But unless you have no soul or imagination it’s also stunning and humbling.  Someone who was intelligent and sensitive and brave, who had no interest in being killed and eaten, fought very hard but died here.  And others, who were also intelligent and sensitive and brave, who also fought very hard, were fed here.  And the breeze picks up.  Little lonely ghosts of an adrenalin-drenched drama linger in this place – you can feel them.  And it’s appropriate to breathe in and to be deeply silenced by this truth.

Environmental philosopher Michael P. Nelson gamely copes with “ginormous” mosquitoes and gobs of “moose grease” as he necropsies a moose on Isle Royale in Lake Superior. (Photo: John A. Vucetich)

When Michael P. Nelson talks about his work, he mentions carcasses and cadavers to a startling degree — startling because Nelson is not a physician or a veterinarian or even a biologist. He’s a philosopher. So at first glance, necropsy seems an odd topic of discourse.  But it starts to make sense when you notice that Nelson’s office is in Oregon State’s College of Forestry, not the College of Liberal Arts where universities typically house their philosophers. And, as the only philosopher ever hired to lead one of the National Science Foundation’s 27 Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites — in this case, OSU’s H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest — Nelson again defies tradition.

“We started the search assuming we’d end up with some sort of ecologist, hydrologist or biophysical scientist,” recounts John Bliss, the associate dean of forestry who led the hiring process. “I knew we’d turned a corner when the ecologists on the committee stopped me in the hall to say things like, ‘Maybe a philosopher is what we need!’”
With -ologists already well represented, they opted instead for Nelson’s novel viewpoint. “Michael brings a philosopher’s logic to complex problems, unencumbered by disciplinary straitjackets,” Bliss says.

Mind Over Matter

To understand these discrepancies, you have to go back to Nelson’s hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin, where, in a high school anatomy class, he saw a dead body laid out on a steel slab. “I thought that cadaver was the coolest thing in the world,” he recalls. But once he got to college, the study of biology struck him as tedious. Too many equations to solve, too many chemical reactions to memorize. In contrast, he found himself relishing his philosophy classes. Ideas like the moral imperative and the inherent nature of being quickened his imagination. He soon switched majors and began to ponder the world on a cerebral rather than cellular level.

Michael P. Nelson

His fascination with biological systems, however, never went away. Eventually, this man whose mental petri dish was awash in syllogisms instead of cell divisions circled back to where he started — to that raw, physical nexus of life and death that is a carcass. It happened about a decade after he earned his Ph.D. at England’s Lancaster University, the cradle of environmental philosophy. By then, Nelson was teaching at Michigan State University, where he met John A. Vucetich, co-director of a long-term, multidisciplinary study of predator-prey dynamics. Vucetich invited Nelson to visit the study site: a wild, isolated, mist-wrapped island in Lake Superior. Nelson was enchanted. Soon he became the “resident philosopher” for Wolves and Moose of Isle Royale.

Which is how, in 2005, he came to be kneeling beside a pile of bones and sinews where wolves had devoured a moose. Every summer, Nelson participates in collecting biological samples, including scat and skulls, for DNA analysis and pathology studies. Now in its 55th year, the project has tracked the dynamics between wolves and moose over a timespan unprecedented in the annals of predator-prey studies. Surprising insights into island biogeography and wildlife management are emerging from the mists.

“What I really like about my work, is that it exists at the edges of disciplines.”

— Michael P. Nelson

Sting Like a Bee

In front of a crowd, Nelson moves nimbly, like a boxer, on the balls of his feet. An aura of great energy emanates from his face and hands. It’s clear that he’s in a hurry to push his thoughts outward. Planet Earth is, after all, poised on the cliff of calamity, he says during a joint presentation on ethics and climate change with OSU conservation philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore. He and Moore challenge the scientists in the audience to couple their facts (climate models, data sets, statistical analyses) to their values (as parents, as community members, as global citizens). It’s time to kick the advocacy taboo to the curb, the two philosophers exhort, arguing that meaningful action arises only when facts (“what is”) are welded to values (“what ought to be”).

What It’s Like to Necropsy a Moose

It’s physical and sensual. It’s not an exercise in hypothetical counter-factuals or wonderings about brains in vats or the playing of a clever devil’s advocate. It’s hot and uncomfortable and smelly.

Read more…

To drive home the urgency of curbing fossil fuel use, Nelson cites sources as diverse as “Genesis” and Dr. Seuss. At last year’s meeting of LTER scientists nationwide he did a riff inspired by The Lorax. This scholar of striking contrasts can recite playful couplets one moment and the next, dare scientists to rethink the most basic assumptions of their careers.

“Look, we don’t know how to create careers in science that fully empower scientists,” Nelson tells a roomful of researchers. “What we do know is this: Everything has changed. You have taught us that. You should ask yourself some questions: Are the old forms of scientific practice working? Or do you need to create another path? What does it mean to be a scientist now? You are studying systems, ecosystems; you know about the necessity of connections. Live what you know. That’s integrity.”

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Read more

See details about Michael Nelson’s teaching, books, ongoing projects and affiliations.

Predator and Prey, a Delicate Dance, The New York Times, May 8, 2013

Wolves Teach Scientists Their Limitations, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 1, 2013

Stuart Sarbacker teaches on the theory, history and practice of yoga at Oregon State University. Listen to a podcast with Sarbacker.  (Photo: Theresa Hogue)

For many people, yoga is a form of relaxation. But in India, the birthplace of the exercise, yoga is beginning to stretch beyond the boundaries of one’s self and into the ecological realm. A new movement called “Green Yoga” encourages men and women who practice yoga — called yogis and yoginis — to strive for bettering their environment.

Green Yoga was pioneered by an influential Indian figure, Swami Ramdev. Stuart Sarbacker, assistant professor of philosophy at Oregon State University, has studied Ramdev, who hosts a daily show in India combining yoga and activism. He has attracted some 250 million viewers of all ages.

“Part of what drew me to study Swami Ramdev is this notion that inner transformation should be reflected outwards in some sort of transformation of the external world,” says Sarbacker. This idea is paramount in Green Yoga as well.

“What happens on the mat, so to speak, should translate into a transformed relationship with the world. That transformation may be reflected through personal choices, such as choosing organic foods, or it might mean buying a yoga mat made from natural rubber instead of plastic,” Sarbacker adds.

But Green Yoga doesn’t stop at consumer goods. Ramdev has used the practice to establish landmark status and protection for the heavily polluted Ganges River. Previously it was believed that the Ganges could not become dirty despite the dumping of untreated sewage and chemicals. But through non-violent protests and Green Yoga, Ramdev has created awareness for the river in both the people and the political leaders.

Sacred River

“One of the things that interests me very much is the idea that the Ganges historically was viewed as inherently pure. For most Hindus, it is in fact a Goddess, Gunga,” says Sarbacker. “Instead of thinking you can put whatever you want in the Ganges and she will always be pure, the discourse has shifted more towards what are we doing towards our sacred river, to our goddess by pouring our waste into it?”

Swami Ramdev (Photo: Wikipedia)

Sarbacker has written extensively on the theory, history and practice of yoga and is looking into the relationship between spirituality and environmental philosophy. He has focused specifically on Ramdev. “I’m using ethnographical and anthropological methods to create a snapshot of the development of a particular institution and really the life of a particular teacher, at a certain moment in time.”

Sarbacker wonders if Ramdev will next champion the topic of climate change in India. With the Ganges River being fed by receding glaciers, the water system is at risk, yet little attention has been brought to this issue. Whether Ramdev’s prominence will be sufficient to tackle it is yet to be determined, however with a stardom that has been compared to Oprah’s, he is in a position to do so.

Sarbacker is a certified yoga teacher in addition to being a professor. In spring 2013, he will teach a course at Oregon State about Green Yoga with an ecological consciousness.

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Listen to a podcast with Stuart Sarbacker here.

Illustration by Teresa Hall

Like a bunch of teens left unsupervised, humans have been running amuck ever since crude oil first gushed forth on a Pennsylvania farm in the 1800s. Our 200-year-long “fossil-fuel party” has made modern life possible but has fouled the environment and ignited catastrophic changes in Earth’s climate.

“We’re like juveniles throwing a big party,” says OSU’s Allen Thompson, an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy. “The house is a mess, the goldfish are dying, the plants haven’t been watered. We’ve screwed up everything.”
As we awaken to the sobering consequences of unfettered consumption, we can take several tacks, Thompson argues. We can give in to despair or denial. We can continue trying to mitigate damage by cutting carbon emissions. Or we can begin adapting to our radically altered world.

Thompson doesn’t suggest for a minute that we shouldn’t do everything in our power, personally and politically, to curb greenhouse gas emissions. But, as he notes in a rueful tone, international mitigation efforts have so far failed to slow the trajectory of worldwide warming. Even if nations suddenly clamp down, there’s enough carbon dioxide already wrapping the planet to alter conditions for thousands of years.

Choosing Optimism

Thompson admits to bouts of anxiety about where we’re headed. As an undergrad at The Evergreen State College, where he was part of a “very liberal, environmentally minded, progressive set of young nouveau-hippies,” he first read The End of Nature, Bill McKibben’s now-classic book on global warming. It has haunted him ever since. But rather than succumb to hopelessness, he set about constructing a philosophical framework for at least a limited form of optimism.

Our best chance for bequeathing to our children an intact planet and an ethical society — a “life worthy of human dignity” — is adaptation, Thompson has concluded. When he talks about adaptation, however, he’s not talking about girding seaside towns against storm surges or planting drought-resistant crops (although those kinds of measures certainly are needed). Rather, he’s talking about nothing less than a radical transformation of our humanity. Our current idea of adapting to climate change is too limited for a ravaged world; it’s more akin to “coping” or only reducing vulnerability, he says. Besides, the strategies we typically put forward — exporting new energy technologies, for example, or sending money to poor nations for desalination plants — while helpful, too often are also effective at preserving or extending the very economic framework and consumer culture that created the climate crisis in the first place.

So if we hope to flourish in this human-dominated geologic era (which scientists like Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen are calling the “Anthropocene”), we must reinvent ourselves, Thompson argues in Ethical Adaptation to Climate Change: Human Virtues of the Future, a new book of essays from The MIT Press that he co-edited with Jeremy Bendik-Keymer of Case Western Reserve University. We must redefine what it means to be a good human, both individually and collectively.

Ecological Identity

“Adapting to new conditions really means changing yourself,” Thompson says. “The scale of change we’re facing with global warming is unprecedented in human history. It will put a tremendous strain on our social orders and our governmental patterns. It will threaten our very mode of civilization. We have to start rethinking not only our individual character traits but also our institutions so we can move toward a new global ecology. It is crucial that we think of human excellence ecologically.”

In a few short millennia, the human species has altered its mother planet irrevocably. Just as we are the only animals capable of such profound impact, so we are the only ones capable of reparation and restoration. In this fact lies our greatest duty, says Thompson.

“Humanity now has the role of managing the global biosphere,” he writes. “We were neither designed nor destined for this; only the contingent course of history has made it so. … Human beings are now managers of the planet in the sense that collectively our actions determine the basic conditions for the existence of all life on Earth.”