Reflections of the Changing Planet

This page was created for my Sustainability class at PSU. What will be on this blog is my own reflections from readings and work we do inside and outside the classroom. I hope this assignment will give others insight about our changing planet and open the eyes of critics. Enjoy and ask questions!

[nirvani-bliss-deactivated201209]

[bohofien]

Spread much love and peace! ☾

[honeyiro]

[ornithophilous]

[reflectionsofthechangingpla-blog]

The US is more 'green' than we thought

When we think about environmentally friendly countries, the US is most definitely not the first one to come to mind. Well, that’s not our fault either because the US has gone against going ‘green’ for some time now, but all that is about to change.

For years China has been the number one country in the world to invest in clean energy, but somehow the US stole the 2012 spot by investing a little over forty-eight billion, while china invested 45.5 billion. Now that may not seem like a whole lot but that 3.5 billion can go a long way. I wish I had 3.5 billion or even one billion…ok of topic, but you get my point.

So why all of a sudden the big jump for clean energy? Well the truth of the matter is the US has been close behind china for some time now, but we never had the ‘umph’ to take the top spot. Not that it really matters anyway who has the top spot, the only thing that does is take away the meaning of the cause.

What we should be focusing on is the fact that all countries should be trying to invest in green energy and if one country doesn’t have the billions of dollars to do so, we help out. I always say this but we must remember, sustainability is a global issue. We must look at it in global terms and fight for it on global terms. The moment we stop caring who the highest investor is, is the moment we take a step in the right direction.

[reflectionsofthechangingpla-blog]

Rough cut of my groups project :) tell me whatcha think!

[reflectionsofthechangingpla-blog]

The FREE book that is online for everyone to read!

Educate yourself's.

http://www.withouthotair.com/

[reflectionsofthechangingpla-blog]

The local group that I am doing my video project on.

Check out their website! 

http://www.greenhammer.com/

[reflectionsofthechangingpla-blog]

The Big Picture

The importance of the big picture-

When looking at how to change our lives for a more sustainable future, we always look at these small miniscule changes that don’t really do anything in the long run. Take for instance your phone charger, it’s probably sitting in the wall right now with nothing plugged into it because your phone is right there next to your computer getting text messages from your dear mother, however, people may look at you and say “oh, you are wasting so much electricity right now by leaving that thing in the outlet!” well you can turn right back around and tell them, “well actually, by having my charger plugged in, I am only using one quarter of one percent of my home’s electricity.”

Now that looks quite insignificant doesn’t it? And the truth of the matter is that…well it is quite insignificant. Physicist David MacKay looks at the big picture though. He states “If everyone does a little, we’ll only achieve a little.” We must do much more than a little in order to achieve this sustainable future everyone wants or should want. 

Also look at it in terms like this. I live in Portland, Oregon, the little sustainable bubble that it is, and say we all decided to stop using fossil fuels and resorted to renewable energy. Oh doesn’t that sound dandy.  Well the matter of the fact is, it’s just not possible. Implementing such big changes is darn right impossible to do on a local scale, not because we don’t have the will power but it is because we don’t have enough resources for supply and demand.

In order to achieve success we have to look at the BIG picture, and not just at a local lever or even a national level. This is a global issue so we must look at it and solve it in global terms.

[reflectionsofthechangingpla-blog]

Green Hammer

Green Hammer-

It becomes difficult to try to believe in something so much when the outlook is pretty grim. Green Hammer, a construction company based in Portland, Oregon, see differently though. After talking with one of the founders the other day for my Frinq video project, I became enthralled.  Everything they stood for and everything they were trying to achieve seemed quite reachable unlike believing that people will actually change for a sustainable future.

When Green Hammer first started out, it looked bleak. The company was starting out just as the economy was tanking. However, somehow they pulled through and continue to strive for excellence with their sustainable buildings and techniques.

When visiting one of their houses they were building for a lovely couple, I was surprised how “cute” it looked. I didn’t know what to expect when looking at a sustainable house, but I was pleasantly surprised. And then I walked into the house and was even more surprised. Although the house was still under construction, and there was no air conditioning what so ever, the house was a whole thirty degrees cooler on the inside. Then after I noticed this I seemed to pay more attention to the differences in this passive house style compared to a normal home. The main thing, that I noticed, was the ventilation system. With this system, toxins from the outside air were not coming in and causing a bad environment. Also the cool thing about the house was that it produced as much energy as it consumed making it really sustainable and affordable at the same time.

This passive house technique is being used all over Europe and has actually become the standard there, so why not here? If we start changing our building techniques now, to more sustainable ones, it will be one more step towards a hopeful future.

[reflectionsofthechangingpla-blog]

Post-Apartheid South Africa

Here I go again talking about past social movements that effect sustainability in some way or another but, it is a very important topic that needs to be discussed regardless. This time we are going to be focusing on the apartheid movement in South Africa. I want to talk about this mainly because it was being discussed today in class but also because it is the topic of my research paper for FRINQ class (although I mainly talk about the views of racism in post-apartheid South Africa, which is another story.)

When discussing the movement of apartheid in South Africa, what comes to mind? Maybe such key figures as Nelson Mandela. Mandela was a key person in the fight against apartheid rule however he was not alone. We look at past social movements and always think that change was only achieved by great leaders. Are vision is blinded by how we were educated at school, so I do not blame one for thinking this way, but, it is time to shift that focus. Apartheid ended because of the persistence of the South Africans. They onward struggle against the Afrikaners was a difficult one but yet they kept trying, many of them even killed for this fight. We always look past the innocent people that died to end the shame of such atrocities as Apartheid rule.

The point is, apartheid did not end because of one person alone but the whole of South Africa, the seventy percent of the population, and the determination to end such discrimination. Remember that movements may start out small and you may think you don’t make a difference, but you do. 

[reflectionsofthechangingpla-blog]

The Congo Free State

The Congo Free State:

In class we have been learning about various things that connect sustainability to the outside world (see last post). This week we learned about the movement of abolition of slavery and the creation of the Congo as a so called free state. It is important to understand the connection between the two concepts discussed in my sustainability class because the truth is, they go hand in hand. The connection between the two becomes quite clear when we look at the big picture. They both are the result of exploitation of a people. On one hand we have the slave movement which was of course the result of exploiting African Americans and kidnapping them from their homelands and using them to work in extreme conditions for our leisurely pleasure. On the other hand we have the creation of the Congo Free State which was created by king Leopold II as a way to try to end slavery and also create a nation of free trade (to help boost their economy and make it a thriving metropolis). The sad fact is King Leopold actually only wanted the Congo to extract all its resources and reap profits.

 As we can see, the two topics that were discussed above both follow the fact that the exploitation of other people is the reason we have such problems still to this day, including problems of sustainability. Just look at modern times how the united states goes into a third world, extracts all the resources and takes the profit without giving back to the native people. Sounds familiar huh? Every movement comes with the cost of exploitation,  we just need to figure out, as a society, how to turn our negative history into a more positive future.

[reflectionsofthechangingpla-blog]

The Connection to Sustainability and the Outside World

The Connection to Sustainability and the Outside World

Sustainability is a very, in general, broad topic. It’s very meaning can change between person to person. One of the greatest things about Sustainability is it can be tied to almost anything in the world such as history. When looking at the past we can learn how to change the future. But we can even look further into the subject as to say that such historical moments like the civil rights movement can be linked to the sustainability movement in which their inner working are more or less very similar.

When looking back into history, we find such clues that lead us back to sustainability and saving the environment. Last Thursday we reviewed a piece by Robert Marks and a piece by Las Casas. They primarily focus on the destruction of the Native Americans culture when the Spanish came over to the Americas (The Great Dying). When assigned theses reading I truly wondered what these topics had to do with Sustainability but you have to look beneath the surface.

When we learn subjects during school, we usually learn about leaders and the movements that followed. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, however, we seem to miss the other side of the story. From the people who were behind the actual movement, that were behind the leaders.

From reading these assignments, we learn to acknowledge the other side. We learn to appreciate the movement as a whole instead of as an individual aspect. But it is not just movements that you can tie in with sustainability, you can also look at organization or other aspects like modern day in comparison to thoughts of the environment back hundreds of years ago (Which prove to be very important to acknowledge because these thoughts of sustainability date back farther then one would expect.)

We must tie Sustainability into all aspects of our life to understand that it is fundamental to grow from and it is much easier to do than one would think. Next time you watch the news or read an article, think to yourself “How can this link to Sustainability?”

[reflectionsofthechangingpla-blog]

"Earth Days"

When watching the film "Earth Days" your thoughts become useless and all you can think about is how the planet has become so corrupted due to our own demises. Through out the film you see many people who say that something needs to be done about our worsening climate but yet they refuse to give up the money, time or, resources too make such things possible. Then you have the limited few that give their all to fight our environmental problems. In order to fix these problems that will ultimatley be our downfall we need to be like the limited few and give it our all. Many people have a problem with this because they do not want to give up such frivalous amenities. It is these citizens that are making our environmental issues worse. We must all give up even a little something to fix our planet. When we all can realize this, the dreams of the people that created Earth Day will be actualized and our planet will indeed be saved.