The Production of Consumer Goods

To explore the sustainability challenges facing the production of consumer goods, we'll focus on one industry that touches us all: the fashion industry. We've started to watch The True Cost, a documentary by Andrew Morgan. As we unpack this film, our conversation will lead us to talk about consumerism, outsourcing production, externalizing cost, sweatshops, workers rights, social and environmental impact, GMOs, organic farming, Fair Trade practices, economic justice, etc.

Modern Sustainability Challenges: Farming

This quarter we'll explore sustainability challenges in the modern world. We'll focus on four areas: farming, the production of consumer goods, the production of energy, and fresh water management.

To guide our first subject of investigation, we'll watch and discuss Ken Burns' documentary The Dust Bowl, which depicts the agricultural development of the American Great Plains in the early 20th century, the ensuing catastrophic collapse of this ecosystem, and the American government's efforts to restore the land's integrity through innovations in soil conservation and land management.

Optional Reading: Empire of the Summer Moon - Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History, by S. C. Gwynne, Chapter 1

Presentations

 (AD and GM demonstrate what a good presentation looks like)

You are going to research material for a presentation next class on a domesticated plant or animal of your choosing (e.g. bees, cows, grapes, goats, apples, cats, cotton, camels, strawberries, chicken, rice, sheep, tomatoes, silk worms, potatoes, etc. – we already presented wheat and corn). You can work alone or with one partner.

Each presenter or group of presenters must find the following information for their presentation:

1 – The name and a picture (on cell phone or flash drive) of your domesticated plant or animal.
2 – The name and a picture of its wild ancestor.
3 – Its place of origin.
4 – When it was first domesticated and by whom.
5 – When it was first transported on each continent.
6 – An anecdote about this plant or animal.

The Neolithic Revolution

We saw the sustainability challenges facing hunter gatherer societies, and notably the rapid hunting to extinction of most megafauna worldwide. The next chapter of our story brings us to an innovation that would have a profound effect on the ability of people to feed themselves over the long run, without depleting their resources: agriculture, which came with the domestication of animals and plants. 

Read Wild Thing on Aeon by Jacob Mikanowski, about the domestication of animals, and answer questions.

The domestication of wheat 12000 years ago in Turkey:




The domestication of Corn 9000 years ago in Mexico:



The geographic origins of the world's food crops:

Reading: excerpt of The Sixth Extinction

- Read what you can of Chapter XI of Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction at home (for 30 minutes maximum - after that it's up to you whether you want to keep on reading or not). Note that I have included chapter XII as well because I thought you might be interested in reading it.
We'll discuss chapter XI next class.

Chapter XI looks into the causes of the loss of the Pleistocene megafauna and its consequences for the lanscape.
Chapter XII explores the possible reasons for the disappearance of archaic humans such as Neanderthals and Homo Erectus, who had populated Africa and the Eurasian continent before modern humans, and cohabitated with them for several thousand years.

 35 000-30 000 years old painting from the cave of Chauvet, France, depicting species now extinct in Europe

From the Pleistocene to the "Anthropocene"

Look at the following graph of Earth's temperature during the Pleistocene period, the time when most ancient and certainly modern humans came about. What characterizes the Pleistocene? How did it end? The next period, in which we currently live is called the Holocene. What difference do you notice between the Pleistocene and the Holocene? what do you think are the implications for people?

Paleotemperature graph from Wikipedia

Now let's look at the time when humans started migrating out of Africa and populating all continents:

From Khan Academy

In this radio segment, listen to the introduction of a new concept, the "Anthropocene", and take notes about key concepts or questions you have about it:

 When did humans start shaping Earth's fate? from National Public Radio

When did the "Anthropocene" really begin? How did the first Homo Sapiens or modern humans interact with their environment? How did they change it?

What Killed the Mega Beasts? Discovery Channel

Top 10 animals hunted to extinction in a more recent past.

Earth's Timeline

Students have been working in groups to research data on the following subjects relating to the history of the biosphere: temperature, composition of the atmosphere, plate tectonic, paleobiology, geological periods, crucible events. They then incorporated them into a timeline, showing the relationship between geology, biology, earth chemistry and sometimes even extra terrestrial influences (gravitational pull, asteroid strikes, etc.).

On this 4.5 meters timeline representing the 4.5 billion years of Earth's history, 40 000 years of human history was represented by a single vertical line, the width of a human hair. This will be our next object of study.