Subacademic paper post oh noes!
I'm posting this paper I'm turning into my Fundamentals of Environmental Design course today because I am motherfucking hilarious. And depressing. Ugh. I don't normally write like this for "academic papers" but I think I needed some catharsis after a summer of reading derrick jensen. its also just a 1-2 page response paper to some readings, probably worth 0.5% of my grade, so even if my teacher decides I'm a moron I'll have plenty of opportunity to recoup the grade.
Low Flow Faucets, Energy Star Bulbs and the All-Consuming Cthulu-Beast That Is Globalized Industrial Capitalism
kat
"Just as human impact has negative impact upon the global environment and thus upon future resources, the obverse can also be true, that human impact can have positive benefit through design intention.... the role of stewardship through design conceives of human intelligence and creativity as an integral part of the evolution of life on earth, in which the capacity to design is as much a moral instrument and as such is our one best way to prepare for an unpredictable yet more desirable future" (watson, p. 9).
Stewardship is not sustainability. Stewardship, as defined by Merriam-Webster is “the conducting, supervising, or managing of something; especially: the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one's care,” and at no point in history was humanity ever entrusted with the “careful and responsible management” of nature. We have instead wantonly imposed ourselves in a position of power, and our folly has created the mess we now see as looming environmental cataclysm. We are every day being humbled by what we do not understand and cannot control; from the ever faster rate of species loss worldwide, to the unprecedented melting of the arctic ice, it is ridiculous to assume that we know enough to act in any capacity as stewards of the global ecosystem. We are at the moment the global ecosystem's most insidious foe.
Personally, my relationship to the environment is fraught with moral dilemmas and hypocrisy. I am, as I write this, consuming a (free) can of Pepsi. I am surrounded by the comforts of first-world industrial civilization, I type on a relatively new laptop computer; I am a college student; I am an urban dweller through and through. Perhaps paradoxically to this culture I consume very little; I get virtually everything I need from free-piles, second hand stores, dumpster diving and barter. I don't drive, instead I ride a bicycle on average ten miles a day, occasionally taking public transit when I'm feeling tired or achey. I am a committed social and evironmental justice activist but it is here my theory and practice truly diverge. I still have a carbon footprint, not all of my food is local, I sometimes eat meat, and though I only shower every couple of days I take luxuriously long showers. My life is full of the privilege that comes from living in the United States, privilege that comes at a mighty cost to all life on this planet presently and to whatever survives the future.
While I accept personal responsibility as a member of the civiliization that is killing the planet, I do not believe the argument that conscious consumerism is an acceptable tactic in the larger strategy of saving the planet from us. I am struggling in my search for viable solutions. I don't entirely buy Watson's conceived "stewardship through design." In the loosest definition of design I believe that we are capable of doing less bad, and possibly even doing well in the future, but I don't see that possibility coming soon. Forever offered by a capitalist logic bent on reducing interconnected community to the isolated individual “consumer:” personal responsibility is not the answer to the environmental crisis. Eating vegan, shopping less, and buying low-flow faucets is not going to undo the extinction of vital species being lost today. In the most radically opposite approach, strapping a bomb to oneself and attacking Monsanto or the nearest dam would do little if nothing to slow the onslaught of the all-consuming Cthulu-beast that is globalized industrial capitalism.
I balk at writers attempts to characterize consumer choice as a realistic tactic for combating anything, let alone climate change; but I am more optimistic than I let on. While we are not stewards of the global ecosystem we do have a gigantic responsibility to clean up the mess we have created. We have the responsibility and the capacity to cease killing the planet. Watson writes “the capacity to design is as much a moral instrument and as such is our one best way to prepare for an unpredictable yet more desirable future.” I hope terribly that he is right, my interest in architecture stems entirely from this notion.