I like wolves. As a child, I loved the book “Julie of the Wolves” and as an adult I enjoyed the anime “Wolf’s Rain.”

Wolves are some of the least understood of the predators that humans have pitted themselves against over the ages, others being sharks, bears, and large cats. One of the main reasons is that they compete with humans for resources. These predators won’t usually outright attack humans unless threatened, but humans will and have killed them in scores because of food and resources. This makes it extra difficult to make the case for their conservation in the face of endangerment and extinction.

I received this poster and bumper sticker in the mail yesterday from Defenders of Wildlife, along with a letter and fliers asking me to donate to the organization with the added incentive of receiving a wolf photo book and/or aluminum water bottle.

I have supported them with a donation in the past, but I am doubtful whether I will give again.

I have a few reasons for this. The main one being that this type of physical mail is so gimmicky and quite annoying, that I do not want to encourage them to send me more by responding to it. I’m hoping that by ignoring their waste of paper (even if it is recycled paper), they will eventually stop it. It would be nice if there were a way to opt out of physical mailings and in place of that receive emails, but as far as I can tell from their website, there is no such thing.

But still, I hope that the people who are reached by their campaigns truly consider conservation more seriously than the pamphlets suggest. The materials could be more informative, but I understand that the species-focus has been one of the most successful strategies.

This is where a more scientifically literate society would be very different. Conservation groups would not have to take the single species or simple issue angle in order to garner public support.

In areas of the world where most people live in and with the environment and accompanying wildlife, human culture has deeper understanding of the relationships of the ecosystems. We may not be able to return to that type of interaction with nature in this country, but perhaps with better incorporation of science into society we can achieve something similar.

This is what I hope to contribute to with my work!

Last friday, I volunteered at the Solar-Powered Film Series hosted by Solar One and Green Edge NYC. I found out about this event from Green Edge NYC (specifically Patricia Curry). It was great to meet up with people doing great work in New York regarding sustainability and community outreach! Thanks should go out to both organizations who put on a great series!

This night’s film was The Garden, about a group of urban farmers in L.A. who started their 14 acre garden after the riots in 1992. They go through some hardship starting in 2004 when they have to fight to prevent eviction.

It was an emotional film! It was frustrating how unsympathetic to farming the people trying to get the land were. The community went through several legal difficulties during their fight. I felt worked up about protecting the plants and the relationship that the people developed with the plants, more than the human interests involved. So many of the trees they planted were producing fruit and took many years to reach that point, and the community gained so much from their relationship with the land. But if you watch the film, you will see what happened. The film also brings to the fore the reality that many groups are constantly in conflict with each other because of things like land and development. There are many ways that things could have gone, and the film documents this journey.


Here is a video/slideshow that I made from the pictures and video I took of the events:


It was really a great event overall! The screen had to be inflated, and that was really fun to watch. I’m not sure what it is about watching something inflate, but considering how many people still go to watch the Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons get blown up, it has to be some kind of innate human intrigue.

Stacey Murphy ended the night telling us about BK Farmyards. They do very interesting work in Brooklyn with growing food in backyards and contributing to Community Supported Agriculture (I think). Check out their website.

I hope that there are more events like this that more people can go to in the future. I think it is a good idea to show people that we don’t have to sacrifice everything that we enjoy (movie-going) in order to live a more sustainable life. It isn’t about being ascetic. To me, it is about being conscious of what we do, of our choices and trying to make the right decisions.

(This piece was written Fall 2007.)

Our perception of Nature has everything to do with the way that we live our lives. People who trivialize the importance of nature to their daily lives take for granted what Nature has given and allowed us to accomplish. It may seem that we may rely on Nature’s resources indefinitely, but at what cost to Nature? Our time on Earth has been but a few blinks of the eye in the great geological scale of time yet the impacts that we have made while “conquering” our domain will most likely last for much longer. Differing perspectives on Nature will define the relationships and the types of interactions that we have with Nature.

Two great thinkers who approach this topic are William Cronon and Aldo Leopold. Both believe that the characteristics of man’s relationship with Nature depend on how man approaches Nature. The overarching Western idea that the Earth with its natural resources were meant for man’s use and progress came to the Americas with the Europeans. Several thinkers argue that this school of thought is deeply rooted in religion, and so is that much more ingrained in the culture. Followers were taught that the resources given to man by nature were limitless and for the taking while in other parts of the world people believe in the interconnectedness of all things in the world. This fundamental difference in thought has lead to many advances in society but at the expense of the natural world (i.e. the Industrial Revolution).

Cronon’s article titled “The Trouble with Wilderness; or Getting Back to the Wrong Nature” discusses the common interpretations during his time of the idea of “wilderness” and why that is important to the way the public views and thinks about Nature. One of his major points is that the “wilderness” to most people during the colonization of this nation was a savage and dangerous place in need of “conquering.” The Frontier was for everyone’s taking. Once the wilderness was conquered, however, the perception of nature is changed. People began to think of the wilderness as something to use for their own benefits and economic gains. Eventually, the frontier no longer existed and this passing of the frontier started people thinking that maybe something should be done to prevent complete loss of their beloved “wilderness.”

Cronon states that wilderness is a human creation, made up to satisfy the needs of man including a means of escape from the civilizations also created by man. He agrees that there is value in the feelings and experiences brought upon man by experiencing the natural world but the search for those places is something that was created because of the detachment of the civilized world from wilderness. Wilderness was the “antithesis of all that was orderly and good”(Cronon). People were “reclaiming” these wastelands to use for their own benefits. This self-righteous ideology gave settlers the power to do whatever they wished with the land and take without second thoughts as to consequences because anything they did with the land was an improvement in their eyes.

Cronon uses the word sublime to describe a worldviews on wilderness. Sublime landscapes were the rare and hard to get to places where nature could envelop you in its vastness and beauty while evoking emotions of awe and pleasure. The value of landscape from this point of view was the emotions and experiences when visiting the landscape. “Visiting” is a critical term because it means for most people these kinds of landscapes were not part of normal life and their grandeur is part of the cause for the awe phenomenon. These vast landscapes were separate from their homes and places of habitation. Segregation creates the idea that nature and wilderness is something to be traveled to and is not part of normal life or thoughts for that matter which makes justifications of the exploitation of places other than “wilderness” much easier.

Eventually the sublime landscapes turned into domesticated wilderness by tourism and were tamed by those who sought it. In a way, wilderness becomes the “pet” of man, its only purpose to amuse while under total control of its owner, who exercises complete power for fear of rebellion of the mastered. Cronon makes the argument that there is “nothing natural about the concept of wilderness.” Even if wilderness is being revered and hailed for its beauty, it is still only being used by man to fit into man’s concept of why nature is here and how nature should be exploited. Man forgets, however, that nature is not just the landscapes that are grand and awe-inspiring but is all around and part of everything.

Nature existed before man did and exists as a part of everything so there is nothing that man does on this world that will not in turn affect nature. What man perceives as “natural” changes constantly to fit the needs at that point in time, whether it is the need for recreational areas or for fuel for our fires. Man seems to need to draw boundaries to justify actions around those boundaries. Behind these perceptions is the notion of property. In Western thought, all man needs is a flag to stake into the ground to claim “uninhabited” lands for himself. Aldo Leopold touched on this in his essay “The Land Ethic.”

Ethics begins with the notion that some actions are socially accepted and others are not. But what is right and what is wrong will be different to people from different parts of the world. The incentive for having ethics is to survive in a world where cooperation is necessary. But where does the natural world fit in? Does it count as a member of the community? The fatal mistake here is in Western man’s unrelenting notions that the only usefulness of nature is for economic means. Granted that we would not be at this point in society and culture if we did not take advantage of innovations in technology and opportunities to increase the standards of living, but sacrificing much of our natural resources is a high price to pay for an “easier” life. Even the use of the term “natural resource” is a form of economic measurement of what presently exists in the natural state of the world. In this way we are all trained to think in numbers and selfishly take what may or may not exist for our taking.

Leopold suggests that the solution to many of these philosophical problems is a change in the content of conservational education. To instill a type of ecological conscience that treats the natural world with the respect that it deserves must start from the lessons learned earliest. We are taught to treat others the way that we want to be treated and to respect our elders. But what of things that exist in nonhuman ways? Are they too unworthy of our respect and consideration? Even most of the conservation practices today must have some sort of economic or social payback in order for them to be practical and effective practices at all. Are we too self-centered to do anything for the good of the community and world that include living things other than ourselves?

The “tragedy of the commons,” as it has been named, has yet to be fully challenged and a fitting solution has yet to be found. Leopold brings up the point that most conservation efforts must be left up to the government because private landowners only have personal benefits in mind. If they act for the benefit of the community, it is only with an “outstretched palm,” as Leopold puts it. But is it not only natural to think only about oneself or ones own relatives in the struggle to survive? Darwin based much of his work on the “struggle for existence.” Surely a sign of fitness could be considered financially stability when that means steady flow of food income and opportunities to reproduce. If existence to the next generation were not guaranteed, then an act for the good of the community and future generations would not be profitable enough to be worthwhile.

But that brings up deeper questions of “What does that really mean?” and “Is money really the most important thing in life?” In many cultures money is not the central goal of life but somehow it often is in our culture. The “American dream” is often glorified by the media and has been the collective goal of most people in our nation for hundreds of years. But while people are occupied with efforts to reach a goal that most can only dream about, they forget about the things that sustain them. The milk and cereal for breakfast, the bus that takes the kids to school, the office job that brings home the bacon, none of these would be possible if not for the support that “Mother Earth” gives us.

Leopold introduces the idea of a “land pyramid” where plants are at the bottom because they harvest the energy of the sun, and thus supply all living beings above with energy. All the levels of the pyramid rely on each other and interact in complex ways that have yet to be understood completely but the basic idea is fairly simple. Each level decreases in energy stores because of the expenditure of energy to acquire enough to live long enough to reproduce. Often there are only a few species of living things within a landscape that are useful to humans, so when they are exploited an imbalance in the pyramid is created. In this era, however, we have become so accustomed to having anything we want at nearly any moment that we desire it that we are manipulating the pyramid in ways so that we will not know how the pyramid is being affected until perhaps the farther future. So when people happily go to the movies and go shopping and having a meal with friends, the many resources that go into making that movie, that blouse, and that burger and fries (those that come in wrappers being the most wasteful), really come at a greater cost than the actual dollar amounts. Life in excess has become the ideal life of luxury and the goal of many who live in this country.

This also has to do with the point that Leopold brings up of transportation. It is the costliest of processes that taps into the energy of the environment and changes cycles that usually are local and self-sufficient into ones that cross the globe and so are thinned by stretching. Moviemakers travel around the world to find suitable locations; blouses made in China find their way into department stores in Manhattan; and food is probably one of the most traveled resources of all. These actions disrupt the “land pyramid” which keeps the energy circuits flowing, all for the benefits to humans. Only recently has the realization of some of the consequences really caught up with us and we are stumbling as a society to find ways to prevent the more serious ones from happening.

Cronon and Leopold question our society’s perspectives on the natural world. Cronon thinks about what the standards for “natural” are and why a “separate” view makes it easy for society to behave irresponsibly. He strives to bring home the point that “wilderness” is not the only type of nature that requires management and care because any actions that we take will affect nature in a worldly sense. To Leopold, the “ability to see cultural value of wilderness boils down…to a question of intellectual humility.” By this, he means the realization that the land does not exist solely for our benefit.

The underlying common utilitarian perception of nature is what has brought us to our current situation in the world with its many conservation issues. Nature is not a commodity and cannot fix on its own all of the problems that we have created. When we are able to change this selfish view of nature, we will see that there is a greater purpose for nature which does not include satisfying our every whim and fancy. Though at this point any type of conservation practice may be better than none at all, it may not be enough to stop all of our problems, just slow them down a bit. We cannot sit back and say we are doing what we can. We must change the way we think, the way we interact with nature, and how we use what nature graciously gives us. So, as Einstein once said, we cannot go about solving the problems we have created with the same line of thinking we used while creating it.

Pirates and their relationship with international fishing industry

Illegal fishing and dumping continues to be a major problem on the Somali coast, but you wouldn’t sense that from reading the news (unless you pay especially close attention, see the paragraphs at the end of this article). International ships also are huge competitors in the fishing industry, making it difficult for local smallholder fisherman.

The stories that were all over the news a few weeks ago were all about the American crew and captain who were attacked by pirates off the coast of Somali. We feel sympathy for those who had to fight off the pirates, and the captain who was a hostage for several days.


But what is at the root? What causes this tension between pirates and commercial ships? Why do the pirates do what they do?


I don’t have an answer, but I think that more research could be done to investigate the human-environment conflict here. I wrote about human-environment conflicts in an earlier post, and would hope that there is more research being done on this front.


I’m going to look more into this in the coming weeks and maybe get back to this topic, but in the meantime if you have any thoughts, I would like to hear them!

Image credit:

http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Pirates-Only-Posters_i1142364_.htm

A discussion about vertical farming and some of its environmental implications
(Portions of the quoted text have been edited from the raw transcript.)


Vertical farming has been brought into the forefront recently, with a spot in the film FUEL, articles in TIME, Scientific American, as well as others in the past 6 months. What this concept entails is growing food in a controlled indoor environment in vertical structures that could be built in cities, urban centers, and as annexes to new buildings being constructed. Plants can be grown hydroponically, and even some livestock can be raised. The technology is there, as is most of the ecological understanding.

The man behind this concept is Dickson Despommier, Ph.D., a professor of medical ecology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. He is the kind of guy who gives away copies of The Lorax to spread love for the environment. He even keeps extra copies of them on his shelf in his office at Columbia’s Medical Campus. I visited him at this office, which, by the way, has a great view of the Hudson River. When asked how this vertical farming idea developed, Despommier tells the story about how the idea came out of a somewhat failed class project investigating rooftop gardening in New York City.

What came immediately after was further investigation and, later, years of adding detail to the concept. He and his wife spent that first summer talking out the concept. They learned a lot about what technology out there and even revisited some old favorite stories. Despommier explains it, “She put me onto a book she got as a kid—it was called Old MacDonald Had an Apartment House. And it was about Old MacDonald, who moves to the city and grows his food, all of his crops, inside the apartment house he’s in. And of course he grosses out everybody else in the apartment building. And they all move out, and in that case, he just took the whole thing over, but they come back in the wintertime to see where their old apartment was and they look in the bottom of it, and there’s a greengrocer, selling fresh produce. Wow! You know, they actually forgave him for doing all of this. Of course, that was the story, right?”


Making the connection between vertical farming and our daily lives may seem like a stretch, but put into the perspective of the global human impact, it begins to make sense.


Despommier is personally invested in vertical farming because, as he says, “[at] no time in the history of the earth has any one organism dominated the scene like we have. And it’s created huge problems…. [F]or every indoor acre of farming that you create, you can save five to ten to fifteen outdoor acres of land.” This encourages the hope that we may decrease our dependency on the environment as well as relieve some pressure on the farmers. He continues, “Seven billion people have an agricultural footprint the size of South America. Another three billion, which will happen in another forty years, will require an additional Brazil. We already use 80% of the land to farm.” So if something doesn’t change in the way we grow our food, millions more people will not have enough to eat.

Because vertical farming requires less land, a big incentive to make it work on a large scale is that it would allow more people to live in urban centers. Social pressure, specifically as it affects livelihoods, is an important factor that influences density of settlements. “Failed farms result in a migration of farmers to the cities, every time. What happens to the land? In fact, there’s been a recent trend—which is quite amazing, actually—Landsat photographs from space will tell you that the forests have recovered over 5% in the last three years.” Vertical farming will not induce failed farming on conventional agricultural lands, but it will create alternatives to a system that has no future for expansion. If the right social pressures are created and people are given the choice, vertical farming may be one of the solutions to growing problems.


According to Despommier, “If we could supply everybody with enough water and enough food, you could have ten billion people on the planet, because most of them will choose to live in cities, just like you and I. Make the cities imitate nature in terms of ecological process, and you’ve got it made. Your agricultural footprint goes very, very small. The rest of the world recovers.”

At the heart of the issue is the disconnect between humans and the environment. The overwhelming attitude towards the environment and resources is one of utilitarian values. This worldview is not only destructive for the earth, but for our species and our existence. “If you look at nature and say what’s the difference between us and them,” Despommier suggests, “the answer comes back, there’s no difference. Because we are them. We are nature. We are an expression of nature.”

“However,” Despommier continues, “we don’t behave like a single species. We don’t behave like one termite mound, for the greater good of the termite mound.” This type of behavior makes it difficult for collaboration towards a common goal. The goal must be large enough that all humans find purpose in it. Maybe we are reaching that point in the face of the threats presented by climate change, but we have yet to make any progress.


“So here’s my question,” he says, “my question is how can humans behave like the rest of nature? The rest of nature self limits themselves by the amount of resource that they have available to them, and the availability of their niche that they live in. That’s an ecological concept that is immutable. Everyone believes this, everyone except us. Isn’t that crazy? So if we are a natural species, just like everything else, and if we are creating for ourselves a world that is non-sustainable, then it behooves us to use our intelligence to create a sustainable world.”

Just like with any invention, Despommier points out that, “The way you make a vertical farm work is you don’t assume it’ll work to begin with. The assumption is I will get it to work. How? By applying science and technology at all levels.” The mindset that things must immediately work, that they must be an immediate solution, is impossible to live up to. Nothing really ever works that way in any other sector, so we shouldn’t expect that from this one. There may be hidden factors to consider and several issues to work out, many more than to mention here, but that happens with every new human endeavor and can be overcome by investment in innovation.

The right mindset is to ask the right questions to help progress along the way. “So, how do I make this building behave like an ecosystem?” he asks. “I want this building to reflect that process. We create cities. We love ‘em. Let’s live in them. Let’s make them ecological units. Let’s encourage people to live in the city.”


However, we should remember that the social factors are just as important as the ecological ones. “Old MacDonald moved to the city!” he exclaims. “Remember, remember, he wanted the social services, for his kids. He wanted to go to the movies every now and then. He wanted to visit the library. He wanted social services to take care of…he didn’t want to have to worry about his water anymore, his heating, that’s all taken care of.” So maybe the solutions to human problems are also intertwined with solutions to environmental problems, and we cannot view or approach them as completely separate things.


Close to the end of my time with Despommier, I asked, “For vertical farming to happen, what is the next barrier to overcome?”

“Money,” he says. “Social will and political impetus. I think in another year, those 2 things will go away. They’ll go away because the virtue of this is to prescient not to want to do it.” So we can hope to imagine the future, with adequate investment in this new technology, we could have self-sufficient communities and a more sustainable lifestyle.


“Cool stuff,” Despommier comments. “It’s like a living building. It is a living building. I want it to be inside my city. I want to live near it. I want to get up at 3 o’clock in the morning and be able to make myself a Caesar salad by going to the green market that’s open 24 hours a day and buying something that was picked 10 minutes ago. And take it back to my apartment and chop it all up and put some nice stuff on it and sit down and eat it. That’s what I want.”

Interdependence and the role of cultural attitudes (in the context of the global economic crisis)
(This piece was written Fall 2008.)
Much of the literature on conflict has focused on determining drivers and predictors of
conflict. While most have not come to any decisive conclusions, we may still gain insight as to
what are the underlying factors involved. The goal for this type of investigation is to find ways to
build peace where conflict has done damage or to determine states that are at immediate high risk
for conflict. In this short piece, I will examine a few ideas that may explain some aspects of
conflict, but may yet be proven drivers. These are concepts that seem to come up in literature
from across disciplines. I will focus specifically on two: interdependence on a global scale, and
the role of cultural attitudes.

It may be true that we may never fully understand the nature of conflict or be able to
explain the causes for its occurrence in all of its forms. However, these two ideas are also
extremely relevant in discussion of events other than outright conflict, such as the ongoing global
economic crisis. The crisis is not an outright conflict, but the implications are important to
consider for conflict prevention and peacekeeping. It has already increased tensions between the
United States and the world, as many leaders of other nations have blames the lack of regulation
on the banking system in the US. As I will discuss later, the interdependent nature of the world
society will increase the reaches of any crisis. Analysis of these concepts may bring much
needed insight for economic recovery, which I will address in the last section after I have made
arguments for why and how these concepts are applicable to the economic situation.

Interdependence is a broad concept that generally means that groups rely on other groups
and if a connection were to collapse, there would be repercussions for all involved. This may be
perceived on political, social, economic, and especially ecological levels. The nature of
interdependencies are still in need of investigation and should become a priority in evolving
thought because, as Carius puts it, “mutual dependencies in global politics serve to strengthen
peace” (Carius 2006). Harff (2003) used a structural model to discern pre-conditions of geno-
/politicide. She examined past events and suggest that the “greater the degree to which a country
is interdependent with others, the less likely its leaders are to attempt geno/politicides” (Harff
2003). In this modern era, interdependence has become unavoidable for most nations. There is,
however, a certain reluctance to admit this and that is where cultural attitudes come in.

The reason for discussion of cultural attitudes may be less apparent, but also much more
delicate. Culture is developed over hundreds of years, and is generally resistant to change. This
may be considered an adaptation because social behaviors that have become acceptable will help
individuals survive in a harsh world. Anything that strays too much from the social norm may be
considered too strange, or even a threat to society. Harff (2003) cites “exclusionary ideology” as
another precondition that allows leaders of regimes to categorize people and thus alienate them.
This is an extreme example but may signify the purpose of ideology in the evolution of society.
Over time, outlying ideas or persons that are not adaptive are increasing likely to be eliminated
through extinction, expulsion or otherwise. However, when a cultural attitude has become
outdated or maladaptive, it may endanger the society if it is not changing to fit the circumstances.
Worst comes to worst, stubbornness in cultural attitudes may end up blocking important
connections with other ideas and groups that would create necessary interdependence.

One such example of the Norse in Greenland is discussed in Jared Diamond’s Collapse
(2005). Diamond develops a framework to analyze societies that have collapsed as well as
modern societies that may be showing similar symptoms.
The five points of the framework are (Diamond 2005):
1. Self-inflicted environmental damage
2. Climate change
3. Hostilities with other societies
4. Friendly trading relations with other societies
5. Cultural attitudes

Diamond argues that the decline of the Norse in Greenland in the late 10th century into
the 15th century may be partially explained by their rigid unwillingness to give up European
culture and customs. The Inuit, living in similar conditions nearby, were able to out-live the
Norse by several hundreds of years. Though there is archeological proof that the two groups
were in contact, the Norse never seemed to adopt the skills or traditions that helped the Inuit
survive, such as hunting ringed seals and whales and wearing one-piece parkas. The Norse held
onto their European identity, building elaborate churches and importing the latest fashions. In a
sense, the Norse exported their culture with them to a place where it was not well adapted, but in
their views it was unacceptable to change their identity. Doing so would have made them seem
less civil in the eyes of the Europeans back home, a connection that kept their settlement alive
through trade. However, when those trading ships stopped coming into port, their fancy clothes
and beautiful stained glass windows could not save them from starvation during the Little Ice
Age (the Norse grew hay, which failed with the cooling climate).

It may be advantageous to look at these ideas in contexts other than conflict. The same
underlying assumptions may rule throughout society and may be analyzed not just in specific
categorical cases but also in other disciplines of research. The most obvious recent example of
global interdependence is the global economic crisis. The “credit crunch” has affected markets in
Europe and in Asia. Economies are now more globalized and interdependent than ever before, as
exemplified by the trade to GDP ratio of 51% (Dervis et al. 2008), which makes for great
disaster if any were to collapse.

Economic interdependence may be assessed on three levels: the real economy (trade and
direct investment); the financial economy; and economic policy (reciprocal influence and
cooperation) (Draghi 2008). At the New Vision Conference in October 2008 hosted by Carnegie
Europe, Kemal Dervis makes the statement that the “financial crisis needs to be managed with
much greater international coordination,” by achieving an “equilibrium between efficiency and
robustness in the global economic market” (Dervis et al. 2008). A global problem calls for a
global solution, though that is much easier said than done.

At the root of the crisis are the housing bubble and the freezing up of credit. Though we
may have an understanding of the immediate causes, Robert Wade suggests that the “cost of
capital should be more closely aligned with its risks” (Wade 2008). Changes will need to be
made at the regulatory level. At that same session of the New Vision Conference, Van den
Spiegel says that, “Economic models and risk management always fail because they are based
on, and simultaneously change, human behavior. If they are successful, human behavior changes,
leading to their ultimate demise. Intervention needs to take place before that happens in order to
correct the imbalances” (Dervis et al. 2008). Taylor states that it all may depend on “how
companies incentivize their workers” (Dervis et al. 2008). This suggests that policies regulating
the economy should be as versatile as the entities participating in it. There is no room for rigid
politics and policies that become outdated soon after they are passed.

We may be a long way away from recovering fully from the economic crisis. Deutsche
Bank (2008) estimates that growth in the US and in Europe will be restrained for the next 2
years. It will very likely take a lot of effective coordination and cooperation across many
disciplines even within one country. It may be unpleasant to change personal views on touchy
issues, but it may be in the best interest for certain cultural attitudes to pass into history, such as
the American tendency to overconsume and aspire to a lifestyle of luxury (which may also be
relevant to economic crisis, with bank executives raking in the millions while their companies
file for bankruptcy). Slight changes in consumption patterns and in production processes may
alleviate much of the problem, and may not necessarily require a lower standard of living. On the
macro level, the economy needs influx of investment in the right places, and opinions are always
changing as to where those places are. The global markets may be more connected and
interdependent than we think they are and it will be important to understand what those
connections are, how they are evolving, and how policies in the future will affect them.
Albert Einstein once said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we
used when we created them.” In this light, we should explore the possibility to adapt through
healthy interdependence and a revolution in cultural attitudes.

References

Carius, A. 2006. Environmental Cooperation as an Instrument of Crisis Prevention and
Peacebuilding: Conditions for Success and Constraints. 2006 Berlin Conference on the
Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change.
Dervis, K., P. Taylor, F. V. d. Spiegel, and D. Rennie. 2008. The Long-term Implications of the
Global Financial Crisis. New Vision Conference Session 5. New Vision Conference:
Post-Bush America and the World. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Diamond, J. 2005. Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed. Penguin Group.
Draghi, M. 2008. Deep interdependence – the transatlantic economy and its prospects. Aspen
Institute Italia International Conference.
Harff, B. 2003. No lessons learned from the Holocaust? Assessing risks of genocide and political
mass murder since 1955. American Political Science Review 97:57-73.
Wade, R. 2008. The First-World Debt Crisis of 2007-2010 in Global Perspective. Challenge
51:23-54.

http://www.carnegieendowment.org/events/index.cfm?fa=eventDetail&id=1193&&prog=zeu