Conclusions

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better, it's not"

-Dr. Seuss

The Lorax gives a dreary but motivational parallel to our contemporary environmental situation. Big businesses taking over land and polluting resources. While there may not be a Lorax who pops out of trees to try and protect his surroundings, we are all Lorax's. We can all speak up and protest against corporate destruction of resources.

One thing I have learned in my year of sustainability classes has been that man is a resilient creature. While a small action may be just a small action, it is better than no action. However, it is important not to forget about the bigger picture. No matter how much you use reusable bags and turn your thermostat down, climate change will not be stopped in it's tracks until corporations get the message that they are destroying the only planet they have to live on, and the people are not okay with it. The real issue lies with them, not our small emissions. We must stand up and make our voices heard, speak for the earth, like the Lorax spoke for the trees. The best part? We're not alone. There are tons of groups leading the way. The planet is changing, there is no going back, but it is not to late to change the path humanity is headed down.

We are nature, a realization that should stop us in our tracks. It is time for

humanity to reorganize ourselves.

-Hawken 171 - 177

Lessons from the Past

Apartheid in South Africa: Ruling white minority domination over 'non-white' (black, mixed, indian) majority 1948-1994

This week I learned about another event I had never hear off. The articles were a bit overwhelming so I asked my mom to sum up for me the events that occurred during the end of apartheid in South Africa. It is a fascinating, a disturbing, detail in history that has contemporary effects on South Africa.

The "Anti-Apartheid Organizing on Campus... and Beyond" was full of ideas on how to protest and get attention. While some of the ideas may seem a bit outdated, I think some also can be seen in the environmental movement.

For one, media can never be underestimated. The television can be a useful tool for gaining attention and really sinking a message into people. This power is abused by commercial advertisements but can still be used to get messages across. "Political Organizations and movements working for social change must consider the role of media in their society, they ways it an promote social change and the ways it reproduces old ideas and structures" (On Campus, 47). With the role of internet and social media we can send an even more powerful message today.

The anti-apartheid movement has some strong central figures. One of these was Nelson Mandela. As soon as the National Party was elected in 1948 he began anti-apartheid campaigns. He was sentences to life imprisonment in 1961. He was known as the most significant black leader in South Africa and there were many protests for his arrest. His sentence was undone in 1990 under a new president and he was released. In 1994 he was inaugurated president after winning in South Africa's first multi-racial election. While central figures have been important to past social movements I think part of the uniqueness and strength of the sustainability movement is that we are all leaders and we can all take equal action.

"Reigniting the Struggle" stresses the important of international involvement in ending apartheid. "...the international anti-apartheid movement made a major contribution to ending white domination" (2). Similar to this, people around the world today need to set aside differences and fight towards environmental justice.

Here is a helpful timeline I found on BBC News to help me make sense of the length and dates of apartheid.

Skewed Evolution

"It seemed obvious that some racial natural law was at work and that the extermination of non-Europeans was simply a stage in the natural development of the world." -Linqvist, 115

Social Darwinism is a concept advocated by Herbert Spencer that states individuals and groups are subject to the same laws of Natural Selection as plants and animals. This was a popular concept in the late 19th/early 20th century. This term could (can) be used to "justify" imperialism and racism and to discourage reform, among other things. In the context of Sven Linqvist's Exterminate all the Brutes, Social Darwinism is a rationale in the killing of indigenous peoples in the Americas. The author is not so much condoning the wiping out of these tribes but giving insight into how policy makers and conquistadors viewed the world.

"Five thousand soldiers were mobilized for a search party to drive all the natives onto a small headland... not a single native had been caught. There were, as it turned out later, only three hundred left." -Linqvist, 120

The above quote refers to the 1820's extermination of the Tasmanians. Colonists came onto the island of Tasmania (SE of Australia) and massacred natives within a year of colonizing. (It is interesting to note that Great Britain sent 24 convicts along with a few soldiers and volunteers for this mission.) After the initial massacre life for the natives was impoverished and they were starving. So, quite understandably, they attacked the settlers. This caused them to be seen as more savage and the need to move them increased. Linqvist writes that the lives of the Tasmanians were in the hands of fate, Natural Selection. The Europeans were simply aiding in the process of modifying and improving Tasmanian descendants. It was almost a compassionate act.

"According to the logic of the Darwinian patricide, we were forced to exterminate our parent species. That included all the 'savage races' of the world." -Lindqvist, 120

Natural Selection is often described or thought of as 'survival of the fittest'. In my biological anthropology class the professor has asked us to please not use that definition, ever. Natural Selection is not just about a massive competition for survival. It is about sex and reproductive success. Adaptations that are better able to acquire scarce resources and therefore mates in their specific environment will survive and reproduce more, leaving more descendants. When looked at from this way, 'Social Darwinism' is completely discredited. As far as patricide, the killing of ones father, I do not think Darwin intended for this to be used in justifying killing off natives and considering them the parent species who needed to die so the next group of people could flourish; obliterating them "to the long since dead world in which they belonged from the viewpoint of evolution" (Lidqvist, 120).

When we step outside of the frame, and toss aside our ideologies that mask our actions, it is only then that we can see history for what it was, and justice can be served. The fingerprints on the smoking gun of holocaust are our own (enotes.com summary).