Environmental Picks

[sunjoy]

Pick 1 For their opening movie of the semester, the film society screened Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth". It was better than I thought it would be, and I encourage people to see it when it comes on DVD. The film-makers used a heavy hand to edit autobiographical sketches of Gore into his slide show on global warming. The slide show itself was

Comments

[shesanightowl]

Hmm, interesting list. I would add to it William Cronon. Especially one article "The Trouble with Wilderness".

He writes about the geographical relationships of people to 'the environment' and how our idea of what 'the environment' is is constructed by historical accounts and culture. We think of 'nature' as only the state parks and things we are able to access by car and with money and not as the everyday environment in which we live. It's less of a scientific account of environmentalism but I've found it to be very thought-provoking and useful in framing the way I think about my environmentalism and the politics of environmentalism, e.g. the Sierra Club and whatnot.

[sunjoy]

Sorry for the late reply. I read that Cronon article for a class that was taught by the Central Park Conservancy. One of the many good things about urban parks is that they give people an incentive to feel connected to their own environment, although they will often still think of "environment" only as comprising things that are green or that chirp, rather than things that are made of concrete or that honk when there's traffic.