And then after class said that she would like to teach another one where the question is “should we even have a livestock industry at all?”. I told her that I’d love to teach one where I just make the students repeatedly read The Jungle and Grapes of Wrath until they start burning shit down and she replied that it already seems like we’re heading that way.
My only good professor.
That’s what kept me from going into it. The separation of town and country is important to me from either side of it, but rural communities here are extremely reactionary and the businesses are mostly wealthy landowners. I don’t want them to stay in business and I want their land to be public, so sustaining what exists just feels like repainting hell. In urban ecology what I want just makes the city more pleasant to live in and my customer base is every taxpayer. It’s a lot easier to feel good about most of my work and advocate against the greenspace I don’t like.