Fluent Essays

Greenhouse Gases Society and the Environment 2 Society and the Environment Pragmatic Solutions to Ecological Issues SECOND EDITION Michael Carolan Colorado State University 3 First published 2017 by Westview Press Published 2018 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2017 Taylor & Francis All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Every effort has been made to secure required permissions for all text, images, maps, and other art reprinted in this volume. A CIP catalog record for the print version of this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 13: 978-0-8133-5000-4 (pbk) 4 For Nora, Elena, and Joey 5 Brief Table of Contents Preface to the Second Edition Acknowledgments 1. Introduction: Individuals, Societies, and Pragmatic Environmentalism Part I: Living in a Material World 2. Greenhouse Gases: Warmer Isn’t Better 3. Waste: Our Sinks Are Almost Sunk 4. Biodiversity: Society Wouldn’t Exist Without It 5. Water: There’s No Substitute Part II: At the Intersection of Ecology and Society 6. Population: A Problem of Quantity or Quality? 7. Transportation: Beyond Air Pollution 8. Food: From Farm to Fork 9. Energy Production: Our Sun-ny Prospects Part III: Organizing a Sustainable Society 10. Political Economy: Making Markets Fair and Sustainable 11. Governance: Biases and Blind Spots 12. Inequality and Growth: Prosperity for All Part IV: Shifting the Focus to Results 13. From Our Beliefs to Our Behaviors: Pragmatic Environmentalism in Action Glossary References Index 6 Expanded Table of Contents Preface to the Second Edition Acknowledgments Chapter 1. Introduction: Individuals, Societies, and Pragmatic Environmentalism Individualism: Too Much and Not Enough The Contribution of the Social Sciences Material Things Have Momentum The Messy Relationship Between Behaviors and Attitudes The Journey Ahead Important Concepts Discussion Questions Suggested Additional Readings Relevant Internet Links Suggested Videos ECONNECTION 1.1. Some of Those Deep Sociological Drivers Part I: Living in a Material World Chapter 2. Greenhouse Gases: Warmer Isn’t Better Fast Facts Implications Urban Areas Food Security Children, Women, and the Elderly Climate Change Refugees Solutions Environmental Movements Matter Seventeen Pragmatic Behavioral Changes Stabilization Triangle and Wedges Green Building Geoengineering Carbon Markets and Offsets Important Concepts Discussion Questions Suggested Additional Readings Relevant Internet Links Suggested Videos ECONNECTION 2.1. The US Public’s Knowledge of Climate Change ETHICAL QUESTION 2.1. The Most Threatened Are the Least Responsible ECONNECTION 2.2. Climate Change Linked to Food-Related Vulnerabilities for Certain Populations CASE STUDY 2.1. Climate Change and the Wine Industry 7 ECONNECTION 2.3. Testimony from Satou Diouf, Gadiag Village, Senegal CASE STUDY 2.2. Climate Refugees from Indonesia and Bangladesh MOVEMENT MATTERS 2.1. Beyond Coal and Its Unusual Bedfellows ECONNECTION 2.4. Examples of Geoengineering, Mitigation, and Adaptation ECONNECTION 2.5. Biochar Chapter 3. Waste: Our Sinks Are Almost Sunk Fast Facts Implications Energy Waste and the Life-Cycle Analysis Recycling Food Waste Waste and Public Health E-Waste Solutions MSW Management Alternatives from Around the World Extended Producer Responsibility Important Concepts Discussion Questions Suggested Additional Readings Relevant Internet Links Suggested Videos CASE STUDY 3.1. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch ETHICAL QUESTION 3.1. What Ought to Be Most Valued? CASE STUDY 3.2. The Close Loop Fund and Recent Recycling Trends ECONNECTION 3.1. The Recycling Loophole ETHICAL QUESTION 3.2. Public Health and Value Judgments ECONNECTION 3.2. E-Waste and Public Health MOVEMENT MATTERS 3.1. The Real Junk Food Project Chapter 4. Biodiversity: Society Wouldn’t Exist Without It Fast Facts Implications Changing Definitions of Biodiversity Biodiversity: The Fuel Driving Ecosystem Services Biocultural Diversity Biopiracy Solutions Community Conservation Agrobiodiversity Conservation Important Concepts Discussion Questions Suggested Additional Readings Relevant Internet Links Suggested Videos ECONNECTION 4.1. Thinking About Ecosystem Services Conceptually ETHICAL QUESTION 4.1. Sophie’s Choice: What If We Can’t Save Them All? ECONNECTION 4.2. The Tragedy of the Commodity ETHICAL QUESTION 4.2. The Power of Conservation Maps ECONNECTION 4.3. The Irreplaceable Bee ETHICAL QUESTION 4.3. Sustainability: For Whom and Toward What End? ECONNECTION 4.4. Socioecological Benefits Known to Arise from Community Conservation 8 CASE STUDY 4.1. Participatory Forest Management in Kenya MOVEMENT MATTERS 4.1. Open Source Seed CASE STUDY 4.2. The Seed Bank That Makes Memories Chapter 5. Water: There’s No Substitute Fast Facts Implications Bottled Water Privatizing Water Agriculture Climate Change Surface Water Groundwater Hydrologic Extremes Water Quality Water Demand Solutions Water as a Human Right at the Right Value Water Governance Important Concepts Discussion Questions Suggested Additional Readings Relevant Internet Links Suggested Videos CASE STUDY 5.1. China’s Water Woes ECONNECTION 5.1. The IMF and the World Bank ECONNECTION 5.2. US Bureau of Reclamation CASE STUDY 5.2. Neoliberalism and Water Privatization: The Case of India CASE STUDY 5.3. Desalinization in California MOVEMENT MATTERS 5.1. Grassroots Organizations Take on Nestlé Waters Canada CASE STUDY 5.4. Micro-Watershed Councils in Mexico and Guatemala Part II. At the Intersection of Ecology and Society Chapter 6. Population: A Problem of Quantity or Quality? Fast Facts Implications Greenhouse Gases Urban Sprawl Food Feeding a Growing Nonhuman Animal Population Feeding a Growing Automobile Population Solutions Socioeconomic Development The Future Role of Cities The Case for a Population Explosion “Up Rather Than Out”: If It Works for Cities, Can It Work for Farms? Important Concepts Discussion Questions Suggested Additional Readings Relevant Internet Links Suggested Videos ECONNECTION 6.1. From IPAT to STIRPAT 9 ETHICAL QUESTION 6.1. Do Countries Have a Right to Their Fair Share of CO2 Emissions? CASE STUDY 6.1. Japan: A Rapidly Shrinking Country CASE STUDY 6.2. Socioeconomic Development in Kerala, India ETHICAL QUESTION 6.2. Whose Behaviors Should Change? CASE STUDY 6.3. Family Planning in Ethiopia CASE STUDY 6.4. Urban Density: A Tale of Two Cities (Within the Same City) Chapter 7. Transportation: Beyond Air Pollution Fast Facts Implications Pollution and Public Health Habitat and Biodiversity Community Solutions Dense, Livable, Intermodal Cities From Street Hierarchy to Interconnectivity Disincentivizing the Car Important Concepts Discussion Questions Suggested Additional Readings Relevant Internet Links Suggested Videos ECONNECTION 7.1. Effective Speed CASE STUDY 7.1. China’s Pollution Problem ECONNECTION 7.2. Social Capital ECONNECTION 7.3. Community Severance CASE STUDY 7.2. The Rise of Bike-Share Programs ETHICAL QUESTION 7.1. Value Judgments Embedded in Transportation Policy ECONNECTION 7.4. High-Occupancy Vehicle Lanes CASE STUDY 7.3. “Daylighting” the Cheonggyecheon Stream in South Korea CASE STUDY 7.4. Breaking Through the Street Hierarchy ECONNECTION 7.5. Have Cars Reached Their Peak? MOVEMENT MATTERS 7.1. The Rise of Public Transit Movements CASE STUDY 7.5. The London Congestion Charge Chapter 8. Food: From Farm to Fork Fast Facts Implications Environmental Impacts Community Impacts Malnutrition and the Green Revolution The “Treadmills” of Agriculture Solutions Agroecology La Via Campesina and Other Peasant-Based Movements Urban Gardens Important Concepts Discussion Questions Suggested Additional Readings Relevant Internet Links Suggested Videos CASE STUDY 8.1. Mobile Bay Jubilee 10 ECONNECTION 8.1. Fish In Fish Out (FIFO) Ratio ECONNECTION 8.2. Negative Impacts of Industrialized Farms ECONNECTION 8.3. Yes! We Have No Bananas ECONNECTION 8.4. Agroecology: Growing More Than Food and Fiber CASE STUDY 8.2. Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) MOVEMENT MATTERS 8.1. Food Sovereignty Movement Scores Victory in Ecuador Chapter 9. Energy Production: Our Sun-ny Prospects Fast Facts Implications “Clean” Coal Hydraulic Fracturing (aka Fracking) Nuclear Power Solutions Efficiency and Curtailment Renewables Incentivizing Renewables and Household Efficiency Important Concepts Discussion Questions Suggested Additional Readings Relevant Internet Links Suggested Videos CASE STUDY 9.1. Three Gorges Dam CASE STUDY 9.2. Experimenting with Carbon Capture in West Virginia ECONNECTION 9.1. Mountaintop Removal Mining ECONNECTION 9.2. Floating on a Cloud … of Fossil Fuel Emissions ECONNECTION 9.3. More Cheap Fracking Plastic MOVEMENT MATTERS 9.1. The Fight Over Local Control CASE STUDY 9.3. Fukushima Nuclear Disaster as “Normal Accident” ECONNECTION 9.4. Windmills and Bird Fatalities ECONNECTION 9.5. Social Norms and Behavior Part III. Organizing a Sustainable Society Chapter 10. Political Economy: Making Markets Fair and Sustainable Fast Facts Implications The Growth Imperative The Treadmill of Production Internal Contradictions Metabolic Rift Another Contradiction of Capitalism Globalization of Environmental Goods and Bads Critiquing the Environmental Kuznets Curve World-Systems Framework Solutions Total Cost Accounting Fair Versus Free Trade Important Concepts Discussion Questions Suggested Additional Readings Relevant Internet Links Suggested Videos 11 CASE STUDY 10.1. Compact Fluorescent Bulbs: Jevons Paradox or Rebound Effect? ECONNECTION 10.1. Treadmill/Metabolic Rift: Declining Global Fish Stocks ECONNECTION 10.2. Capital Shaping Humans in Its Image: A Third Contradiction? ECONNECTION 10.3. Forest Transition Theory ECONNECTION 10.4. “Apolitical Ecologies” and Foucauldian Governance ECONNECTION 10.5. Fair Trade MOVEMENT MATTERS 10.1. Italy’s Gruppi di Aquisto Soledale (GAS): Solidarity Purchasing Groups Chapter 11. Governance: Biases and Blind Spots Fast Facts Implications Welfare Economics and Cost-Benefit Analyses Tyranny of the Present: Discounting The Self-Interested Straw Person Solutions From Tragedy to Drama Absolute Sustainability The Precautionary Principle Important Concepts Discussion Questions Suggested Additional Readings Relevant Internet Links Suggested Videos ETHICAL QUESTION 11.1. Unpacking “Science” ECONNECTION 11.1. Discounting and Forest Management MOVEMENT MATTERS 11.1. Dams: Making Changes to How Things Are Counted CASE STUDY 11.1. Central Government, Privatization, or Common-Property Regime? CASE STUDY 11.2. Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation Chapter 12. Inequality and Growth: Prosperity for All Fast Facts Implications Rethinking Growth The Sociology of Consumption Environmental Justice Solutions A Postgrowth Society Development as Freedom, Justice, and Empowerment Important Concepts Discussion Questions Suggested Additional Readings Relevant Internet Links Suggested Videos ECONNECTION 12.1. Freedom Isn’t Free, and Apparently Best in Moderation ECONNECTION 12.2. The Plight of Native Americans CASE STUDY 12.1. Environmental Racism in Cape Town, South Africa ETHICAL QUESTION 12.1. Is There a Right Level of Inequality? CASE STUDY 12.2. Kellogg’s Six-Hour Day ECONNECTION 12.3. Community Capitals Framework MOVEMENT MATTERS 12.1. The Metales Plant in Tijuana, Mexico 12 Part IV. Shifting the Focus to Results Chapter 13. From Our Beliefs to Our Behaviors: Pragmatic Environmentalism in Action Fast Facts Implications Knowledge and Worldviews Denial, Ambivalence, and Apathy Consumerism, Advertising, and Status Attainment Solutions Advertisements, Freedom, and the Public Good Collaborative Consumption Globalization of Environmental Concern Pro-Environmental Behavior Social Movements Pragmatic Environmentalism Important Concepts Discussion Questions Suggested Additional Readings Relevant Internet Links Suggested Videos ECONNECTION 13.1. The Growing Scourge of Social Distance ETHICAL QUESTION 13.1. Is Pollution Natural? ECONNECTION 13.2. Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining: From “Waste” to “Untapped Idling Capacity” ECONNECTION 13.3. Collaboration Might Build Trust but It Also Needs It to Work CASE STUDY 13.1. The Carrotmob (aka Buycott) ECONNECTION 13.4. The New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) Glossary References Index 13 Preface to the Second Edition Society and the Environment: Pragmatic Solutions to Ecological Issues was born of my personal frustration as an educator. In my department at Colorado State University, we have an undergraduate concentration in environmental sociology; I teach the introductory-level course in that concentration, called Global Environmental Issues. Every semester in this class, I engage with roughly 130 students about the environmental state of affairs, while also going to great lengths to explain how sociology can inform our understanding of how we’ve arrived at this state. It’s an incredibly fun class to teach, not only because it deals with subject matter that’s close to my heart, but because the students tend to be really interested in the material as well. But when I first taught the class, over the course of the term my students’ early excitement changed to something cooler. They were becoming, to put it in a word, depressed. Sociology students talk frequently about their desire to make the world a better place. Yet in our environment classes, day after day, we focused on all that was wrong with the world. I was feeding my students a steady diet of pessimism—about how they can’t really make it better—yet still asking them to take individual responsibility for our environmental future. No wonder they were getting indigestion. When I realized this—when the CFL went on over my head—I began to make solutions a central component of my class. My students still occasionally feel disheartened or upset, but these days I rarely see a true cloud of depression settle over them. I talk about solutions in two ways. Think of the first like a steady drumbeat: problem/solutions, problems/solutions. … Each chapter, following this arrangement, begins by stating environmental issues and their implications for society. At each chapter’s midpoint, the discussion becomes solution oriented, tackling the possible solutions to the problem immediately at hand. Yet in the end, solutions—real solutions—to our environmental ills come not from fiddling around at the margins but from deep systemic change; we need to also come up with solutions that take us in other directions. The second way I therefore talk about solutions takes the form of an argumentative arch that builds throughout the entire book. Think of it as a complementary drumbeat that slowly crescendos until the cymbals crash in Parts III and IV, where attention centers on collectively reorganizing a sustainable society. I have found this two-part technique for talking about solutions to be particularly useful in the classroom. Sociologists have long been suspect of bolt-on solutions; after all, we are trained to see the root causes of problems—sometimes to a fault. But I would argue that small changes to behavior (such as turning down the temperature on one’s hot water heater) and technological fixes (like compact fluorescent bulbs) have their place as long as they are met with an equal zest to create deeper structural change. At the same time, I realize such short-term fixes risk creating short-term apathy, which can derail attempts to solve today’s environmental problems at their root. To those reading and assigning this book, I recommend a critical reflection on the solutions proposed in each of the following chapters. Ask yourself: What do they fix and what do they miss? Much of the material that populates the book comes from my Global Environmental Issues class, so you could say it has, from a student’s perspective, been truly peer reviewed. It is loaded with figures, tables, and images as well as a variety of text boxes: the Case Study, to briefly highlight case studies; the Ethical Question, to highlight the value disputes that underlie environmental conflicts; the ECOnnection, which allows me to interject additional information into a subject; and the Movement Matters, new in this edition, which offer vignettes on grassroots movements that have affected legislation. I also include at the end of every chapter, which I again draw right from class material, suggested additional readings, discussion questions, relevant online sources, and suggested videos. Finally, I take time at the end of every chapter to highlight particularly important concepts. Definitions of these terms and of all the terms appearing in boldface are then provided in the glossary located near the end of the book. Talking, thinking, and learning about environmental issues in a pragmatic way may also require going beyond the pages of the book in your hands. With that in mind, I have posted a number of “beyond the book” 14 • • • • • • • resources online at www.westviewpress.com/carolan. These resources will link you to the social web by way of video clips, podcasts, and interesting, informative blogs and websites. Slides of the figures, tables, and images as well as a variety of slides expanding on issues raised in the boxes are available to help bring the subject matter alive during lectures. Sample quiz questions are available for use as a study guide to give to students or as a starting place for crafting your own exams. Additionally, the website provides a selection of exercises, scenarios, and games (such as an adaptation of the “wedges” game developed by the Carbon Mitigation Initiative at Princeton University), all of which are designed specifically to promote active learning in the classroom. If you have suggestions for additional resources, please feel free to share them with me via the website. Before you dig into the book, I want to say a few words about my intentional use of the term pragmatic in the book’s subtitle (indeed, originally the plan was to call this book Pragmatic Environmentalism). As with solutions, my understanding of pragmatic operates at two levels. At one level, the term is meant to evoke a very commonsense understanding, relating to practical matters of fact where results are of greater importance than philosophical debates. Yet as is also made clear in the chapters that follow, the world is not that black and white. Matters of fact, for example, particularly when dealing with environmental issues, are rarely self- evident. Philosophical and ethical questions are often embedded within debates around what ought to constitute a fact. I would therefore caution anyone from operating solely according to this understanding of the term as they search for answers to the environmental problems that plague us. Yet you could say this book is pragmatic insofar as short-term solutions go. This brings me to the second interpretation of pragmatic: as pragmatism. For those unfamiliar with this term, it references a distinct philosophical tradition, whose relevance for environmental sociology I delve into in Chapter 13. At the moment, I will say only that I appreciate the pragmatist approach, for it offers an alternative to overt structuralism, on the one hand, and methodological individualism, on the other. The way it does this, I should also add, makes it inherently hopeful, as the changes it seeks are deep and therefore lasting. But you’ll have to read the rest of the book to find out how this optimistic story ends. Finally, a few words about the revisions and changes made, as this book represents a second generation: Society and the Environment 2.0. I am often disheartened to see new editions of texts come out with only cosmetic changes—updated citations and statistics but little else. Don’t get me wrong; any good text needs to be current. But I also believe authors have a responsibility to update text in additional ways. Fields change, or at least they better—you shouldn’t be taking a class on a subject if it isn’t! And authors don’t always get everything right the first time. I certainly didn’t. After the release of the first edition I realized there were areas of literature that deserved greater attention. I don’t claim the second edition gets everything right either. But it represents an honest attempt to improve on the range of literature offered in the first edition. Having surveyed current instructors who have adopted my book, the consensus was not to add additional chapters. Rather, they were of the opinion that my energies would be better spent adding material within the existing chapter format. That is what I have done. Some of those substantive additions include the following (in no particular order): expanded discussion on fracking expanded discussion on the sociological dimension of environmental problems—linking ecological concepts to sociological concepts and more emphasis on the institutions of society, their interrelationships, and how they socially and culturally define nature, resources, and environment greater attention to health consequences addition of new text boxes called “Movement Matters,” which provide vignettes on a grassroots movement that has effected change more visual elements—photos, figures, and tables expanded ancillaries, offered on the instructor website expanded discussion on social movements 15 http://www.westviewpress.com/carolan Acknowledgments How does one begin to acknowledge people when one’s career is filled with supportive relationships and enlightening encounters? From my graduate student days, when I was lucky enough to have Michael Bell as my PhD adviser, to today, when I have the good fortune of being chair of a sociology department full of faculty and students interested in issues related to environment sustainability and justice, my experience with scholarship has been inherently collective, and this book is a reflection of this fact. So I’ll focus on naming those with a presence more directly felt. First, Evan Carver, the original acquisitions editor at Westview Press who talked me into taking this project on. Without you there would be no book. Period. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the various editors and assistants at Westview Press who have helped immensely over the years— Brooke Maddaford, Leanne Silverman, Krista Anderson, James Sherman, and Grace Fujimoto. I leaned on a number of colleagues for images and articles and in a couple cases used some as sounding boards for ideas and arguments. Those colleagues include Brett Clark, Maurie Cohen, Jennifer Cross, Riley Dunlap, Cornelia Flora, Jan Flora, Lori Hunter, Colin Khoury, Jack Kloppenburg, Aaron McCright, Kari Norgaard, Thomas Rudel, and Richard York. A heartfelt note of thanks must also be extended to these scholars who provided constructive comments and criticisms of the book: Dr. Shaunna L. Scott (University of Kentucky), Dr. Krista E. Paulsen (University of North Florida), Dr. Manuel Vallee (University of Auckland), Dr. Kooros Mohit Mahmoudi (University of Northern Arizona), Dr. Jesse T. Weiss (University of the Ozarks), Dr. Susan G. Clark (Yale University), and Dr. Christopher Oliver (University of Kentucky). The original book proposal and final manuscript were extensively reviewed by a list of scholars known only to me as “Reviewer 1, 2, 3, …” Thanks too to all those anonymous (at least to me) instructors who adopted my book and were kind enough to provide the publisher and myself with constructive feedback on how the first edition could be improved. A lot of you sacrificed a great deal of time to anonymously involve yourselves in this project. Your comments were invaluable. Thank you. I am also grateful to all those students whom I have had the good fortune of learning from each semester in my Global Environmental Issues class (the introductory class for our environmental sociology concentration at Colorado State University). This book is the culmination of a lot of trial and error in that class as I sought to make the material interesting, relevant, and, importantly, hopeful in tone. This work was supported in part by the following grant: Social Science Korea (SSK), National Research Foundation of Korea (grant number NRF-2013S1A3A2055243). Finally: to Nora. Thanks to you I am assured that my days will be full of nonmaterial contentment, while in our children, Elena and Joey, I find hope that the future will be in good hands. 16 1 Introduction: Individuals, Societies, and Pragmatic Environmentalism Why must books on the environment be so gloomy? Chapter after chapter detail what’s wrong, followed by, if you’re lucky, a chapter or two on what could be done to turn things around. No wonder my students express bewilderment and, in a few cases, something akin to borderline clinical depression when, during the first week of my Global Environmental Issues class, I ask about their thoughts on the ecological state of the world. A quick query on http://Amazon.com brings up 66,351 books when the words environmental problems are typed into the search bar. A search of the term environmental solutions, conversely, brought up 14,062 books. Sex, apparently, isn’t the only thing that sells books. We can add apocalyptic ecological predictions to that list. I understand why, historically, all this attention has been paid to environmental problems. People are not much interested in reading about solutions until they’ve been convinced that there’s a problem in need of solving. More than fifty years have passed since the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Since then we have been exposed to a steady diet of problem talk, with measurable effect. A 2015 poll found that roughly half of Americans have heard about the ongoing drought in the western United States (Ipsos/Reuters 2015). (As I write this in the summer of 2015, Californians are facing “historic water rationing plans” [Boxall and Stevens 2015].) A 2015 Ipsos poll of eighth graders across the United States offers the following encouraging news: not only are kids widely aware of the terms global warming and climate change, but they nearly universally agree (94 percent) that climate change is real, while 85 percent agree that human activity significantly contributes to climate change (Ipsos 2015). Even friends of mine who would rather lose a limb than be called environmentalists acknowledge the problematic ecological conditions that surround us. (Granted, they might still be in denial about climate change, but not much else.) Who is left to convince? Isn’t it time to turn the corner and talk about—and even celebrate—instances of positive socioecological change? This book is a bit of both: a bit about problems, a little bit more about solutions. By focusing on ecological solutions—rather than entirely on problems—I am striving to make this book hopeful, recognizing that if we can’t at least think and talk about and point to sustainable alternatives, we really are in trouble. But I am a realistic dreamer, as indicated by my evoking the term pragmatic in the book’s subtitle. Although it never hurts to be imaginative about what could be, we must be realistic about the possibilities. Too often we confuse criticism, to the point of focusing only on what is bad and wrong, with gritty realism. That kind of negative approach is not realism but pessimism. Pragmatism decries grand narratives—those totalizing theoretical views of the world that claim to explain human mind, body, and society since the beginning of time. As someone who finds social theory interesting, I admit that it is fun to try to “scoop up” the world in one all-encompassing conceptual framework. Grand narratives are like flying at thirty thousand feet: they are great for discussing the big picture—things like global capitalism and world political and economic systems. When the time comes to roll up one’s sleeves and talk about practical policy solutions, however, I find these approaches less helpful, especially when issues revolve around sustainability. (I realize grand narratives have their solutions too, but they are often unrealistic, nebulous, and even polemical. In a word, they’re not pragmatic.) Theoretical grand narratives aside, the nontheoretical sustainability literature is equally rife with overly simplistic, onesize-fits-all solutions. Single- handed praise for such phenomena as vertical farming (Despommier 2010), climate engineering (Keith … The essay needs to be one-page single space of writing, in a font no bigger than 12. It must contain one outside the book source and may include your own ideas and opinions, as well as your own creative solutions (MLA citations). We focus on a pragmatic approach, so it would be important that your ideas have some element that they are in the realm of possibility to achieve. Creativity is key for these solutions, however, and so that is a key component as well. Do not include your name, class, etc, at the top. The more specific you can be, the better. One solution works, writing about too many can dilute your paper. You can incorporate text ideas into your own solution thoughts. Be as SPECIFIC as possible. Do no use "Education" or "More Funding" since they tend to be too vague and large of ideas, so work towards being as focused as possible. Assignment Will be over Chapter 2-Greenhouse Gases: Warmer isn't Better. The chapter has solutions presented to many challenges we face regarding theses gases and the changes they manifest. I would like for you to have at least one outside source that is not our textbook.