This One's A Keeper.

This course is perhaps one of the most enjoyable for me this semester. It is in this course that I am able to test my assumptions of environmental politics and the debate surrounding climate change. At times it is frustrating trying to wrap my head around much of the debate and science of the issues. For me, the most interesting parts of the course were learning about different theories as they relate to environmentalism and the different approaches different actors utilize. That is, how nations differ in their approach than do international organizations or even grass roots advocacy.

In the beginning, I was entirely fatalistic about this course and how anything could change. It was depressing to learn about how just by living and the way we do we are destroying the environment. But I really enjoyed tracing our steps in history to how we got to this point, and attempting to think different about the problems. The last few weeks were particularly enlightening in this regard and now I am much more conscious of environmental efforts in my daily life. This is a difficult course to teach and covers a wide variety of topics but I believe Professor Nichols did a commendable job compacting much of the rhetoric and literature into applicable and learnable lessons. The speakers we saw were particularly valuable to making real world connections to the material.If there is one indicator at what I will take away from this course, it is the books I keep. Typically at the end of each semester students sell back the books they deem useless. But many of the books in this course I will choose to keep and refer back to in my future endeavors.

New Perspectives and Solutions

Despite the often depressing and hopeless subject matter, this class was my favorite of the semester. I had taken a few environmental classes before, but most of them focused on development (which is my concentration in SIS). After becoming interested in the environmental impacts of development, I decided to take this class to gain a greater understanding of the environmental issues that the globe is facing. What I did not really grasp before this class as the sheer scale and urgency of the environmental problems. I knew that climate change was occurring and that it would effect everyone, but I was not aware of the devastation is could cause.

Besides the facts of what is really happening in our environment, I am taking away a good deal of perspectives and viewpoints on the true causes and solutions to our environmental problems. I feel like I can view the discussion from multiple sides and I know where different actors and scholars are coming from (for example, comparing Eaarth and Cradle to Cradle). I would love to see a society like Bill McKibben proposed, but I can’t see enough people mobilizing quickly enough for it to be truly effective. Yet, at the same time, I am wary of the supposed power of technology as a cure-all. I am still unsure of the best way to move forward, in the face of the monumental challenge at hand. However, despite my uncertainty, I take solace in many of the small-scale actions that I have seen and we have discussed in class that are slowly working to preserve the environment. As a soon-to-be graduate with no definite plans yet, I am eager to leave the security of AU and do something of significance. I know that it will be in the field of development, but I have become increasingly interested in the intersection of environment and development. I hope that I can have a career in this field, and I am sure I will use the knowledge I have acquired in this class.

Linking Environmental Politics to Development

This course has greatly broadened my scope of knowledge on environmental regulations, international conferences, the politics surrounding various issues. I entered this class with a defined interest in environmentalism and sustainability, but I knew nothing about the different definitions of those two words, the contrasting perspectives, and criticisms of different approaches to handling the environmental crisis that strikes our planet.
My focus in SIS is International Development, but that does not at all make this course irrelevant to my studies. I have learned about the linkages between environmental degradation and development issues such as environmental displacement, issues with food aid, and how consumerism in affluent countries hurts developing countries. Reading literature by scholars like Aldo Leopold, Bill McKibben, Michael Maniates, and others, ha given me vast insight into the realm of environmental politics, and provided me with the right tools to analyze how this all relates to developing economies. Since I chose to work on a group project throughout the semester, I have spent a lot of time looking in to ways that activism spurs social change to positively impact the environment. My experience showed me the challenges one faces in activist movements to make lasting changes on a college campus, which I also had the opportunity to hear more about from Bill McKibben and Lt. Dan Choi on Saturday at Power Shift. I drew many parallels to my experience and the global climate change conferences and legislation developments we discuss in class. In both situations, (although mine on a much smaller scale), multiple parties are involved and affected by the proposed change I wanted, so that entails many steps and different people to consider. Finding out that I could not achieve my goal due one simple contract was quite disappointing, but also woke up me up to the reality. Contracts act as binding agreements between two agents, and are necessary for this capitalist society to function—another common theme with my experience and the experience that global actors play in efforts to reduce climate change.

I will take all of these experiences with me in my (anticipated) career in international development and activism.

Apologizes for Sounding Hopeles

There are certainly a lot of things that I will take from this course. Even though I am winding down my college career, this is the first purely environmental course that I have taken. I have picked up some new information on the various subject and topic areas we have discussed. But what I have taken away the most is a way of thinking, a mindset that considers the many different aspects of the environment and environmental thinking. This all probably all sounds a bit cliché, but the exposure to environmental thinking has made these issues much more visible to me.

I don’t intend to become utterly devoted to a radical environmental worldview or shift my career toward environmentalism (although if I can find a job in environmentalism now, I’ll take it). My concentration and my area of greatest interest remain development. But this course has taken a lot of what I learned in numerous development courses, and allowed me to further understand this material within an environmental framework. My thoughts and beliefs in development have become better formed from these materials.

At the same time, my greater knowledge of environmental issues of today is leaving me with a bit of exasperation. Throughout the course, so many of the biggest problems we face environmentally have been discussed, as have some of the potential solutions. I personally, struggle to understand the optimism for our future in some situations. Bill McKibben must be idiotically optimistic if he believes the solutions proposed to the apocalyptic future are possible or even enough. From a global view, the reality of reversing human impact seems hopeless, and it is something I make no attempt to think I can solve. Global efforts may be required, but I will take solace in the local efforts and local mindset. These smaller pictures can have hope. Apologizes for making it seem all I take from the class is to give up.

Responsible Technology

I found the book “Cradle to Cradle” to be a refreshing approach to the environmental problems at hand. While the authors took a clearly very technology-centered perspective, it was one that I found responsible. We have frequently discussed in class the dangers of growth-centered societies and assuming that technology and innovation will solve all of our problems. And while I typically find myself agreeing with that perspective, “Cradle to Cradle” promotes responsible technology that not only eliminates harm to the environment, but also nourishes it. I think part of the reason that the book really struck home to me was that the authors did recognize that there is something wrong with the economic system within which the world functions. Corporations must move beyond standard measures of efficiency and work towards “eco-effectiveness”. Essentially this means that not just factories need to be eco-efficient, but the entire process of creating and disposing of goods needs to be environmentally aware. I really do think McDonough and Braungart’s ideas are creative and insightful, and I would love to see the world that they envisioned.

However moving in this direction will be slow, and will take a lot of convincing on the parts of business owners. I think the fact that McDonough is reconstructing Ford’s River Rouge factory is a big step, because if other corporations can see how effective their strategy is, it could flourish. Until we convince business owners and consumers that working towards a healthy environment is in their best interest, large-scale change will not occur.

Reducing reliance on "Reduce, Reuse Recycle"

McDonough and Braungart’s book Cradle to Cradle approaches sustainable living from a unique angle. They have disposed of the “reduce, reuse, recycle” mantra, and pointed out that it is far from the solution that we need for sustainable living. Reading this book, I was very surprised to learn of many of the processes and dangerous materials that are involved in the production of even the most innocuous products. It is fascinating to learn of some of the chemicals and metals that seem superfluous, yet have found their way into all sorts of everyday items. It would have been interesting to hear from McDonough and Braungart’s perspective the history of how these materials became involved in so many of our products.

The alternative production system that these authors suggest, a shift away from “cradle-to-grave” toward a “cradle-to-cradle” system, is in line with the radical shift that other environmentalists have suggested is necessary for a new global political and economic system. McDonough and Braungart call for a new approach to consumption may be necessary, but it seems almost market liberal in its reliance on technology as the solution for all environmental ills. The right technology may make a significant difference to humanities sustainability, but other issues like population growth and land practices must be considered as well.

The future of the environmental movement will require a shift from “reduce, recycle, reuse” toward the “cradle-to-cradle” approach suggested in this book. This requires a radical shift in system, one that will not be easy. However, this approach must begin with a push from somewhere.

Efficiency in the "Olden Days"

In Cradle to Cradle, authors William McDonough and Michael Braungart explore pretty much every type of consumer product imaginable, how it is made, and how the mind frame of "efficiency" has affected its production. The authors are against this idea of efficient production because they think it ignores the true ways that production could prove sustainable, and does not "reach deep enough" (62). Eco-efficiency tries to make the best of the mess we have already created, work with a tangled, badly designed system, and reduce waste instead of just creating a whole new system that wouldn't create any waste at all. This is what we need to do, the authors express, in order to live and work in a world that acknowledges the entire linking relationship of all things. But capitalism does not allow for this. Unfortunately, I don't think we will ever reach a system like this because companies care only about producing goods quickly and cheaply--and that's their definition of efficiency. For many companies, eco-efficiency isn't even something they will consider because it constricts them to regulations and limits them to how much waste they can produce.
The authors also discuss our consumer culture of waste. Waste has become embedded in our daily lives to a point that it is completely unavoidable to live a zero-waste life (unless maybe we go transcendentalist and live outside for the rest of time). Most of the products we use are comprised of parts that come from many different spheres of the globe and are extracted from nonrenewable sources. I found a lot of similarities from this reading and the video "The Story of Suff," which examines our shopping culture as a driver behind "perceived obsolescence," which the authors also discuss in Cradle to Cradle. Products today are designed not to last long so that we feel we need to throw them away and buy more. This contagious mind set is dangerous and must, somehow, be expelled if we want to continue living on this planet.
One particular story in the book I found interesting was the discussion of prior leather shoe production. Conventional leather shoes, they say, are "monstrous hybrids" (99) comprised of too many different biological and technical materials. In the past, leather shoes were tanned with vegetable chemicals and the wastes posed no real problem becuse the shoe could biodegrade after use. But this required a lot of time to produce, and has therefore been replaced with a cheaper, quicker mode: chromium tanning. But this is emits dangerous toxins (often in undeveloped regions, pointing to the unequal disparities within the system), and leather shoes can no longer biodegrade. So why don't we go back to the old design? Because capitalism does not idealize it.

After reading this, I am completely at a loss. What can I do, then, if there is an ethical issue behind literally every product I use in my daily life? Perhaps well-educated architects could come up with a new system to remedy the situation, but will the world ever adopt it and let it replace the old one? Doubtful. I'm curious to see what others have to say about this.

The Lorax: An Ending for Social Change

The Onceler's not right
He cannot be
He is a terrible man
He'll cut down this tree

There is a better option
It is a concoction
Of People, Ideas and Positive Oction

I'll go near and far
But I won't go by car
I'll cross that mountain range
I'll adopt social change

I'll tell this story of the evil of thned
Of a fat little man who became king of greed
Now all that is left is this one tiny seed.

Oh and I'll give the capitalists anthrax
Long live the Lorax!

Lorax

Yo can someone post our Lorax ending? I forget who has it...

Green Aviation

Saw this cool article on The New York Times.

also theres a really cool graphic on the second link at the end.

Air Traffic System Update Encountered Turbulence
By JAD MOUAWAD
Imagine an air traffic system where planes would no longer have to wait in long rush-hour lines before taking off, or have to circle the skies before landing. In this world, planes would be able to fly more direct routes and land along smoother glide paths.

Those are the changes the Federal Aviation Administration has been promising for years through an ambitious program to modernize the nation’s air traffic system, and replace radars on the ground with satellite technology. The problem is that this new system, called NextGen, will cost an estimated $30 billion to $42 billion to complete. So far, the airlines have been reluctant to put up their half of the money for a system that will not be operational for at least a decade.

But NextGen, which stands for the Next Generation Air Transportation System, received a boost on Friday with House passage of a $59.7 billion bill that finances the F.A.A. over the next four years, providing much-needed stability to the agency’s flagship program. Since 2007, the F.A.A. bill had been repeatedly stalled and its budget temporarily extended 18 times.

The bill, which was approved 223 to 196, largely along party lines, also cuts overall spending on aviation by $4 billion and includes a provision that would curb the right of airline employees to unionize. The bill from the Republican-dominated House must still be reconciled with a vastly different version that the Senate, controlled by Democrats, approved in February. The White House has said it will veto a final bill that includes the labor provision.

And Representative Nick J. Rahall of West Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, assailed the deep cuts in the F.A.A. budget, which, he noted, came a week after two airliners landed at Washington National Airport without being able to contact the single air traffic controller on duty.

Modernizing the nation’s current air traffic system, which is based on technology invented during World War II, is universally seen as critical to coping with the congested airspace over the United States and to accommodate growing traffic. In its latest forecast, the F.A.A. estimated that United States airlines would carry 1.3 billion passengers in 2031, up from about 700 million in 2011.

Just like GPS for cars, satellite navigation gives pilots their exact location at any given time. Air traffic controllers would not have to wait 30 seconds for the next sweep of their radar screen to know the locations of planes. Radar’s limits means that controllers must now keep planes three miles apart when they approach airports. This limits the number of planes that can land each hour and contributes to the longer lines for takeoff.

“Today’s airspace is woefully antiquated,” said Steve Fulton, who helped pioneer satellite-guided navigation with Alaska Airlines in the 1990s and now works for GE Aviation.

Airlines burn an extra 10 percent of fuel today, he said, as they circle complicated approach routes or are put on a holding pattern by controllers juggling several flights.

“Instead of a chaotic and unplanned and unpredictable system, NextGen would provide precise synchronization,” he said.

Because of the surge in traffic in recent decades, the current system is often operating at the limits of its capacity. Robert W. Mann Jr., an aviation industry expert in Port Washington, N.Y., estimated that delays and airport congestion cost the industry as much as $12 billion a year in lost time and extra fuel costs.

The United States has also been lagging other countries that are already moving into this digital navigation age, including Australia, Canada, China, and several European countries like Sweden.

Yet airlines, which continue to be low in cash, have been reluctant to commit before they get a clearer sense on how the F.A.A. plans to transition to this new technology.

“Basically, it comes down to economics,” Mr. Mann said. “This is an industry that is not operationally driven. It is financially driven. And unfortunately, the airlines have learned to be very circumspect.”

Experts said the repeated delays in financing over the last few years have contributed to NextGen’s slow pace. The F.A.A. also has a history of being unable to complete large-scale investment programs on time and on budget.

In a report last month, the Department of Transportation’s inspector general said that another of the F.A.A.’s major technological programs, called En Route Automation Modernization, was four years behind schedule and could end up costing as much as $500 million more than its initial budget of $2.1 billion. The program, one of the building blocks of NextGen, is intended to track airliners at cruising altitude. It has suffered software glitches, including tagging flight numbers to the wrong planes, at its initial testing centers in Seattle and Salt Lake City.

“Yes, we have not been perfect in the past in technological rollouts,” said Michael P. Huerta, the F.A.A.’s deputy administrator. “But this one is different.”

Of NextGen, he added, “We are beyond this being a research and planning project and we are very much in implementations.”

The airlines are broadly supportive of the F.A.A.’s goals to make the system more efficient, said Sharon Pinkerton, the senior vice president for legislative and regulatory policy at the Air Transport Association, the industry’s main trade group. But the F.A.A. needs to establish some clearer benchmarks on how it plans to move forward, she said.

“Airlines would like to ensure that the F.A.A. is able to demonstrate they can deliver the promised benefits of NextGen, especially from projects in which airlines have already equipped planes,” said Ms. Pinkerton, a former F.A.A. assistant administrator for aviation policy, planning and environment.

Alaska Airlines, for instance, has been using a satellite-guidance tool called R.N.P., or Required Navigation Performance, that allows its planes to take off and land along more direct routes than traditional approaches, even in bad weather with low visibility.

Southwest Airlines has invested $150 million to equip most of its 600 Boeing 737s with this technology.

The F.A.A. said it has established more than 900 procedures and routes for planes equipped with the satellite technology at about 200 airports. But carriers complain that many of them are simply overlaid on the old radar-based approaches, which makes them far less effective. As a result, the benefits to the airlines have been diluted.

“These new aircraft have extraordinary capabilities that we can’t use because we have older planes crowding the airspace and because we don’t have the required navigation capabilities,” said David Cush, the chief executive of Virgin America, which has a younger fleet equipped with satellite technology.

Southwest, for instance, uses the technology at only 11 airports, including Los Angeles and Raleigh-Durham.

Mike Van de Ven, Southwest’s chief operating officer, said the F.A.A. should give landing priority to planes with the latest satellite navigation tools onboard, instead of on a first-come-first serve basis, as is the case today.

“If you have made the investment in the equipage to allow your plane to be more efficient,” Mr. Van de Ven said, “we believe you ought to get preferential treatment.”

Steve Dickson, senior vice president for flight operations at Delta Air Lines, said the airlines had a long history of investing in technologies the F.A.A. required, but that never paid off.

“It’s fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me,” he said.

“Right now, based on our track record, the benefits accrue to the late adopters. We need to change that paradigm if we want to move forward.”

http://visualization.geblogs.com/visualization/optimized_descents/

Empty Rhetoric?

As I watched Obama’s speech last Wednesday, I was excited. His discussion of cutting America’s oil dependence rang true to everything we had been talking about in class. However, after the initial excitement wore off, I started to wonder how feasible his statements really were. While it would be great if we cut back on the amount of oil imported each day and worked towards making energy efficient technologies more available, it seems like an unlikely goal unless political will on both sides grows. One of the articles discussed the Republicans reactions to Obama’s speech, calling it “same old, same old”. Even Obama admitted that countless politicians have vowed to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil, what makes Obama so sure that his administration can do that? Considering the current political gridlock, it seems unlikely that both sides will ever come to an agreement about a policy framework for Obama’s proposal. I fear that his speech will just turn into empty rhetoric because action towards his goal will be hard to sustain.

I also wonder if Obama’s suggestions are enough. His speech was still overwhelmingly centered on economic growth through clean energy markets. However, as we have been discussing in class, growth might be the wrong thing to focus on. Bill McKibben wrote that we should be focused on maintaining the huge wealth that we already possess. While this is a huge deviation from mainstream thought and economics, it might be a necessary change if we are going to weather the storm of climate change.

All Talk No Game?

On Wednesday I was surprised to see some of my friends who attend Georgetown University to post pictures of President Obama making a speech on their campus. I was even more intrigued by the words written behind him "Winning the Future: American Energy". Now just the title demonstrates the same old rhetoric of creating change for 'future' generations. This speech clearly came at an opportune time for the President

With the Middle East in crisis and gas prices rising sharply because of it, the President needed to address and mitigate fears related to energy policy as they affect the every day lives of Americans. The President needed to connect the events in the Middle East to the American people in some tangible way. The way he went about doing that was focusing primarily on automobiles and the oil industry. Additionally, this has political overtones for his mounting reelection campaign. The President took this opportune moment to deliver a two-birds-with-one-stone speech.

Yet his rhetoric alone cannot change energy policy or the way Americans think about the energy policy. Further relating his message to the American people, the President invoked the economy and a nice jobs report. While the President provides a hopeful message on the future of the environment, his rhetoric is not clearly backed up with concrete action. He seemed to understand the idea of institution change; Stating the nation "has known about the dangers of our oil dependence for decades. Presidents and politicians of every stripe have promised energy independence, but that promise has so far gone unmet. ... We've also run into the same political gridlock and inertia that's held us back for decades. That has to change." It remains to be seen whether anything actually will change

A Popular Argument, but NOT a Sustainable One

Obama’s speech touches on several of the important energy issues that we have discussed in light of responding to climate change. However, he is framing his changes in energy policy in terms of immediate political security, and not the long term environmental security that many concerned about climate change would be hoping to hear.

The immediate response to reading any coverage of the speech from an environmental advocate is extreme disappointment at the limited commitments the administration is taking. Before reading the speech, I had seen a number of news articles with headlines concerning Obama cutting foreign oil by 1/3 in 15 years. My immediate reaction was that this commitment is very underwhelming. While it may seem like a practical commitment in the light of recent concerns over foreign oil and looking at the reality of America’s addiction, this is not what is needed with the environmental concerns of climate change looming or already affecting us. From a security perspective, Obama is quite right that the United States should cut down on foreign oil, but this commitment must come along side overall oil consumption cuts.

Despite this less than encouraging start, it is refreshing that Obama does realize the reality of the situation ahead. He discusses the rising consumption of countries like China and India meaning that there is not going to be long-term declines in the price of oil. Similarly, he acknowledges there will be no quick fixes to the current energy situation.

Where Obama misses the mark, other than his focus on cutting only foreign oil, are some of his alternatives. The first two alternatives he discusses, natural gas and biofuels, are not sustainable either. While they most likely have a role in our future, he discusses them as the solution rather than means to steady the ship while we develop better alternatives. The attention he pays to efficiency is a solution worth noting. In both transportation and electricity, improving efficiency are probably the most attainable and cost-effective solutions we have. Still, Obama brushed off the long-term concerns for the environment in favor of protecting national security and the wallets of Americans; a popular strategy, but probably not a sustainable one.