I'm going to pretty much skip this as well, for the same reason I bypassed the last "main point" of the introduction.

The next point up on the long list of topics is:

At the risk of simply appearing lazy, instead of spending yet more time writing about this again, I'm just going to re-direct anyone interested to some old posts I have written about what sustainability means.

That's enough excuse making. I promise to write a long, upbeat, optimistic, bright-green essay for next time based on the next question for discussion raised in the textbook

Posted by bastish at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

No, I have not forgotten about my little blog project to review, online, the Environmental Science textbook that I first read a few years ago. And no, it's not that I am too busy (although there are a few unrelated things that I have been exceptionally excited about lately). The reason I have not posted anything about it is that the next important concept the book attempts to teach is what you see above.

"What!?.." you may be thinking, "Stories about how we are bringing about the end of civilization? That's Kevin's specialty."

Well, that's just it. Some readers have remarked recently that my writing is growing more negative and doomy-gloomy. That is surely not the intent, and I can't stress enough how non-gloomy and good-humored my face is while I write. But, alas, the reader can not see my face and probably imagines this.

And, while what I am writing is simply an attempt to wrap my head around the way things are. Like it or not, history is a saga of rises and falls of civilizations, and there are parallels between the collapse of Easter Island and today. My belief, and obviously the belief of the textbook authors, is that the first step to making sure that our current global civilization doesn't go the way of so many smaller civilizations in days past, is to recognize those parallels.

Unfortunately, it seems that all too many people like to skip that step, jumping right to "innovating", believing that those who do recognize the negatives are, at best, pessimistic, at worst, reveling in the thought of global civil and eco-system collapse. I assure you I am neither.

So, I'm not going to write any essay about this point. Instead, I will simply suggest that anyone interested in truly understanding environmental issues, and why they are important look into this a bit on their own, keeping in mind that the point is not to spread doom and gloom or loose hope, but rather, to identify trends and factors that lead to the collapse, basic principles, if you will, showing how we can really screw up our world, allowing us to innovate without repeating the mistakes of the past.

Perhaps a good place to start is Michael Balter's site, which I just learned about this morning, and have not yet had a chance to browse. Or, perhaps, Jeremy Diamonds newest book, Collapse also which I have not yet had the chance to read (anyone out there with a used copy I can buy?). Or, if you don't have time, here is an interview with the author on Diane Rehm.

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Guns, Germs and Steel, Diamond examined the downfall of some of history’s greatest civilizations. In COLLAPSE! How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, he now asks: “What causes the collapse of great civilizations, and what can we learn from their fates?” Diamond weaves an all-encompassing global thesis through a series of fascinating historical-cultural narratives. From Polynesia to ecologically robust areas like Montana, he traces the fundamental pattern of catastrophe: environmental damage, climate change, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices — and offers solutions. Brilliant, illuminating, and immensely absorbing.

Posted by bastish at 03:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Before I left for my vacation from my vacation, I was starting to think a little more about how people interact with their environment, looking for good examples that I could make into overly-dramatic National Geographic style one-liners. (I also want to improve my creative writing skills.)

I realized something though... perhaps because it is "too obvious", I never stopped to think just what "environment" means. What is my environment? What is theNenet environment? What constitutes the environment of the various people I encountered on my bike trip? It further dawned on me that how different people define their own "environment", -where they draw their boundaries, may be one of the keys that keeps me from understanding why more people just don't seem to care about "the environment".

So what is my environment?

The textbook defines it as follows:

Suddenly "environmentalism" takes on a whole new meaning that that of the nature loving hippy which is all too often presented in main-stream media. If the environment does not just mean birds and bees, but rather includes the combination of all things and factors external, we are suddenly talking about economic and social issues as well. This complicates the question a bit, but brings it closer to what I have come to know as "sustainability", which by most definitions is based on the interconnectedness of ecological, economic, and social issues.

As far as my homework -describing how the people I saw on my trip interact with their environment- my dog ate it. Well, actually, I don't really feel that I have enough information, after just watching people for a fleeting few seconds as I zoomed by on my bike, to draw worthwhile conclusions.

Maybe an easier example, when talking about how people interact with this larger definition of environment, is this recent Living on Earth article about the town of Chalmette, just outside of New Orleans, where residents face massive oil spills.

The interaction between the oil spills and their current quality of life is painfully obvious. Although I am not living in the immediate vicinity of the oil spill, I can understand, to some degree, the consequences since they effect me and all of society, all-be-it in a different way than they effect the people of Chamette.

What I have trouble understanding though, is how their connection to oil grew so strong. I am not trying to blame or criticize the people. After all, they were in a position that I have never been in. I am simply thinking out loud as I try to understand how and why people interact with their environments in the way that they do -and how is this based on the interaction of natural, social, and economic environments.

As people in southern Louisiana start moving down the long road to recovery from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, some places have to contend with more than muck, mold and debris. There are also massive oil spills. Officials say eight million gallons leaked at more than 50 sites in the region. That's more than two-thirds of what spilled in the Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska in 1989.

Families in Chalmette go back generations; neighbors know each other and value their connections. The main industry was once fishing, then more people took jobs with the oil refineries that grew up against the neighborhood's fences and yards. Now the oil that brought jobs threatens more than a thousand homes.

Sure, I understand it on an intellectual level -how the more immediate need to feed the kids can take precedence over longer-term needs to provide a healthy natural environment, or perhaps how some people may want a bigger house and nicer car more than clean air. Empathetically though... I have trouble putting myself in their position... I have lived a privileged life, never been in an economic environment so bleak to willingly and knowingly allow (and help) the oil company to destroy my immediate natural environment to such a degree in the first place.

The argument [for a law-suit agains the oil company] goes like this: wetlands and coastline once stretched many miles between the cities and the Gulf. But canals for pipelines and drills contributed to coastal erosion, which cost Louisiana more than twenty square miles of wetland a year over the past decade.

The oil and gas industry destroyed that terra firma. Had that ecosystem existed it would have absorbed the hurricane force winds and storm surge.

It's not like they weren't aware of the risks to their physical environment either... it seems like they ignored them, for whatever reason, in favor of an improving economic environment.

Like other businesspeople here, Mustachio had mixed feelings about Murphy Oil and the other refineries. There were the occasional accidents that forced midnight evacuations, and persistent questions about air quality. But then, there were also the jobs.

Then again, I am constantly put in a position to either aid in the destruction of our natural environment for the promise of a better economic environment, or more comfortable (in the short-term) life. I try not to make that compromise, as I am sure they did as well... but I always do, when I choose to take a train all the way to Kyushu for a vacation when I could just as well have had the vacation nearer to Tokyo, or to buy imported raisons when there are no local alternatives instead of simply giving them up, or my fondness for tea heated by natural gas instead of just drinking it at room temperature, or using nuclear generated electricity so I can play with my computer...

I can't deny feeling somehow "better" than people who I see as compromising more, though I do deny believing that I am better. I recognize that a major part of how we interact with our natural environment is based on our economic and social environment. But is that all it is? Another comment that one of the towns people made seems to indicate that our different perspectives on how we should treat the natural environment in relation to economic and social is also based on a differing understanding of a key word...

MUSTACHIO: They generated money for this Parish. And generated sustained life while taking it away from us, in a sense, because it polluted so badly. But we depended on it. Right now, I can't see them doing anything for us, but we'll see. I don't know. All I can hope they can do is buy my property and have me move on, you know, because I don't want to be here. And I think a lot of people are the same way now.

This quote uses the word "sustained" to describe the lifestyle that oil money brought to the community.

Certainly it depends on the context, but when it comes to "life", the word "sustain", for me, has a long-term implication... longer-term than my own life-span. Could it be that the residents actually saw the benefits of the oil industry in their backyard as being something that could be sustained for such a long time, despite the negative effects to the ecosystem? Or, does their definition of "sustain" imply only a few years or decades?

Perhaps the word "sustain" is not where we differ, but rather how we define "life". Being from the privileged background that I am, I would not consider a life plagued with the dangers of occasional oil spills in my back-yard as one I would want to sustain for very long. Then again, I do not live in what I would consider an ideal social environment, with a strong sense of community. This would make it easier for me to give up my own social environment and move elsewhere. Perhaps they had a more ideal social environment, a place they called "home", and placed a lot of value on it -more than they placed on their natural environment.

I guess I will never know, but it was an interesting exercise to take ten minutes out of my day to think about it. And now that I am thinking about it, I can't seem to stop recognizing these interactions wherever I look, or whatever news story I hear. It's not rocket science, it's just something I never really consciously looked for before. And yet, the question remains unanswered... what defines, and how do I interact with my environment?

Posted by bastish at 09:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Stabbing, crunching, thinly crusted snow crisps the already sharp air. A long pole -young, of birch- creaks a final sigh as it finds it's center of gravity, resting conspicuously perpendicular to this endless -impossibly so- landscape. The Arctic dusk, florescent, silent, softens by contrast. This is where Andrei has decided to set up camp.

The darkness crawls in like the reindeer-skin-clad figures that have begun to appear, of which the women set themselves to work. Slowly, yet steadily, wooden planks, iron stoves, handcrafted tent poles, and reindeer skins appear. These will soon form the walls of the chums, tepee-like shelters that serve as the mobile homes for the brigade -as the Soviets once called a group of these nomadic herders. Chatter and laughter carry far through the arctic air, and despite the harsh, potentially deadly environment, no one seems in a hurry, for as the Nenet say, "Those who hurry in the tundra are in a hurry to die".

Yet, not far beneath the chatter and seemingly laid-back atmosphere, lurks a growing fear. Though the Nenet have long since learned to adapt to and love their nomadic lifestyle here in the northern most reaches of siberia, at the fringes of the modern world, and despite their certainty that they are the best reindeer herders in the world, a beliefs that, says Andrei Golovnev, director of the ethnology section of the Ural Institute of History and archaeology, "allows them to survive", they know that their way of life is in trouble.

The Yamal Peninsula, the Nenet's summer pastureland, is home to what may be the largest natural gas reserves in world. For all the benefits the industrial age is expected to bring to the people of Russia, it has already brought along a drastic increase in population and pollution in the Nenet's natural habitat. The environment suffers from acid rains. Some reindeer die from eating moss laden with heavy metals, but those that live to the slaughter eventually enter into the human diet. Nuclear tests on Novaya Zemlya are another grave danger to the health and existence of the people of the area.

This is one of the main concepts underlying a sound understanding of sustainability and environmental science, and it is briefly touched on in the textbook I am following along with (Chapter 1: Introduction: Sustainability, Stewardship, and Sound Science).

At first, it sounds almost too obvious to even spend time on. Yet, thinking back, it must not be too obvious, because I clearly remember when, as an adult, I first started consciously becoming aware of just how closely my life is tied to my environment. I was filled with a mixture of awe, inferiority (stupidity), and anger. I felt stupid that I had never really realized or thought about it, and I felt anger that this was not covered in school as I was growing up.

Although (or perhaps because) I never explicitly thought about it, I guess I was under the impression that some people, such as those seen in National Geographic, were "more connected" to their environment than we "modern people" were. Perhaps it will sound like a trivial issue related to semantics, but I realize now that it's not that some people are more connected to the environment than others, for we are all completely, and undeniably connected to their environment, relying on it for everything in our lives, rather, it's that some people are more aware of that connection.

The above account of the Nenet people is probably not so accurate. It's actually just my imagination based on a National Geographic article I came across of stack of old magazines at the local junk shop a few weeks ago. I was particularly drawn to this article after having spent time in Sweden listening to my neighbor's stories from Lapland, fascinated that people could live in such a harsh climate without our modern dependance on fossil fuels. I was fascinated that people could be so in touch with their environment that, as the Blue Earth Alliance writes:

Everything the Nenets need can be roughly covered by one word: reindeer. These half-domesticated, half-wild animals supply almost all their food, clothing, transport and shelter. They Nenets move as the reindeer move, following their annual migration north to the open tundra across Yamal, which they call the "land of the second sun".

Yet, despite an obvious connection, and deep understanding of their environment, the Nenet's also have their own issues. The Yamal Peninsula is not only being exploited for it's richness in oil and natural gas. As the demand for reindeer meat drops due to the high cost to get it to market, the Nenets simply increase the size of the herds. According to Nenets: Surviving on the Siberian Tundra, in the March 1998 issue of National Geographic, land that some ecologists estimate can sustainably support 120,000 reindeer, are currently home to over 175,000. Yet, despite warnings from both russian and western scientists that as much as half of the peninsula is being overgrazed, little is being done. In part, says the article, because Nenet leaders refuse to accept that overgrazing is a serious threat.

The Nenet's close relationship to their environment is obvious. The National Geographic article is peppered with colorfully dramatic one-liners (as only NG can do) illustrating that connection.

As the nomads move north across the melting snow of late spring, they will shift to the lightweight summer sleds that their reindeer can pull across the fields of damp tundra grass.

Aleksei can lasso galloping reindeer with ease and make a sled from larch, without nails or modern tools, in less than a week.

"Give me fresh air on the tundra, not the stink of gasoline in the cities," [Aleskei] told me one night after pursuing a stray reindeer in a blizzard.

Reindeer, also called caribou, are everything to the Nenets: their food, clothing, shelter, transportation, even their sense of identity.

Man and deer become almost related... The first thing a newborn baby touches outside the womb is the deerskin in which it is wrapped by the mid-wife. A dead man is also wrapped in deerskins. And between these first and last encounters, a person lives with the deer [and] thanks to the deer.

A herder relies on the instincts of his lead reindeer. When lost in a blizzard with no hope of finding the camp, he'll look to the lead reindeer to show the way.

Nenet women depend no less on reindeer in their daily lives, making use of every part of the body. One morning I watched Anna Serotetta, the grandmother in our chum, using her teeth to separate a sinewy substance into strands, which she then rolled between her palms. The material came from a reindeer's tendons, and she was turning them into sewing thread. The [reindeer skin] garments are extraordinarily warm, offering protection from winter temperatures that routinely drop well below zero.

One day Anna Serotetta scratched under the snow and pulled up handfuls of straw-like grass she used to insulate her boots. Another substance, a cottony pulp scrapped from under the bark of birch trees, substitutes for toilet paper and is used in diapers.

"Do all people look the same to you?" [asked Vladimer] "No," I replied. "Well," he said in a voice raspy from cigarettes, "neither do all these reindeer look the same to us".

Compared to our* more modern lifestyle, it is easy to see how some people would consider the Nenet lifestyle to be more "primitive", and why we so often forget that our life is just as inextricably tied to our environment. This got me wondering. "Can I come up with some catchy, colorful, National Geographic-ish one liners that illustrate how?" I feel like a little school boy getting his first homework assignment. This will be one of my goals as I ride my bike around Kyushu next week. I'll not only be paying extra attention to how I interact with my environment, but also how the people I come across along the way do as well.

The bottom photo is originally from Bryan & Cherry Alexander, 1996, "The Vanishing Arctic"; Found at this site with caption: Nenet woman and reindeer on the Yamal Peninsula (below). This image shows a Nenet woman and reindeer, part of a "brigade" heading south on the autumn migration. They are leaving the summer pastures of the peninsula's tundra terrain to the west of the Bovanenkovo gas-condensate field and moving south to the winter pastures in taiga (forest zone), southeast of Salekhard. The top photo is from my trip up to the North of sweden.

Posted by bastish at 07:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is something I have wanted to do for a long, long, long time -even before I ever went to Sweden to study. It's also something I have tried to start doing several times, but for some reason of other it always ends up dying.

What? ↑menu

The plan is to dedicate a new section of my blog to the basics of Environmental Science.

I'll be following the outline and concepts found below, as presented in Environmental Science: Toward a Sustainable Future, the textbook I used a few years ago to introduce myself to the concept of environmental science and sustainability. As much as time allows, supplementing this with articles and research from both on and off-line, as well as, hopefully, the experiences and knowledge of anyone following along that wishes to comment.

1. Ecosystems and how They Work
2. The Human Population
3. Renewable Resources
4. Energy
5. Pollution and Prevention
6. Toward a Sustainable Future

The textbook was initially chosen based on it's availability (Tomoe lent it to me). I am using the 7th edition, published in 2000. The 8th edition was published in 2002. I will do my best to find the latest facts and figures for any charts.

Why? ↑menu

Well, one obvious reason.

• This is something that everyone should know.

But also, after having attended a graduate program in Sweden about sustainable development, I am looking for an excuse to revisit this text, looking at it through my "more learned" eyes.

• Question what I think I know.
• Explore what I don't know so well.
• Share what I learn.
• Translate knowledge into action.

And finally,

• I have secreat fantasies that other people will find this intersting enough to follow along, maybe even on their own blog... and maybe... maybe an entire blog-ring style learning community could develop and we could learn about it together... maybe... maybe...

Guts ↑menu

I tell myself that the reason I never did this before (although I once started it, I never made it public), despite thinking about it every time I sit down to blog, was that I never had the time. I'm not sure I reall buy that, in fact, the main reason I am finding the time now is to prove to myself that despite my previous failure, I do have the guts... the guts to expose my own ignorance, to advertise to the world how much of, what seems like such a simple concept once I read it, I didn't already know.

So, if what I write sometimes seems excrutiatingly elementary, please bear with me. If what I write sometimes is excrutiatingly mis-informed, please correct me. But, in the other hand, if what I write is sometimes new, interesting, or helpful to you, I'd appreciate a comment or two.

Posted by bastish at 05:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)