TuttleJPDebate2

John Peter Tuttle Debate Paper #2 Word Count: 1,814 Sustainability Problems Question: Is American culture a sustainability problem?  There are many sustainability problems in the world; however, in many cases, they can be traced back to culture. This is particularly evident with American culture; we have grown used to having a nearly limitless energy supply from fossil fuels, advertisers are convincing us to buy the latest products even if we do not actually need then, and many people simply do not know or care about sustainability or environmental problems. American culture is often synonymous with the idea of consumption – consuming as much as we can, in some cases to help the economy. While it may accomplish that goal, unless there are systems in place to deal with all the older products that people are discarding, it ends up being a //horrible// idea environmentally. There are several issues to solve with American culture being a sustainability problem. Education is a major problem – many people simply do not know that there are sustainability problem, or if they //do// know about them, they are not quite aware of the severity of them, or what they could do to solve them, which, in some cases, could simply involve small lifestyle changes. Another problem is more systemic – there need to be systems in place to help solve some environmental problems, such as recycling.  Naomi Klein’s TED talk, entitled “Addicted to Risk,” explores how American culture seems to be “addicted to risk” – we often will take part in potentially environmentally-damaging activities without taking into account the potential consequences. Klein begins by giving a bit of history, mentioning Rachel Carson’s warnings about DDT and other insecticides, and how doing something seemingly simple like killing insects can have larger impact that affect the rest of the food chain – in this case, resulting in robins and other birds that eat the insects dying out. She discusses how the constant need for growth that capitalism requires has led to the sorts of environmental problems that we have discussed in class – issues with declining supplies of oil and methods for extracting it, etc. She explains how corporations will often try to put off activities to improve environmental issues, just to try to make more money – “So rather than asking, as precaution would demand, what can we do as quickly as possible to avoid potential catastrophe, we ask bizarre questions like this: ‘What is the latest possible moment we can wait before we begin seriously lowering emissions? Can we put this off ‘til 2020, 2030, 2050?’ Or we ask, ‘How much hotter can we let the planet get and still survive? Can we go with two degrees, three degrees, or – where we're currently going – four degrees Celsius?’” This emphasizes the idea of being “addicted to risk” – putting something else – in this case, profit – at a higher importance than impact on the environment and environmental problems, completely ignoring issues that could have repercussions far outside one’s own company. It does a good job of showing the twisted sort of logic that companies end up using to justify problems, which in some cases can be rather terrifying, as it often seems like reckless endangerment of human life.  Naomi Klein’s argument is not perfect, however; there are plenty of people who //do// take into account these sorts of environmental problems, and who do not just try to ignore problems until they get too difficult to handle. That being said, those people are not nearly enough to change the behavior of everyone in the United States. Her argument tends to put a tad too much blame on individual people, especially when there is not too much individual people can do to make a large dent in the environmental problems we have nowadays. She also does not provide too much in the way of specific potential solutions to the environmental problems she discusses, beyond general discussions of taking risk into account with respect to environmental issues. In many cases, these sorts of problems need to be solved on a systemic, rather than individual level, though part of what needs to be done is to put systems in place to help educate individuals, encouraging them to work to better the environment themselves and use greener products.  Ronald Reagan’s announcement of his candidacy for President argues that we //can// solve the problems that we are facing, at least as of the time that it was written. He explains how the problems at the time, both environmental and otherwise, are not due to culture, but rather, due to leadership: “[m]uch of this talk has come from leaders who claim that our problems are too difficult to handle … [t]he crisis we face is not the result of any failure of the American spirit; it is failure of our leaders to establish rational goals and give our people something to order their lives by. If I am elected, I shall regard my election as proof that the people of the United States have decided to set a new agenda and have recognized that the human spirit thrives best when goals are set and progress can be measured in their achievement.” Reagan discusses the history of America that he has lived through, the Depression, and how America managed to recover from that situation. He also brings up some of the technological advancements in the twentieth century. He discusses some of the energy problems the United States was having back then, mentioning the “energy crisis” that has still continued to this day, explaining how “[o]ur country was built on cheap energy. Today, energy is not cheap and we face the prospect that some forms of energy may soon not be available at all.” Reagan’s argument is similar to many modern arguments about environmental/energy problems, and even mentions greener energy solutions, such as solar power. Reagan also discusses some of the political issues the United States was facing at the time; however, they are not exactly relevant to the environmental issues being discussed.  There are a few flaws with the argument in Reagan’s speech, though they are not necessarily his fault. The environmental problems were not as severe back then, though he did bring the appropriate ones up in his speech. Reagan’s speech does bring up potential systemic solutions, unlike Klein’s, which makes it a bit more practical and helpful. However, he does not mention what individuals can do to solve environmental problems; while systemic solutions may do a better job, educating individuals would also be useful in terms of attempting to change specific cultural behaviors and issues that negatively affect the environment. His solutions also assume that the systems in question can actually change, and, in many cases, these sorts of things take a while to change, due to political issues like bureaucracy, red tape, etc, and that is assuming you do not end up with political issues involving different industries, like there were when General Motors came out with the EV1 electric car.  P. Wesley Schultz’s paper from the August 2002 issue of Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, entitled “Environmental Attitudes and Behaviors Across Culture,” does a good job of summarizing these sorts of problems among various cultures, and how people view environmental problems and try to deal with them. The paper begins with a discussion of consumption and population, explaining how that, especially when combined, they lead to major environmental problems, especially with respect to recycling. Consumption, of course, is a major issue with American culture; as we learned in //The Persuaders//, marketing to get people to consume more is a rather large industry, and in many ways, a large part of American culture. Population refers to population growth, and Schultz explains that this compounds other environmental problems by putting even more strain on already-dwindling resources. He explains how one of the major issues with dealing with environmental problems is that “[e]nvironmental problems are particularly insidious because they develop slowly.” As Klein explained, people will often end up procrastinating with respect to these sorts of issues, putting them off until they are far worse than they would have been if they were dealt with properly in the first place. Admittedly, in some cases, there is a need for technology that does not exist yet, or people simply do not know that there are any issues with the methods they are using. The paper does mention how people in the United States did not originally care about environmental problems, and only really started caring about them once they got worse, and discusses some of the history behind reaction to environmental problems, mentioning Earth Day in particular as an early response to problems and a cultural attempt to get people to volunteer and help the environment. It explains how “[s]olving environmental problems will require a concerted effort by a large group of people,” and does mention that people tend to work less if they are working in a larger group, making large-scale attempts to change behavior to solve environmental problems a tad difficult – people will simply assume that someone else will deal with the issue, which at some point is true, but if //everyone// thinks that way, nothing will ever get done.  Personally, I think the problem lies somewhere in the middle, between the two speeches; many sustainability problems are caused, at least in part, by cultural issues, but I do not think the situation is completely hopeless. There are certainly some companies that are working to make products that use more recycled materials; however, those sorts of actions alone are not nearly enough to help solve the world’s sustainability problems; at a certain point, people //do// need to change their attitudes with respect to environmental problems. With respect to solutions to these sorts of problems, there are several issues that need to be solved. Education is one part of the problem – people do not know about environmental problems; in other cases, they may know about the problems, at least in the back of their mind, but they do not know about the severity of the problem. There is a bit of a chicken and egg situation with green products, however; people do not know about green products, so there is not too much of a market, and if there is not a market, companies will not bother making green products, unless it is something they are particularly passionate about, like some of the companies discussed in films such as //Addicted to Plastic//. Overall, this is a problem that requires solutions on many different scales: changes in political systems between companies invested in particular environmental issues (both negative and positive), change in systems for recycling and other smaller scale systems, and changes in education, which leads to the final scale: changes in people’s individual behavior, which may not seem like it can make much of a difference, but can certainly help contribute to solving environmental problems.