Post #8

For me food is so difficult. I care about what I eat and how it effects me, but unlike Michael I have my moments-frequently-where I give in and eat processed food. For me eating the food is more about time availability than preference. I honestly have granola bars every morning for breakfast and I can't stand them. I feel like I am eating a piece of wood, but in my mind there is no way I have time to grab anything better. This issue of caring but not doing stems from being a student which I think is very hard to get past. This is where the school institutions need pushing. I think Goucher is in pretty good shape in terms of food, but we can still go further. I think the food served at Pearl Stone is completely disgusting and is just a bunch of french fries and chicken fingers. On the other hand, I know a couple people at Goucher who will only eat that food so really the question becomes how do you change students or anyone for that matter?

The only thing I think can help change anything would be if people were forced to eat good food. I mean you look at countries who don't have processed food and you see that their food is very intimately connected to their culture. Where as, here in America there really isn't a very concrete culture. In some ways that is good because people can do what they want, but at the same time it does allow a lot of room for different things.

The solution to this is education. Since you can't invent a culture for America, the people need to be educated on where there food is coming from and how it effects their health. If people can be educated than they can begin to make the choices that allow subsidies to be put on good foods rather than processed foods. I hope that in the food revolution going on right now, especially with the help of people like Michael Pollan, we can change peoples minds and make good choices.

Response # 7

Since I first started my journey at Goucher I have felt that the environment is something that is important to this campus as a whole. This is something that inspired me to join the GreenHouse and involve myself in more of the action side of sustainability on campus. Since joining, the Goucher environmental movement has a very different light to me. I still feel that people are interested, but sometimes it seems like that is as far as it goes. Last semester I spent a good bit of time trying to recruit students to live in the GreenHouse and it turned out to be an extremely difficult task. People showed interest and then backed out at the last minute. I feel like this happens a lot with these students groups. If you look at the mailing lists for both GCAG and Ag Co-op there are a lot of people on those lists but less than half go to the events and meetings. My question for Mr. Cortese is how do we get past this barrier? How do you convince people that this issue is worth your time and effort? Furthermore, for those who are part of these groups how do we get members interested in doing something different and interesting? I feel like so many people just rely on the ideas of a coupe extremely motivated members instead of trying to be innovative themselves. I can only imagine what would happen if there were more people being creative about creating this sustainable campus.

On the more administrative side of things I also feel that students environmental ideas are not given the priority that they should be. As someone who has dealt with this side of things I and the greenhouse have been turned down on multiple occasions. However, the college still loves to promote us to the outside world because we make the college look good. To me this can be very frustrating. I feel that the administration should be more open to student ideas if they are going to promote the student groups to the degree that they do. I honestly have no idea how this issue can be solved, especially since the bond between the students and the administration is so sensitive.

Ultimately I think this campus has a long way to go to becoming a sustainable community. I think we need to get more student action and not just the same small group of people. I think that the student groups that are already established really need to work together more in order to create a stronger sense of community and hopefully get more people involved in each groups events. Furthermore, I think that the bridge between the academic side of campus and the residential side of campus needs to be breached. I think that the classroom is one of the best places to get students motivated to do things. I really hope that this new environmental studies program can start melting these two sides of campus together. With these changes I think Goucher could be on it's way to becoming a very sustainable community.

Respone # 6

After reading the IPCC report and watching Everything's Cool I have become aware of how simple words can affect the overall tone and message of a document. I was completely shocked to see that someone in politics was adding and changing words to make climate change seem like more of a debate. Even if the document is stating serious concerns the use of the word "maybe" would obviously leave the reader confused and questioning the legitimacy of climate change. On the other hand, the IPCC report used words that suggested the probability of an issue and addressed serious concern when needed. It was very evident what was important and what was not. Although, I was surprised to see all of the data presented in italicized words. I have read many different scientific reports and I have never seen word usage like that. Generally that kind of data is expressed in a very quantitative way, which I find to be more accurate and informative. I am sure that this was avoided because the IPCC report is not intended for only scientists, but as a science student I felt like that was missing.

Despite the qualitative presentation of data I thought that the IPCC was a necessary and enlightening report. I especially liked all of the graphs. The most interesting graph to me was SPM.5. This graph projected global surface warming depending on a variety of projected GHG emissions over the next 100 years. I found the projections that had a slight increase in the next 50 years and than a gradual decrease to be the most intimidating and powerful. I feel this way because I am very doubtful that the change needed to decrease GHG emissions will occur any faster than this. In this situation there will be an almost 2 degree increase in temperature causing major changes to occur. At that point it will have been too late to fix all that has gone wrong and life has we know it will be extremely different. Despite this negativity, there is hope. I think that climate change needs to be brought to the people in a more appealing way that will cause the majority of Americans to believe climate change is important and fixable. In order to do this we need to better understand the general public and what they understand about climate change. Furthermore, I think that often times the issue is overwhelming which causes people to avoid it, but if people were educated on the issue and understood how small changes can go a long way I do think change would begin to happen. If the general public were to not only agree on the issue but also feel passionate about change the government would have no choice but to change.

Ultimately, the government would fear the people instead of the people fearing the government.

Response #5

Reading Speth's Red Sky at Morning really hit home for me. As I was reading about poverty, economic growth, and globalization I felt very selfish. I looked around my room and realized how much crap I have. There are very few things in my room that I can say I know where this came from, how it was made, what resources were consumed, and how it's creation affects the environment. I truly care about the environment and do a lot of things to live my life with this in mind, but even so I am still a part of the destruction of the environment. I will guiltily admit that I do enjoy buying things. I love just getting new pens or even just buying a pair of running shoes. The idea of something new and "clean" just makes me feel better. I was trying to figure out why I have this reaction to new things and realized that I am not thinking about the bad associated with it. My new and "clean" object consumed a certain amount of energy, used some source of water, added emissions to the air, and could have polluted a water source. Furthermore, there are millions of people on the other side of the world who are trying to survive let alone buy a pair of running shoes. All of these things seem so far away when I am looking at my soon to be purchase and I can imagine this is the same or most likely worse for a lot of americans. It is even harder to change this because it is such a huge part of the society we live in today. I would say the more you have the more you are respected by people. Of course I disagree with this statement, but this is a very difficult attitude to avoid having in your life. With this in mind how is it possible to get past this attitude? I think the best thing for anyone is to connect with the natural world on a deep level and connect with those in other parts of the world who are less fortunate. If you can see these things and connect with them it might be easier to put the pens down at the store and say there is more to this life. Furthermore, I think it is important to be educated. Understanding what goes into making something could potentially change how one feels about it. Of course this is all on a personal level and consumer changes are most likely going to happen with government policy changes.

Response #4

Reading Dryzek's The Politics of the Earth really sparked my curiosity about the media. I was so confused as to why experts (scientists) are not trusted in the claims that they make. The main scientific experts who are conducting these experiments and giving the white house advice are obviously the best scientists in the country and have been trained extensively to conduct reliable studies that uncover the truth of an hypothesis. Even I, a student of science of only three years can distinguish concrete scientific studies from others. With this in mind I am trying to determine why the american public has so much trouble believing these scientific experts (people who have dedicated their entire lives to discovering the truth of climate change). I realize that there is another group of people who are dedicated to hiding the truth of climate change and their disagreement causes doubt in the minds of the general public. It truly terrifies me that the knowledge distributed by the media can not be trusted. This is so terrifying because the general pubic does not question what is said to them by a "trusted" source. To me this is one of the main reasons why change is so difficult. There is not any way to make your voice heard on this issue without there being a debate or questioning, even if you graduated from M.I.T. with a PhD in geology. How this can be changed is beyond me. Some ideas I have are emphasizing science in education so there is a better understanding of its validity, having sources reviewed by the government to ensure reliability (of course this runs the risk of a particular administration altering truth), or punishing those who claim truth to national level publications when they have no real basis for it.

Although, even if climate change was a cold hard fact that the entire world agreed on, would change happen? Considering the heart of America is the economy, would people be able to sacrifice growth for the future of people on earth? I sincerely question this and honestly do doubt that people would change. However, I am going to continue to try to believe that things can change and having truthful media is a good place to start.

Response #3

When reading The Politics of the Earth by John Dryzek, I was overwhelmed by his account of both the Promethean and the Survivalist thought. I felt like both of these were the extremes on the environmental spectrum. I personally believe in the principles behind the survivalist thought, however I do not think it is right to abandon other countries in light of this. Furthermore, I think the survivalists are being too gloomy about limited amounts of resources (at least that is how I feel Dryzek portrays them). Yes, I agree that we are going to run out of resources eventually, but there are other renewable resources (sun, wind, earth, and ocean) that we are never going to run out of. With that in mind, the survivalists need to push for developing ways to capture these renewable resources. The use of renewable resources would significantly reduce emissions, preserve the nonrenewable resources, and save money on a long-term basis. Furthermore, I think it would be amazing to see these things not only developed in industrialized nations, but in developing nations as well.

On the other hand while reading the chapter on Promethean thought I was of course angered at how much the United States government been involved in this movement. I can’t believe how selfish this country is being in terms of the environmentalism. I understand that people may not believe that we are causing global warming, but it is a well- known fact that we are causing ozone depletion, acid rain, forest destruction, etc. Furthermore, our country is demonstrating that they do not care that our country’s industrialization is hurting other nations all over the world. The country obviously cares more about economic progress than human safety and the environment. The worst part is that the decision to be this way sits heavily on the president and the administration he chooses. I am not ok with the president and congress having the power to decide whether environmentalism is important or not. I think it would be an interesting move to have Americans vote for those people. Even if someone were chosen that I didn’t like at least it would be my whole country that decided. I know this will never change, but I think it is an interesting idea to consider. I hope that when things start getting worse this country will step into the big shoes it has to fill, but for now I think we are stuck arguing about whether the mid-Atlantic snow storm was caused by global warming.

Respone # 2

While I was reading Speth’s, Red Sky at Morning, his mentioning of the United States emitting the most greenhouse gases intrigued me. It made me think about how much damage we, as an individual country, have done over the past century and how that relates to the call for action today.

The question hanging in the air is how much should each individual country do to reduce emissions? Since the United States has been emitting a substantial amount of greenhouse gases for an extended period of time should they have to reduce emissions faster? Furthermore, since developing countries have emitted less should they be able to emit more so they can establish themselves as a developed nation? The solutions to these problems are complicated and ultimately there is no one way this can be answered. However, in my mind I think the best way to solve this problem is to evaluate how much emissions an individual country is outputting and develop goals based on that value. Despite the fact that a developing country was not involved in the initial industrialization period and did not get their chance to emit substantial amounts of gases does not mean that they should be able to now. I understand the unfairness that some countries might see in this, but if major developing countries are given free range the amount of emissions in our atmosphere could be deadly. In order to help these developing countries along, the United States needs to be an example. We need to apologize for the harm we have caused to the world and commit to rectifying ourselves. I would hope that if the United States started making environmental progress other countries would follow. I say this because the United States is a major world leader and also has a way of making things look enticing. However, we are currently not doing this and have yet to even sign the Kyoto Protocol. Hopefully with Barack Obama in office more can be done to change the way the United States is acting in this regard, but our fate is still lingering in the air.