Environmentalism of the Mind; Ranchers as Allies in Conservation; Human and Natural Time Scales; Protecting Ordinary Places

To take another example, economists dominate our cultural conversations about time, relentlessly emphasizing quarterly profit-and-loss statements, monthly rates of employment, inflation, or economic growth, and daily fluctuations in the stock market. Yet "good economics," such as maximizin...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Chronicle of Higher Education Vol. 46; no. 39; p. B6
Main Authors Shabecoff, Philip, Bock, Carl E, Bock, Jane H, Oelschlager, Max
Format Book Review Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Washington Chronicle of Higher Education, Inc 02.06.2000
Chronicle of Higher Education
Subjects
Abbey, Edward (1927-1989)
Behavior
Biophysics
Citizen Participation
Climate change
Community Relations
Earth science
Earth sciences
Economic growth
Economic Progress
Environmental movement
Environmental protection
Environmentalism
Environmentalists
Evaluation
Physical Environment
Securities markets
Urban Studies
United States
United States > US
Massachusetts
Arizona
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Summary:To take another example, economists dominate our cultural conversations about time, relentlessly emphasizing quarterly profit-and-loss statements, monthly rates of employment, inflation, or economic growth, and daily fluctuations in the stock market. Yet "good economics," such as maximizing economic growth (that is, economic throughput, the conversion of natural resources through industrial production into desired consumer goods), although good for the stock market (investors) and pocketbook (consumers) in the short term, increasingly appear to be "bad biophysics," using nonrenewable resources produced over millions of years at unsustainable rates, and generating pollutants that perturb systems, such as the ocean and atmosphere, that evolved over millions of years. Because the Earth sciences operate at different temporal scales than do politicians and economists, it could be that they have much to teach the human species about time, especially about the deep, deep past and the evolutionary processes undergirding all life. - Max Oelschlager, professor of community, culture, and the environment at Northern Arizona University, in "Natural Aliens Reconsidered: Causes, Consequences, and Cures," an essay in Earth Matters: The Earth Sciences, Philosophy, and the Claims of Community, published by Prentice Hall A PLACE Worth living in and leaving to future generations requires the investment of time and money, as well as an understanding of the fundamental relation between the quality of the physical environment and society's overall quality of life.
ISSN:0009-5982
1931-1362