President Crow: American Research Universities Must Lead Our Emergence from the Stone Age

By Michael M. Crow

During the past few years many of us may have confronted the disturbing realization that the standard operating procedures of our contemporary culture often fall short of the mark or even produce entirely unintended consequences.  The near-meltdown of global economic markets and our faltering efforts to revive the economy, to consider but one scenario among many, offer stark evidence that we seem to be grappling with the escalating complexities of the present and future stuck resolutely in the mindset of the past.  This is to say nothing about our success in shaping a world that in all likelihood cannot sustain our long-term enhancements in wealth generation and, more generally, quality of life for humanity.  Given the apparent limitations in our knowledge matched with our overwhelming hubris as well as capacity to exercise brute force, and there is only one possible conclusion:  as a species we are still mired in the final decades of the Stone Age.

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I am

Up Scenic Point
I thank the rocks
And the plants
And the animals
For being part of me
As I am part of them

Not from each other
We are each other
As we human beings
Are all one another

We are sacred
Each particle of mass
Even the air (we breathe)

I am not a visitor here
On this earth (though I like the idea
at times)
I am
The earth itself
And everything in it
I am
The fires in august
That blow through this valley
I am
The wind from the cliffs
Scouring down over the lakefront
I am
The raven fledglings
Perching still on the edge of my nest
I am
The earth itself
And everything in it

Not a keeper
Not a visitor
Certainly not
A master

But the very spice of it
The gritty grime of it
The rocks and mud and plants
My body smells of it
It grows out of me
I grow into it
We are here
Together here

By listening
We can know this

Contributor’s Biography:

Amy Pearson is a Ph.D. student in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication. Her research explores the ecological implications of the ways we talk about wilderness areas, especially in National Parks.

In this piece she situates herself as a human being in equal relation to her “ecological” surroundings. She is convinced that a primary means of creating a sustainable Earth might come through re-envisioning and rearticulating how we as human beings sit in relation to our ecological environment. The photograph is from Glacier National Park in Montana where she spends her summers as a ranger naturalist.

Memory of Water: The Salt River Project

The Salt River Project follows the Salt River from the recreation areas East of Phoenix out to the Gillespie Dam West of Phoenix. It is the story of an urban desert river.

The project begins with the conceptual framework provided by high water marks. Clumps of dirt, plastic bags and plant growth five feet up in trees serve as a reminder that the dry riverbed is not dead, but only dormant. Too often in the desert, water concerns orbit around the idea that we’re using up all our resources and that the dryness is a sign of the dismal future. Though transient communities have made the river channel home, and others use it as a dumping ground, sooner or later the water will rise again. Everything found in the channel is colored with this knowledge. … Continue Reading

Too Much of a Good Thing: The Relationship between Money and Happiness in a Post-Industrial Society

By Alison Dalton Smith

Happiness is considered a universal human aspiration, but the means to achieving happiness has become inexorably entangled with gaining material possessions.  In common paradigms of economic development, Gross Domestic Product is used as a proxy for measuring the well-being of a nation’s citizens.  While this is often true in impoverished nations where basic needs are not met, there is a threshold point past which increasing economic gains no longer necessarily deliver increases in human well-being.  Beyond this threshold, economic measures are no longer adequate for accurate measurement of a nation’s human well-being. In fact, this myopic focus on economic growth has created an unsustainable way of life that is increasingly unfulfilling for those that are engaged in the cycles of consumption.  In this paper, I will address both recent patterns in human well-being in industrialized nations and more comprehensive indexes that quantify human well-being.

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Environmental Management of Multinational Corporations in India: The Case of PepsiCo.

By Manjyot Bhan

Abstract

Before the 1980s, environmental regulation in India was almost non-existent. In pursuit of economic development, the Government of India (GoI) kept environmental regulation of multinational corporations to a minimum in order to attract foreign direct investment. Multinational corporations have often been blamed for taking advantage of weak enforcements in India; however, in recent years, many of them have started to self-regulate and often set their environmental standards above the minimum compliances enforced by the GoI. My research will investigate the change in environmental management of PepsiCo, India—an American large food and beverage multinational corporation.

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