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GEOG 101

GEOG 101. Day 25 : Social Change for Environmental and Social Sustainability. Housekeeping Items. Talk by Giles Slade on Friday, author of a new book: Exodus: Climate Change and the Coming Flight for Survival . It will be at the VIU Library at 2 p.m.

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GEOG 101

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  1. GEOG 101 Day 25: Social Change for Environmental and Social Sustainability

  2. Housekeeping Items • Talk by Giles Slade on Friday, author of a new book: Exodus: Climate Change and the Coming Flight for Survival. It will be at the VIU Library at 2 p.m. • Today we’ll cover the topic of making social change to achieve great sustainability, and on Monday we’ll do a review for the final starting from freshwater ecosystems (Chapter 12) on. • Definitely read all of Chapter 22 on environmental policy. • I did the math wrong when I said environmental legislation went back 50 years. It’s actually been 40 years – to the early 70s, with another up surge in the late ‘80s, and various revisions to legislation in the late ‘90s, and then recently (and disastrously) under Harper. • While environmentalism is not the dominant paradigm, it has grown enormously. In 1970, 20 million Americans came out to the first Earth Day rallies and activities. In 2010, half a billion came out in 175 countries!

  3. Housekeeping Items • At the same time, as resources get scarce, corporations and their governmental backers are mobilizing to make a last-ditch grab for the resources that are left, as detailed in Michael Klare’s book, The Race for What’s Left. This bound to heighten conflict.

  4. Housekeeping Items • One issue we talked about last time was how growth in GDP was not making more people better off. Here is a short video that illustrates that point: http://www.utrend.tv/v/9-out-of-10-americans-are-completely-wrong-about-this-mind-blowing-fact/. • When we think about defending the Earth and fomenting change, we don’t need to start from scratch. Almost 30 years ago, I came up with the idea of the “planetariat” (see also Paul Hawken’sBlessed Unrest). This was/is a group that was resisting the degradation of ecosystems, cultural homogenization as a result of globalization, and seeking to preserve the unique characteristics of local places. • It consists of indigenous people around the world, small peasants and farmers who have lived relatively sustainably for generations, and members of counter-cultures (Quakers in the past, and hippies more recently).

  5. Social Change • What do you think are the most effective ways of achieving change, and where would you put the emphasis – on the individual behavioural level or on the institutional level? • Arguably, we need both, and both kinds of change reinforce one another. Can you think of examples? • I divide the strategies for achieving institutional change into four: electoral action & lobbying; policy development; influencing the public directly and through opinion-makers; direct action, both political and lifestyle. • Similarly, affecting individual behavioural change has four dimensions: education; incentives and disincentives (moral and financial); promoting public discussion (turning consumers into citizens); providing alternatives.

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