safe
things. Using fear to manipulate people (prime example: Catholic Church) is
not acceptable. However, warning people of an immanent danger is the duty of
everyone. There are fine lines between the will to take risks in the name of
progress and a fulfilled life and being stupid and egoistic by taking
unreasonable risks in the name of progress and a fulfilled life. Clearly the
difference between healthy fear and phobia and acceptable and unacceptable
risks is based on our judgment of a situation. My impression of the last few
years as a conservation biologist and also as a participant of political and
ethical discussions is that the core of many ongoing discussions is a
disagreement on facts or interpretations of facts and not so much a
difference in values, political views and procedures.
I want to elaborate by strongly simplifying the current situation:
Basically, some people think that something is going wrong in the
relationship of humans to their environment (I will call these group 1) and
some people think that we are mostly doing fine but maybe need some minor
adjustments (group 2). (Interestingly enough, most biologists who research
organisms outside of the lab think that something is going wrong, whereas
most supporters of "generally we are doing fine except for some details"
come from either biology unrelated disciplines such as economics or from
more manipulative disciplines such as forestry, agriculture, landscaping
etc.) From the perspective of the people who think that we are generally
doing alright (group 2), the other group's fears are of course phobias and
their statements are fear-mongering.
Furthermore, if nothing is going wrong than group 1's calls for more
restrictions in human behaviors towards their environment must be motivated
either by power hunger or by a disregard for humanity and its right to
self-fulfillment and development. Because group 2 thinks that group 1 is
wrong, its political struggle for change is dubbed subversion and
infiltration and successes such as teaching children about environmental
problems are called manipulation and fear-mongering.  From the perspective
of group 1, group 2 is a bunch of self-centered power-and money-hungry
capitalists who chose to disregard the facts on the state of the environment
to their personal benefit and for their (often monetary) profits. (My
personal opinion is that the motivation for group 2 to manipulate or
misinterpret facts can include everything that is said about the motivation
of group 1 (e.g., hunger for power) but also personal profit which usually
doesn't work for group 1 at least not at the financial scale of group 2.)
Basically, I think that most accusations of power hunger, manipulation,
dooms-daying, green-washing, fear-mongering etc. exchanged between people
can be traced back to a basic disagreement on facts or interpretation of
facts. (And this also includes situations when both sides agree that we are
far from being certain about an issue but group 1 thinks that information is
enough to warrant action whereas group 2 thinks that the indications for a
problem are not sufficient to justify any action.)
Take for example Steven's recent post:
In light of Jim Tantillo's posting about ecophobia, this is veryinteresting.
GMO should be avoided because of "potential" problems. Am I the only one who
sees the connection? Is environmentalism a "fear" of harm?
sb
Obviously he doesn't see any problem with GMO's. Therefore, any criticisms
of GMO's (not substantiated by 1000+ dead people ;-) are fear-mongering and
the whole movement of envrionmentalism becomes a movement motivated by
phobias. However, if one accepts proven problems (allergies, butterflies) in
combination with hypothetical problems one might legitimately warn against
GMO's and view the environmental movement as a much needed balance check on
the out-of-control high tech industry. (It isn't always necessary to have
experimental evidence to come to reasonable conclusions about the possible
outcomes of certain actions. One wouldn't need to cut the earth in half to
find out whether this would have detrimental effects to humanity - it would
be enough to assume that such an action would have far reaching effects on
the atmosphere and the earth's orbit to foretell catastrophes.) Therefore,
it comes down to the disagreement on the potential dangers of releasing
GMO's.
How does this relate to ethics? Group 2 wouldn't have any reason to think
that our patterns of consumption are unethical because they obviously are
not significantly deteriorating the state of the planet. However, they could
determine group 1's conservation efforts as unethical because they tend to
limit individual freedom. Group 1 could determine our patterns of
consumption as unethical because they limit societies access to clean air
and water or more generally access to a healthy environment and compromise
future generations ability to meet their needs. Clearly ethics are strongly
influenced by empirical data and its interpretation.
So maybe we should really discuss the existence and severity of
environmental problems on this list and if we could reach a consensus would
find out that we would largely agree on the ethics to be derived from the
results.
Volker
----- Original Message -----
From:	Jim Tantillo <[log in to unmask]>
To:	<[log in to unmask]>
Sent:	May 18, 2000 11:24 AM
Subject:	Environmental education and PP, was Re: Fwd: Nowadays we
	idolizenature


> Just another quick thought.
>
>
> >Lacking direct experience with nature, children begin to associate it
with
> >fear and apocalypse, not joy and wonder. "If we fill our classrooms with
> >examples of environmental abuse, we may be engendering a subtle form of
> >dissociation."
> >
> >He offers this analogy: In response to physical and sexual abuse,
children
> >learn to cut themselves off from pain. Emotionally, they turn off. "My
fear
> >is that our environmentally correct curriculum similarly ends up
distancing
> >children from, rather than connecting them with, the natural world. The
> >natural world is being abused and they just don't want to have to deal
with
> >it."
>
> I occurs to me that maybe this is a good place to implement the
> Precautionary Principle:  we should ban environmental education because
> there's a possibility it creates children who don't want to deal with
> environmental problems.  Just a thought.
>
> Jim T.
>
>
>
> >
> >To many environmentalists and educators, this is contrarian thinking-
> >even blasphemy. But some hunting and fishing organizations make a similar
> >case; they point to the rising average age of hunters and, consequently,
> >falling financial support for conservation through hunting and fishing
> >licenses.
> >
> >Yes, they say, fishing and hunting are messy-morally messy-but
> >removing that experience from childhood will do neither children nor
> >conservation any good. The movement to stop hunting and fishing, they
say,
> >is led by people who have little direct contact with nature; anti-fur
> >Hollywood stars, for instance-perhaps the last weasel they met was a
> >casting director.
> >
> >"You look at these kids (in the animal rights movement), and you largely
> >see urban, disaffected, but still privileged people," says Mike Two
Horses,
> >a former San Diegan who now lives in Tucson. Two Horses is the founder of
> >CERTAIN (Coalition to End Racial Targeting of American Indian Nations).
> >
> >His organization supports native people such as the Northwest's Makah
> >tribe, traditionally dependent on whale hunting.
> >
> >"The only animals the young animal rightists have ever known are their
> >pets," he says. "The only ones they've ever seen otherwise are in zoos,
Sea
> >World or on whale-watching (now whale-touching) expeditions. They've
> >disconnected from the sources of their food-even from the sources of
the
> >soy and other vegetable proteins they consume."
>



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