200 Years; Abundance to Scarcity: America and Nature

from communication center the university of texas at austin this is two hundred years in the year nineteen seventy six the american republic celebrates its two hundredth anniversary as a part of the us bicentennial program at the university of texas at austin two hundred years explores the past present and future dynamics of history's longest living democratic society this as rex we're for two hundred years this week we will be talking about the challenges we face as we enter a period of increasing scarcity of the many things that we've enjoyed an abundance in the past with us are robin party associate professor geography at the university of texas at austin jerome bump assistant professor of english at the university and steve pyne ut austin graduate student an assistant instructor in american studies and we reached a point in time when we must rethink the promises on which our relationship to nature

and all its creatures and resources have been built i will start with steve nash sure we have time for one thing they're learning problems with her old conservation thought it was a design to cope with the atomic bomb and pesticides or a case in point for nothing that the landscape is at least to some degree or a cultural product as well as a natural product and as our assumptions and values and institutions and cultural argento so will our relationship to the landscape and faculty aren't normal problems now are large major cultural problems jerry oh i think we need a shift from the wasteful thinking oh four and neil frontier is among people still believe that america has a frontier two more european model of a nation with limited resources limited species into a consciousness of the need to conserve and conserve the variety and the unity of the systems in which we live and robin these premises i think of being the stated several

times in american experience the last time than thirty years ago and aldo leopold and that is that iran land ethic that is reducing the dichotomy that we have traditionally articulated a man versus nature and and getting to things that are so intimate human fearing there for the environment of the formal granting hall wrong something that should be subdued as the american position you made countless my relationship with her mother nature developed eve of the midwest but look our position is unique however i think that our response not to reducing the american moment these are unique in the sense that we have according to george perkins marsh and over and almost a hundred years ago we have within two hundred years affected an extensive change that has taken two thousand the lawyers teachers into effect here reviving the tempo change and the

scoop of change of being incredibly great well is this of all because in the first the only nation was supposed to go to it and the land unused at that fertility or do something as a road in syria does move farther west simple way into our system has evolved what i think you get a couple of aspects one is american asian really comes of age just about the center i'm i'd have a wave of of global exploration and humbled to everybody else in a sense a kind of discovery of organic nature and of course that comes in conjunction with the industrial revolutions we're a sense the country is being sold at the same time the industrial revolution taking place since it's outfitted mechanically with all the apparatus of the industrial revolution and intellectually it's outfitted with parts of the scientific revolution so that's been in many ways a kind of a unique phenomenal it among the

european nations but at the same time so much of the american experience was on control there was a muffled migration thickener in the strictest sense so despite the fact the people have certain kinds of baggage industrial intellectual buy it was really very much a kind of a sprawl it's nothing to us a little are sprawled across the politicians across the country and the government has never really caught up in we really have no national policy towards and probably never will families and i think that since the frontier is permanently buy a star are institutional approach to niger we have to realize now that the new frontier's loans new frontier here or anywhere in the world that we have to belong to the rest of the world and begin to relate to the entire biosphere of the world as an ecosystem realize and resources are limited that our stability plans independent complexity

complex preserving the complexity of armor and preserving the number of species our preserving a variety of ecosystem in which we live because the complexity you know the energy independence of the system represents stability there's a very complicated ideas difficult understands much easier to understand the idea of waste and using as much as you want but one example when my make excluded leaders of oversimplified and rhyme and in the economic sphere or in cuba became a one crop country or island was subjected to loud that wild fluctuations because a bit oversimplified its environment and we want to stay away from that sort of a dangerous situation i think what we've been saying is that there is the metaphors to reconnect with the american bar and refine these metaphors such as the country's one of the hostages the idea of progress totally new sense of time i think of homeland has done a

positive thing very much expansionist very much aggressive in a posture towards england and it is on these metaphors i think we have to challenge and take steps you think other nations are repeating our experience perhaps missing the conclusion that we are entered the presenter of course the final debate between developed countries and all countries do not feel as sternly as we do the need to limit population which is very important in conserving resources and we feel they should do so we've really should prompt more experience but we believe they're not doing so that they are ravaging mr mendez we did ours and so on and they blame us for wasting the world's resources being the most wasteful country in the world and obviously it has tremendous economic and political ramifications throughout the world this issue how can way home come to grips with the reality of

the economy is based on mom the free enterprise system in which expansionism is the key well you'd compromise their position before the past pluto has been extremely reluctantly done isaac cases there's a water resources in the widest point much debated hundred years gone rather not resolved at least in part and part of the twentieth century and so there was decided that the resource was significant enough for all the people at large the government there should take control the director of course the charge was that this was a socialist invention an intrusion on oh it should have been for enterprise but in fact the system compromised its open only insofar as it had to in effect that certain damson things could be built with them many of them and they were not it would compete with private power interests of a community to supersize of the same thing will happen with their energy resources for detroit now i think we've always was surrendered to local control

two local decision making and in outer soles a national institutional control or policy over the resource all judging on that i doubt that we'll have one for energy are patrolling but will of survival control that i thing that the recognition that you mentioned and penn in scarcity has always intended response the response has been named the conservation movement of his first on the second episode is not at the moment but the trouble is i think the response we tend to develop is a response that is the moment in the moment being simply based on a technological fix a technological solution he is the one that will solve the problem of non renewable resources rather than getting out of it and i know that mindset so to speak we're simply depending on the traditional attitudes towards environmental resources and simply substituting one solution i think we have to recognize

this world where a big mental change a big change in culture and civilization now russia for instance from a preoccupation with an increasing quantity of material possessions upon which our economy is really based in many ways to a concern for the quality of life in all its aspects including activist and a gasp exits medical aspects we have to stay pointed out begin to make cat democratic decisions about an informant about an issue like small grant really prepared to do this and take a lot of pride changes in attitude with to think about a systemic effects will start to think about our medical facts the environment we've created a family is this was with the americans to extend for the cancer and as states than eighty percent of all cancers are caused by the environment so we're creating our own carcinogenic environment we have great impetus to change those can be extremely difficult to change the way

we've been thinking for not just in america or two three hundred years but in the west for two thousand and one problem or what are you what can a promotion and you use to make these these kinds of decisions the past it for longtime the present we've always relied on scientific information to make that decision but i think we're getting to the point now are many this decision simply don't have the technical or scientific solution their political or ethical decisions many of the old conservation programs that were designed at the beginning of the century are now kind of nemesis to any of our conservation reforms of the present on that were founded directly or indirectly and certain assumptions about how nature worked and now we may have a new set of theories about how nature works we might decide that it's not necessarily growing organism but it's a huge computer that has a kind of cyber know that network are we call this does not work ecology of the word was and we commit our resources to this theory we're simply

repeating the problem of the past i would suggest that there is no firm solution in that world going to be able to deal with other people a voice had a sense of how they fit into the landscape based on how they understood it but the understanding keeps changing and our understanding the policies were set up now based on what we understand the ecology will be limited that will be like if the last of the rest of the center what you're saying is the borrower worship of technology may not all for a heavenly solution to the problem and maybe the problem for the prom of our exploitation destruction of our environment is due to this mindset in which we have the chili a divide things up and analyze them and other parts which is the basis of technology and science and our most frequent division in between man and nature of his division in the west as an analyst to put a set ourselves apart from major think it's something to be exploited not something for which we're responsible to preserve or conserve and this is one of those fundamental

mindsets that's going to have to be changes suggested changes in our way of even scientific and technological thought there's a movement away from simplistic analysis to some concept of synthesis movement away from preoccupation with progress to some of the kind of cyclical time to a drought monitor for an early career and fundamental revolutions and thought that time even within the scientific spirit so members are thinking groups and many people's minds an institution responds that at the moment is a pattern of it being jammed so the political sphere is extremely critical and fostering and in promoting religion incentive cosmetic and right now we are emanating from our nationals couple where energy programs and mothers are being considered the environmentalists are trying to

stop the energy program the alternative that we need an american the cost of false care and so what how does one now oregon was kind of opposition rebels want truth in a minute why shouldn't i think finally come up with some kind of economic table the chosen in the long run energy conservation will be a profit more more profitable than the continued waste or you can create some kind of political scare or maybe even another culture for people they'll respond to people wanted small because it's inside the va because it's carcinogenic i think you ought to use to make the same kind of argument for energy willy and eliminated like cigarette smoking i think that direct him as the last last fellow

with oil companies i think they put an end today what was known as the ecology move i think arguments about the scarcity of oil that they turn things around and i've been able to push things back then environmentalists fear allow more pollution of environment for the sake of color whatever energy source but at the same time one thing we can do is still some other thunder they are and their interest loans and so on television elsewhere appoint the need to conserve as a compilation so many respects but andy that's the same message that we've been trying to preach and airwaves to take out those parts of their message here which hit our own our program and use the road again i think that the college and when did not and i think it's very cool the paintings overtones to the new technology movement and responded but i think now we are really affecting us compromise in the consumer sector and the central bar

which or to circuitry democracy can you really find a voice this is a striking i think that has happened at renault no longer able to trust officials as the recent violence in this country of course no one demonstrated we are getting involved ourselves on the possible that will not in a striking way and i think in a way that means hopefully genuine participation in a democratic sens we've talked about a total package here most of the term and let's get down to a kind of illustration that has always used to go home a poem which are frequently done effectively and that is an aerial well i've why is it important to say have a particular species like that who couldn't cry in our arms this particular fish is from a mud cavern in the desert in california

any obscure early animal against the city was an important to this far as a when nothing is important has gone to points to first is from a realistic ecological pond one really believes in one can the chain of interconnectedness we are in an exponential sends simplifying the building crane hasn't been crying in the chain may be just one small link but what has set upon and embark upon on a path that will inevitably lead to the decision instability and the outcome of that crop's it can affect the agricultural sphere has the zika does that fit within such as the one occupied what can have it that occupied by helping create an intimate one of your thing is important and that is from a subjective foreclosed on

point of view and a lot of species diversity i think you know that to me is true a diminution of the potential for enrichment in the human experience whether it's recreation on an outdoor experience what will never see the green grange hall hear the thunder passenger pigeon wings that already has gone on and on forever so the inevitability and what appears to be the inevitability of extinction i think it's something that should give great cause for concern i agree with with critically or second argument that the answer to who been crimes that as a cultural phenomenon something that we can experience or something ever pass was worth preserving some of the grand canyon what i am bothered the sounds of the fight that we were my preserver helping crime are some exotic fish because it's part of a chain of interconnectedness that but we considered ecological area a hundred years ago a people

have a different theory a scientific theory of nature which eventually led them to suggest to think that but they could eliminate certain kinds of predators predators reform of waste and major and so based on considerations of darwinian evolution they could eliminate those ways by limiting the predator well now we have a new theory based somewhat on a more information experience which made with nature would suggest we ought to reserve was busy because it fits into a certain changes seemed to me that in a sense can alter has forced those mistake because that the rule change one key issue here and it is it goes forward to giving a bunch of night but they understood the balanced of war and to their identity allison could be maintained a criminal why some other predators when something commando strike the predators was an honest and balanced major figures in arrests of increasing its profit on his ranch or whatever let's face it you're talking about not really a new theory that conflict have two very traditional marriage ruling

the origin of species appeared at fifty nine and then there was a great deal of the ecological area we thinking now about an ecuadorian stability and so it's it's really a serious matter that man who continually tends to oversimplify as environment to stay with the idea of space that we can't run away we are we have about three species like cats dogs in whenever birds we like and so back to that example i tried to re up earlier about cuba when oversimplifying our environment to a certain extent and we're discovering that we've eliminated many things that we depend upon we just cannot predict what's going to happen for well speaking of we cannot predict would you like to make some quick predictions as to what we can anticipate over the next hundred years i'm sure we'll muddle along the next hundred years likely that the left is trying to capture that you see any new developments at medicare in

this very good thing we realized we have in fact a sense of optimism and i think the fall whether we believe elements to growth and not the very concept of minutes to grow which of course is a very controversial on the very idea that i find extremely and refreshing because this kind of thinking in terms of realizing that in the fine art world and we are incompatible another solution does not have an instant problem or other every culture these these these cliches i think they'd like it to that they are hoping i think in this information and even revolutionary if we follow these implications of no no more growth and we obviously see very serious threats to certain economic elites which are more force changes our economy itself well today we have discussed something that is of vital importance to

each and every american and it has the challenges that we face as we enter a period of increasing scarcity and that many of the things that we may have enjoyed an abundance today there are up to today we may have to try to learn how to do with a lesser amount in the future are even without any our panelists today have included rob and dottie associate professor of geography at the university of texas at austin jerome bump assistant professor of english at the university and steve pyne ut austin graduate student an assistant instructor american studies says rex we're for two hundred years two hundred years as part of the united states bicentennial program at the university of texas austin is a continuing series of weekly conversations about the past present and future dynamics of history's longest living democratic society two hundred years is produced by

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