Could a Humanities approach to the Environmental Crisis work?

Are we clever – or is it just vanity?

Things are changing – we need more humanity.

If the sea levels rise,

It is nature that dies,

We must act - or the future's insanity.

I have just completed the FutureLearn course “Environmental Humanities – Remaking Nature” run by the University of New South Wales. This looks at the way in which the Humanities can temper the scientific and technological approach to the problem. The course highlighted the weaknesses in an overtly anthropocentric approach which looks for sophisticated technological solutions (which will probably not succeed) and which ignores the fact that we are part of the natural world.

To me the most important part of the course related to helping people to understand what is happening by using various storytelling techniques – which is why this post starts with a limerick. The course, coupled with ideas from other FutureLearn courses, also influenced my new mission statement, and the new approach taken in presenting posts on this blog.

The Enterprise Shed (FutureLearn)

Do you have good ideas in your head?
Why not share them with others instead!
You can find a good source
On a FutureLearn course
In an entrepreneural shed.

A course called "The Enterprise Shed" run by Newcastle University started of FutureLearn this morning which sounds interesting. I am not sure I have time to do it, but there is no charge for joining so I have decided to dip my toe in the water and see what it is like and can report back here if it is of interest.

Captured by the Camera - Musical Reflections

A Reflective Tuba Player at the Xmas Farmers Market, Tring

When I am out with my camera I am always looking for reflective surfaces which might give an unusual picture and this one, of a tuba player provided one large and four small reflections of the euphonium player and the former Rose and Crown hotel.
Earlier reflective pictures show Tring Church Tower, while Bridge over Troubled Waters was taken on the Aylesbury branch of the Grand Union Canal.

How a very young baby sees the world

A new baby's brain is exact
It can see things you can't; that's a fact,
But its brain has to choose
What to keep, what to loose
And the key shapes it needs to extract.

Trying to find out what a very young baby actually sees would seem to be an almost impossible job, but a recent Scientific American article summarizing research by a team led by Jiale Yang of Chuo University, Japan, has produced some interesting results.

So what are Gravity Waves

Two black holes, when they met, cause a cavity
In the space time contin’um called gravity
And the waves, fast as light,
Prove that Einstein was right,
As the scientists claim, with audacity.

The science involves much complicated mathematics but a simple model will explain the basic idea.

Why were stone handaxes made in the same way for a million years?

Early man made some useful hand tools
And no-one could say they were fools
But the axes they made
They failed to upgrade
‘cause no-one could teach them the rules.

In considering the evolution of human intelligence there is uncertainty about when an effective language first emerged and there is also a mystery of the early stone hand axes, which were made to the same design for about a million years. If the early hominins who made these tools were really that intelligent one might expect that someone in more than 70,000 generations would have found a way of making better stone hand axes.

The Black Kite - A Bird that uses fire as a tool

An intelligent bird is the kite,
For a fire it knows how to ignite.
And some scientists claim
It can carry a flame
So its prey can be caught in their flight.

Yesterday the British newspapers were full of the news that Black Kites in Australia deliberately removed burning embers from a bush fire and dropped it on nearby grassland, setting the grass alight. The small mammals and lizards living deep in the grass would become visible as they tried to escape from the flames, and could then be easily caught.

What trees should we plant to combat global warming

An old oak tree at Ashridge

Climate change is a fully proved fact.
Keep our woods and our forests intact.
But should we plant more?
Conifers I deplore;
Oak and beech are the trees that attract.

This limerick was inspired by today's news on the BBC web site "Wrong type of trees in Europe increased global warning."