Really fascinating article about a Amazonian tribe that has partnered up with Google Inc. to help save the rainforest. Interesting example of how technology can help protect the environment. The story is absolutely phenomenol, you should really check it out!
Category Archives: climate change
Medicine and Sustainability
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Two important stories that will make sense to all of you, but specifically to those “I wanna be a doctor” folks among us. As you’ll learn in the California story, doctors get paid by the task — office visit, exam, surgery, etc. This is not sustainable given where health care may be headed; it’s certainly not beneficial to the consumer. Also as you’ll hear, given the cost of medical school and the loans MD’s have to pay back after graduation, specialization in the system drives doctors away from where they are indeed needed — primary care.
In California, Facing Down a Family Physician Shortage
In another story that shows us how wonderful we are, this is concerns Global Health. In fact, this link will take you to several stories concerning Global Health — cholera perhaps spreading to the DR and Miami, organ trafficking, and a global food crisis.
As you ponder your last “mini” essays, think about some of these challenges.
Smart-Growth Policy Splits Environmentalists
In class and in our reading we’ve been learning about the divide between the environmental justice movement and the environmental movement. This article talks about another split in the environmental movement; between those who support investing in a “smart-growth policy” in urban areas and those who don’t. Developing environmentally friendly “green” building projects (parks, housing) seems like a good idea, but the Sierra Club has been experiencing a lot of opposition. Many club members are against the new focus on urban environment and “see efforts to promote density as colluding with developers.”
Do you think this represents an outdated vision of environmentalism? Is incorporating urban development into the environmental movement a good thing? (Do you agree with Arreguin, that the club should “look at the bigger picture of how (we) can be more sustainable”?)
And finally, is it possible to bring these movements together despite the apparent conflicting ideals and differences?
Geoengineering: People vs. Planet?
A new method of potentially earth-saving technology has come about, but its consequences may outweigh its benefits. Geoengineering is the process of changing the earth’s climate in order to counteract global warming. Scientists have adapted this idea and a large part of their evidence has come from the Mt. Pinatubo eruption in 1991.
This massive eruption in the Philippines released 20 million tons of Sulfur Dioxide into the atmosphere. These particles of Sulfur reflected the suns rays back into space and lowered the earth’s average temperature by half a degree. Scientists are looking to utilize the same earth-cooling process without erupting any more volcanoes.
One plan to use Geoengineering was introduced to the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity. This plan entails releasing sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere in order to cool the earth’s temperature. In addition to its effective results, this process would also be very cheap.
On the other side of the argument, some people are worried about the affects that these changes could have on our life. Is global cooling worth the potential for drastic rain changes that could cause massive issues in areas of the world that depend on constant rainfall? As of now, Geoengineering is halted until the scientific research has been concluded and regulations have been set up.
The answer to our problems???
This article Powering the Planet With Solar Energy on the production of solar fuel was part of our assignment over break for my chemistry class. I thought I’d share it with you guys as a more hopeful look at the future of our planet. The conclusion of the article is especially thought provoking.
“We have an even grander vision. Some time in the future we will be able to put three components of our atmosphere — carbon dioxide, nitrogen and oxygen — along with sea water into solar reactors to make not only fuels, electricity and pure water, but polymers, food and almost everything else we need. We have been taking from nature since the beginning of time, consuming the oil, gas and coal given to us by thousands of millions of years of photosynthesis. This is the century in human history when we will start paying back with the capital generated through fundamental research in chemistry.”
What do you think of this idea of humans as producers as opposed to consumers? This seems to go against our natural niche in nature and as a result violates some major biological principles. Do you think people will be open to the idea of scientific production of polymers that can be used to food? Is this idea any different than GMOs?
In Denial of Climate Change
In this editorial, In Denial of Climate Change, we learn about a perspective that’s being taken by some Republican candidates.
The candidates are not simply rejecting solutions, like putting a price on carbon, though these, too, are demonized. They are re-running the strategy of denial perfected by Mr. Cheney a decade ago, repudiating years of peer-reviewed findings about global warming and creating an alternative reality in which climate change is a hoax or conspiracy.
This is a perspective that’s not uncommon among many people across the USA. I wonder, then, what we have to do to demonstrate that we, indeed, have affected — and continue to affect — Nature?
These elections (November) and this mediated hype without debate comes at a time when we’re witnessing the questioning the “value,” “worth” and significance of the Humanities in colleges and universities. For instance, there is a debate, ongoing, in Do Colleges Need French Departments.
In her response, Martha Naussbum argues that,
Cuts in the humanities are bad for business and bad for democracy. Even if a nation’s only goal were economic prosperity, the humanities supply essential ingredients for a healthy business culture.
Nations such as China and Singapore, which previously ignored the humanities, are now aggressively promoting them, because they have concluded that the cultivation of the imagination through the study of literature, film, and the other arts is essential to fostering creativity and innovation. They also have found that teaching critical thinking and argumentation (a skill associated with courses in philosophy) is essential in order to foster healthy debate inside a business world that might too easily become complacent or corrupt.
We in the U.S. are moving away from the humanities just at the time that our rivals are discovering their worth. But a healthy business culture is not all that life in America is about.
What might be the connections between Republican rejection of man-made climate change, the media hype without debate or dialog, and the willingness of citizens to accept the notion that climate change is happening — and has happened — outside our influence?
What Democracy?
Following our discussion on Thursday, defining terms — Democracy, Socialism, Communism, Capitalism and The Yankees — several parallel stories have appeared that suggest the struggle and the tension we discovered in our exercise, in our discussion.
Please examine these, carefully, and again per group (each group, except one, still is behind and has to do the Scott Page post), determine HOW these stories define Democracy/Capitalims/Us and HOW these stories parallel Empire of Illusion.
The first story is from Terry Gross’s Fresh Air, ” ‘Citizens United’ Ruling Opened Floodgates on Groups’ Ad Spending.”
The next 2 are not stories, but rather, commentaries. First, Bob Herbert, writing for the New York Times, in Policy at its Worst, tells us that, “We can’t put the population to work, or get the kids through college, or raise the living standards of the middle class and the poor. We can’t rebuild the infrastructure or curb our destructive overreliance on fossil fuels.”
The next opinion, also from the Times, is by Charles M. Blow, High Cost of Crime. Here, Blow informs us that, “Our approach to this crime problem for more than two decades has been the mass incarceration of millions of Americans and the industrializing of our criminal justice system. Over the last 25 years, the prison population has quadrupled. This is a race to the bottom and a waste of human capital. A prosperous country cannot remain so by following this path.” Take a look at how much a single murder costs — then ask yourself: why do we incarcerate more people than anyone else in the industrial world?
The last story, which parallels Hedges’ chapter, “The Illusion of Wisdom,” and written by the indefatigable Camille Paglia, was sent to me by Izzy Ocampo. In “Revalorizing the Trades,” Paglia asks, “what if a student wants a different, less remunerative or status-oriented but more personally fulfilling career?” She responds to her question, saying that, “There is little flexibility in American higher education to allow for alternative career tracks.”
In a moment, Paglia sounds a lot like Hedges:
Jobs, and the preparation of students for them, should be front and center in the thinking of educators. The idea that college is a contemplative realm of humanistic inquiry, removed from vulgar material needs, is nonsense. The humanities have been gutted by four decades of pretentious postmodernist theory and insular identity politics. They bear little relationship to the liberal arts of broad perspective and profound erudition that I was lucky enough to experience in college in the 1960s.
Examine each of the stories and the editorials, then discuss, online, how all this fits our notion of the struggle for democracy, our struggle for the truth?
Will the Environment Survive Peace in the Middle East?
I attended the lecture given by Prof. Alon Tal of Ben Gurion University on Wednesday.
Below is the link to the recording of the lecture, and my notes from it.
Will the Environment Survive Peace in the Middle East
Professor Tal spoke about the prevalence of transboundary pollution, regional challenges in regards to resources, discussed the importance of environmental issues in peace talks. He is optimistic about the future of the region and emphasized the role of civil society and US involvement in peace talks.
Some (perhaps) Depressing Updates
Panel Blasts Government On Gulf Oil Spill Response
October 7, 2010
A preliminary report released Wednesday by the federal commission investigating the BP oil spill blames the Obama administration for misrepresenting “the amount and fate of the oil” in the Gulf of Mexico.
Scientists and Soldiers Solve a Bee Mystery
October 6, 2010
Since 2006, 20 to 40 percent of the bee colonies in the United States alone have suffered “colony collapse.” Suspected culprits ranged from pesticides to genetically modified food.
Obama talks green, GOP talks freeze
October 2, 2010
Wind, solar and other clean energy technologies produce jobs and are essential for the country’s environment and economy, President Barack Obama said in promoting his administration’s efforts.The president used his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday, a month away from congressional elections, to charge Republicans with wanting to scrap incentives for such projects.
The End of Nature, FEMA Trailers, and Bed Bugs
There’s an uncanny relationship between climate change and man’s infringement on nature, the national bed bug plague , and what is likely to be the metaphor of our times, FEMA trailers…more
Before correcting papers, today, and after falling off a horse, I set out and tried to put together some of the material we’ve read in the course with the Clifford Symposium. I asked myself, “what does global health mean to me?” And, “what are some relationships between class and the environment and global health. If you select “more,” you see what I’m thinking — and what we’ll discuss Tuesday.