Environmental Studies At The New School

Learning about and engaging with the environment involves the integration of many disciplines and combines the classroom experience with work in the field, fusing theory and practice. At The New School the nucleus of this engagement is the Tishman Environment and Design Center. It is a place for students and faculty from all colleges and schools to gather, interact, and explore shared experiences. It facilitates research, curriculum development, internships, and fieldwork opportunities. It stimulates critical thinking and builds relationships through lectures, public programs, workshops, and conferences. The center is exactly that, a center of creative work and experience that allows students and faculty to explore the curriculum, share and interact on projects, and research and work with the community at large to explore opportunities for collaboration. Our environment is the larger New York metropolitan area. There are many opportunities to work with towns, cities, states, non-governmental groups, corporations, other universities, and other organizations. Through the Tishman Environment and Design Center, we hope to connect students and faculty to this broader coalition to enhance learning, civic engagement, and research.

[motherjones]

No, Dudes, Organic Food Is Still Good for You: Five Ways the Stanford Study Sells Organics Short

Is organic food little more than a trumped-up marketing scheme, another way for affluent consumers to waste money? A just-released paper by Stanford researchers—and the reaction to it by the media—suggests as much. Here are a few reasons that shallow analysis doesn’t hold up.

(photo via)

[zsofiaa]

[laughingsquid]

City Acquires High Line’s Final Section from CSX

[msnbc]

This month, over a rapid four day period, the ice sheet that covers Greenland melted more than it ever has in the last 30 years, NASA reported. Find out why scientists are alarmed on the Lean Forward blog.

(Photo credit: AFP/Getty Images/NASA)

[breakingnews]

Rapid Greenland melt alarms scientists

[humanrightswatch]

Jimmy Liguyon, shot dead on March 5, 2012, resisted attempts by mining companies to operate in his village.

The Philippine government’s failure to address threats and killings of environmental advocates worsens a climate of lawlessness just as the Aquino administration is pushing for new mining investments.

Photo courtesy of Liguyon family

[seanlennon]

Here’s the HD version of Don’t Frack My Mother!

[newsflick-blog]

Lightning strikes over a barn surrounded by a soybean crop in Donnellson, Iowa, July 13, 2012.

[mydarkenedeyes]

Polluted Promises

New illustration by Dan Elijah G. Fajardo 

[humanscalecities]

Green Cities of Europe: Global Lessons on Green Urbanism

Edited by Timothy Beatley

[sadowa]

Mario Tama/Getty Images  

Protesters at the Belo Monte dam site in Brazil.

The Dam Boom in the Amazon

A confrontation between the insatiable appetite for energy and the enduring need for habitability is under way in Brazil as it moves aggressively to harness the power of its rivers with plans for dozens of hydroelectric dams.

Such projects are engineering and aesthetic marvels that provide hydroelectric power and can also control floods and direct water for irrigation. But they also divert rivers, destroy animal habitat, displace entire communities and drown vast amounts of land beneath reservoirs.

One project has galvanized the anti-dam movement in Brazil — the Belo Monte dam on the Xingu River, a tributary of the Amazon in Pará State. At a cost of roughly $16 billion, it is one of 30 large dams that have been announced for Brazil’s Amazon region.

The Brazilian government and executives at Norte Energia, the consortium of companies behind the dam, say the project is vital to meeting the energy needs of a country poised to become the world’s fifth largest economy by 2017. They argue that in 10 years, Brazil will need 56 percent more electricity, and that hydropower is the cleanest, cheapest and most dependable option.

The finished dam will stretch nearly four miles across the majestic Xingu. It will also radically transform the land and the lives of at least 20,000 people, including thousands of Indians who have lived along the river for centuries. The project includes two dams, two canals, two reservoirs and a system of dikes. More earth will have to be dug than was moved to construct the Panama Canal, according to the environmental group International Rivers.

Belo Monte is one of dozens of major dams under way or in the planning stages around the world. According to Philip M. Fearnside, a professor at the National Institute for Research in Amazonia, Brazil’s plan for energy expansion calls for 48 large dams by 2020.

[pri]

Euro trash wanted! Sweden’s waste-to-energy program converts household trash into energy, providing electricity and heating to hundreds of thousands of homes across the nation. But the program may be too successful; they’re now running out of homegrown trash to fuel the power plants. 

Catarina Ostlund, Senior Advisor for the Swedish EPA, says the country is currently importing 800,000 tons of trash from other European countries. More.

(Photo: The Vattenfall combined heat and power plant in Uppsala, Sweden. From Vattenfall/Flickr)

[iraffiruse]

[nsenvironmentalstudies-blog]

Thanks, Josh.

[rob-kalmbach]

[nevver]

Lover’s Lane

[think-progress]

32,000 flee Colorado Springs as wildfires worsen. Gov. John Hickenlooper said “It was like looking at the worst movie set you could imagine.”

Photo via @scottseibold

[plantedcity]

Visualizing climate change in Vancouver 

Here’s a shot of the freshly painted columns of the Cambie Bridge stretching across Vancouver’s False Creek. The blue shading is meant to show the potential impacts of the melting of Earth’s major ice sheets in terms of sea level rise. Details here. 

Related:

‘Sea level rise fastest in Pacific: report’ (Vancouver Sun)

‘Report illustrates toll of climate change in Vancouver’ (Georgia Straight)

‘Vancouver in the research spotlight as one of the world’s most vulnerable cities to rising sea levels’ (Adaptation to Climate Change Team - SFU)

‘Coastal Cities at Risk’

‘Sea level rise for the coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington: Past, Present, and Future’ (National Academies Press)

[think-progress]

Republicans are holding nearly 3 million transportation jobs hostage for 6,000 temporary oil jobs.

Why would they… oh wait, that’s just Republican (oil) math.

[nsenvironmentalstudies-blog]

"Mayor Bloomberg said in a statement, "Adrian Benepe has done extraordinary work as Parks Commissioner leading transformative changes in every corner of New York City, and I couldn’t be prouder that he is going to lead the Trust for Public Land’s new initiative to replicate our work in cities across the country.""

Parks Commissioner Benepe Resigns For Job At Trust For Public Land