LCENVS

An article about walmart's attempt to buy more local produce and educate small farmers. This is a new aspect of their sustainability goals that they are trying to focus on now.

The biggest question I have is what standards they are using to make their judgments on what is "local", "sustainable", or such like. Local is within state borders, but will Wal-Marts on the borders of states be subject to that same criteria, and unable to access markets just a few miles away? I tried to dig through their website, but as of yet have found mostly press releases... Just some thoughts relating this to the symposium - I'd welcome comments, I'm just trying to figure out what this could lead to: For all those who attended the symposium (particularly the banquet), this timing couldn't have been better. Last night the VP of Bon Appetit said that "when Wal-Mart says change, people change". Wal-Mart is also an expert at driving prices down, even on luxury items. If the high price of specialty local or organic foods are indeed bifurcating the market, and keeping lower incomes out of the alternative food movement, Wal-Mart is a force that can change that. That said, Wal-Mart is also very good at driving down prices at the expense of the producer. While many of the people behind Wal-Mart support the alternative food movement, sometimes very directly, this could be the economic equivalent of getting hugged to tightly by a gorilla. Its size could crush a lot of aspects of the alternative food movement (like independent producers). And if there is a serious drive to cut costs, migrant labor exploitation and other cost-cutters could become pretty serious. It is all about what Wal-Mart is actually measuring... Either way, this will be a good one to watch, in my opinion. The Wal-Mart fortune has actually been pretty supportive of environmental agriculture and community issues for longer than most people think. They've been demonized, fairly, for a lot of issues related to the destruction of local economic communities and such, but here is one organization that has been largely supported off the Wal-Mart fortune: http://www.icfdn.org/abo

A company called Vadxx in Ohio is taking the "picked-over" scraps of plastic and converting into a low-sulfur crude oil. I don't know how feasible this would be large scale but its nice to see this stuff out of the landfills and being put to use.

This NY Times article discusses new research performed by Boston Childern's Hospital on a possible link between air pollution and diabetes.

People love talking about wind and solar. For good reason, too. Geothermal, hydro, and other renewable energy sources are valuable, but ultimately only sun and wind (and mostly sun) have the heft necessary to power the nation. That leaves us with two big problems! Night time and windless days. Enough power has to be produced to meet minimal needs at any given time, which is related to the idea of baseload production. When the wind is really moving, or the sun is particularly bright, wind and solar plants can generally overproduce. But all that is for naught when night rolls around, unless things like pumped hydro or NaS batteries fill in the gaps. Of course, there is always nuclear. Tempting as it is to say you can either argue for nuclear, or read about Japan, the nuclear option is still on the table - largely because of its ability to provide constant energy. But if wind and solar are indeed more desirable, storage is an absolute must, and worth being informed about.

"... researchers were especially surprised to find that wealthy nations were no better at safeguarding their rivers than developing nations." GIS mapping used here too. After the Willamette River cleanup this past Saturday, this topic has been on my mind. I think we really need to address the chemicals we're dumping into our water, and this doesnt just mean the typical concerns around oil and extremely toxic compounds. We have a mentality that water is only here for us to use to get rid of our waste. We emphasize the importance of "clean water" for people's health because we use clean water for cleaning things, but we forget that even though we're clean, the water's not anymore. And the truth is, water does a lot more than function as a human waste disposal. We should know better than to think that we wont have to deal with the effects of the chemicals in our shampoos, toothpastes, and agricultural chemicals once the drain/rain takes them away. It just takes the effects a little longer to cycle back around, but clearly, they have.

A brief article about the project PlanetSolar, led by Raphael Domjan, and its efforts to prove that solar power is a viable and wise alternative energy approach, especially in the shipping industry. Domjan has overseen the construction of a solar-powered catamaran with 5,300 square feet of solar panels and hopes that its voyage across the world will encourage a re-examination of fuel efficiency and popularize solar technology.

Could Mt. Everest be the Panda of movements attempting to address issues of global warming? It isn't exactly charismatic megafauna, but maybe for climactic problems a bit of "charismatic geology" could do the trick?

From the NYT opinions blog. It may be old news now, but its always good to remember that the way we think about things - cognitively or not - does impact the things we do about them. Here we see how fear influences environmental policy and our own health in potentially deleterious ways. Strikingly similar to much of Barry Glassner's research as well, I believe.

The environmental movement have been hampered by a series of "though traps": we live in a world a limits, people are self-centered and hate following rules, we've lost our connection to nature, and even if we wanted to change it's just too late. Lappe argues that if we look at the world with a more ecological mind, a mind that recognizes that everything is connected and we can change the world if we change how we see it. As Anais Nin said, "We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are". So we just need to see the world not in terms of quantities but qualities, not limits but alignments, and so on. I would recommend this book for someone who doesn't believe that we can see our way out of this crisis, that needs a glimmer of hope on the horizon. I wouldn't recommend it for an environmental studies student, but perhaps for their disgruntled uncle.

Check out this interesting debate, with lots of money already invested!, over the possibility of a high-tech fix to global warming by scrubbing CO2 from the atmosphere, once rejected out of hand but now seriously considered given our failure to enact policies to limit GHG emissions...amazing how the discussion changes in a matter of a few short years!...

In this piece, New Yorker writer reports on recent remarks by Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum claiming that Obama's environmental and energy agenda constitute a "theology." When questioned further on his line of reasoning, Santorum said, "Radical environmentalism...[is] this idea that man is here to serve the earth rather than to husband and steward the earth's resources." I mean, to be honest, I don't take Santorum seriously. However, what do we think of his argument here? After having recently read Shellenberger and Nordhaus's argument in their opening to their new book "Love Your Monsters," Santorum's statements here struck me as, well, pretty similar to some of what S&N are saying. S&N say that environmentalism has all the touches of a theology; so does Santorum. (They say the same thing for different reasons, of course.) Has environmentalism become a theology? And by conceptualizing it as a theology, do we presuppose some sort of inherent antagonism between Science and Religion?

Just bumped into this TOE (Theory Of Everything) related to environmental studies...what do you think of it??

This is an older article about an issue that has caused a lot of controversy in Alaska between interest groups. The giant open pit mine proposed at the headwaters of Bristol Bay's salmon runs is a threat to the fishing industry and the environment and many oppose it. Many also support the jobs it would bring to the area and Native Alaskans who are the primary inhabitants of villages in Bristol Bay are divided on the issue as well.

Probably a must-read for those interested in climate issues, since this article makes the claim that glacial losses may be 10% that of what we once thought. Which raises the question of how serious climate change is, versus what we say it is, how issues like this reflect on environmentalism, and more. In particular, it calls to mind environmentalism's dependence on science as justification, which often works well, but sometimes scientific knowledge is improved and (therefore) changed. It isn't a clean way of accessing the truth, and you're taking a risk with much of science when its new. Those in hydrology can appreciate how imperfect much of the data collection and interpretation we have is, to speak to this point. For those who get nervous, the Christian Science Monitor is not religiously run or influenced, only founded by a religious institution historically. And they cover climate change news on the regular, without an agenda for skepticism. So don't let that throw you.

In this book, the authors discuss the use of protected areas for conservation and their ties to capitalism. The authors discuss the dualism in which many environmentalists view conservation and the preservation of protected areas as a means to halt the impacts of capitalism; however, they argue that capitalism permeates conservation practices. The authors argue that the forces of capitalism and conservation both "re-categoriz[e]" the environment. The boundaries between conservation and capitalism are not easily defined. I would recommend this book to someone who is familiar with the conservation and environmental movements. In addition, I would also recommend it to those who are familiar with the conservation movement and oppose it. I think they would gain some helpful insights about conservation that they may have not considered before.

Here's an important 40th anniversary in the history of US environmentalism; would you agree with the author of this post, now that we know what we know 40 years later?

I thought that this was an interesting article because it discusses uranium mining and the possible environmental contamination concerns that increased production are causing. Specifically, inappropriate clean-up processes are leading to contamination of aquifers and drinking water in areas where mining and production are occuring. This article relates to many of the energy debates and concerns that are brought up in many current environmental books--specifically in many of the books that were reviewed in ENVS 400. -Isabel Kuniholm

deBuys, William. 2011. A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest. New York: Oxford University Press deBuys goes into the political, ecological, ecological and climactic science behind what drives the current and future problems in the American Southwest. He summarizes the science behind climate change, Hadley cells and the problems behind urban planning in big cities like Phoenix. Aside from giving a stirring overview of the natural beauty the region boasts, deBuys says more than once that the book is a thorough history of a region that will drastically be affected by climate change within our grasp that we should not ignore. The problems, while numerous and quite difficult to sort through, should be easier to solve with our resources in the region. I agree with the need for cooperation to swash through the web of problems, but despite the issues of drought and water quality mutual to regions around the world, they are simply not the same. I fear it would be much harder to transpose a solution from the Southwest to the Mediterranean or Western China.

Solomon, Steven. 2010. Water: the epic struggle for wealth, power, and civilization. New York: Harper. Steven Solomon's book Water: the epic struggle for wealth, power and civilization takes a look at how the control and efficient use of water has shaped human society from the ancient past to the present. With a look at water's influence in history from ancient civilizations to modern day, in his book, Solomon stresses that beyond the high value of precious resources such as oil, the control of water is far more important to the development of powerful societies. Weather through oceanic knowledge/skills or freshwater resource control/manipulation, throughout history water, Solomon argues has been the essential key to the rise and fall of great powers. Looking at different turning points in history, such as the rise of the Egyptian Kingdoms and Europe's establishment of the world trade system, Solomon shows how the control and advancements made in relation to fresh water control and/or seafaring highlights how water was the catalyst in each society's ability to gain and elicit control for a time being. With the support of his historical background in how water has played a keys role in the rise and fall of powerful kingdoms and nations, Solomon believes that water issues have the ability to impact political, economic, and environmental realities across the globe. Although lengthy, the book had a detailed amount of historical points that brought strength to his argument. I found his books to be very convincing in the fact that water played a pivotal role in explaining who in history were and were not able to rise to great power and take control impacting the direction of human civilization's growth. Throughout the past, water has shaped that way humans have developed. I agree with Solomon that it is by no means that this reality should change in the outcome of the future human history. For water related research or personal water related interest this book