Notes on Union of Concerned Scientists, Robert Samuelson essay, and Bruchac essay

Our first question in engaging with these three readings was whether they were, in the end, pieces of "environmental literature," or whether they were simply texts that concerned environmental subjects. We discussed the nature of "literary art" and brought these conversations into contact with analyses of the very organization of our textbook. All three essay appear in the "Peril and Response" section, indicating that these pieces directly "respond" to manifestations of environmental peril, or question such assessments of the environmental situation. Can a political text be "artful"? Is that its main purpose? Certainly, provocative activist and political texts have been designed with literary merit as a goal (Abbey's comes to mind), but in the first of these readings, that of the Union of Concerned Scientists, artistry does not seem to have been the goal.

The "World Scientists' Warming to Humanity" is a document organized into five principal sections, with the sections "WARNING" and "What We Must Do" coming last. The scientists (and we engaged with the sweeping nature of this descriptive term and the veil it draws across the identity of the writers, even though thousands of scientists signed the document) identified present environmental critical areas and focused tightly on the need for population control. Their suggestion, though they do not use the term, is that human life and "environmental" life are networked to each other, a network that people often ignore. Do we think in terms of networks? Have we thus far in the term, when discussing texts like The Land of Little Rain or Abbey's Desert Solitaire, used this term? How does this scientific, activist proclamation function as an outline of some of the themes that Abbey, for one, also addresses? These writers also certainly dwell on the paradigm of "war." They indicate that our human society must de-emphasize war and alternatively emphasize preservation. They write that "a new ethic is required" -- a new attitude of care for "ourselves and the earth." How do you react to their call, their proclamation?

Samuelson's "The End is Not at Hand" presents an argument in conflict with the claims the Union of Concerned Scientists makes. He contends that "environmental distress is a featherweight" in contrast to "the great scourges of humanity" including "war, natural disaster, oppressive government, crushing poverty, and hate" (463). His focus is on the realities (natural and political) that have made human existence a challenge -- so his focus is an anthropocentric one, to be sure. But he justifies his stance by claiming that human preservation and happiness are of utmost importance, that access to food and wealth and employment opportunity is critical. Our focus on "environmentalism" he believes is an eclipsing focus, one that puts our concern for all aspects of the "network" in a balanced arrangement (wherein the Silvery Minnow, for example, might be as significant as the human) rather than one that prioritizes human health and well being, which is an arrangement he sees as more sensible and economically wise. He contends finally that because now "everyone is an environmentalist," the term has become "increasingly meaningless," lacking the nuance that would enable us to evaluate the severity or seriousness of various natural and potentially man-made environmental problems against other concerns that face humankind.

In Bruchac's "The Circle is the Way to See," he weaves Native narrative -- a traditional (Abenaki) legend of Grandmother Woodchuck and the trickster Gluskabe -- into the opening pages of an essay that contends with the question of whether the "earth [is] sick" (495). Native communities had many valuable lessons to teach white settlers, Bruchac argues, but through their haste and their political ambition, white settlers neglected to attend to or value many of these potentially learned lessons, and as a consequence, the last centuries have been marred by diseases, which have killed humans, trees, and other elements of the circle of existence. As Bruchac explains, a preferable way of viewing the earth might be as a "web of life that sustains us"; if we view the earth this way, we can see that the web "is weakened, that the earth is sick." He suggest a recallibration of even this attitude so that we recognize sickness as not evidenced only by changes to the earth. We must recognize that this is a sickness from which humans are suffering. Humans will die (and have long died) as a consequence. His argument is that we need to come to understand our proper place, to turn away from our "self-importance." Like the Union of Concerned Scientists, Bruchac uses the notion of "war" to reveal that "we have been at war with nature for a long time" (496). What experiences -- from the books we have read or from instances in your own life -- reveal to you that Bruchac's assessment might be true? How might his suggestion that we view "things in terms of circles and cycles" actually come to pass?