Nature and Society Relations Commons^™

A ‘‘Practical’’ Ethic For Animals, David Fraser

Ethics and Animal Welfare Collection

Drawing on the features of ‘‘practical philosophy’’ described by Toulmin (1990), a ‘‘practical’’ ethic for animals would be rooted in knowledge of how people affect animals, and would provide guidance on the diverse ethical concerns that arise. Human activities affect animals in four broad ways: (1) keeping animals, for example, on farms and as companions, (2) causing intentional harm to animals, for example through slaughter and hunting, (3) causing direct but unintended harm to animals, for example by cropping practices and vehicle collisions, and (4) harming animals indirectly by disturbing life-sustaining processes and balances of nature, for example by habitat …

Regimes And Resilience In The Modern Global Food System, Sara W. Tower

Student Publications

Much public discourse surrounding the modern global food system operates on the assumption of the primary agency of individual consumers in ensuring an equitable and sustainable food supply. However, this approach fails to account for the larger structural forces of the system which frame the limits of how we interact with and are affected by our food system. Taking a closer look at the global economic, political, cultural, and environmental forces that have collectively shaped historical food regimes reveals the deeper structural patterns that currently determine how we produce, distribute, and consume food around the world. Due to the underlying …

West Of Eden: Resource Wars And Nature-Cultures In The American West, Scout Calvert

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

The richness and variety of the western landscape is what is at stake in hot political contests for the resources of the West: much of this public land is available to economic activity, including for mining, grazing, logging, and recreation. These uses threaten to outpace the land’s ability to renew these resources along with others, like air and water. Now in the first decade of the millennium with a new environmental awareness emerging partly from media coverage of global warming and peak oil, The American West at Risk offers a wide-ranging look at the degradation of the environment in the …

Taking The “Pest” Out Of Pest Control: Humaneness And Wildlife Damage Management, John Hadidian

Attitudes Towards Animals Collection

Humans have been in the pest control business for a long time. At least 3 major foci of pest control activity currently can be found in governmental and private sectors, with private services focused on both traditional commensal rodent work as well as the more recent control of “nuisance” wildlife in cities and towns. Beyond the traditional approaches and techniques historically employed, animal damage managers are increasingly faced with the challenge of addressing the social context within which their work occurs. An ever-increasing variety of stakeholders have brought new concerns, new thinking, and new approaches to the table in a …

Toxic Tourism: Promoting The Berkeley Pit And Industrial Heritage In Butte, Montana, Bridget R. Barry

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Butte, Montana’s Berkeley Pit and its deadly water are a part of the country’s largest Superfund site. In 1994 the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a Record of Decision designating Butte, along with the neighboring town and mining site of Anaconda (twenty-five miles northwest of Butte), and 120 miles of Montana’s Clark Fork River as a single Superfund complex. The vast mining operations undertaken in the area, including five hundred underground mines and four open pit mines, have resulted in hazardous concentrations of metals in groundwater, surface water, and soils.

Butte’s mines once extracted more tons of copper …