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Relates to next year's symposium on cities: here are some of the popular (and impressive, though unsurprising) approaches cities are taking to becoming more environmentally friendly. Many are rooted in energy concerns and transport, among a few other social equity issues. However almost all commonly share large-scale government investment approaches to creating spatially isolated things (exceptions include bike shares and Curitiba's bus system). Look to Masdar City for one that is fully designed as an environmentalist's paradise (cars are banned). But I would point out that such cities are incredibly expensive to build, and in this case, they're almost guaranteed to be built on the sale of oil. While I don't like to play a game of blood money blame, there is some irony. I'd like to see some cost-benefit analysis that address whether the costs, both monetary and external from the use of oil, really make these projects "better", or if they are more of a show than a practical reality. Curitiba in Brazil is one worth researching as well, if you're interested in cities. Also a design-centric city, Curitiba also tries to build off popular demand, and alongside their environmental wins they have a good list of social records to lay claim to as well. Unlike Portland's own MAX, they have a decent percentage of citizens who actually pay to ride the public transit (despite the fact that it also is run via a system where fare checkers are few and far between), and analysts have credited it to the civic pride generated by the aesthetic value and efficiency of the system. The demand there is a little more organic and if I remember right, the bus system actually uses a few private businesses who compete to provide optimal service. Government steps in to keep things relatively well organized - an interesting economic approach as well. Interesting government programs that combine solutions to poverty, waste, and education in one as well.

Cleveland has an interesting thing as well - low-income, private efforts to address problems locally and at a smaller scale. Theoretically, their approach could be used in a whole range of places, and addresses social concerns in Cleveland far better than something like a new green stadium would. It just requires people willing to set up systems like the one in the article (and funding - the systems they have were funded by another organization, not reliable in terms of expanding the scale of the project or keeping it going into the long term It is also a fairly fancy system - and costlier too. But the idea can be done cheaply). As we prepare to enter discussions on the symposium (meeting on the 10th! A week from today) I'm curious which approach people find more appealing.

Addresses the big environmental question of where the force to solve environmental problems will come from. This talk argues for coorporations as the major force - and not the small ones either. Cargill as the change we need? He also touches on ideas of economic externalities at the very end, which is one (atleast in my opinion) of the most important economic ideas (and ideas in general) that relates to environmentalism. Not paying attention to the value of environmental resources is bad for the environment, and bad for the economy. The most recent economic meltdown could be argued to be a product of similar misjudgments in value in the housing market. Simply a good philosophy of progress to keep an eye on. Also interesting how businesses are realizing they want to be competitive into the future, and that is the very definition of sustainability

Definitely valuable points made in this talk. Oddly enough though, for the same reason that I was concerned about the fungicides saving bees, the fundamental theory if this talk worries me. There is a "treat the immediate illness/symptom" ideology at play here. This very well may be the only option for avoiding the pending doom, but we can't rely on this as a long term solution to our sustainability crisis. True, it might be impractical to wait for consumers to get their act together, but if we just give up on that effort all together, we're not going to save ourselves for very long. There needs to be a drastic change in consumerism. If consumers are sent the message that sustainability is being taken care of at the higher level of companies and producers (and this is my main concern with this talk) then we remove all incentive for consumers to change their ways. Jim posted an article about a week ago about how energy efficient appliances do not actually result in reduced energy use, and the main reason this happens is because it makes the consumers feel like they can go back to old (pre-responsibility) energy use habits (or even more) once the appliances are labeled "efficient." In the same way, this sustainable companies idea might not work very long. I'm thinking, for example, the point where he mentions palm oil in China. He says we could say to consumers "go ahead and use palm oil because its all 'good,' " when in reality -- granted, this palm oil might be better than other alternatives, but still -- any use of palm oil is something we should be trying to move away from. This might be a valuable short-term method of saving the world, but in my opinion it has to be just that: short-term. I agree with you that the mention of economic externalities was one of the most important parts. Too bad he didnt expand on this. I would love it if someone should give a TED talk on just this idea (my parents wont listen when I try to explain that even the organic foo

Sounds like, in the long run, a call for a shift in the economic system itself. A little further out there, but I found this one a few nights ago: http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_jackson_s_economic_reality_check.html I recall thinking it sounded a little idealistic at the time, but yesterday's idealism can be today's movement and tomorrow's reality, I suppose. A vague plan for the future from him, but a plan of sorts all the same. Still not sure I buy it, but I can't deny liking the sound of it.

We in ENVS are all over the bon for composting waste at catered dinners/events. But do we need that waste in the first place? And what about in the lunch room -- where there's a dishwasher! -- paper cups for the special drinks? Really? And until they stop putting them out in those lines, I'm looking at you, ENVS students; plastic cups are only a few steps away.

Not only do the disposable cups in the Bon suck, but at the meet your major events bottled water was served, while there are water fountains just down the hall. I don't get it. And I have a big problem with Maggie's and DoveCote not selling reusable mugs or promoting the fact they have mugs you can use if you stay there.. How can we discourage this practice?

Lucy I totally get what your saying. I know that Maggies has the reusable mugs but they don't advertise them, however dovecote doesn't--they do have cups though. Maybe that can be a topic we could bring up with the sustainability task force? Jim what do you think?

The title phrase is a well-known book title as well, from Robert Heilbroner's Worldly Philosophers of 1953. Both this article and Heilbroner's book, however, are talking about economics. These authors argue that economics has, over the last several decades, approached problems much like dentists, "modest people who look at a small part of the body but remove a lot of pain." For all its virtues, this approach provides no nuance nor guidance when everyone plainly realizes that our economic system is a mess, and we need informed people to ask big questions about it. They see the Occupy movement as asking these questions, and call on economists to offer answers. This recommendation rings at the heart of a liberal arts education, and is why in ENVS 220 we collectively struggle to connect the data and methods we work with to larger theories and frameworks, larger philosophical stances that remind us there are choices to be made in how to understand and fix this world.

Living Through the End of Nature by Paul Wapner presents a new way forward for environmentalism after the end of nature. Wapner argues that humans have altered the physical environment to such an extent that it can no longer be viewed separately from humans. Additionally, many argue that nature is just a social construction and never existed in the first place. Since popular environmentalism focuses on how humans can reduce their impact on nature, the end of nature presents a problem for the movement. However, Wapner argues that the end of nature will actually make the environmental movement stronger and more politically effective by making political debate less contentious and by focusing on the connections between people, landscapes, species, and narratives. Moving beyond nature will also soften the boundaries that currently exist, and protect the well-being of humans and the nonhuman world by focusing on opportunities that involve both, such as urban sustainability, social justice, poverty alleviation, and the rights of indigenous people. Overall Wapner's book is well argued and well supported by concrete examples. However, he continually presents wildness and wilderness in terms of otherness which leads the reader to question if he actually believes his own argument about the end of nature. Wapner provides good historical background of the environmental movement which makes this book useful for readers that are beginning to be interested in environmentalism, or potentially beginning students who would like to learn about different perspectives on the topic. I would recommend this book to almost anyone, though the academic style to Wapner's writing makes this book more appropriate for a classroom setting than for a popular audience.

At face value, this doesn't look terribly environmental. And the explicit content really isn't (unless you count carbon emissions from burning tires in the streets and such), though no doubt there will be impacts on resource decisions, etc... if we dig for it. I bring it up more because of the implications it has for our ability to predict developments in the future. In ENVS 160, this applies pretty directly to the Limits to Growth model we've been discussing (as readily as it applies to optimistic predictions of world growth - predictions either way). It brings us to that ever present thorn in the side of decision makers: we don't know what the future holds, or what will make it get there. Where someone parked their car impacted the course of a nation, and the international focus on Egypt today can show how that has widespread impacts as well. If we're cautious and uncomfortable with the mystery of the future, resilience may be a way to hedge our bets, relating to another issue in the class. Otherwise, it largely seems to be a gamble. Even the broad trends can jump. How much will we ever be able to model, when it comes to systems this complex? A recognition of the limits of prediction, not a statement to their being invaluable (no one predicted the car, and it mattered in the outcome. But people could have predicted social unrest resulting in many people in the streets, and that was needed to take advantage of what the car provided)

Shellenberger and Nordhaus' first big essay The Death of Environmentalism stated that in order for us to take more productive action on the ecological issues of today and tomorrow we must move past environmentalism to post-environmentalism. In their book The Breakthrough: from the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility they argue that the environmentalism that got us this far, is now failing to address the major ecological issues of our time including climate change, and that we must move past this "politics of limits" (what they claim traditional environmentalism is) and move forward to the what they call the "politics of possibility." This is the idea of harnessing all of our human innovation, technology, creative ideas, and passion and pushing for a new modernization, one in which there is more prosperity for all. This they claim will allow us to properly address and take action on the major ecological issues of our time, like climate change. It's a compelling argument but one that seems to have some holes in it. If we are to push for a new modernization, and increase everyone's prosperity, how exactly do we go about doing that? Modernization had terrible effects on the people who didn't have the resources to fight it, would this be round two of that history? How do we make that transition in a more manageable and civil way? Regardless, this book is a must read for environmental studies/science/policy students and teachers, as well as people who consider themselves environmentalists and those who do not. Shellenberger and Nordhaus are clearly trying to reach across the divide, meeting the political left, center and right, and have already influenced some politicians and big names in our society. Could this be the direction we head in? The Politics of possibility?

So, is the era of freeway utopias finally over?  Well, not everywhere, but in some cases indeed they are coming down in a number of US cities. So, what seems to be the pattern connecting these once-icons of freedom that are now (or soon to be) gone, vs. those that are remaining (or expanding)?

This article talks about how the metaphors, language, and terminology we use to describe phenomena (in this case poverty) actually impact how we act and perceive policies and reality. It calls back to ideas about knowledge being communicated via social constructions that give us one view, but may be just as accurate as a description that gives a different view or description of the same phenomena. The same language issue (particularly issues of "natural" being "good") finds its way into environmentalism. Of course, it is neither fun nor (at face value) practical to always be wary of the semantic and syntactic details of our language (coming to LC, I remember being frustrated and resistant to the insistence of some of my professors that I use "gender neutral language" in essays, rather than using "he" or "she" to refer to conceptual individuals or "mankind" to the human race) , but perhaps it matters a little more than we think. Ultimately it is hard to know exactly how our language influences the way we think and act, and the language-shaping-thinking versus thinking-shaping-language debate is alive and well. Regardless, when in a field that practices a lot of advocacy work and various forms of story telling (even the stories we tell about the history of environmentalism or certain environmental conflicts) it is something to at least consider.

A succinct introduction to the idea of permaculture and why we need it. For those ENVS students who dont yet already know: There's a group of students working on putting in a permaculture garden/food forest on a plot of land right next to campus. If you're interested, read this for background and email me (jhuggins@lclark.edu) so I can tell you when and where our next meeting will be.

Well, sounds like we have a discussion going here! If you want, Julia, we can talk at length about it, but it's gonna be difficult to talk if skeptics are dismissed as not knowing what permaculture really is. If the heart of permaculture is "the idea that agriculture should harmonize with natural cycles," a Julie Guthman or a Bob Goldman or a JDP would probably say sounds good, what what sort of harmonization with what sorts of natural cycles? This is inspirational, but too vague to adequately describe the details of any agricultural technique -- a whole host of techniques far different from permaculture could make the same claim. And perhaps our difference concerns permaculture not as an agricultural technique (which Julie appeared to endorse in her brief remarks), but its e.g. class, religious, and political dimensions, so we'd probably need to broaden our discussion to include its full dimensionality. ENVS represents an inclusive approach: it's not the ecological dimension alone, nor other dimensions; it's as many dimensions as are significant. Others on this thread may or may not be interested in permaculture, but in general it's worth a broader conversation between faculty and students on proposed solutions to our ecological problems. We want to make sure that there's a healthy give and take and a healthy respect, which may lead to a broader understanding of why certain solutions don't necessarily enthrall all of us. (Anyone ready to reform the tax code, as Julie strongly recommended as one of her "ecological" solutions??)

Like Julia, my response is too long for Diigo (perhaps this a function we should write to them about changing?), but I've posted it as a Google Site (also like Julia): https://sites.google.com/site/envs220diigopermaculture/

Map-based interface comparing human quality of life (primarily related to health, education, and income, but including other measures as well) in different parts of the US. Turns out, surprise surprise, that there are some huge differences from place to place, suggesting the necessity of situated research to explain these differences.

No light read, at 39 pages, but a good source for anyone doing research on the value of ecosystems from an economic perspective. My scant review of it indicates that it brings together a lot of different studies on the benefits people get from natural systems, and how much it would cost us to replace those with artificial systems. From the preface: "Applying economic thinking to the use of biodiversity and ecosystem services can help clarify two critical points: why prosperity and poverty reduction depend on maintaining the flow of benefits from ecosystems; and why successful environmental protection needs to be grounded in sound economics, including explicit recognition, efficient allocation, and fair distribution of the costs and benefits of conservation and sustainable use of natural resources." This report has been cited a lot lately in efforts to create some sort of system that would remove externalities from the pricing of all sorts of goods, and account for the costs of natural capital (i.e. the environment) in producing more or less everything. That would be a major environmental achievement, and social achievement in general.

A better read: http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Bright-Green/2009/1116/the-economics-of-ecosystems Summarizes the report well, and also puts out the big question: can we put a price on everything? I personally am frustrated by how often debates turn into a cost-benefit analysis about the "practicality" of an idea - and I say that as a fan of the field of economics. Should we be resorting to that to defend environmental things that we value, or are there larger ideas and principles at play? Do we weaken the strength of a principles-based argument with a practicality/economically based one?

We'll be discussing several issues connected to this in ENVS 160 come spring, not only related to the technical and political drawbacks of pricing ecosystem services, but also the naive notions of "natural" vs. "artificial" that it often presupposes. The whole exercise reveals about the very best mainstream environmental thought can deliver…which is not good enough, in many recent scholars' opinions.

Last of my posting on the political situation, just wanted to provide some variety. This is a more moderate view. It points out the fact that all things considered, the Obama administration has not been a huge help with environmental issues in so far, so the change will be tough on the environment, but not neccessarily dramatic. And it also has a touch of optimism at the end, that bills supporting certain aspects of energy issues may pass via compromise. But all told, its a lot of the old bad news, and more. Funding cuts seem to be a big worry - if you can't get rid of a committee, department, or what have you, its not as hard to make sure it has no money. I'd be interested in seeing how the elections at the state level might play out as well. The state parks system in my home state is under threat now, and I imagine the same might be true in other places. Anyone from other states know anything personally about whats going on at that scale?

Its important to remember how much scientific knowledge is affected by cultural context in how it is both accepted and understood. Science cannot escape the pressures placed upon it by the cultural and societal ways of human beings, at least so far. Speaking as someone who has covered scientific research for a public audience via the PioLog and in other projects, its not fun playing the translator between the technical experts and "the common man", as it were. A lot gets lost - and its hard to know whats valuable, and what isn't. Or what wasn't even understood in the first place (I'm far from the best person to be writing about research relating to the structure of Gecko hair follicles - a problem that can be found throughout journalism. Journalists do not always understand what they're writing about, and can cast it in ways that are often far off the mark. Its an odd business). So here we have an example of science trying to use other means of communication to get across that translation. But do scientists have the time, and should they have the responsibility, of having to expend resources not only on their studies, but on communicating them - and their implications - to the public? By getting away from journalism, do we risk facing a more significant or intentional sort of bias? I don't know what the right way to share science, its process, and its results with the public is, but I do think creating alternatives to the primary model is a useful thing. The current journalistic model has its strengths, but it has its weaknesses as well. Perhaps creating multiple ways of doing this will be useful.

I plug this one a lot, and the Monitor has great coverage on it, but I'll put it out there again. First, because the news that the Supreme Court is not hearing a case on the issue is pertinent both to this issue, and to the chance to have established some sense of precedent for similar environmental cases in the future, as that becomes a bigger and bulkier part of society (and therefore the law). Second, because it really highlights the destructive capabilities of things causing environmental change, even in real time. I think one of the most interesting parts comes in here: "If the Asian carp does take hold in the Great Lakes, the ecosystem will no doubt do what ecosystems do best: adapt. After all the term "invasive species" is, by definition, relative, often marking a transitional phase as a species establishes itself in a new ecosystem. ...Whether the economy adapts to the Asian carp, however, remains to be seen." That highlights the real reason there is so much concern. These lakes are damned important to the well-being of the states around them. And its not just the Great Lakes, once in place Asian Carp readily move into wetlands, river ways, and even other lakes. Minnesota calls itself the land of 10,000 lakes, Wisconsin has more in its "Lakes District", and Michigan follows suit. The economies built around them have covered most of my summer pay over the past few years, so this is a very personal issue as well.

One of the icons of the climate movement is, well, giving up…but imagining a new dawn, one that looks a lot like the utopia of traditional societies that many in the environmental movement prefer: "The momentum of the heat, and the momentum of the economy that power it, can't be turned off quickly enough to prevent hideous damage. But we will keep fighting, in the hope that we can limit that damage. And in the process…we'll help build the architecture for the world that comes next, the dispersed and localized societies that can survive the damage we can no longer prevent.…We'll need, chief among all things, to get smaller and less centralized, to focus not on growth but on maintenance, on a controlled decline from the perilous heights to which we have climbed." So, what's wrong with this picture??

It's always easy to see how people subscribing to ideas we don't like succumb to groupthink, but we are capable of the same -- here, the topic concerns the anti-Islamicist trend in this country but it could equally concern any environmentalist/anti-environmentalist bandwagons out there. Dowd quotes a Scottish historian: "[People], it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one."

The chemical DDT was banned in the 1970's, therefore there is no way it is still effecting plants and animals today, right? Well this NY Times article on California condors, a species battling against extinction, discusses a possible link between thing-shelled condor eggs and DDT. Condor's diets often include sea-creatures, such as California sea lions, which have high levels of DDT in their blubber. Could eating sea lions cause condor eggs to be abnormally thin?