Living in the Environment 18th Edition by Tyler Miller,Scott Spoolman

Exercise 1

The American theologian, Thomas Berry (1914-2009), called the industrial-consumer society, built on the human-centered, planetary management environmental worldview, the "supreme pathology of all history." He said, "We can break the mountains apart; we can drain the rivers and flood the valleys. We can turn the most luxuriant forests into throwaway paper products. We can tear apart the great grass cover of the western plains, and pour toxic chemicals into the soil and pesticides onto the fields, until the soil is dead and blows away in the wind. We can pollute the air with acids, the rivers with sewage, the seas with oil. We can invent computers capable of processing 10 million calculations per second. And why To increase the volume and speed with which we move natural resources through the consumer economy to the junk pile or the waste heap. If, in these activities, the topography of the planet is damaged, if the environment is made inhospitable for a multitude of living species, then so be it. We are, supposedly, creating a technological wonderworld. But our supposed progress is bringing us to a wasteworld instead of a wonderworld." Explain why you agree or disagree with this assessment. If you disagree, answer at least five of Berry's charges with your own arguments as to why you think he is wrong. If you agree, cite evidence as to why.