due Thursday 9/19
Instructions: Using the following questions as a guide, develop a response essay for your viewing of Inconvenient Truth, Gasland, and Trinkets and Beads.You can also use materials from Acid Test and Gulf Stream to supplement your understanding of CO2and Climate Change.
Your essay should incorporate some of the ideas in the assigned readingsfor these films.In this paper I would like you to consider the use of fossil fuels--their extraction as well as burning--and their known and projected consequences. What do you think we need to do?
Again, do not simply answer the questions--use them to guide your thinking (i.e., keep them in mind).
Length should be 3-4 pages double-spaced (minimum 800 words). You can partner up with one other person to complete this, but see me first if you plan to do this.
On CO2 and Climate Change
- Al Gore discusses the relationship between human-generated rising CO2 levels and climate change (using ice core evidence), showing its relationship to worldwide temperature change (more CO2 = higher temperature--previously never >300ppm; now ~600ppm, and projected to be soon “off the chart”), to glacier melts, rising sea levels, and ocean acidification. Discuss the Scientific Basis of the basic features of the film’s argument.
- Gore identifies two canaries in the coal mine: the Arctic and Antarctic (north and south poles). Polar ice melts portend accelerating climate change and changing shorelines, flooding heavily populated areas. They could mean the Ocean Conveyor possibly stopping thereby bringing another ice-age. Explain the canary metaphor here.
- Gore compared what we might call the Climate Change Denial as comparable to the denialism that occurred around the health problems in tobacco usage by the Tobacco Lobby. Is this an apt comparison? Explain.
- Gore contends that “[climate change] is not a political issue but a moral issue.” What is this distinction supposed to mean? Explain what he might mean here and comment on what you think.
On Fossil Fuels and Their Extraction
- Hydraulic Fracturing is a process that requires hundreds of chemicals, many of which are known carcinogens. The process infuses them into ground water to facilitate natural gas extraction. What are the risks and is it worth it to take these risks? What are the alternatives for this “clean energy”?
- Corporations and governmental agencies say there needs to be proof that there is contamination. Where should the burden of proof be in regards to whether injecting known carcinogens into water might have hazardous human consequences? Should agencies like the FDA and the EPA require the industry to prove their products and conduct are not going to be hazardous before going forth? (Hint: remember the Precautionary Principle.)
- The land occupied by the Huaorani is said to belong to them under Ecuadorian law; but the oil underground is said to belong to the government. Compare to John Winthrop’s argument in early American (Puritan) history that although the Indians have a natural right to the land (because they live there), they do not have a civil right to the land because they are not subduing it.
- Comment on the corporate model of development described in Gaslandby a resident near Divide Creek: develop the area as fast as possible, then, if you trash it, make the residents prove it, fight it in a court of law, and buy out the last person standing. Is this a fair description of their process? Compare to the model for oil exploration explained by Alan Hatly in Trinkets and Beads: Oil companies do never enter an area and set out to do damage to the environment; they enter with the intent to find and extract the oil as quickly and cheaply as possible and obtain the greatest profit.