In this chapter the author David Orr explains the causes of our unfortunate condition from the social confining situation to those that are inevitable part of human condition. As the author looks into the future three crises will be imminent: the food crisis as result of worldwide soil losses and rapidly expands of population, The cheap energy, the race between the fossil fuels and the solar energy, and the climate change. This has to do with the limits of the natural resource.
Besides these crises the writer mentions the crisis of the spiritual resources. Human need a new vision of the link them to the planet in a more life-centered. The crisis as a social trap is part of lucid behavior in situation typified by multiple but conflicting rewards. The rewards are short terms but the costs are long term and paid by all. One of the solutions that will deter the human to get into those traps will be if the costs are paid up front as part of the purchase price. Effort to build a sustainable society on assumption human rationality must be regarded as partial solution.
Recognition of these social traps and making policies to avoid them will help in building sustainable society. The crisis as consequence of the economic growth has to do with the propensity of all industrial society to grow beyond the limits of the natural systems. Human use 40 percent of the net productivity of the ecosystem on the planet, changing the was the climate, exterminating species, and toxifying ecosystem. The writer also elucidates that the importance of the economy in the modern world is a great deal of the tendency of the social trap. The cultivation of mass consumption through the advertising promotes the psychology of instant satisfaction which creates pressure that lead to risky technological perhaps the most danger one. The crisis as the result of the urge to dominate over the earth, to be fruitful, to multiply, and to dominate its creature is inherent in the bible.
The idea that the science should be limited on the grounds of ecological prudence struck too close to the presumption of establishment science for ease. In effort to build a durable social order we must acknowledge, that effort to change society for the better have a release history. “Societies change continually but seldom in direction hoped for, for reason that everyone will understand and will consequences that are anticipated”. Ecological LiteracyIn this chapter the author explains what the ecological literacy is, and its importance on educating our society for the benefits of the future generation.
Failure to develop ecological literacy is a sin of “omission” and of “commission”. Our society is failing to teach the new generation about the basic earth and how it works. Also we are teaching them things that are wrong. Our students don’t know that the environment subject is as important as history, politics, economics, mathematics, etc. To become ecologically literate one must not only be able to read and like to read but also to observe the nature with insight. People who do not have idea about the ground on which they stand will miss on of the elements of good thinking which is the capacity to distinguish between health and disease in the natural systems and their relation to health ad disease in human ones.
To help our society become ecological literate we must recognize that all education is environmental education. Second environmental issues are complex and can not be understood through a single discipline. Third, for inhabitants, education occurs in part as dialog with a place and has characteristic of good conversation. Fourth, experience in the natural world is both an essential of understanding the environment and contributing to a new thing. Fifth the way education occurs is as important as its content. Sixth, education relevant to the challenge of building a sustainable society will enhance the learner’s competence with natur .
