Cultivating our World: Visions for a Better Future
Cultivating our World: Visions for a Better Future
Due: Tue December 5, 2017 noon in the Canvas Drop Box
Worth: 25% of final grade, scaled out of 25
Objectives: Develop the capacities necessary to face some of the challenging issues of our time, discover how your passions and strengths might address these issues, cultivate your imagination so as to encounter reality more meaningfully, and apply theories and examples that will help to cultivate a world in which you yearn to live.
Inquiry: Write a paper that responds to the questions: What are the challenging issues of our time? Who am I in relation to these issues? How can I nurture my capacities to assume greater responsibility for addressing key issues of concern to me? What is my vision for a better world? Why would this world be better?
ssessment: Your paper will be assessed along the following dimensions:
(1) Reflection: Demonstrate that you have considered all of these questions thoughtfully, and from a variety of angles and dimensions. Especially, show that you have contemplated deeply who you are in relation to this inquiry and how you might become more fully yourself.
(2) Creativity: Exercise your imagination and dream courageously! Yet, please discern carefully the difference between productive imagination that enables you to enter reality more fully, and fantasy or escapism that leads you to flee from problems that must be faced.
(3) Analysis: Identify a set of relevant concepts from the text assigned during the Integral Ecology and Environmental Justice Unit.[1] Explain these concepts in depth and utilize them analytically as you address some of the paper questions. Elaborate, expand, or innovate. Apply at least one theory from the Theoretical Framework Unit and ideas or examples from the Ethical Organizations Unit to address some dimension(s) of this inquiry.
(4) Empowerment: Rest in a sense of your own autonomy as a responsible human being and potential leader. Identify the mindsets, sensibilities, tools, skills, experience, and resources you need in order to heighten your capacities to contribute toward manifesting a world for which you yearn. Articulate a pragmatic action plan that will enable you to move from the place where you are now to the place you seek to be.
[1] Pope Francis, Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home (Vatican City: Catholic Church, 2015).
Cultivating our World: Visions for a Better Future
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Cultivating our World: Visions for a Better Future
A better world is a world where the environment is safe and healthy for everybody, and corporate organizations observe their duty to do the right thing always. This paper discusses the main challenging issues of today and the way I could nurture my capabilities to take on greater responsibility for tackling major issues of concern to me. In addition, the paper outlines how I envision a better world and describes the way in which this world would be better.
The world today faces a wide array of challenging issues ranging from economic and social issues like extreme poverty, economic inequity, gross inequality between the poor and the rich and human trafficking. The world also faces various environmental issues such as environmental pollution, environmental exploitation and degradation, global warming and climate change, as well as lack of respect of local cultures by large multinational companies. Exploitation and degradation of the environment exhausts the resources that provide livelihood to local communities. In addition, it undoes the social structures that have shaped cultural identity as well as their sense of community and life for a long time (Todd, 2017). It is of note that in different regions globally, indigenous and local populations are being pressured to leave their homelands for the purpose of making room for mining or agricultural projects carried out devoid of regard for the degradation of culture and nature. Pope Francis discussed the ecology of everyday life within our neighbourhoods, places of work, homes and rooms (Pope Francis, 2015). People try to shape their environment in order to express their identity. Even so, when the environment is chaotic, disorderly or filled with unsightliness and noise, such overestimation makes it hard for people to find themselves integrated and contented.
Other challenging issues include those that pertain to environmental justice and injustice including locating noisy airports, transfer stations, railroad tracks, utility transformers, heavy industrial facilities, and landfills in low-income communities. Even so, such environmental issues cannot be separated from questions of production and consumption. This is in line with the concept of integral ecology, which is an essential concept in the 4th chapter of Laudato Si’; the encyclical on the environment conceptualized by Pope Francis. The notion of integral ecology stems from Pope Francis’ understanding that everything is related closely and that current problems necessitate a vision that can consider all aspects of the global crisis (Pope Francis, 2015).
Environmental justice, as Todd (2017) pointed out, is a significant aspect of the struggle of improving and maintaining a healthful and clean environment, particularly for communities that have traditionally played, worked and resided close to the pollution sources. Environmental justice denotes that both the environmental amenities such as clean air, clean water, scenic views and parks, and potential environmental hazards are distributed evenly all through both wealthy and poor communities. Usually, low-income communities are the ones chosen to be the sites where something that is not so desirable is situated. Lack of knowledge of environmental issues in particular and political power in general serves to allow this contemptible situation to persist (Todd, 2017). The unfair distribution of toxic waste and other unwelcome environmental features raises the question of why these hazards are allowed by the society to exist anywhere in close proximity to human activity in the first place.
Environmental injustices are often brought about by unconscious classism and racism, in addition to fear of the reaction of more powerful and educated environs. In essence, it is a vicious cycle, with people from minority communities inclining to have lower incomes hence only being capable of affording to live in environs that have some negative qualities. In addition, environmental justice is in opposition to the destructive operations of big companies and necessitates universal protection from production, extraction, and disposal of hazardous/toxic poisons and waste which may threaten the basic right to clean food, water, land and air. It also mandates the right to responsible, balanced, and ethical uses of renewable resources and land in the interest of a sustainable planet for human beings as well as other living organisms (Todd, 2017). Water and air are significant issues in relation to environmental justice or injustice. Given that a lot of minority or poor communities are situated close to waste disposal sites or industrial facilities, the quality of water and air could suffer if they are not monitored properly.
One notable company that has been accused of environmental pollution and environmental injustice is Chevron thanks to its oil pollution in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Chevron acquired Texaco in the year 2001. From the year 1964 to the year 1992, Texaco spilled in excess of 17 million gallons of oil because of pipeline raptures, burned millions of cubic meters of toxic gases, deserted over 900 unlined waste pits, and dumped billions of gallons of poisonous waste into streams and rivers in Amazon (Donziger, 2009). This oil pollution took place because of the use of obsolete and unsuitable methods of oil extraction. The Ecuador National Court ordered Chevron in the year 2011 to pay $9.5 billion for cleaning up 400,000 hectares of contaminated rainforest within the Ecuadorian Amazon and establish a health program. However, the firm has declined to pay this amount and has stripped all its assets in the country (Hong, 2016). Cleaning this mess will be amongst the world’s largest ever attempted decontamination efforts. Life at the Amazon after Texaco has seen cancer rates, which include childhood leukaemia, being 3 times greater compared to cancer rates in other parts of this poor country (Donziger, 2009). Furthermore, there are high rates of birth defects and miscarriages in the Ecuadorian Amazon because of exposure to oil pollution (Donziger, 2009).
This incident clearly shows how poor, rural communities are suffering greater exposure to environmental pollution compared to other communities. They realize few benefits and bear a disproportionate share of the burdens of residing in close proximity to a mining facility owned by Chevron. The ...