PLEASE POST:
Call For Papers
EnText
The Journal of The School of Education
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Volume II (Spring 1996)
-The Paradox of Environmentalism:
Crossing Boundaries in the Age of the EcoCrisis.-
In the West, we are confronted almost daily with new
information predictive of ecological disaster on a
global scale. Polls indicate that those of us living in the
so-called first world profess a greater awareness of the
crisis than ever before. Further, these polls indicate that
a growing number of individuals are participating in
efforts aimed at stemming the tide of global environmental
degradation through activities such as recycling, community
clean ups, earth friendly consumer action, as well as other
forms of environmental activism. Yet despite our increasing
education, awareness and efforts to respond, the global
environmental crisis continues to worsen--a situation that
Max Oeschlaeger calls the--paradox of environmentalism.--
For this issue of EnText, we are seeking articles written in
response to this paradox, with particular emphasis on
opportunities to obtain insights by crossing the boundaries
between our accustomed popular environmental discourse.
Further, we welcome articles from persons who might differ not
only with popular answers, but also with the questions being
examined.
Deadline for Proposal Submission: February 1, 1996
Send Proposals to:
Karen Barnhardt, Guest Editor
Room 239B Curry Building
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Greensboro, NC 27412-5001
(910) 334-3492
You may contact Entext electronically at:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Editor's Statement
The question we pose as guest editors/contributors for Entext is
"Why aren't we talking: across hallways, across departments, across
disciplines, across the divisions of race, gender, sexual orientation, age,
culture, identity?" In posing this question we are in part announcing
the mission of the journal: "to provide a forum for dialogue and
discussion across boundaries, in regard to important socio-cultural
issues." Patti Lather writes about "research as praxis"--research
designed to have a practical, felt impact as well as intellectual
import--we have similarly envisioned Entext in terms of what could be
called "publishing as praxis," having identified communication across
boundaries as an important issue, we felt that starting a journal would
be one way to "make an issue of an issue" in literal and figurative,
practical and intellectual senses.
Many including Cornel West have pointed to the
urgency of the need for boundary crossing in our present
historical moment, and this journal can be seen as a
response to that urgency. But it is also done in the spirit
of prevention--in the hope that in whatever way, however
slightly, the commitment to continued dialogue, continued praxis, and
continued searching in this journal's pages will work toward making
urgent responses less necessary in the future.
Entext will be published annually-both in print copy and
electronically on the World Wide Web--with each year
featuring an issue arrived at by a new guest editor drawn
from the graduate students in the School of Education at
the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Each year's guest
editor becomes a member of next year's editorial board. This
mission of providing a forum for communication across boundaries
will provide continuity; topics/themes will of course change, but
the commitment to cross boundary dialogue will continue. We hope
you enjoy the journal, consider contributing to future issues, and
write to us if you have comments or questions.
Karen Barnhardt Bob King and Bill McLaurin
1995-96 Guest Editor 1994-95 Guest Editors
Contact:
Room 239B Curry Bldg
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Greensboro, NC 27412-5001
(910)334-3492
EMAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sat Nov 18 01:10:22 1995
Date: Sat, 18 Nov 1995 00:10:04 -0800 (PST)
From: Asa-Maria Turesson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Call For Paper
In-Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
On Fri, 17 Nov 1995 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> PLEASE POST:
>
>
> Call For Papers
>
> EnText
> The Journal of The School of Education
> University of North Carolina at Greensboro
> Volume II (Spring 1996)
>
> -The Paradox of Environmentalism:
> Crossing Boundaries in the Age of the EcoCrisis.-
>
>
> In the West, we are confronted almost daily with new
> information predictive of ecological disaster on a
> global scale. Polls indicate that those of us living in the
> so-called first world profess a greater awareness of the
> crisis than ever before. Further, these polls indicate that
> a growing number of individuals are participating in
> efforts aimed at stemming the tide of global environmental
> degradation through activities such as recycling, community
> clean ups, earth friendly consumer action, as well as other
> forms of environmental activism. Yet despite our increasing
> education, awareness and efforts to respond, the global
> environmental crisis continues to worsen--a situation that
> Max Oeschlaeger calls the--paradox of environmentalism.--
>
> For this issue of EnText, we are seeking articles written in
> response to this paradox, with particular emphasis on
> opportunities to obtain insights by crossing the boundaries
> between our accustomed popular environmental discourse.
> Further, we welcome articles from persons who might differ not
> only with popular answers, but also with the questions being
> examined.
>
> Deadline for Proposal Submission: February 1, 1996
>
> Send Proposals to:
> Karen Barnhardt, Guest Editor
> Room 239B Curry Building
> The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
> Greensboro, NC 27412-5001
> (910) 334-3492
>
> You may contact Entext electronically at:
>
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
> Editor's Statement
>
> The question we pose as guest editors/contributors for Entext is
> "Why aren't we talking: across hallways, across departments, across
> disciplines, across the divisions of race, gender, sexual orientation, age,
> culture, identity?" In posing this question we are in part announcing
> the mission of the journal: "to provide a forum for dialogue and
> discussion across boundaries, in regard to important socio-cultural
> issues." Patti Lather writes about "research as praxis"--research
> designed to have a practical, felt impact as well as intellectual
> import--we have similarly envisioned Entext in terms of what could be
> called "publishing as praxis," having identified communication across
> boundaries as an important issue, we felt that starting a journal would
> be one way to "make an issue of an issue" in literal and figurative,
> practical and intellectual senses.
>
> Many including Cornel West have pointed to the
> urgency of the need for boundary crossing in our present
> historical moment, and this journal can be seen as a
> response to that urgency. But it is also done in the spirit
> of prevention--in the hope that in whatever way, however
> slightly, the commitment to continued dialogue, continued praxis, and
> continued searching in this journal's pages will work toward making
> urgent responses less necessary in the future.
>
> Entext will be published annually-both in print copy and
> electronically on the World Wide Web--with each year
> featuring an issue arrived at by a new guest editor drawn
> from the graduate students in the School of Education at
> the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Each year's guest
> editor becomes a member of next year's editorial board. This
> mission of providing a forum for communication across boundaries
> will provide continuity; topics/themes will of course change, but
> the commitment to cross boundary dialogue will continue. We hope
> you enjoy the journal, consider contributing to future issues, and
> write to us if you have comments or questions.
>
> Karen Barnhardt Bob King and Bill McLaurin
> 1995-96 Guest Editor 1994-95 Guest Editors
>
> Contact:
> Room 239B Curry Bldg
> The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
> Greensboro, NC 27412-5001
> (910)334-3492
>
> EMAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sun Nov 19 08:16:34 1995
Date: Sun, 19 Nov 1995 10:14:56 -0500 (EST)
From: Ronnie Hawkins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: RACHEL #468: Cut Waste, Not Trees (fwd)
Things have been pretty quiet on this list lately, so I thought I'd
forward an article that I find very exciting in bringing together several
streams of concern for a common future. Sorry about the length. It's been
cross-posted on the conservation biology list, but I haven't seen it on
others yet.
Ronnie
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 17:17:49 -0500
From: Peter Montague <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RACHEL #468: Cut Waste, Not Trees
=======================Electronic Edition========================
.. .
.. RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY #468 .
.. ---November 16, 1995--- .
.. HEADLINES: .
.. CUT WASTE, NOT TREES .
.. ========== .
.. Environmental Research Foundation .
.. P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403 .
.. Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
.. ========== .
.. Back issues available by E-mail; to get instructions, send .
.. E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the single word INFO .
.. in the message; back issues also available via ftp from .
.. ftp.std.com/periodicals/rachel and from gopher.std.com. .
.. Permission to repost, reprint or quote is hereby granted. .
.. Subscribe: send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
.. with the single word SUBSCRIBE in the message. It's free. .
=================================================================
CUT WASTE, NOT TREES
The attack on the environment by so-called "conservatives" in
Congress has caused a radical re-thinking throughout the
environmental community. People are recognizing that they must
stop working alone and must start building alliances.
Among other developments, a new coalition has formed between
forest activists, energy-conservation advocates, and toxic
pollution fighters. Perhaps most importantly, this coalition
includes people aiming to create (and retain) good jobs in their
communities. Their goal is to cut use of wood in the U.S. by 75%
in 10 years. An excellent new report provides the rationale, and
describes the plan.[1]
Here's the thinking behind the new coalition. Lois Gibbs, of
Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste (CCHW) [Falls Church,
Virginia; phone: (703) 237-2249] is spearheading an anti-dioxin
campaign. Dioxin is among the 2 or 3 most toxic chemicals ever
discovered, and it is produced by incinerators, by paper mills,
by metals smelters, and by the production of many pesticides.
(See REHW #290, #390, #391, #414, and #438.) Now CCHW has joined
with the Rainforest Action Network of San Francisco [phone: (415)
398-4404] in a Wood Use Reduction Campaign. The goal is to reduce
wood consumption in the U.S. by 75% within 10 years --an
ambitious goal, but one that can serve as the "glue" to bring
many environmental groups and economic development groups
together. Rainforest Action is in it to save the world's
forests. CCHW is in it to save forests, too, but their main aim
is to reduce toxic dioxin and stupid waste disposal.
For example, as Gibbs points out, paper (which, in the U.S., is
made almost entirely from wood) is a major fuel for municipal
solid waste incinerators, which are also a major source of toxic
dioxin emissions. If solid waste incinerators were shut down this
act alone would:
** Significantly reduce the nation's serious dioxin problem;
** Stop virgin wood products such as shipping pallets and paper
products from being used mindlessly as fuel in incinerators (half
of all hardwood harvested in the U.S. is for pallets, much of it
discarded after one use);
** Force municipalities to manage wood and paper waste
differently (in other words, reprocess rather than landfill or
incinerate them).
Gibbs said recently, "At Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous
Waste, we envision a wood reduction campaign that uses a
collaborative model similar to our McToxics Campaign of 1987
[which successfully forced McDonalds to stop using foam
clamshells for packaging fast food]. ...Thanks to that campaign,
people now look at foam packaging differently. We need to do the
same with the image of paper and wood waste, by informing
Americans about the connections between the destruction of
forests and dioxin." The campaign to reduce wood consumption by
75% also offers significant opportunities to create new jobs both
in cities and in rural areas.
The destruction of virgin forests is occurring on a massive scale
around the world, in Indonesia, in Siberia, in British Columbia,
and in Latin America. Worldwide, some 14 million acres of
rainforests disappear each year. In the U.S., 95% of virgin
forests are gone, with only 5% remaining. Forests are home to
most of the world's species and most of the world's indigenous
peoples. Forests provide important free ecological services
--holding water on a grand scale, producing huge quantities of
oxygen, and providing major cooling. (When the forests of
southern Honduras were cut, the average (median) outdoor
temperature rose 13.5 degrees Fahrenheit (7.5 degrees
Celsius).[2] In addition, forests serve human needs directly,
producing game, medicines, fruits, gums, nuts, resins, fiber, and
firewood.
Industrial logging in forests is a major cause of ecological
destruction and the loss of biodiversity. For example, in the
U.S., some 350,000 miles of logging roads have been cut through
forests --more than 7 times the total length of the U.S.
interstate highway system. Only 10 percent of the inhabited
Earth remains in roadless condition. The other 90 percent is
chopped up by roads into segments of less than 8000 acres. This
is startling considering we haven't approached the 100-year
anniversary of the automobile. Logging is a major cause of this
disturbance.
Now environmentalists have determined to save the world's forests
by confronting the major source of forest destruction: the rising
demand for wood, particularly in the industrial world where wood
is wasted on a grand scale. Among industrialized nations, the
most wasteful is the U.S. (France, for example, has per-capita
paper consumption that is 50% of ours.) The U.S. logging
industry expects a 46% increase in logging operations by the year
2040. If this comes true, U.S. logging in 2040 will equal
today's combined logging by the U.S.,Canada and Sweden.
There are two major paths that wood products follow when they
leave the forest. One passes through sawmills, plywood mills,
veneer, or other wood panel mills, and then into the network of
building construction, shipping, manufacturing, and furniture
industries. The other path passes through pulp mills into the
larger system of paper, paperboard, and fiberboard production.
Together, the two paths --generally building materials and paper
--account for more than 80 percent of industrial wood use in the
U.S. (the other 20 percent includes fuel wood, wood chips, and
raw logs for export).
Thus a campaign to reduce wood consumption will focus on getting
wood out of buildings, and getting wood out of paper. Getting
wood out of buildings requires 2 basic steps:
(1) Reduce wood in building construction, substituting modern
materials (NOT steel or concrete, which create problems of their
own) and efficient construction techniques. Nearly 90 percent of
all housing in the U.S. is constructed of wood and the average
new home in the U.S. uses 1600 cubic feet of wood products.
Modern materials and construction techniques can reduce the
needed wood substantially.[3]
(2) Building codes must be changed to allow construction using
recycled wood (from old barns, for example) and earth materials
(rocks, sand, silt, clay, and even straw bales [discussed
below]). The Uniform Building Code was adopted at a time when
wood supply was considered limitless. The code must be changed.
Two very promising --and time-tested --building materials are
adobe (in dry climates), and rammed earth (in any climate); 15%
of the population of France today lives in adobe or rammed earth
buildings. A relatively new construction material is baled
straw, which can be used in any climate. Initially developed at
the University of Arizona (Tucson), straw-bale buildings have now
been built in many states and in Canada. Again, a major obstacle
is the building code. Straw-bale homes are structurally strong,
very energy-efficient, and fire-resistant. Manuel A. Fernandez,
the State Architect of New Mexico recently wrote, "ASTM [American
Society of Testing Materials, in Philadelphia] tests for fire
resistance have proven that a straw bale infill wall assembly is
a far greater fire resistive assembly than a wood frame wall
assembly using the same finishes." It turns out that straw bales
contain enough air to provide excellent thermal insulation, but
not enough air to support a fast fire. (I have been in a
straw-bale house at Genesis Farm in Blairstown, N.J.; inside, it
has the snug feel of a well-made adobe house. From the outside,
it has sharp, modern lines and an eye-pleasing tan stucco finish.
If you didn't know the walls were baled straw, you wouldn't
guess it.--P.M.)[4]
Getting the wood out of paper is, if anything, easier than
getting the wood out of building construction. Today, quality
paper is made from rice and barley straw in China, from sugar
cane waste ("bagasse") in Mexico and India, and from the kenaf
plant in Australia. There are 300 mills around the world making
paper without wood.
The most promising wood substitutes for making paper are the
kenaf plant, and straw --the leftover stalks from cereal grain
production. Paper recycling can only carry us so far because the
paper fibers break and become shorter when paper is recycled. To
give recycled paper good qualities, new fibers need to be mixed
in. Those new fibers need not come from wood --leftover stalks
from farmer's fields will work nicely, and so will kenaf. Thus
the city, as supplier of recycled fiber, can coordinate with
rural producers of non-wood fibers, creating jobs and income for
both. (The hemp plant will produce high-quality paper as well.
Kimberly-Clark, a U.S. Fortune 500 company, operates a paper mill
in France producing hemp paper for Bibles and cigarettes. But in
the U.S. growing hemp is a serious federal crime--even hemp with
its narcotic characteristics bred out. This stymies development
of a hemp industry. Walt Disney sells clothing made from hemp,
but not from fiber grown in the U.S.)
Marvelously efficient is the use of agricultural residues to make
paper; it requires no new land brought into production. A
small-scale mill in British Columbia is making paper profitably
from agricultural waste today, and 3 more mills are planned. The
small scale is an advantage because it keeps capital needs low,
making such mills suitable for community-scale economic
development.
In sum, reducing wood use by 75% in 10 years seems doable, and it
puts the environmental community into a new posture: cooperating
across issues, and combining economic development with
environmental protection.
And there is one other big benefit: Reducing the use of wood to
maximize social and environmental benefits will require us to
measure our efforts in new ways. In many different areas (forest
advocacy, pollution prevention, recycling/waste management,
energy conservation, and community development), we will need to
measure our efforts against a long-term vision of where the paper
and wood industries should generally be headed. We will need to
set targets for them, not leaving economic and social decisions
exclusively in the hands of corporations any longer. Finally we
must judge ourselves by our willingness to demand a future that
more than a minor variation of the status quo. Parts of the old
environmental movement may regard their work in a new light, when
judged by this criterion.
--Peter Montague
===============
[1] Atossa Soltani and Penelope Whitney, editors, CUT WASTE, NOT
TREES; HOW TO SAVE FORESTS, CUT POLLUTION AND CREATE JOBS (San
Francisco: Rainforest Action Network [450 Sansome Street, Suite
700, San Francisco, CA 94111; telephone: (415) 398-4404; E-mail:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]], 1995).
[2] J. Almadenares and others, "Critical regions, a profile of
Honduras," THE LANCET Vol. 342 (1993), pgs. 1400-1402.
[3] For further information, contact the Center for Resourceful
Building Technologies in Missoula, Montana, a clearinghouse for
resource-efficient building materials and techniques. Phone
(406) 549-7678. Additional U.S. groups promoting alternatives
are listed on pgs. 53-61 of the report cited in footnote 1, above.
[4] Books on adobe, rammed-earth and straw-bale construction are
available from Real Goods, 555 Leslie Street, Ukiah, Calif.,
95482-5507. Phone 1-800-762-7325. Fax: (707) 468-9486; foreign
orders: (707) 468-9214. Additional U.S. groups promoting
alternatives are listed on pgs. 53-61 of the report cited in
footnote 1, above.
Descriptor terms: forests; paper industry; pulp; lois gibbs;
citizens clearinghouse for hazardous waste; cchw; rainforest
action network; wood use reduction campaign; economic
development; dioxin; msw; incineration; shipping pallets;
recycling; mctoxics campaign; mcdonalds; indonesia; siberia;
british columbia; indigenous people; native people; honduras;
roads; logging industry; automobiles; biodiversity; uniform
building code; adobe; rammed earth; straw bales; fires; fire
hazards; thermal insulation; paper; kenaf; hemp; agricultural
waste; china; india; mexico; australia; energy conservation;
corporations; democracy; center for resourceful building
technologies; building materials;
