Lifeboat Scenarios

The first film clip I showed today was from Powaqqatsi, second film in a trilogy by director Godfrey Reggio and scored by Philip Glass. The film was released in 1988, and Wikipedia says:

Powaqqatsi is a Hopi word meaning "parasitic way of life" or "life in transition". While Koyaanisqatsi focused on modern life in industrial countries, Powaqqatsi, which similarly has no dialogue, focuses more on the conflict in third world countries between traditional ways of life and the new ways of life introduced with industrialization.

The first scene is of a gold mine in Brazil, called Serra Pelada, in which the miners carry sacks of dirt for processing. Towards the end of a scene, we see some workers carrying another who has been struck by a falling rock.

The images from this film help put a human face on what it might be like to be one of the people who is not in Garrett Hardin's lifeboat. They also highlight the difference between the material comfort that you and I experience, and the lives of less privileged others.

I also showed this interview with Garrett Hardin.


A contemporary writer whose views are also relevant to the discussion of the connection between political and social actions and our ecological status is Jared Diamond. His book Collapse shows how the collapse of societies is often prefaced by an unsustainable exploitation of their natural resources. From the Amazon.com review:

While Guns, Germs, and Steel explained the geographic and environmental reasons why some human populations have flourished, Collapse uses the same factors to examine why ancient societies, including the Anasazi of the American Southwest and the Viking colonies of Greenland, as well as modern ones such as Rwanda, have fallen apart. Not every collapse has an environmental origin, but an eco-meltdown is often the main catalyst, he argues, particularly when combined with society's response to (or disregard for) the coming disaster.

There are two videos of Jared Diamond that I'd recommend. One is an interview on PBS's News Hour on the topic of how nations respond to environmental and economic crises. The other is a talk that he gives at TED.