{"id":84,"date":"2022-04-28T19:24:57","date_gmt":"2022-04-28T19:24:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppcc5\/?post_type=chapter&p=84"},"modified":"2023-05-22T17:19:29","modified_gmt":"2023-05-22T17:19:29","slug":"from-beetles-to-boardrooms","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppcc5\/chapter\/from-beetles-to-boardrooms\/","title":{"raw":"From Beetles to Boardrooms: Closing the Hermeneutic Loop of an Existential Crisis","rendered":"From Beetles to Boardrooms: Closing the Hermeneutic Loop of an Existential Crisis"},"content":{"raw":"Humans are infatuated with disaster. Perhaps, among the many pitfalls of human nature, our continual fixation with \u201cthe end\u201d leaves us the most helpless, the most docile, and the most ineffectual at handling the complex set of ecological changes known as \u201cthe climate crisis.\u201d When we are no longer able to conjure up magical explanations for a global loss of biodiversity, contaminated freshwater resources, or polluted air, we can escape to the cathartic thrills of a motion picture. Climate change, so far, rarely comes in such a cimematic form. The oncoming threat to our very existence is often too slow, too \u201cgrand\u201d, and too insidious to forge that type of connection with our collective imagination. In another respect, when we see them, the byproducts of what scientists label \u201canthropogenic global warming\u201d are simply too frightening for our ability to interpret connections. Rather than shrink from the challenge, maybe we need more interpretations, connections drawn, loops closed, in order to start understanding the changes we are going through together.<\/em>\r\n\r\nIn the American West, these phenomena have been arriving in the form of wildfires. Unlike a simple drought or polluted wastewater, a wildfire speaks the language of the disaster film \u2013 vividly ablaze with the natural element we have spent so much of human history trying to harness. In the 2013 article, \u201cWildfires Point to Global Warming,\u201d Colorado educators Brook and Gaurav Bhagat utilize this quality to unpack the causes of recent destructive wildfires and connect this phenomenon to the context of our climate crises, vividly yet dryly explaining how the acceleration and breadth of these events is both directly and indirectly linked to global warming. This interpretation may not be novel to the ears of many, but their solutions neatly situate our most familiar selves \u2013consumers - in the driver\u2019s seat of change.\r\n\r\nSuch solutions are at the ready for many, whether practiced or not: conserve energy at home and drive less; buy from responsible companies and support governmental policies that can actually address the problem. The Bhagats conclude their list ofsolutions with a shift \u00a0in the perspective toward the reader, adopting an imperative set of actions. \u201cTake initiative\u201d they write as an antidote to helplessness (5). The final paragraph makes this important turn, acknowledging that individual action will be inneffective unless larger systems change. Short of responding to increasing wildfires by metaphorically \u201cburning down\u201d the system, the primary shift suggested in our personal lives is a change toward an active recognition, holding ourselves responsible to build the type of government and the type of consumer culture we want to live in. The active verbs, \u201cask,\u201d \u201cdemand,\u201d and \u201cget informed\/get involved,\u201d (5) help place the reader back in control of a destiny from which we have built so many diversions to avoid.\r\n\r\nOf course, this is established by the Bhagats in a thorough description of the nearly incalculable devestation of these fires. Using enumeration, the authors spell out the staggering number of acres and amount of destroyed property,\u00a0 as well as lost animal and human lives. The effect of these numbers can be numbing, forcing readers to retreat to ignorance. While numbers alone won\u2019t always convince, the focus and background of the pine beetle might be more compelling. An unwitting cause of creating the \u201cvirtual tinderbox\u201d (3), pine beetles become an excellent metaphor for the seemingly minute changes caused by warming temperatures. If the \u201cgrand\u201d narratives of climate change seem either too distant or too daunting to fully absorb, drawing the connection between these creatures and destructive government policy, corporate greed and\/or apathy, and the domino effect of longer summers, warmer winters, expanding the life cycle of a once useful part of forest ecologies, creates an effective visual image that actualizes the \u201cpoints to\u201d action of the article\u2019s title. Statistics often mean little to a reader unless they come in the form of a meaningful comparison, and the Bhagats cite the \u201c60 fold\u201d increase in beetle populations in recent years (3). These types of illustrations are not only useful for a visual culture obsessed with disaster films, but they reinforce the logical connections between ourselves and the slippery concept we call \u201cnature.\u201d\r\n\r\nClearly, humans have long been troubled by their own relationship to nature, particularly in our increasingly atomized existence. Media is catered directly to our interests and tastes. We have come to expect a robust collection of consumer choices, each one built around abundance and personal detachment from natural resources, technology and human labor. In reality, a disproportionately few of us possess the political or economic power to seize the type of control that might match our knowledge or concern. Unlike the backyard sludge of Love Canal, the asbestos-tainted rain of Libby, Montana, or the indelible underwater images of the gushing Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, climate crises don\u2019t always create the \u201cdownstream\u201d effect that allows us to \u201cpoint to\u201d corruption and negligence at the source, mobilizing real people to collectively demand even a little bit of political power and influence for change.\r\n\r\nWildfires are a \u201cnatural\u201d part of a forest ecology, and they have long been a reality of the late summer months in places like California or Colorado, but recent years have introduced so many people to the experience of a burning red summer afternoon sky \u201ccrackling through the clouds like vericose veins\u201d (1). Sensory details like this help us feel the fear in the form of a phenomenon, a discrete event that forces us to try to understand our changing environment. \u00a0Closing the \u201chermeneutic loop\u201d relies on creating such links between phenomena and the contexts that create them, as well as the contexts which form and manipulate the discourses that matter. These types of connections are going to be evermore crucial as time goes on, and as the problems we face grow less avoidable.\r\n\r\nWorks Cited\r\n\r\nBhagat, Brook and Gaurav Bhagat. \u201cWildfires Point to Global Warming.\u201d Blue Planet Journal<\/em>, 2013, http:\/\/www.blueplanetjournal.com\/ecology\/wildfires-point-to-global-warming.html.<\/a>\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n ","rendered":"

Humans are infatuated with disaster. Perhaps, among the many pitfalls of human nature, our continual fixation with \u201cthe end\u201d leaves us the most helpless, the most docile, and the most ineffectual at handling the complex set of ecological changes known as \u201cthe climate crisis.\u201d When we are no longer able to conjure up magical explanations for a global loss of biodiversity, contaminated freshwater resources, or polluted air, we can escape to the cathartic thrills of a motion picture. Climate change, so far, rarely comes in such a cimematic form. The oncoming threat to our very existence is often too slow, too \u201cgrand\u201d, and too insidious to forge that type of connection with our collective imagination. In another respect, when we see them, the byproducts of what scientists label \u201canthropogenic global warming\u201d are simply too frightening for our ability to interpret connections. Rather than shrink from the challenge, maybe we need more interpretations, connections drawn, loops closed, in order to start understanding the changes we are going through together.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the American West, these phenomena have been arriving in the form of wildfires. Unlike a simple drought or polluted wastewater, a wildfire speaks the language of the disaster film \u2013 vividly ablaze with the natural element we have spent so much of human history trying to harness. In the 2013 article, \u201cWildfires Point to Global Warming,\u201d Colorado educators Brook and Gaurav Bhagat utilize this quality to unpack the causes of recent destructive wildfires and connect this phenomenon to the context of our climate crises, vividly yet dryly explaining how the acceleration and breadth of these events is both directly and indirectly linked to global warming. This interpretation may not be novel to the ears of many, but their solutions neatly situate our most familiar selves \u2013consumers – in the driver\u2019s seat of change.<\/p>\n

Such solutions are at the ready for many, whether practiced or not: conserve energy at home and drive less; buy from responsible companies and support governmental policies that can actually address the problem. The Bhagats conclude their list ofsolutions with a shift \u00a0in the perspective toward the reader, adopting an imperative set of actions. \u201cTake initiative\u201d they write as an antidote to helplessness (5). The final paragraph makes this important turn, acknowledging that individual action will be inneffective unless larger systems change. Short of responding to increasing wildfires by metaphorically \u201cburning down\u201d the system, the primary shift suggested in our personal lives is a change toward an active recognition, holding ourselves responsible to build the type of government and the type of consumer culture we want to live in. The active verbs, \u201cask,\u201d \u201cdemand,\u201d and \u201cget informed\/get involved,\u201d (5) help place the reader back in control of a destiny from which we have built so many diversions to avoid.<\/p>\n

Of course, this is established by the Bhagats in a thorough description of the nearly incalculable devestation of these fires. Using enumeration, the authors spell out the staggering number of acres and amount of destroyed property,\u00a0 as well as lost animal and human lives. The effect of these numbers can be numbing, forcing readers to retreat to ignorance. While numbers alone won\u2019t always convince, the focus and background of the pine beetle might be more compelling. An unwitting cause of creating the \u201cvirtual tinderbox\u201d (3), pine beetles become an excellent metaphor for the seemingly minute changes caused by warming temperatures. If the \u201cgrand\u201d narratives of climate change seem either too distant or too daunting to fully absorb, drawing the connection between these creatures and destructive government policy, corporate greed and\/or apathy, and the domino effect of longer summers, warmer winters, expanding the life cycle of a once useful part of forest ecologies, creates an effective visual image that actualizes the \u201cpoints to\u201d action of the article\u2019s title. Statistics often mean little to a reader unless they come in the form of a meaningful comparison, and the Bhagats cite the \u201c60 fold\u201d increase in beetle populations in recent years (3). These types of illustrations are not only useful for a visual culture obsessed with disaster films, but they reinforce the logical connections between ourselves and the slippery concept we call \u201cnature.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clearly, humans have long been troubled by their own relationship to nature, particularly in our increasingly atomized existence. Media is catered directly to our interests and tastes. We have come to expect a robust collection of consumer choices, each one built around abundance and personal detachment from natural resources, technology and human labor. In reality, a disproportionately few of us possess the political or economic power to seize the type of control that might match our knowledge or concern. Unlike the backyard sludge of Love Canal, the asbestos-tainted rain of Libby, Montana, or the indelible underwater images of the gushing Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, climate crises don\u2019t always create the \u201cdownstream\u201d effect that allows us to \u201cpoint to\u201d corruption and negligence at the source, mobilizing real people to collectively demand even a little bit of political power and influence for change.<\/p>\n

Wildfires are a \u201cnatural\u201d part of a forest ecology, and they have long been a reality of the late summer months in places like California or Colorado, but recent years have introduced so many people to the experience of a burning red summer afternoon sky \u201ccrackling through the clouds like vericose veins\u201d (1). Sensory details like this help us feel the fear in the form of a phenomenon, a discrete event that forces us to try to understand our changing environment. \u00a0Closing the \u201chermeneutic loop\u201d relies on creating such links between phenomena and the contexts that create them, as well as the contexts which form and manipulate the discourses that matter. These types of connections are going to be evermore crucial as time goes on, and as the problems we face grow less avoidable.<\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/p>\n

Bhagat, Brook and Gaurav Bhagat. \u201cWildfires Point to Global Warming.\u201d Blue Planet Journal<\/em>, 2013, http:\/\/www.blueplanetjournal.com\/ecology\/wildfires-point-to-global-warming.html.<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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