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Influence of Media

Media plays a major role in our everyday life, although we might not see direct influences the repetition of useless or biased reports can alter the way we perceive knowledge and legitimate facts. This is has become very evident when looking at the number of people that still are climate change skeptics.

In a Salon article titled “Watching Fox News makes people distrust science” the author Lindsey Abrams discusses research done by multiple universities and found that people who watched Fox News and other conservative networks were much more likely to not fully believe in climate change or at least the fact of human-caused climate change. Although people who view other networks like CNN and NPR were more open to the fact of human-caused climate change, many news stories discuss topics with potentially immense effects on our environment without giving much attention to possible side effects.

Corbett discusses this in her book Communicating with Nature when she describes how news stories involving important issues like mass-transit, consumer spending, and companies waste reduction measures often overlook possible benefits or pitfalls to our ecosystem. As people begin to digest these stories they pull out the facts that are being presented by editors, but the readers often lack much critical thought to other sides of the story or even different outcomes which might be unforeseen.

In the age of 24-hour news, we often tune in and tune out, only taking in the spoon-fed information coming through the television. As of the last year or two more people are starting to question the concept of “fake news” but I think we need to investigate useless news. With corporate interest and political biases involved the companies presenting U.S. news tend to stay away from topics that could harm corporate shareholders causing us to get caught up in old problems like “is climate change even real”.

Corbett even touches on the fact of “reality” in mainstream media, as we continue to learn about these stories many seem unreal or irrelevant because many people today don't see problems until it is directly affecting them or their community. Instead of trying to inform about breaking news stories maybe we should have more discussions on television about various social and environmental problems to try and communicate solutions or ideas which could help us ascend in the future.

A series of books titled Censored examines critical news events around the world but that receive little coverage by the mass media. These types of books and websites are crucial for getting independent points of view from people within these conflicts along with scholars looking in from the outside. If we are going to discuss news we have to consider all stories even if they are uncomfortable or not as interesting because many social and environmental problems can result from neglect and ignorance.

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Life of a Gardener

In recent years I enrolled in several horticulture classes, this is when I developed my interest in plants, gardening, and agriculture.

My passion started to grow with simple class work, I was instructed to do certain things around the horticulture garden. My teacher would always explain in detail what needed to be done and why this was a major spark in my interest because not only was I learning useful knowledge I saw the direct effects my contributions made to the garden.

These efforts lead to beautiful flowers, herbs, and vegetables which raised my interest in my diet. As I began to grow more I realized I wasn’t eating how I should, and after gardening, I saw how satisfying producing your own food was especially when it's full of nutrients and vitamins I was probably lacking. I used to see eating vegetables as a chore whereas now I see it as more of a reward for my hard work in the garden.

As I continued learning from my gardening experiences in class, I took it one step further. I created my own garden on my balcony while living in a large apartment building. This is when my education really turned into a hobby, using what I've learned to overcome obstacles and taking new experiences to continue to learn about my future endeavors.

Which leads me to my future goals, on a day-to-day basis I have tried to become more conscious about the foods I put in my body and try to make healthier more sustainable food choices. I am trying to focus on getting more protein from nuts, grains, and beans while also increasing my vegetable intake and providing myself with natural sugars and less processed treats.

This month I am working towards creating my hugelkultur beds for my garden this upcoming spring, I have received permission from my apartment manager and have already created the wooden structure to separate my garden from existing landscape. My hope is to be finished after finals week when I will collect compostable materials and mix them to create my hugel pile.

My goal over the next year is to work with the SSLUG garden more and find ways to increase awareness about sustainable garden practices. I have received a lot of attention from my garden last summer and now with construction underway more people are interested in what I am creating. I am considering using my garden as a model and trying to work with my apartment complex or renters to see if anyone would be interested in paying me to build gardens similar to mine around the property.

This leads me to my next goal, informing people about different gardening or farming practices and their benefits along with encouraging people to garden and become involved in where their food is coming from. I realized the impacts I could make when a contractor was working on my apartment building and came up to ask me about my rain barrel and the garden techniques I was using because he wanted to take the information to his family operating a small farm in Northern Arizona in Navajo territory. I shared many ideas with the contractor and he seemed excited to share his newly gained knowledge with his family. This experience left me more fulfilled than I could have imagined because after this encounter is when I realized that I could have a much bigger impact with teaching what I learn instead of just using it for myself.

My long-term goal is to continue to learn about sustainable organic gardening techniques and try to figure out how we can incorporate more of these methods in our industrialized agriculture system. We need to learn how to take steps towards a future with less chemical fertilizers and pesticides. A future system that relies on using natural nutrients and focuses more on IPM solutions is my vision. In addition, we will need to learn how to lower our water usage and l still have plentiful crops. I hope I can help to be the change in the future of our food systems.

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Our Future

The system we live in cannot thrive as it has forever so my goals are to spread sustainable practices through communication skills and interactions with people in my communities and the world as a whole. I have a love for plants so I will mainly focus on interacting with people and their current methods of gardening and agriculture to come up with ways to change processes which protect the earth and its soil but still allow for fruitful harvests. For people who are less involved with where the food on their plate comes from I would like to spread the knowledge of healthy eating habits along with easy ways to start a personal garden to get people more interested in providing for themselves and less reliant on the industrialized agriculture system we currently have in place. I would also like to be involved with new developments and renewing old developments. This could be getting more houses to use solar panel as prices continue to drop or even setting up greywater systems to cut down on water consumption and waste going to treatment facilities. Also potentially incorporating more garden and green space areas where members of the community can enjoy some aspects of nature even if they might be landlocked by cement in a large city. We could accomplish this by creating rooftop gardens or even trellises along windows patios. I want to show people to the subtle beauty of nature and bring people to the realization that we only have one chance to do our best for the earth. I believe my role in the environmental movement is to show people that you don’t have to know all the solutions to our problems to start work towards a better future.  

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Rise of Technology

As we continue to grow technology will undoubtedly be the way for a more secure future. But to secure our future we need the ability to sustain production abilities. Currently in the U.S. and other major production countries companies are creating products with a limited lifespan to force users into buying all new products.

There are many ways that companies keep this system in place, for example new computers and smartphones might change apperance but most of the time it is simple computer chips which are upgraded. So the only way to upgrade the soon to be obsolete software is to buy a whole new product, creating more waste and production for means of profit. This problem needs to be addressed creatively.  If we are able to create products that are made to last and can be upgraded with future technology we can save copious amounts of waste and save the raw materials needed for future generations to create.

Changes in production will require adjustments from consumers. Currently we are living in an unsustainable material economy, heavily reliant on new production and constant consumption. This has systemic problems that are intertwined with our daily activities and tied to emotions. Consumers often see no other option but to purchase new products and often these purchases create a release of happy feelings and a type of consumerism high. With the system in place we, as the consumer have immense purchasing power that can be used to change how companies create and produce. Once companies start to make the shift towards a sustainable future we can use our purchasing power to support those companies while boycotting the companies with the least environmental considerations.

Most companies are able to continue with the system in place and continue producing cheap goods by externalising their costs, which is described well in “The Story of Electronics” a short film that explains our material economy and the inner workings. The narrator Annie Leonard shows that these large corporations are able to externalise their costs by skipping on health care for workers especially avoiding the lower paid individuals doing the most toxic work. Or continuing toxic production at the expense of a water source in a third world country because the companies won't be held responsible they externalize the cost to the community and its citizens. Until we are convinced on the harmful side affects of our purchases these companies will continue to produce new items with no regard to environmental cost.

In Corbett’s “Communicating with Nature” she describes our mindset around work and leisure. She points out that for most of us we believe our work life has little to do with nature or even the environment around us. We too are focused on money and success with little attention to what's happening in our environment. We need to become more aware of our role in society and what effect it has. When we work towards more sustainable practices in all fields there will hopefully be less need for consumption. Then once companies realize the change in public opinion they will have to adapt to our needs as a consumer.

With our purchasing power and commitment to our goals we can achieve anything in our current system, it is more a matter of enlightening the masses to our future and the problems left ahead.

"One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn't do."   - Henry Ford

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Corbett, J. B. (2006). Communicating nature: how we create and understand environmental messages. Washington, DC: Island Press.

The Story of Stuff Project, 23 Feb. 2017, www.storyofstuff.org/movies-all/story-of-electronics/.

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The Path Less Traveled

This week I conducted an experiment where I avoided concrete and paved surfaces as much as possible. Very quickly I realized the difficulties I would face in executing the experiment.

Walkways were invented to be convenient. The paved surface gives a clear path to get where you need to go with little hazards or obstacles. Avoiding these convenient pathways was my biggest challenge. It was virtually impossible to walk outside any building and not walk directly on concrete. With clear paths set in stone the few times, I was able to avoid them was walking on the grass alongside the sidewalks or cutting through a field or quad.

Another observation I noticed was walking across a quad seems reasonable to get where you are going, but when I did decide to walk next to the sidewalk I definitely felt awkward because I was clearly avoiding the sidewalk like it was hot lava.

Concrete or some sort of solid pavement is crucial for ease of access along with personal transportation like skateboards and bikes. Which is why concrete is used immensely in every town/city across the U.S. The only problem is with more concrete comes less natural drainage through the layers of soil.

There are not many obvious solutions to create a safe and reliable path while trying to prevent floods and other drainage issues. One idea is to create new types of permeable pavements to allow for more drainage directly through the streets and sidewalks. In addition we need to increase the number of living plants and soils to accompany the streets to allow for slower and sustained absorption. With more plants in urban areas, they have the potential to add oxygen and provide a more clean and happy environment for people in neighborhoods lacking nature.  

Another solution I have seen in California was a paved trail right next to a dirt trail to allow runners the opportunity to run on a slightly more forgiving surface while also giving a place for people who needed pavement. Even though this be an alternative in communities not fully developed there is still the problem with more populated cities where nearly everything is covered in concrete. The only real option for these cities is trying to incorporate more natural landscapes into future plans. This could be something as drastic as cutting on space to build parks or as simple as designing terraces into buildings or even green roofs full of plants and an ecosystem of its own.

Most problems in our environment can be helped by the individual but we need to all work together to plan more inviting and sustainable cities that make people happy to live there. We all need to adapt to more of a “land ethic” like Aldo Leopold describes in one of his popular books, A Sand County Almanac. If we begin accepting our duties and obligations to the treatment of the natural world we can more forward to create a promising future for our generations to follow.

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep”   Robert Frost

Frost, R. (n.d.). Robert Frost Quotes. Retrieved October 05, 2017, from https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/r/robertfros151819.html?src=t_nature

Corbett, J. B. (2006). Communicating nature: how we create and understand environmental messages. Washington, DC: Island Press.

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A life worth living

Ecocentric ideologies are most inline with my belief system.  I fall in between ethics, value-driven ideologies and transformative ideologies. I seek to maintain a healthy ecosystem as a whole and try to think of ways to make it easier for people to change.

My ideologies were formed at a young age growing up in Michigan. I was always told to go play outside and explore, so that is exactly what I set out to do.

At a young age my parents allowed me to be fairly independent, allowing me to explore the woods across the street from my house. I remember feeling more sheltered climbing around the trees then sitting at home. One day my school, which sat adjacent to the woods decided to chop down several trees to make trails through the area. I was disappointed  because everytime after that I would typically follow the trails, losing the sense of exploration.

Then ten years later on a trip home, while driving through my old neighborhood, I noticed the trees were gone, nothing of a forest left, just an empty field. I was in shock and the memories I had there seemed like they vanished with the trees. This was one of the first times I personally felt how important preservation could be, not only for the ecosystems but also the history/memories. The destruction of my childhood forest playground shaped my ecocentric ideology leaning more specifically to preservationism.  

Another major historical point for me was the first time I went hunting. My grandpa went hunting every year. In middle school I finally I got my hunting license and was old enough to join him. I learned so many important things such as how animals and ecosystems as a whole are one living thing. I learned the very important fact that meat comes from killing an animal. When I killed my first (and only) deer I felt obvious guilt for taking his life but also it seemed like I killed so much more. While we waited all I could think about was how many animals have I killed to eat all this meat in my life. That experience taught me the importance of respecting where your food comes from. This also made me never want to waste food again, especially any meat because the thought of animals giving their life to go to a waste bin was terrible. This experience gave me a new outlook on animals and their treatment leading me to more ethic or value driven ideologies.  

Growing up in Michigan also gave the luxury of access to endless lakes, small lakes, rivers, swamps and a true love for water. I would ride on my favorite trail, Celery Flats, which weaved around the Kalamazoo River and plenty of swamp lands for exploration. I would go with friends to different lakes and explore the unique ecosystems. I loved to go to swampy areas and try to find frogs and turtles. But by far my favorite place to visit was Lake Michigan. I didn’t see an ocean until I was nine years old but once I did, my first thought was that it reminded me of Lake Michigan, endless blue until the horizon met the blue and continued it to the sky. There is one spot in particular that I would always walk to, where a stream lead into the lake and I remember one time I returned to find small amounts of oil along the stream’s edge. Finding the oil left me feeling very unsettled and I wondered how it could have happen and what I could have done to help prevent it in the first place. The experience made me want to do something and change how we treat our water resources. These experiences are where my transformative ideologies stemmed from. I see the world as one and realize that if everyone doesn’t work together to create a better Earth our problems will only get worse.

My love for nature was established by a young age however I never fully understood how I could protect or help do my part until I moved to California. There I learned from peers and teachers countless ways to be more aware of daily activities and the harm they could potentially cause. I learned how it is not necessarily the big things that make a big difference, it is a combination a tons of little things that add up to living more sustainable. (741)

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Circle of Life

Circle of Life

Irony can be a painful thing to learn, whether it is listening to your own advice or maybe trying to follow the rules you have set in place. This week I read “Thanks for the pesticides, America” an article on Salon.com which was published in 2013. In the article Evan Mascagni discusses the effects the production of pesticides has on the world.

The main pesticides discussed are the monocrotophos which started being produced in the 1960’s. Soon after production began the toxic effects began to become evident to our environment like massive bee die offs, the death of thousands of birds, and a threat to humans who consumed the insecticides. So as you would imagine we decided to ban the usage of monocrotophos, but decided we didn't need to ban or even control production of the pesticide as long as it was an export product. This seems like something that should contradict the Environmental Protection Agency’s ban on the product in the United States but according to a federal law any pesticide banned in the United States can still be sold as an export around the world. I was shocked that we could discover something to be detrimental to ecosystems but we still allow American companies to produce and export it.

The more distressing fact is how current this problem is even though we banned this pesticide in 1989. Mascagni brings to attention that 23 school children in India were exposed to food that had been tainted with monocrotophos in 2013 and this resulted in the death of all 23. So twenty-five years after being banned this chemical is still being exported around the world with its deadly side effects which can even be seen in the United States.

David Weir and Mark Schapiro call this “Circle of Poison” because in our one world economy we often see the effects throughout the whole system. They describe the issues starting domestically at the production facilities where workers are exposed to pesticides for long periods of time and that increases the probability of health complications. In addition, the damage done to the communities where these products are being used, whether it's local wildlife dying off or even farmers being exposed weakening their health and well being. Lastly the food often doesn't stay in the communities where it was grown and can often be found on the global market and ultimately back in America. Ironically, this may result in America citizens consuming products tainted with the very toxins we banned. Without a self evaluation of our chemical production/exportation regulations and their effects on our globe, we will fail our biosphere by killing off crucial pollinators, predators, and even future thinkers who could help further our civilization to our next step. I’ll leave with a quote from Robert Heinlein, “The supreme irony of life is hardly anyone gets out of it alive.”  (483)

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Plastics: Will They Ever End?

Plastics: Will they ever end?

No. Every plastic made on earth still remains today. The fact that plastic has zero biodegradable properties means that no matter how much time passes plastics will remain in the soil and oceans. Our layer of soil will be known as the plastic era, hopefully not with evidence of our extinction. We have started to realize this problem over the last 15 years which resulted in an increase of recycling. The problem with recycling is only a small fraction of plastic is able to be recycled and the rest is discarded to the dumps or oceans. About 6.5% of the annual use (33.6 million tons) of plastic is recycled. Another 7.7% is used in waste-energy facilities where they burn our trash to produce power, releasing tons of toxins into the air each year. The plastic that is recycled often goes through a similar process being boiled until they can separate the usable parts from the waste. This process isn't as environmentally friendly as its intended. Most of our plastics are sent to china using fossil fuels to ship over the ocean and then the plastics go through the toxic recycling process. Since there is no end game with plastics, the only option is to change our usage and habits. Firstly we need to find another material for all of our single use plastics. This includes anything from grocery bags, plastic in packaging, and even plastic bags to pick up after our animals. The more ways we change ourselves the faster we move for change as a whole. We hold the power of being consumers by using our buying power to influence how companies change the future of their environmental impact. The next option for change is to create a plastic tax, especially for one time use plastics. This could be charged to the producers but the cost will certainly trickle down to the consumer, hopefully encouraging us to use different products which might use little to no plastic. If we focus on lowering our future usage it will be easy to handle the problem at hand with the tons of plastic destroying our ecosystems around the world. We will need to create new ways to reuse and recycle plastic in ways which it doesn’t have harmful affects on our planet. There are many challenges ahead but we can only start with ourselves, so the easiest way to improve our society is to figure out how you can change. Once we have worked to change our habits maybe we will be enlightened with more ideas that can help us rid our use for plastics and the oil it is produced from. Every dream begins with a dreamer. “Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and passion to reach for the stars to change the world” (Harriet Tubman) (477)

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“There is no truth. There is only perception”

In the text Communicating Nature, the author Corbet describes the different experiences that result in our overall environmental ideology. Our environmental ideologies are formed from beliefs about the natural world which shape the way we see and use the nature around us. The author breaks these experiences into three different categories, the first being direct experiences. These direct experiences involve being submerged with nature in an unguided, exploratory adventure. These experiences were a significant part of my childhood, creating a connection to the earth and to its ecosystems. As a child growing up in Michigan I spent most of my time exploring with friends. We would play at the neighborhood school’s playground and eventually wander the forest surrounding the school. I can remember sitting amongst the trees, listening to different birds and animals feeling a true inner peace.

The author describes that our childhood experiences are an important factor in shaping the way we interpret our place in the environment, along with our actions in that environment. This can be demonstrated by my love of the water. Being raised in michigan comes with an inherent love of the water and its ecosystem. We often spent weekends at local lakes exploring the differences which makes each unique. Occasionally we would take the trek to lake michigan which compared to other lakes seemed like an ocean. This is where my true love for the water arose from. Weekends spent with long days of sun and water to the horizon. Having these experiences as a child changed my outlook on water, creating an inner importance to preserve for future generations.

The next experience the author discusses are indirect experiences. These experiences are guided explorations, for example having a treasure hunt to discover different plants and species in a national park. Although you are in nature experiencing it for yourself, you are being guided in what you see and experience. These lack the level of curiosity of direct experiences, but they’re are important because they can teach us about places we have little personal experience with. Recently I went to the the meteor crater 30 miles east of flagstaff which was a really cool experience but most certainly guided. We learned about how the meteor hit thousands of years ago and the implications of the landing which was interesting because i have never learned much asteroids or meteors. This experience taught me that nothing is forever and that some things are inevitable. This made me think about our use of plastics and how it is inevitable that we use them because of their convenience, but how could it last forever. Although the use of plastics will hopefully be surpassed by some new inventions, the plastics that exist now, will exist forever in our ecosystems, slowly destroying our oceans.

Which brings me to the last experience the author brings up, the symbolic experience. This is how I was originally introduced to the problems with plastics in our ocean through the multiple films. They showed the beauty which most of us will never have the opportunity to see along with the destruction that threatens to take it all away. These experiences are important as well because it helps us understand problems we may have never discovered in our daily lives, like where might this plastic bag float one day.

Experiences are what give life meaning and purpose, and understanding the different environments, cultures, and people we help bring us together to solve some of the most important issues facing us today. (589)