Geography 3312A/B Lecture Notes - Climate Change Adaptation, Climate Change Mitigation, Our Common Future
1 Dec 2012
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Document Summary
Ecological degradation is not new it"s been happening regularly throughout history. There have been massive extinctions before at one point, 97% of the planet was wiped out. What"s new this time: the rate and scale is paralleled & there is public awareness. Incompetent scholarship: biased research by people paid by energy industries. Being encouraged to drive cars & use air conditioners: a confusion between weather & climate. Weather: a variable, local and immediate phenomenon. Climate: regular range of highs & lows of temperature & precipitation: lack of agreement about the character of humanity"s relationship with nature. Is nature robust, capable of withstanding human action: entrepreneurial expansionist. Meyer and turner (1995) argue that these 4 perspectives are largely impossible to verify or refute and so they describe them as myths. Global consumer society and the world system of accumulation is bad for the environment and fails to recognize that the economy is a (smaller) part of the (larger) environment.
