Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Let's talk about the environment . . . again

Hi students. As I've been reading through your final papers, I have been impressed with the variety of topics you've taken on. Many of you have discussed problems with American education, a few have discussed various conceptions of the American family, and a few of you have tackled issues related to the environment. I want to ask you all a question inspired by some conversations in my American Nature Writing class today. Do you think "natural resources management" is an oxymoron? Can "wilderness" places be managed? In a corporatized, industrialized society like ours, how do we perform "cost-benefit analyses" on our uses of natural places and resources (meaning, how *do* we do this and how *can* we do -- and potentially justify doing -- this)? Some deep issues to ponder as we head into the final week of classes!

16 comments:

  1. Well, by "manage", the people using the word mean protect. There is still a faction that works solely to protect the environment from influence, to keep it at a previous state. In a true, ever evolving world, there can't be protection, or the area and animals in that area can't change to their new environment. They can't change to a new environment which will eventually affect them because of groups which protect them. And as someone famous and smart once said, "[as long as] the ends justify the means [progress will be made]."

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  2. If the word manage is used loosely, not as a manager manages his store, then nature can be managed. The people flow and hunting restrictions can be controlled, as well as resource extractions and such. We cannot go in and manage how many trees will live and die, how many animals live in a specific area, or the amount of bugs per tree. I suppose it could be possible, but then it begins to lose the idea of nature.

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  3. Honestly, I don't think "wilderess" places can be managed. The wild is called the wild for a reason. We can fantasize ideas of how to manage and possibly implement these ideas, but I don't think they will be 100% successful. However, this doesn't mean that we can't try our best to make our management ideas as successful as possible. What we can do, is collect and analyze data. We can try to better our understanding of cost-benefit analysis.

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  4. I agree with the other bloggers that "manage" is a little vague because it has a number of meanings. I think the wilderness deserves to be "managed" in the sense that it should be protected (from us!) but not manipulated. Introducing new species to an ecosystem or limiting a specific number of resources or introducing new resources can all have detrimental effects on the ecosystem, so of course we need not "manage" it in that sense.

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  5. When someone says to me anything about "managing," I immediately fall back on the engineer's default and begin thinking of managers themselves. In all of my experiences thus far, it is best to let nature fall back on its own devices, as the human definition of "managing" is merely a system used to give people false power over meaningless topics. It is an inefficient system that can not do so much to safeguard the continuation of nature half as well as letting nature "manage" itself.

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  6. I definitely think they can be managed. But in the sense that we are being good stewards of our natural resources. Natural resources should be used, but they should be used responsibly and in a way that will ensure that those resources will always be present for us to utilize. "Managing" does not mean that we completely rope off our natural world with the intention of protecting it, but rather manage it well so that modern society may progress while the environment continues to flourish. That is a win-win situation. The wilderness is there for us to protect, utilize, and enjoy.

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  7. I believe that "wilderness" places cannot be managed. It is the wild. All ways we would try and "manage" the wilderness will fail or not be completely successful. I think that we can try and study the wilderness in order to make our ideas of managing it as successful as possible, like PandaDance said, in order to better our understanding of cost-benefit analysis.

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  8. I agree with some of the other postings in that wilderness can be managed. Even though it may not be sealed off from the rest of the world, we can still somewhat control what goes on in a specific area. As for the whole idea of a "cost-benefit analysis" of an area, all that has to be done is figure how much it would cost to do whatever it is that is going to be done and seeing if the costs are much lower than the benefits.

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  9. Managing the environment doesn't mean helping nature along in any way. Managing the environment is a strictly selfish endevor: do we as humans want to survive? Yes. Do we want to cause mass starvation? No. Then we need to adjust our own usage of the environment accordingly. Again, there are no "cost-benefits." The choice is simple. If we don't want to kill ourselves off via lack of resources, then we need to monitor our usage and keep it at a reasonable rate.

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  10. I think that when people say "manage" they should also think of responsibility. If we manage something, we are responisible for it. Nature is something that typically does not have to be managed. It tends to manage itself. However, if people find that BOTH nature and humanity can benefit from a change, then we as humans have the right to manage that in what ever way that is required. We also have the responsibilty to take such actions.

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  11. Natural resources management is certainly not an oxymoron. Humanity’s ability to affect change on Earth is unprecedented. Managing natural places is not only possible but in practice in many areas. For example the Yellow Stone wolf population is monitored and controlled (not to mention that we put the wolfs there in the first place). This is not to say that we have complete control of nature, we can shoot the wolfs that attack cattle but can’t stop the wolfs from doing it.

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  12. For starters "natural resources management" is certainly not an oxymoron. There is x amount of y resource which causes z impact if too much is taken or precautions are not taken. The use of natural resources is a constant incredibly hard optimization problem. Every aspect of the action has to be studied and therefore managed properly so as to reap the maximum benefit with the minimum impact. Every action taken has a reaction and we have just recently started to care about that reaction and take steps to lighten or even fix it. Without human interaction nature creates and controls a perfect natural balance. It is our job to minimize our impact on that balance while still realizing that were human and we take what we want and that we will always impact nature negatively.

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  13. I think that instead of management it should be called protection. The idea of the land as being some tangible object with a value that can be bartered and manipulated is silly. Rather, the land should be something that we cherish and protect. Yes, we need the land to live, and we are consuming its resources at an extremely fast rate, but there needs to be a massive movement to rebuild and nurture the environment. This concept of cost benefit is just simply a lose/lose situation.

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  14. I believe that natural resources management is an oxymoron. Natural resources that are being managed by people are equivalent to synthetic resources since people tend to seperate resources from things that might negatively affect them when people try to manage resources. This seperation leads to a seperation of the resources from nature and, therefore, reduces the "natural" factor in natural resources. Wilderness places cannot be managed for the same reason; the act of managing the wildnerness makes it less wild and more like a park. Cost-benefit analyses of the environment are arbitrary. People try to do what is best for themselves, so any value assigned to anything will be based on the goal of personal gain. This personal gain is also the justification for assigning values to the environment. The logic is that "If it helps people, it's okay."

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  15. I believe that people can try to manage natural resources, but there is not much they can do to conserve or protect them. Nature does a very good job at managing and regulating it self, without the need for human intervention. When people start to disrupt this flow too much, nature canot keep up. So, there needs to be some management so people dont disrupt the environment too much.

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  16. To a certain extent, nature can be controlled. But in the end, the raw power of the natural is something we have yet to be able to match. We can grow forests with the sole purpose of harvesting the lumber, we can grow farms to gather the food, we can build dams to create lakes and limit water flow, etc. For the most part, these continue on with little interference. However, when the structure is broken, it is heard far and wide. Katrina is a perfect example: the hurricane over-powered the levies, destroying them and in turn flooding an entire city.

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