Exam Study Notes

Guiding Questions: How do different perspectives develop? How do perspectives affect decisions about environmental issues?

Perspective: How a particular situation is viewed and understood by an individual.
- Based on personal and collective assumptions, values, and beliefs.
- Informed and justified by sociocultural norms, scientific understandings, laws, religion, economic conditions, local/global events, and lived experience.

Values: Qualities or principles that people feel have worth and importance in life.
- Underpin perspectives and are seen in communication/actions with the wider community.
Contrasting Examples:
- Native Americans losing land and food (salmon) due to hydroelectric dams campaign for removal.
- Small town person losing job in coal industry due to climate legislation campaigns against mine closures, votes conservative.

Values held by organizations are seen through advertisements, media, policies, and actions.
- Example: Patagonia (outdoor clothing company).
Values Surveys: Used to investigate perspectives of social groups towards environmental issues.
- Recognize values underpinning perspectives and assess how these values impact the issue.

Questionnaire: Asks the same questions of all individuals in a sample.
- Useful for investigating patterns, trends, and attitudes.
- Complements information from other techniques like observation.
- Involves setting questions and obtaining answers.

Worldviews: Lenses shared by groups through which they perceive, make sense of, and act within their environment.
- Shape people’s values and perspectives through culture, philosophy, ideology, religion, and politics.
Buddhism: Every living thing is co-dependent.
- Humans are not autonomous and are not more important than other living things.
- Must extend loving-kindness and compassion to life and the earth.
Christianity and Islam: Share a belief in mastery/dominion over the earth.
- Genesis: God commands humans to "replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over it."
- Quran: The earth has been given to humans for sustenance.
Islam: Differentiates from Christianity.
- Humans have caretaker status, not rulers.
- The Quran recognizes the animal world is a community equal to the human one.
Native American: Hold property in common (communal).
- Subsistence economy: barter for goods rather than use money.
- Participate in a democratic process.
- Laws handed down by oral tradition.
- Polytheistic religion (worshipping many gods).
- Animals, plants, and natural objects have spirituality.

EVS: A model that shows the inputs affecting our perspectives and the outputs resulting from our perspectives.
- Inputs: media, education, worldview, socio-political contexts.
- Outputs: Judgments, positions, choices, and actions.
- Values shape perspective, resulting in outputs.

What is your environmental world view and how have your experiences shaped it?
- Background: religion, culture, education, society.
From history view was earth's resources were unlimited, but now know this is not true.
Earth resources are not unlimited and humans can make the planet uninhabitable.

EVS tend to overlap and complement each other.
Rarely fit perfectly into any classification.
Ecocentric Viewpoint: Puts ecology and nature at the center.
- Emphasizes less materialism and greater self-sufficiency of societies.
- Prioritizes biorights, education, and self-restraint.
Anthropocentric Viewpoint: Humans are at the center and must sustainably manage the global system.
- Through taxes, environmental regulation, and legislation.
Technocentric Viewpoint: Technological developments can provide solutions to environmental problems.
- Prioritizes the economy over the environment.
- Encourages scientific research to control, manipulate, or change systems to solve resource depletion.
- A pro-growth agenda is deemed necessary.
Technocentric Examples:
- Fish farming to solve overfishing.
- GM crops to counter climate change impacts.
- Satellite tracking wolves to monitor movements in Yellowstone.
Extreme Env. Value Systems:
- Deep ecologists (extreme ecocentrics): reject materialism, eat less meat, reduce impact.
- Cornucopians (extreme technocentrics): environmental concerns should not inhibit economic growth.

Perspectives and beliefs change over time in all societies.
- Influenced by government/NGO campaigns or through social and demographic change.

Development influenced by: literature, media, major environmental disasters, international agreements, technological developments, and scientific discoveries.
Rachel Carson - Silent Spring:
- Published in 1962.
- Warned of pesticide effects on insects, birds (silent spring), and humans.
- Believed pesticides like DDT caused cancer.
- Chemical companies tried to ban the book.
- Scientists shared concern and President Kennedy launched investigation.
- DDT was banned.
- Criticized as scaremongering, causing more harm than good as Mosquitoes spread malaria, killing millions.
Greta Thunberg:
- Started school strike at 15 to protest climate change.
- Actions gained media attention, led to global student strikes.