Home | About Us | Membership | Publications | Resources | Events | Members Directory | Employment | Shop | Contact | Contact
Discussion questions for:
A BIG FIX: Radical Solutions for Australia’s Environmental Crisis
by Ian Lowe
Published by Black Inc.; Melbourne, Australia; 2005
Start a discussion about how outdoor education can be used to teach students about the issues surrounding population, consumption, lifestyle and the economic system as addressed in chapter 4.
Do you agree or disagree with the conclusions and/or solutions that Lowe provides? Do you think that the solutions are viable? Be sure to justify your answer with existing research and references other than A Big Fix.
Use chapter 3 to discuss risk in the context of environmental problems and ideas such as the precautionary principle. How do or should we determine what is an acceptable risk? Using the example of oil tankers and the Great Barrier Reef (page 43), for example, students could be asked to research how many oil tankers go past or how many accidents have occurred in the past to back up their answers.
What impact does that 14 million tones of sediment, 43,00 tonnes of nitrogen and 7000 tonnes of phosphorous have on the Great Barrier Reef? Page 44.
Why would the fishing industry be angry at a proposal aimed to increase fish stocks? Page 44.
What do you think Lowe means by the term “Buck passing”? Find an example of when Lowe describes the process further on in the chapter. Page 44
What does Lowe believe are the three problems that are preventing adequate protection of the Great Barrier Reef? What are the three main medium term threats to the Great Barrier Reef according to Lowe (page 43 and 44)? Describe why these things are problems.
Give examples of other rivers around the world that are the focus of political fistfights.
Why is Adelaide ‘at the sharp end of the problem’? page 46
Why is salinity a bad thing? How much land represents 1/3 of Victoria’s agricultural land?
Draw a chart of how all the different things Lowe describes in pages x-x that impact on the… (Great Barrier Reef, Murray Darling Basin, Biodiversity, etc) are interrelated.
Discuss the role of outdoor education in helping to change attitudes.
At the very end of chapter 3, Lowe claims that: “[u]nless these problems are recognised, the well-intentioned attempts to improve economic and social indicators are doomed to fail.”
Give x number of examples of the reasoning behind this statements.
Do you agree or disagree – why?
What role does outdoor education have to play in helping these problems to be recognised?
Assuming that Lowe’s reasoning is sound, what sorts of impacts would occur if the economic and social indicators begin to fall? Have a discussion of risk.
Page 60 – discussion of a ‘closed system’.
Why do you think Lowe suggests we should have a Minister for Population (page 63)?
Page 6 – ways of viewing the world. Discuss “the future was inevitably an extension of the past”.
Page 16. Define a “major extinction event”.
Page 17. Discuss intergenerational equity. Could use the outdoor experience as an example – if you trash a campsite, have you ‘stolen’ the benefits of a nice campsite from the people who camp there after you?
Page 20. “The main obstacle is the dominant mindset of decision- makers who do not even recognise the problem, or see potential solutions as threats to their short term interests.” How do you think an outdoor experience could help to change the point of view of such decision-makers? What role do you think outdoor education can play in the long term to change the way that such decision makers operate?
Page 29. Discuss the term “gated community” and relate it to social well being issues.
In the section ‘Economic futures’ (page 30) in chapter 2, what are the two reasons Lowe gives for saying that Australia’s third world country trade pattern will inevitably lead to economic decline?
Page 33. “Tourism income is a useful supplement, and certainly a more rational way to exploit our unique natural resources …”. Discuss the term ‘exploit’ and how it relates to outdoor experiences. What impact do humans have in different outdoor experiences?
Page 35. How can outdoor education help to explore issues of fair resource allocation?
Page 64. Discuss ways in which living space could be reduced. What impact would those measures have on social well being and/or social equity? Talk about how to keep urban people in contact with natural environments, why this is or isn’t important, what sorts of consequences it has.
Do you think having more material goods has made our lives richer? Why/ why not? What social gains to we receive from material things?
Think about technology that makes outdoor experiences more sustainable. Design some new technology that would make outdoor experiences more sustainable.
Page 72. Can you think of another example of the logic used in arguing “it made economic sense to destroy forests and hunt whales”?
Page 72-73. Play a market economy game twice over – once where the “other species” and “future generations” are involved and one where they are not. Does this bare out the following statement? “Leaving the use of natural resources to the market implicitly presumes that the wishes of this generation are more important than the needs of all future generations and all other species.”
Page 73. What values other than monetary can be placed on natural areas? Can you put a monetary value on nature? Should you put a monetary value on nature?
Page 74. Why do you think the economists and media analysts were demanding more economic growth to solve our social and environmental problems?
Page 77. What do you think about the statement “it is impossible to overstate the urgency of our situation”? Support your answer with references.
Page 78. Imagine your own sustainable society.
Page 87. Use/teach the ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ principles on a trip. How would you teach them on a trip? How could you improve the use of these principles on an outdoor trip?
Page 88. Discuss human bush walkers as a vector for pest species.
Words to define:
How can you use outdoor experiences to teach equity?
Discuss the model of behaviour change used by Lowe when he says the way forward is to:
What are the pros and cons of this model of behaviour change? What are some other ways to go about instigating change?
Discuss the use of outdoor education programs to build a sense of self. How important is it that the general population has a sense of self and well being for them to start taking action to protect the environment? Is there any research that suggests an answer to this question?
Discuss the importance of having a sense of self and well being and the consequences in ability to better understand and take on moral responsibility to existing people and future generations.
| Contact | FAQ | Privacy Policy | |