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Is crisis all that Environmental Education has left?

the extinct
Creative Commons License photo credit: the|G|™

I just finished reading an article in The Walrus by Chris Turner titled The Age of Breathing Underwater. The hypothesis of the article, broadly stated, is that we’ve irrevocably entered the Anthropocene and nature, as the Romantics knew it, or as the prototypical environmentalist tries to protect today, is no longer. Based around twinning the lament of loosing coral reefs and realizing that it is only through the (highly industrialized) technology of scuba diving that we have the first-hand experience of this loss, Turner makes the argument that it is not the beauty of the reefs, per se, that need to be preserved. Rather, it is the “ungainly apparatus” (otherwise known as Western culture) that needs the preservation.

Which brings me to my question: What is environmental education for? I’ve been contemplating this question since I attended the 5th World Environmental Education conference, held earlier this year in Montréal, Québec. One of the keynotes for the 5th WEEC was Stephen Lewis and he spoke about global climate change—he has special insight on this given his role as chair of the first international conference on Climate Change—and the connection to social justice. In a sense, the keynote was a lament: Lewis suggested that our jobs, as educators, was to now go forth and prepare the world for the crisis that global climate change will precipitate.

If this is our jobs as environmental educators, then I want out.

So, we’re presented with fact: the world is irrevocably changed by humans and consequently we’re in the “midst of chaos and devastation on the scale of a world war” (Turner’s words). Do we then say that environmental education is about learning to preserve the “apparatus” that allows us to experience the sublime first-hand? Is it teaching about crisis—extinction, environmental degradation, climate change and the like?

I do feel like, in practice, much of environmental education’s domain is marking change—we tend to embrace a declensionist narrative of the more-than-human world. I do want to clarify that I’m not suggesting that environmental education ignores the human. I am interested in kinds of environmental education that acknowledges that we’re an integral to natural world. In relation (however asymmetric) with many kinds of others. But we (and this is a Western we) need to do more than react to impending doom.

I’m somewhat concerned—and this may strike you as silly—about what happens to environmental education after the crisis is over. So, a challenge then: how do we move beyond crisis in environmental education?

Oh hai!



Oh hai!, originally uploaded by Gavatron.

One of hundreds, if not thousands of shrimps that live in the tidal pools around St-Malo. I fell in love with these arthropods—watching any pool, they would simply morph into view. Now they were always there, but it required a certain amount of intentionality on my part to see them. Once they became visible, they were all over these pools, feeding. I stuck my foot in to see what happened, and I was covered with the little ones that ate the dead skin around my toes.

Rue de Petit Fort



Rue de Petit Fort, originally uploaded by Gavatron.

This road was a highlight of the trip. Funny, I know.

Dinan is a city with a thousand-year history: founded at the narrowing of the Rance River, a bridge was built and boat traffic was charged a toll to pass. As the town grew on the flats by the bridge, it became a greater target for aggression from neighbours. So, the town retreated up the side of the river valley and became a walled city. The connection to the river was still important, and the Rue de Petit Fort (Little Fort Road) is the winding, cobblestoned connection down the steep valley from the medieval walled city to the Rance river below.

Lined with half-timbered houses, you could easily imagine schlepping up and down the streets in the 14th century; I envisioned cobblestones slicked with excrement from animals pulling carts to and from the river port. Loved it.

Blue Angel F/A-18



Blue Angel F/A-18, originally uploaded by Gavatron.

It’s the Canadian International Air Show this weekend.

Most of my colleagues hate this kind of thing, but I profess that I love military aircraft. Perhaps not what they do, but the technology that has created the machine. And while it’s easy to call the airshow a war show, I find the whole relationship between these machines, political machines and our lives a bit more complicated. If you’ve ever flown somewhere on a commercial aircraft built by Boeing or Airbus, you’re implicated in “enjoying” the benefits of the technologies that has helped create this particular object. It’s that whole military-industrial complex thing we were warned about…

I personally abhor and don’t ignore the fact that aircraft of this type are used to kill—they are clearly killing machines—my context, however, is different with these aircraft than, say, if I had grown up in Sarajevo in the ’90s.

So, it’s a true guilty pleasure.

Predator and Prey



Predator and Prey, originally uploaded by Gavatron.

I noticed a grove of Milkweed plants in the neighbourhood that have been inundated with aphids—Oleander Aphids, as I found out later. Its amazing to see the diversity of insects attracted to the aphids and their honeydew.

Not surprisingly, are the insects that eat aphids, including this lady beetle. While photographing this afternoon, they didn’t seem to predatory. Just a lot of sitting around. Perhaps its the larvae that are the voracious eaters of aphids.

The Technology & Ethics of Reporting Bird Sightings

The following post includes ruminations and ideas emerging as I analyze the data collected for my PhD dissertation focusing on the act of birding. It doesn’t represent a final thought or particular endpoint: these are ideas in progress. I would be interested in hearing your opinion of my ideas, too.

SOMETHING I'VE ALWAYS LOVED TO DO
Creative Commons License photo credit: Peppysis

Sharing sightings

Birders, according my research, have embraced the Internet for information about birds. This includes general information about birds (websites such as Cornell’s All About Birds were mentioned by birders) but it would seem that the Internet is seen most importantly as a conduit of bird sightings. I conducted my research in Ontario, speaking with Ontario birders. When I would ask how birders decided where to go on a particular day, birders would often cite the Ontario Field Ornithologist’s (or OFO, for short) ONTBIRDS listserv as a source of information (often the primary source) for sightings.

Sharing bird sightings isn’t a new practise in birding. When I was a child visiting my grandparents, I remember the phone ringing, my grandparents answering and getting the latest news that species X had been seen at location Y. As members of the local field naturalist club, they were part of a telephone tree that spread news about rare bird sightings. After they collected the information, they would then call the two people “below” them in the tree. I imagine that in short order, the information about the birds was disseminated.

So the practise hasn’t changed. But the technology has. Before I talk about the implications of this, I want to bring in another thread into this conversation.

(more…) “The Technology & Ethics of Reporting Bird Sightings”