Category Archives: environment

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.

Communicating Health Lisa Russell:”A Filmmaker’s Perspective: Utilizing Media and the Arts for Global Health Advocacy”

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Before Lisa Russell became an Emmy-award winning filmmaker she was interested in medicine. She describes hearing Jonathan Mann, former head of the World Health Organization’s global AIDS program, speaking about AIDS as a social issue, from a gender, race, and economic perspective, as the day she changed her views. With a masters in Public Health, she set off on a career as a documentary filmmaker showcasing health issues in countries like the Congo, Niger, Ethiopia, Lebanon and many more.

During the talk she spoke about Not Yet Rain, a film she made in 2008 with Ipas about unsafe abortions in Ethiopia. Although Ethiopia decriminalized abortions in 2006, which the government believed would allow women access to safe abortions, many women still resort to unsafe abortions. The documentary follows two young women who are denied abortions because they are too far along in their terms. Russell describes her film as “putting a human face” to a human rights issue. She got a lot of feedback from people, even on Face Book, where a 19 year old girl from Dubai, sought help from Russell to get her to Ethiopia for an abortion. This shows the magnitude of power of media, that people from all over the world were made aware of this issue.

Another project Lisa Russell works with is Urban Word NYC. The program works with teenagers on areas such as creative writing, journalism, etc. It is based on the principle that “teenagers can and must speak for themselves.” This I thought was especially powerful because it gives young people an outlet to express themselves, and to raise awareness about certain issues.

This leads into her Emmy-award winning piece. Her close ties to NYC and the overall flexibility in her film topics are displayed in the next video she presents. She informs us of her close work with young students in the Bronx, New York on issues regarding race, gender and economics. She brings to life in her film, the inspiring poem of a young 13-year-old girl from New York, which she calls ”Biracial Hair”. The poem commences with light and humorous approach of a young girl fussing over her hair, but then both the poem beautifully creates a parallel between the pride holds for both her hair type and how she views herself in society.

Russell is heavily involved in promoting UN MDG Summit #5, one of the few goals the United Nations have prepared, in which the nations engaged plan to decrease and hopefully eliminate maternal mortality. She administers a site, www.MDGfive.com that provides a network and trafficking of situations, ideas, and news that will stimulate awareness and engagement on the said issue. Although the site is relatively new, we found it very well organized and took light into one very cool feature, which would be the clip remixer. In which there are tons of powerful quotes, photos and clips, which you can assemble together for your own custom slide show.

We decided to make one for Class and the Environment: (Please comment) (Fred picked the song)

http://mdgfive.realitydigital.net/Media.aspx?key=DDAC5AFF450B7832

Lisa Russell described her projects as more spontaneous than pre-decided, and we think this illustrates her unique and well-organized way in developing them more than anything. She is meticulous in almost every step of her project and makes sure that she is not offending the people that she films. She also analyzes every position of the issue; by making sure even the “bad guys” that are performing the abortions get their voice. At times she stated she feels in a paradox in terms of films being documented about Africa due to the overall negativity a the films, and she explained that she makes sure her films shed light to the positives, so that there is no inferiority.

Overall her presentation was insightful, informative, and an endearing pleasure to be a part of.

Fred and Sonam

The End of Nature, FEMA Trailers, and Bed Bugs

The Heat is Killing Me and the End of Nature

The Heat is Killing Me

Roundtable: Local/Global (9:30-11)

In this session, we learned of both local (Middlebury) and global (Bangladesh and NE Brazil) health and sustainability projects.

Abul Hussam, Center for Clear Water and Sustainability Technologies, Dept of Chemistry and Biochemistry, George Mason University.

Dr. Hussam’s project originated because his family has been drinking water laced with arsenic, a huge problem in Bangladesh. His talk emphasized sustainable technologies (SONO arsenic filter) and the social implications, though he dealt less with this aspect.

He highlighted 3 UN Millennium Goals that his project is tackling:

MG1: eradication of extreme poverty and hunger
MG7: ensuring environmental sustainability (water <>sanitation<>hygiene)
MG8: develop a global partnership for development

Water is interconnected with sanitation and hygiene — the problem of sanitation has to be solved simultaneously. In Bangladesh, people get their water from 5 sources:

surface water, the most popular and dangerous
groundwater (tube- wells) — where we find a lot of arsenic
deep tube wells
dug wells
rainwater harvesting (very difficult to do because if it sits it develops bacteria and other organic “things” and it has to be filtered quickly, which is difficult and expensive)

People who drink water with arsenic for long periods develop Arsenicosis, which can look like this. Thus, from arsenicosis multiple problems arise: marginalization, lack of opportunity, and the labeling “poor.” Arsenicosis is a disease of poverty.

So Dr. Hussam and colleagues developed the Sono arsenic filtration system. They’ve been able to get this filter to thousands, but new technologies have to be developed and the commercial segment has to enter into the picture thus lowering costs. It took 2 years to get people to buy into the filters because once the water is cleaned it tastes different and people were used to drinking their polluted water and saw this as the “right” water.

Maria Carmen Lemos, School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan

Professor Lemos’ work concerns how people use information, particularly climate change, to make informed decisions about development. She said that all issues of development are linked to — or have to be linked to climate change since it affects everything we do. The affects of climate are not distributed evenly. For instance, those who have affect climate change the most, will be least affected by these changes; those that have affected climate change the least, the poor,for instance, will be most affected.

She gave us a vulnerability function, which makes a lot of sense: Vf(E,S, AC) = Vulnerability is a function of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity.

The rest of her talk focused on Adaptive Capacity:

the ability of a system to adjust to climate change, to moderate potential damages, to take advantage of opportunities, or to cope w/ consequences
set of resources, and the ability to employ these resources, that are prerequisites to adaptation

Thus, Adaptive Capacity is a positive (+). But we’ve lived with the notion that more is better — more knowledge, more spaces, more of everything is better (sounds like McKibben, here, in our reading/syllabus). More, says the professor, has failed so we have to change this idea.

How do we reframe adaptive capacity in climate change since the following characteristics [of adaptive capacity] make it difficult? :

latent nature
dynamic
lack of baseline date
difficult to measure
what scale?
there are many unknowns (such as how do we measure social capital?)

She advocates a 2 tier approach: Generic (income, education, health, safety, political access) and Specific (drought response, disaster relief, climate information)

You have to build adaptive capacity before the disaster, before the risk becomes manifest.

Dr. Brian Saltzman, Dentist, Middlebury, Vermont, Open Door Clinic, Addison County

Most prevalent childhood disease in childhood is dental decay. Dr. Saltzman is therefore tackling this issue through his Open Door Clinic and through education, focusing on the marginalized, particularly the migrant worker.

He spoke about “Dental IQ,” which is the knowledge of diets and foods, which really comes into play with socio-economics.

Dr. Saltsman sees EDUCATION as the primary problem and the solution — we need more people and more bodies to help in this.

Are We Pulling in the Same Direction?

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Or are we pulling against what we need, since, as Thomas Friedman says, all we have are big problems?

In Too Many Hamburgers, Friedman says that, “For democracy to be effective and deliver the policies and infrastructure our societies need requires the political center to be focused, united and energized. That means electing candidates who will do what is right for the country not just for their ideological wing or whoever comes with the biggest bag of money. For democracies to address big problems — and that’s all we have these days — requires a lot of people pulling in the same direction, and that is precisely what we’re lacking.”

The editorial is interesting in that it points to a particular need for changing our perspective — and our energies, particularly when it comes to work. It’s very similar to what I said in class, Tuesday, about doing rather than waiting to be told what to do?

Since you guys all determined that geography establishes a context for success — kids with mothers and fathers that are college grads are more apt to go to college and succeed, for instance, to say it in a general way, and the concomitant social class follows this success, thus the inverse is true, too — might the malaise America is in have had some collective affect on the psyche of our citizens, including you? I mean, your generation’s touchstone is 9/11, since, you’ve experienced decline after decline, negativity after negativity, politically speaking, and you’ve experienced the dumbing down of the public sphere where nothing but a gloss of contemporary America is possible, particularly when mixed with hatred, so I’m wondering what your opinion might be concerning how these conditions affect us psychologically and perhaps hinder what we focus on?

Climate Change and China

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The Chinese turn climate change into a work issue, an interesting and worthwhile editorial by T Friedman of The New York Times.

And because runaway pollution in China means wasted lives, air, water, ecosystems and money — and wasted money means fewer jobs and more political instability — China’s leaders would never go a year (like we will) without energy legislation mandating new ways to do more with less. It’s a three-for-one shot for them. By becoming more energy efficient per unit of G.D.P., China saves money, takes the lead in the next great global industry and earns credit with the world for mitigating climate change.

So while America’s Republicans turned “climate change” into a four-letter word — J-O-K-E — China’s Communists also turned it into a four-letter word — J-O-B-S.

“China is changing from the factory of the world to the clean-tech laboratory of the world,” said Liu. “It has the unique ability to pit low-cost capital with large-scale experiments to find models that work.” China has designated and invested in pilot cities for electric vehicles, smart grids, LED lighting, rural biomass and low-carbon communities. “They’re able to quickly throw spaghetti on the wall to see what clean-tech models stick, and then have the political will to scale them quickly across the country,” Liu added. “This allows China to create jobs and learn quickly.”

The question has to be, where is the American will? Why do we move away from science and data? Why are we reluctant to read the tea leaves and act accordingly?

A Recovery’s Long Odds

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In A Recovery’s Long Odds, Bob Herbert, of the New York Times, discusses how “Americans are not being honest with themselves about the structural changes in the economy that have bestowed fabulous wealth on a tiny sliver at the top, while undermining the living standards of the middle class and absolutely crushing the poor.”

Herbert is pointing us in two directions: first, that Americans appear to be delusional — or that somehow we’ve been complacent with the direction leaders — and the media — say we’re heading. The notion that American citizens are dormant is beginning to get some notice. Arianna Huffington, in her new book, Third World America, evolves this notion, but gives us some solutions — how to turn this around. You can hear a good interview with here in On Point: “All countries have rich and poor. What Third World countries don’t have is a strong middle class. Neither, right now, does the United States,” says Huffington. The second notion is that of course, following on Huffington’s notion of a declining middle class, is that we have a huge gap in wealth acquisition — the disparities are now too great not to be noticed.

The middle class is finally on its knees. Jobs are scarce and good jobs even scarcer. Government and corporate policies have been whacking working Americans every which way for the past three or four decades. While globalization and technological wizardry were wreaking employment havoc, the movers and shakers in government and in the board rooms of the great corporations were embracing privatization and deregulation with the fervor of fanatics. The safety net was shredded, unions were brutally attacked and demonized, employment training and jobs programs were eliminated, higher education costs skyrocketed, and the nation’s infrastructure, a key to long-term industrial and economic health, deteriorated.

Of course, this has everything to do with sustainability – can we sustain the America we have or, perhaps better put: can we sustain the America we’ve had?

Since we’re heading towards Bill McKibben’s End of Nature, it’s appropriate to wonder how deeply the human alterations of nature have gone; that is, it may be that our processes and procedures, our ways of living — socially, economically, intellectually and spiritually — have genuinely altered our ways of being, socioeconomically, and now we find ourselves, like nature, on the ropes.

After reading End of Nature, Herbert and Huffington, I wonder what you think about where we stand in America — and where we may be heading? To put it another way, as first years, what do you see down the line for you in 3 or so years? Or, what do you have to do now to prepare to what seems to be an alternate state of being, one quite different than you’re perhaps accustomed to?

Katrina Victims Revisited

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Since we’re at the anniversary and several of you have experience in NO, this photo essay is quite interesting and, of course, totally relevant to our class, given that we begin with Katrina early on.

Hurricane Katrina Victims Revisited

It’s worth following this up with Children of the Storm.

What do you think? When examining these images, what are you thinking about? Have any of you guys who have experience in NO anything to add to this?
On Sept 21 we read “Mirror on America” and “Leaving the Trailer.” How do these pieces contribute to the images, above?

Welcome!

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Welcome to Class and the Environment First Year Seminar, Fall 2010. This is the first course of this nature at Middlebury. I’m teaching it because I’m interested in investigating how issues pertaining to capitalism, the environment and class intersect. I have no agenda, other than inquiry; that is, my only goal is to collaborate with you in developing the relevant questions that get at this complex intersection.

It is true, however, that if you’re an African American, it’s more likely that you’ll live next to a sanitation dump, a power station and have to deal with problems of poor air and water; it is more likely that you’ll also suffer from health problems — asthma, for instance. Therefore it is not surprising or even illogical to surmise that placing poor and helpless people that may lack wealth and therefore political power next to environmentally dangerous is systematic. For instance, one of the largest and most compelling wind turbine projects is proposed for the ocean off the coast of Cape Cod. This project has met resistance in courts, lead by the Kennedys and the Duponts. The primary argument the Kennedys and the Duponts have put forth is that the turbines will ruin the natural beauty of the view. There is something, then, to how we develop our infrastructure and class.

The course could have been longer, of course; however, I tried to select material that is theoretical and contemporary. It’s a difficult subject because it’s evolving faster than we can think about it. Nevertheless, I’ve tried to provide you with enough materials to ensure you get a wide sense of the ideas and tensions that exist when we speak about class and the environment.

Given the nature of the material, its ongoing change, I’ve made the call to have you write one piece, that you will revise weekly, but that gives you ample creative room to tell your story and simultaneously engage the materials in the course.

This section of the course, the Blog, is just that, a blog. This page is open to each of you. What I expect, as part of my assessment of you, is that you use this space to place ideas, materials, anything at all you consider or run into after class; it is a place to continue talking about ideas we’ve raised in class, and it’s a place for you to give us resources you find in materials that haven’t been included in the course. For instance, in A Glimpse of the Future, columnist Bob Herbert, of the New York Times, tells us that, “President Obama made an appearance in Florida last week that should have gotten more attention. At a time when many Americans are apprehensive about the state of the economy and uncertain about the nation’s long-term prospects, Mr. Obama delivered an upbeat speech that offered a glimpse of a broader overall vision and a practical way forward on the crucial issues of energy and jobs.” Unfortunately, this positive vision received little to no coverage; there was no excitement, leaving Herbert — and his readers — wondering where the American public may be in terms of new development along green lines.

Notice that I provide a resource, a quote, properly cited on the web or for web use, and a statement. I’ll end it with a question: what, indeed, do you think is going on with the American public? Apathy? The issues to complex? Is the public overwhelmed by wars, the economy and simply survival to consider such future-looking and complex ideas?

This is the use of this section. Hopefully, then, others in the class would discuss this one idea and see where it takes us.

Please feel free to add your “welcome”!