Climate Change, Government, and Pretty Things

I remember reading somewhere, during the election season, that Republicans were fretting about Obama making access to unemployment benefits and food stamps easier, when in fact all he had done was advertise the programs more effectively.

This is what I was thinking of when I read about Obama's not super eloquent press conference on climate change. The president "emphasized creating "a conversation across the country" to educate Americans and determine what they're really ready to commit to, policy-wise, on the issue." The article I linked there doesn't really talk about how that might be accomplished, other than President Obama making frequent speeches on the topic.

Which had me wondering.

I know the White House couldn't put up posters saying "Global Warming is Real!" without the right wing throwing a conniption and comparing it to Nazi propaganda. And it might just be a consequence of being in college that I think putting up posters is the solution to anything.

But I do feel like the government has much greater capacities for public education than it actually uses. Think about the health care reform law. For months and months after it passed, and still now, tons of people didn't even know what was in it, much less that they could sign up for special insurance pools to cover them while it went into effect. (You can, by the way. Sign up here.) The places that government provides information are frankly so scattered and poorly designed (think of the massive web of endless .gov websites which no one has ever heard of) that it's not very effective. I guess they have a lot of information to get out while trying to avoid charges of propaganda, but come on guys, do better.

So if the White House wants to start a national conversation to educate Americans on climate change, I really do think they should make some posters. Pretty ones. Which link to well-designed websites full of practical information. Seriously.

(This has been a bit of a rant. Sorry!)

Teaching Environmental Theology

So today in Environmental Theology we were talking about something with the environment and theology, and I can't tell you anything about what we were talking about specifically, because I was thinking about the fact that these issues aren't really talked about in churches I've attended and then I was thinking about how they should be included in sunday school lessons and then I spent the rest of the class and the whole walk home dreaming up a sunday school curriculum on the topic. And I actually legitimately think it would be great fun so I'm writing it here.

This would probably work best for early elementary school age children. The basic idea is based on some sermons by St. Basil, but it would incorporate both theistic and atheistic views of the environment.

Take a group of kids to a local park and send them on a mission: Collect as many different variety of leaves as possible. Or, if you don't want them pulling leaves off trees, have them make rubbings of different kinds of bark with crayons. Gather these all together and count how many different kinds of plants they found.

All that diversity is pretty cool, right? It's certainly more interesting than if all of the plants were the same! Some people believe that God created the world this way specifically, to teach us about God through how amazing the world is. Other people believe that the world came to be this way all by itself across millions of years. (And a lot of people believe both!) What do you think, hypothetical children?

Now, let's talk about stewardship! I'm not sure quite what the best way to convey "but all this lovely biodiversity is under threat because we humans screw shit up" to small children is, but I'm sure someone somewhere has written a picture book about it or something that can get that across without traumatizing anyone.

If you believe in God, how do you think God feels about bad things that happen to the Earth? How do you feel about it? Some people think that God gave humans the special job of taking care of the Earth. But even if you don't think God said so, humans still are able to help protect the Earth more than other species can. (There could be clever comments here about can a tree stop you from cutting it down? Nope, but a person can!)

Brainstorm a list of ways humans can help protect other species. Some will be pretty obvious - don't cut down lots of trees or kill lots of animals! But do you use paper towels in your house? Paper towels are made out of trees! What could you do instead to help keep more trees from being cut down for paper towels? I'm sure you could get a pretty substantial list going on in that vein.

And that's how I imagine a fun day in the park could be spent talking to kids about environmental responsibility, what religion says about it, and what they can do. Obviously you could expand it a lot - talk more about appropriate Bible stories or appropriate other-faith/no-faith stories or both, for starters. But the debate is on now so I have to pay attention. Let me know if you'd send your kid to my hypothetical sunday school class! :D

Environmental Theology Feelings

So I'm taking environmental theology, and today we were talking about if faith traditions can help address climate change, and how. One of the things the article we read talked about was how to attribute blame/responsibility for climate change, and I pointed this problem out.

"I don't think it's helpful to be talking about blame," someone immediately said. "Yeah, like, I have friends who care about the environment but some who just don't care about the earth at all, and you know it's all up to the individual's beliefs so it's not like you can blame them for not doing anything." "Everyone just needs to do their little bit like turning off the lights."

Not gonna lie, all of this made me really angry.

First of all, yes, there is blame to distribute. It's tricky to do so, because it's spread across a few centuries and seven continents, but there are objectively some places and people who are more responsible than others, and failing to take that into account when considering the environmental crisis is incredibly unjust.

Second of all, yes, if your friend doesn't give a shit about the planet, they are absolutely doing something wrong. As people who live in a privileged country which contributed an awful lot to this mess, we have a moral obligation to take some responsibility. We can disagree about the extent of the responsibility - for example, people with more resources probably have more responsibility than those with less - but just not caring is immoral, full stop.

ESPECIALLY when we go to a university that makes basic environmental considerations essentially cost-free. It distributes information on how to recycle properly, and pays for it. It distributes information on unplugging appliances not in use, taking short showers, setting the thermostat at an appropriate level. It provides energy-efficient appliances, LEED certified buildings, and dozens of volunteer and political opportunities to address environmental issues locally and nationally for kicks on a Saturday afternoon if we want. All we have to do is follow directions like we learned in kindergarden, and you can literally avoid sending your garbage to China. Failing to take even that tiny responsibility has a real, concrete impact on the lives of other people. The fact that my classmates failed to recognize that and thought that everyone should just do what they wanted and not talk about blame or responsibility was really upsetting.

How Not to Report on Climate Change

Tonight on the news, when Brian Williams asked some Weather Channel guy if the warm summer was part of a more permanent change, I got all excited. Was the news actually going to talk about climate change?!

There were so many possibilities! He could have linked the warm winter to the record breaking heat waves this summer, or the worldwide increase in extreme weather events. It would have been awesome.

Instead, Mr. Weatherman pointed at his weather map and said something along the lines of, "It's warm this year, so it won't snow. Back to you, Brian."

Sigh. I guess that works, too.

Don't Buy Our Stuff!

The Black Friday excitement has come and gone with only a little bit of pepper spray, but this was a kind of cool idea: Patagonia put an advertisement in the New York Times last Friday telling people not to buy their jackets. Which is sort of a nice message to hear on Black Friday. Don't buy shit!

Though I have to admit, I went out the very next day and bought some yarn on sale. But I'm trying to make all my Christmas gifts with supplies I already have. Which, I must admit, is going to take some creative thinking on my part. Wish me luck! Hope everyone has fun Christmas shopping or not-shopping, as the case may be!

Pre-Thanksgiving Links

Long time no blog! I've been working on a few different projects for school, which you'll get to see shortly. Right now I'm supposed to be packing up my apartment for Thanksgiving break, but I made the mistake of opening my blogroll first, and apparently a lot has happened in the past twenty four hours! And frankly, much of it makes me glad that I'm soon leaving the country! But here's what I'm reading this afternoon.

The Case Against Buying Christmas Presents by Leo Babauta.

A rant, but a good one. I like making and baking Christmas gifts! :D (Though that still means buying things, and stuff like fabric and yarn is often sort of treacherous environmentally and in terms of labor, being made cheaply far away, dyed with all sorts of suspicious stuff, and shipped miles to my local big box craft store...)

Some Occupy reading...

A short, interesting piece on Occupy Wall Street's office space from Mother Jones.

An amazing open letter calling for the resignation of the Cancellor of UC Davis from Professor Nathan Brown.

Occupy Minneapolis occupies a second foreclosed home from Think Progress

There's been some talk about what the Occupy movement should do next as cities make it more difficult to hold actual encampments, and I really like the idea of adopting Minneapolis's strategy of occupying foreclosed homes more widely. It targets a clear issue, brings real attention to the increasing poverty or near-poverty in this country, and has immediately visible results.

And finally, A long, detailed article on different perspectives of higher education by Steven Brint. As a college student, the question of "who should be in college and what should they be doing there?" is relevant to my interests.

Plentitude Economy?

I saw this headline this morning and proceeded to be really confused: Why Masturbation is an Economic Act.

Um. Well. Tell me, TreeHugger, why exactly is masturbation an economic act?

I'm glad you asked, said TreeHugger. It's an economic act because EVERYTHING is an economic act, and we just wanted to shock you into reading about economics!

Ah, clever, I responded, since I'll gladly admit that I usually don't spend much time reading about economics. TreeHugger proceeded to explain using Gross Domestic Product as a primary indicator of our well-being (economic or otherwise) isn't necessarily effective because it leaves out a lot of variables. "Economy" includes all wealth and resources, not just those traded by big banks. So, for example, when we grow our own food, we're replacing commercial farming - that'd look like a loss in the GPD, but it's not a loss of resources. And certain, um, extracurricular activities might replace the entertainment industry in some ways, but the entertainment value remains. So when they say "OMG the markets are down!", that doesn't necessarily mean everything's gone to hell - using less products or services doesn't necessarily mean a loss of wealth, resources, or happiness.

I thought that was a kind of cool idea, but there's a problem - if the market going down means you've lost your job, then yes, it does mean a loss of wealth, resources and/or happiness. Our economy and our way of living is set up around this particular idea of what consumption means, and it has very real-world consequences outside floaty happy thoughts of abundance and collaboration and gardening.

The blog post offered a solution in the form of a video by the Center for a New American Dream called the "Plentitude Economy." It has a few small suggestions for how to reconsider the economy, like having everyone work only 4 days instead of 5 (more jobs, less stress (and thus less health problems), more time to participate in the economy in other ways) and encouraging DIY and neighborhood-based activity. It's a cute little video, check it out:

New Dream Mini-Views: Visualizing a Plenitude Economy from Center for a New American Dream on Vimeo.

What do you think? Is that a useful/realistic way to understand the economy? I think I kinda like it, but I must admit I'm still a bit confused.

"Thank God That Childbirth Was Impossible Before The Invention Of The Internal Combustion Engine"

That headline made me smile lots, so I stole it from Think Progress. My mental image was some complicated gasoline-powered baby-removing device, but actually it was about a woman who lived three blocks from the hospital where her child was born and was prohibited from walking him home. The hospital said it was too dangerous.

In addition to that ridiculous story, please enjoy this military cover of Rolling in the Deep:



Let no one say Republicans don't support the arts. They just support the arts if the arts budget is hidden inside the Department of Defense budget.

Who's In The Kitchen?

Do you remember this? It's Jamie Oliver's TED talk, which came out about a year and a half ago. It's well worth a watch, if you have a moment, but the summary is obesity is bad and unhealthy food is bad and people need to learn how to cook properly and school lunches need to suck less. Some blogs I read had qualms with his discussion of obesity, for good reason, but other than that there seems to be nothing objectionable about suggesting that healthy food should be more available and people should be educated in how to prepare it.



But I remember, when I finished watching it last year, something about it felt... off. To me. I tweeted: "It sounds kind of like he's saying, 'women, get back to the kitchen.'" A teacher disagreed with me - He heard: "everyone, get back to the kitchen." But I went back through the transcripts he gave, and found it striking that all the examples he gave - with the exception of a minister - were women. He talks about a young woman whose poor diet led to serious health problems, a mother who doesn't know how to cook and whose children are obese, another woman whose obese father died in her arms. (Why not just tell us about him? Why make the story about her, as though she had something to do with it?) He talks at length about lunch ladies, called that, because men don't cook school lunch. He waxes nostalgically about a time when cooking knowledge was passed down from grandmothers and mothers - presumably to daughters, though it's not stated that way.

Today TreeHugger has an article making a similar point: part of increasing access to healthier food would have to be teaching people how to cook. In my middle school, cooking class was a co-ed, several-week affair, of which the only thing I remember is how to lay a formal table setting and that wrapping croissants around marshmallows is incredibly delicious. So perhaps it left something to be desired on the health and nutrition side. But everyone knew that cooking was the 'girls'' part of the year - later that year, we spent a few weeks in shop class learning how to use big fancy tools, and that was the boys' part.

I think if we're really going to have a conversation about teaching people how to cook healthy food, we have to make it a conversation about gender. I know Jamie Oliver probably didn't mean to, but he managed to lay the blame for unhealthy food at least in part on the backs of women. Why not ask the boys and men in those families he interviewed what they think about cooking, and whose job it is, and whether or not they're able to do it (or that it's worth their time)? Maybe it's just because I think everything about gender, but I think that'd be a much more productive conversation in figuring out how to encourage healthy cooking for everyone!

Morning Musings

I took some time to catch up on my blog reading today, and here's what I'm thinking about...

The New York Times has a beautiful opinion piece from a few days ago titled The Good Short Life. It's written by a man with Lou Gehrig’s disease, who writes thoughtfully and compellingly about deciding to end his life when he's no longer able to take care of himself, rather than have it extended through expensive medical care. It reminded me of a film that came out recently that I want to see, How to Die in Oregon, about the same thing. I think Clendinen, the author of the New York Times piece, is right that we don't really know how to deal with death. Thinking about it makes me kind of uncomfortable, but I appreciated his honesty and his beautiful writing.

Treehugger has a post about a city that offers people the opportunity to trade in their car in exchange for a lifetime of free public transit. As someone who aspires to live in the city and never own a car, I love that idea - though, I guess as someone who hopes to never own a car, I would also never qualify for the free transit! Damn. Still, I think it's a good idea in that it'll reduce the number of cars in use and increase demand for public transportation, which will hopefully allow their public transit system to grow and be more efficient. I do wonder if it might be best for an offer like that to include access to a program like ZipCar - using public transit takes very careful planning, and there are situations where you need to be able to get somewhere quickly on your own terms, I think.

Finally, today's Cheat Sheet at the Daily Beast featured the headline "Wife Cuts Off Husband's Penis." This made me roll my eyes and wonder why I was supposed to care, but then it occurred to me: Why are stories like this of wives' violence against their husbands so much more talked about and widely publicized than (much more common) violence by husbands against wives? Lorena Bobbit was often referenced in high school, but I can't think of any men equally infamous for attacking their wives, and I'm sure it's not that they don't exist. How strange...

An Experiment

I just finished reading the book The Story of Stuff, and it inspired the following two things:

One, I want to write like Annie Leonard. Describing potential environmental laws as a "delicious smorgasbord" is simply awesome.

Two, after putting down the book and proceeding to throw some useless bit of packaging away in the trashcan, it occurred to me to wonder just how much waste I actually throw away in a day. So, I'm going to try to keep track! I expect to be grossed out.

Two single-serving oatmeal bags
Tea bag, wrapped in a little plastic bag
Thread and fabric scraps from a week of sewing.
Banana peel
Cup, straw, and straw wrapper from a milkshake
Cup, straw, and lid from a drink at dinner
Soup cup and lid from dinner
Tea leaves
More fabric scraps from an evening project

So mostly food things. Some of that could have been composted, but we don't have a composting program at my school, and I don't think the groundskeepers would take kindly to me just throwing things in the yard!

But isn't it strange to think about? Someone's job was to design that cup or straw or single-serving oatmeal bag, which I used for a couple of minutes and then threw out. In fact, there were probably a whole lot of people involved in designing the packaging and actually getting the materials and producing the object and then getting it to the ice cream shop downtown or the campus sandwich shop. Surely all those people could have come up with something better than a wax paper cup that can't be recycled.

Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2011, everyone!

I got my wisdom teeth out this week, and so have spent much of this lovely new year on the couch. Here's some things I've been reading over the past few days:

Four flipped social paradigms for 2011 from TreeHugger. According to them, in the coming year, smaller, more energy-efficient houses will become desperately sought after, and hipsters will again be cool.
Related notes:
Apartment Therapy's roundup of the best use of teeny tiny studio apartment spaces of the year. It is probably weird, and entirely this website's fault, that my dream house is less than 500 sq. ft.
New York Magazine's very helpful article explaining exactly what a hipster is.

The GOP Needs to Tell the Truth about their Views on the Constitution from ThinkProgress. Full of links to scary quotes with Republicans suggesting that things like child labor laws, minimum wage, paper money, and a Department of Education are unconstitutional

Kathryn Gray, 10 years old, Discovers Supernova. As someone who just got a star chart on my ipod and stares back and forth between that and the (mostly starless) sky here, I gotta say that this little girl is probably the coolest ever.

A Scarf a Day for January. I've been knitting non-stop lately, but this woman is way ahead of me: She's making a different crazy scarf every day for the month of January. Themes so far include LongCat and internal organs.

Buy Nothing Day

Today is Buy Nothing Day, and I like this poster for it...

Black Friday Musings

So this morning my friend texted me to tell me that she'd gotten a pair of jeans for five dollars. Another posted on Facebook that his iPod had broken, but it was five years old so there wasn't any point in fixing it. All of this is pretty much normal.

But...

If I get a pair of jeans for five dollars, how much of that goes to the cost of materials and production - cotton that has to be planted and grown and harvested by someone, huge amounts of water that go into dying the jeans, not to mention the chemicals in the dye itself? How much goes to the people who actually put the jeans together, probably women in a factory halfway around the world? How much goes to advertising, or to the marketing guy who wrote the advertisement, or into the CEO's holiday bonus?

Five dollars really doesn't seem to reflect the number of people whose work somehow contributes to that pair of jeans that I'll wear for a few years and then throw away.

Or an iPod. Is that made at that same factory in China that had to put up nets to keep its employees from attempting suicide? Are the little bits of different minerals that went into making all the incomprehensible inner workings of the little computer mined in an ethical way? And if all that trouble went into making a little device I can play my music on, why should it stop working and become pointless to fix so quickly? And what will happen when I decide to throw it away - where will the toxic bits end up?

(Can you tell I've been watching The Story of Stuff?)

Not that I don't like the idea of a five dollar pair of jeans or a new iPod. But still, it troubles me to think about where these things come from...

A Chocolate Crisis? Do Not Want!

Via Treehugger:

In a world that takes for granted the availability of delicious and affordable chocolate, it's easy to forget that the popular product actually comes from trees -- not magical elves or free-flowing cocoa rivers, sadly. But, some experts are predicting that in a matter of decades a drop in production due to changing weather and agriculture incentives may make chocolate 'as expensive as gold'. "In 20 years chocolate will be like caviar. It will become so rare and so expensive that the average Joe just won't be able to afford it," says one researcher. And if I know Joe as well as I think I do, this won't go over well.

You have no idea how sad it would make me if I had to find a new vice to replace candy and baked goods. It would be traumatizing. 

It turns out, growing chocolate is kind of a sucky, thankless, labor-intensive job that turns very little profit. The article suggests things like the Fair Trade Initiative to solve the problem. This would be awesome, because it would mean that farmers would get treated better, AND I could still have my candy bars. Fingers crossed for the continued existence of candy at college-kid prices!

Monsanto? 11th Grade History fails me.

I remember very little from my 11th grade American History class, but I definitely remember that monopolies were bad. All the politicians wanted to be Trust Busters and our textbook chapters on the Gilded Age were full of cartoons of big evil corporations eating up all the poor little companies, so they made anti-monopoly laws to stop that from happening.

All I had to do was pass a standardized test, so my understanding of the topic isn't very nuanced.

But, having watched Food, Inc. and King Corn, I have to wonder...

How the heck is Monsanto not considered one of those evil monopolies we have laws to keep from happening?

I am genuinely confused by this. If anyone could explain it, I'd be appreciative!

What's the Penalty for Destroying the Gulf?

I've been reading about the BP oil spill more every day, and it's so depressing and terrifying that I haven't brought it over here, but here's an article that caught my attention. Submitted with no comment other than, well, they damn well better not destroy the Gulf and then carry on business as usual...

Punishing BP: 6 Brutal Proposals

Ideas range from making BP pay a lot of money (which they absolutely ought to do, to clean up the mess they made) to executing the BP CEO (which I'm not entirely sure is a good idea.)

Eco-Fashion is cool.

I've been recovering from finals and trying to avoid all the depressing news about the BP oil spill, but eco-fashion combines my hippy instincts with my deep and abiding frivolity, so here's a fun quote about that:

I think eco-fashion should be what every designer strives to create and every customer vows to buy. We hear every day that we should reduce, reuse, recycle, turn off lights and unplug appliances, use public transportation and carpool, but you don’t hear enough that we should shop for clothing that isn’t as hard on the environment. I wish people considered wearing vintage and eco-fashion as important as recycling their plastic water bottle. I wish everyone knew that it takes 400 gallons of water just to make one cotton t-shirt, along with all the CO2 emitting pesticides, insecticides and synthetic fertilizers. If everyone knew and cared about this, shoppers would seek out organic cotton and eco-fashion, vintage and recycled clothing. Once enough shoppers demand it, designers and clothing stores would have to provide it. My hope is someday there won’t even be a distinction between “fashion” and “eco-fashion,” all fashion will be eco-friendly.
…
I’ve heard several definitions of sustainability, but my favorite one is “using the resources we have to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” In other words, let’s not screw over our future grandchildren and let’s not screw over our planet. I think our environment is our playing field and we should try to preserve it with everything we do.

From Kate Goldwater, via Feministe.

In Which My Day Is Made

Best headline ever:

World's Tallest Treehouse Built from Reclaimed Wood

Though really they could have stopped at World's Tallest Treehouse and they'd have had my attention.



Ten floors, all donated/recycled wood, super enormously awesome. Can I build one in our backyard, Dad?

More Green Geekery

OMG SOLAR ROADS.



So freaking cool.

Department of Transportation has given Solar Roadways a grant to build a prototype of a solar panel road to replace pavement. According to the articles:

- Give real-time information to drivers via LED "paint" - for example, "detour ahead," or "slow down" when an animal is on the road. (Because, being awesomely high-tech, the road would know the animal was there.)
- Include heating elements to help make icy roads safer.
- Provide a decentralized power grid that would, if these things covered the entire country, produce literally almost enough power for the entire world.

Granted, right now at the prototype phase it's probably closer to a geeky wet dream than a national reality. But isn't that the coolest idea ever? It makes me smile.

Via Grist.