The environment shapes humans, and humans shape the environment

Harrison's 'three revolutions':

• Neolithic
• Industrial
  • Each saw problems of resource depletion and pollution
  • Not to mention a six-fold increase in the number of humans in the last two centuries
  • 'extensive' versus 'intensive' strategies that accompany growth
• Third (Peak oil and Global warming)? What next? A long emergency? Business renaissance? Clean coal? More of the same?

Marvin Harris: the environment shapes humans, and humans shape the environment

• the POET model
• Explaining societal evolution . . . what is the role of the environment, energy, resources?
• Harris, the ruling class, and the nation-state--does environment explains the evolution of governments and the role of the ruling class?

Kolbert, humans and climate change

• Understanding societal 'collapse'
• Climate change and human presence
• Anthropogenic 'forcings'
• Human'exemptionalism' -- apparently the people about which Kolbert writes weren't sufficiently converted to this concept--or were and waited too long to pull up roots.
• Humans and the 'sweet spot'--some things are within our control, some things, apparently, not

The 'resource process'

1. Discovery (oil, gas) All resources are socially defined
2. cultivation/extraction-the raw material (hydraulic fracturing)
3. transportation-this entails getting it from the source
4. processing-what does it get turned into? For whom?
5. Distribution-getting it out to consumers.
6. Transformation-Matter, like energy, can't be created or destroyed.
7. Keep in mind--each step of this process requires massive amounts of energy and resources--and produces massive amounts of waste--just to move the process along.

Feedback loops:

• What's the difference between 'modern' and 'agrarian' societies?
• Role of globalization (does it lengthen the environmental feedback loop?)
• Energy surplus
• Scarcity?
• Risk

Some principles:

• 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics -- are humans exempt??
• Nothing ever goes away (Commoner)
• Everything is related to everything else
• Sooner or later, wittingly or unwittingly, we must pay for every intrusion on the natural environment.
• There is no free lunch.
• If humans don't take care of the planet, the planet will take care of humans. (Loveock)
• Mother Nature bats last