Week of 9/2 Combined Post

Since I was confused this week and did not write a pre-seminar post I'm going to try to do both in this one. I'll start with my initial thoughts on the book we're reading, "The World Without Us" by Alan Weisman, and follow up with ideas and comments that struck me in our in class conversation. This might get messy since I'm sure my own pre-discussion thoughts have already been meshed with ideas from our talk today, but I'll try my best.

We started this week by reading Part One of "The World Without Us" and I was really struck by the idea that most of what we've changed about the world by living in it is mostly non-permanent. Apart from a few rogue pieces of man-made material Earth is well equipped to erase us. While a person looking at Earth after we're gone will definitely know something was here, he'd probably have to look diligently in order to find evidence of a race as "advanced" as we see ourselves. At the same time, though, we as a species have altered the Earth drastically and permanently. For instance, Weisman says that "The ecosystem (in Manhattan) will be a human artifact that will persist in our absence, a cosmopolitan botanical mixture that would never have occurred without us." (p38). Even though the Earth may erase all obvious signs of us (as Weisman clearly shows in the description of what happens to our suburban homes in chapter 1) the Earth will be forever changed from what it was before the human race existed.

This brings me to the in-class discussion portion of this. I've been really stuck on two ideas from class. The first is Joan's suggestion that we not think in terms of good/bad, or unnatural/natural, but rather stable versus unstable. I believe the suggestion had to do with whether or not conditions would change temporarily and then revert back to old conditions (which would mean that the temporary conditions were unstable), or if conditions would change and stay that way. If we follow this logic (at least in the way that I'm understanding it, which may be completely incorrect) then the most stable part of the way we've altered the Earth is actually the effects that we generally consider to be negative... for example the depletion of fossil fuels and the climate change we as humans have caused. I need to think more about this, but I wonder if we can make a claim that only unstable or stable changes are "healthy" for the Earth and how we would judge that.

The second idea is the question "Are we as humans natural??" On page 49 Weisman says "... we've become a volcano that hasn't stopped erupting since the 1700's." in response the carbon footprint we as a species have left on the Earth. I can't help but wonder if we can actually just be equated to this. Are we as humans are nothing but a freak natural occurrence (like a volcano erupting for too long) similar to those that our world has dealt with before? And, of course, if this is the case do we have a "moral" responsibility to evaluate the effects we have on the earth or should we, like a freakishly strong volcano, go about our business and let Earth deal with the outcomes of our actions?