Daily Archives: October 4, 2012

The media & the electric sports car

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When we watched the tv commercials about the pruis and how it was supposed to make us want to buy them because it world be helping the world is an oxymoron. I feel this way because you still have to use all the bad things that electric car does not do to make the car. it also made me think about what other car brand names are starting to go electric.

In my search, I found the Tesla Roadster, which is the sports car version of electric cars. The point of this vehicle is to get rid of tailpipes and live greener however to make this vehicle we know that they have to use petroleum.

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Wilderness: Humans and their Nature

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When looking at the term Wilderness, one of the first pieces of literature that pops into my head is, surprisingly, Lord of The Flies by William Golding. Though a juvenile novel compared with other works that deal with the environment and though it is based more upon Hobbes’ Leviathan, I still can’t help but automatically jump to this high school level book as I reflect on the definition of wilderness.  Continue reading →

Ansel Adams: A Sublime Artist

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People can resonate with photographs in a way that isn’t common with many other types of works of art. A picture is able to show the viewer what was present at the time it was taken in no uncertain terms. When a landscape is portrayed as something powerful and moving and beautiful it can connect with the viewer in ways an abstract description never can. Ansel Adams was a wilderness photographer during the early to mid-twentieth century, who was able to capture the essence of a place. His ability to capture the sublime essence of the wilderness, the wilderness that is both beautiful and awesome, can bring about a desire to preserve these qualities, to preserve the sublime, before they are lost to us.

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Destined to Work

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Everyone seems to be well aware of the environmental crisis that is present all around us. While acknowledging over harvesting of the land and increasing pollution as being major contributors, it has become almost unambiguous that humans are at the center of these environment issues.  As our population is approaching an unsustainable level, we have caught ourselves in a perpetuating cycle of exploiting our environment. Mankind has worked hard and contributed thousands of years of labor in developing and reaping from nature. As the book of Genesis shows, this labor of the land began in the very beginning of life on earth.

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A Green World through Football?

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Since it is football season, which is time of the year where so many Americans minds are dominated by each week’s game more than any other world concern, I thought it would be interesting to look into what type of programs the largest professional sporting organization, the National Football League, does to protect their reputation and image with environmental concerns. I did not know when I first thought of this idea if in fact the NFL did have such programs, but just assumed they must as just about every big business seems to have some sort of “green” program since the movement took such a strong hold a few years back. It is still up for debate how much many programs actually do, or if they are just a device to protect a public image.

The NFL Scores with Clean Energy

Emerson: Minister of the Sublime

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Throughout “Nature”, Emerson’s ministry background is evident, but it is especially clear in the “Introduction”.  Like a minister, enlivened by his faith, he asks countless rhetorical questions of the reader, like a preacher to his congregation. “Why should we not have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not a history of theirs?” This is his initial call for spirituality based on the direct observation of nature, instead of through texts or prophets. Again, playing the good minister, he clarifies his terminology, stating that “Nature” is that which is external to ourselves, “essences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf.”
A reoccurring pattern throughout the text is the notion that spirituality and connecting to the divine is achieved by a communion with the sublime. In essence, forgive the rhyme, the sublime is linked to the divine.  In “Chapter 1. Nature”, Emerson jumps immediately into the sublime.

“…if a man would be alone let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give a man, in the heavenly bodies, the perceptual presence of the sublime.”

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What is our interest ?

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In his work on ecocriticism “The future of environmental criticism”, Lawrence Buell gave definitions for anthropocentrism ans ecocentrism. To put it in simple terms, the former is focusing on the interests of humans over the interests of the environment, while the latter is the opposite. We have seen that when it comes to environmental texts, there is no clear distinction between the two views, both can be applied to the same text.

When choosing environmental literature as a class, I thought I was choosing a class that would focus on literary ways to increase consciousness on environmental protection. My expectation will surely be met when reading Rachel Carson. Buell’s definitions made me wonder, what do our actions regarding environmental protection say of us? Do they make us more anthropocentric or ecocentric?

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Jeep

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Previously in class, we viewed several environmentally charged advertisements. This sparked a very interesting discussion regarding harmony between man and machine, and how this utopia is often illusioned in banal media. Inspired still from this thought provoking dialogue, I decided to continue examining similar video clips and articles. What I found is that these companies are oblivious to many of the messages they convey to the public. For example, there is a fairly popular commercial for Jeep in which a man is cruising on a road surrounded by a dense forest.

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The two articles written by Bill McKibben (2005 and 2009) were substantially eye opening, at least for me. Global warming and everyone’s carbon footprint are topics that are hard to ignore when one lives in a city like Eugene. Nationally it occasionally makes headlines and is mentioned a punch line for future generations because that is how it tends to be viewed, a problem for future generations. Humans aren’t going to be melting or living underground in this lifetime but perhaps that’s the catch 22 of global warming. It’s so noticeable that it goes unnoticed. It’s too big to notice. In his 2005 article McKibben stated “when something is happening everywhere, all at once, it threatens constantly to become backdrop, context, instead of the event” further promoting that in the ‘text’ of our lives the environment is ‘transparent’. You know it’s there and you see it as the background or setting of your life but you don’t focus on it enough to make it apart of your life. This fault humans possess has enabled “one species, ours, (has) by itself in the course of a couple of generations managed to powerfully raise the temperature of an entire planet” (McKibben, 2005). Humans, as a species, are either visual, auditory or kinesthetic learners so what better way to educate and bring awareness to ecocentrism than through art.

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Green Deception

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Hybrid waste article: 

http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/everyday-myths/does-hybrid-car-production-waste-offset-hybrid-benefits.htm

Hybrid vehicle implications: 

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es702178s

Toyota Prius Harmony:  

http://vimeo.com/7384947

While car companies may give the impression that they are on the green side, it is visible that they are really just concerned with selling another product. Advertisement agencies have been able to take advantage of the consumer’s care for the environment and manipulate it. Consumers are told that if they buy a hybrid car with great gas mileage then they will be saving the planet and will be protecting the younger generations. Although this point is partially true you have to look at the process of creating one of these hybrid cars. For instance, the production that goes into making a Toyota Prius is one that is quite costly towards the environment. According to writer Dave Roos of HowStuffWorks.com, “in 2007, a report commissioned by an auto industry trade group insisted that when you factor in the waste generated during production, the notoriously gas-guzzling Hummer is actually greener than the Prius” (Roos). This shows that although the car does promote environmentally friendly miles per gallon it is actually damaging towards the environment. Not only is the waste produced by a hybrid car terrible for the surroundings, but the manufacturing factor is terrible as well. The process of building a lithium-ion battery takes incredible amounts of energy to produce, more so than a conventional car. They rely on mining nickel, copper and rare-earth metals like lithium, which are responsible for higher sulfur oxide emissions (Constantine Samaras). Continue reading →