Christopher Ryan

If you happen to be one of those techno-optimists who believe that our culture can transition to a future powered by benign alternatives by using coal or unconventional carbon-based fuels, you just might want to consider the damage caused by the extraction of these resources…

A good example of how the concept of agenda setting can drive process can be gleaned by following the health care issue in American politics. While the fundamental need is universal care for all citizens, the discussion has been limited to revising health insurance and ensuring that all citizens purchase it regardless of their circumstances…

How much timber must be cut and how much ore must be mined to provide the building materials necessary to rebuild a wiped out city or town after an earthquake, wildfire or typhoon? As storms and other events become more prolific and more powerful and wildfires consume more residences, how much timber is going to be felled to rebuild them? Related to this question is where we allow these structures to be situated and what kind of building codes will we put in place to minimize future destruction, and by extension, future extraction.

As a social scientist with a primary focus on environmental attitudes, values, and behaviors, I have long been interested in the concept of vested interests and how powerful of a motivator and behavioral driver it can be. While this post has languished for quite some time in the dustbin of my hard drive, several writers (e.g. Kunstler, Astyk) have reminded me that the concept of vested interests or, as it’s sometimes referred to, “psychology of previous investment”, needs much further discussion and enlightenment as a prime motivator and key obstacle to substantial and necessary culture change.

I wonder if there might be some magic elixir, as the Bradbury short-story hinted at, that could take us away from the madness and anger swelling up around us these days in the public realm. A very narrow but loud and aggressive demographic has been ignited against health care reform and climate change policy and this sparking fuse is growing closer to the combustible source. There is unquestionably a close parallel between the people who have been motivated to erupt at town hall events and those who have been hurt the most by the economic downturn over the last year.

Resistance to changing the culture we now possess (or possesses us?), a culture that is arguably fatally destructive to the biosphere, includes the argument that we can’t go back to the way we used to live 100 years ago or some other harsher time where we tied our shoes, cleaned floors with mops, and (God forbid) churned butter.