Waking Up to the Environmental Crises

Abstract

As a people, as a world, we need to wake up to the environmental crises at hand. In this essay, I name and discuss 11 of the underlying problems (and correlative opportunities through understanding them): faith/belief in the system, Baconian science, the tendency for highly aware persons to be perceived as radicals, the habit of treading lightly at times in order to communicate with others, the severity of the problem, our fragmented perception of the cycles of nature, that we are often lied to, the difficulty and/or inability to deeply perceive nature, identification with consuming and cultural artifacts, confrontation with capitalism's ''forced choice,'' and the processes of numbing and colonization. I expand on each of these and show how we can change course. I then summarize actions of people fighting pipelines in Virginia as a brief case in point of such change.

Environmentally Specific Servant Leadership and Employees’ Energy-Specific Pro-Environmental Behavior: Evidence from Healthcare Sector of a Developing Economy

“…From the perspective of Asia, especially the South Asian region, this study advances the debate on environmental management and the energy crisis in India and Bangladesh. Indeed, these countries have many things in common (as all three countries were a single region in the past, known as a subcontinent) and, unfortunately, face the same poor environmental and energy crisis [94,95]. Moreover, according to a recent estimate [96], more than 25% of the world resides in South Asia.…”

Eco-martyrdom: Positive elements of self-sacrifice

“…He identifies this division of human/environment as the philosophy of anthropocentrism: the idea that human beings are the sole measure of value, the sole moral agents, and the environment around them exists solely for their use and consumption. Anthropocentrism coalesced during the European enlightenment and scientific revolution (Gibson, 2019; Merchant, 2005). It can be glimpsed in Descartes’ (1637/2008) claim, that nonhuman animals were automata, with no inner life or intrinsic value, or in Francis Bacon’s (1620/2009) view that “nature is only subdued by submission” (Aphorisms: Book 1, Para.…”