Open Blog #3

As my semester is finishing up and I was writing my GAA #7 I was just thinking about how well all of my classes went together this semester in terms of sustainability as the common thread. I took Biology 102, ENVR501W: Sustainable Projects, ENVR202: Intro to Environmental Science, ECIV350: Intro to Environmental Engineering, and obviously POLI477. In ENVR501, we broke up into groups of 3 or 4 and worked on different projects as consultants. The project that I was working on was to create a publicity presentation for Crescent Hills, a healthy sustainable community in the making. The entire concept of the community is to create a small, close-knit community where people are able to walk where they need to go and where they learn to be take charge of their medical choices and be proactive as opposed to reactive. The community will have sustainably built houses as well as low impact development and other environmentally sustainable aspects. Therefore, I learned not only about environmental sustainability and how it relates to new construction and community development plans, but also about sustainability when it comes to health.
We obviously talked about sustainability and environmental issues in my ENVR202 class. I really didn't know much about environmental engineering before taking the class. But it is mostly about improving water, soil, and air quality. So everything from polluted groundwater from agricultural run off to increased carbon dioxide levels from kerosene heaters in a one bedroom apartment are issues that environmental engineers deal with. And environmental engineers work not only with environmental agencies such as the EPA, but they also work with companies who hire them to come in and do assessments. But generally, environmental engineers are helping to make the world we live in more sustainable by addressing the issues caused by modernization and industry.
I've learned about so many aspects of sustainability this semester from green political thought to healthy communities to the harder science of sustainability such as improving water quality through filtration systems and coagulative additives. Overall, these courses have helped to give me a more comprehensive look at how sustainability fits into so many aspects of life and how there are many options out there career-wise where sustainability is still a focus.

Open Blog #2

I attended the service event at the Riverbanks Zoo last weekend and it was really great! When my alarm woke me up in the morning I was initially pretty bitter about being awake and considered not going to the event. But I realized I was being a brat so I dragged myself out of bed, grabbed some breakfast, and headed to the Zoo and I'm so glad I ended up going! It was so much fun. We started off with a presentation about the different types of plants that they have in the Botanical Garden and the reasoning behind their selection. I realized that there are so many plants that I know absolutely nothing about and there is a lot of thought that goes into deciding what gets planted in the Garden. The head gardener (I think his name was Andy?) was telling us how as younger gardeners become a part of the program, they already come in with ideas of how to make the Garden more sustainable.  So even though the Garden isn't totally organic and isn't designed as a permaculture Garden, there are many things that they do in order to be sustainable, and all of those small things that they do add up to make a big impact. Some of the examples of sustainable practices is that they draw their water for watering the plants straight from the river which is a very close local source. They also use compost created from animal dung from the zoo! And they are working to improve their sustainable measures as well. I learned a lot more about the Garden than I expected and I would love to go back and see what they have changed within the next couple years! Also it was fun to actually get dirty and get to plant :) Plus we got to help them pull up their winter vegetables and go to go home with some fresh veggies! I grabbed some kale and swiss chard.

Open Blog #1

For Spring Break I went to the Dominican Republic. I went because some friends found a Groupon for an all-inclusive resort and I thought it sounded nice to go sit on the beach for a week. I didn’t really know anything about the Dominican Republic and I didn’t do any research before getting there. But when we got there I was shocked by how poor it was. We took a bus from Santo Domingo three hours north to Puerto Plata. During the bus ride I noticed that there was trash everywhere on the side of the road. And there were places where I saw people burning trash and where I could tell that trash had been burned. I also went on a boat to watch my friends go parasailing and one of the locals who was with us had a drink and he went to throw his cup into the ocean and I stopped him. He said that he loved the ocean but didn’t understand what was wrong with throwing his plastic cup into the water. The language barrier prevented me from fully explaining the issues of polluting the ocean, but I did what I could. It was so shocking to see so much trash on the ground when I know from school that it could be leeching terrible things into the soil and the groundwater. And to see people throw things into the ocean where I know it could kill marine creatures or wash up on the beach and cause problems there. While I am sure there are also people in the United States who do now know/care about littering and pollution, it just seems like there is such a disconnect between here and there. Maybe it’s because it is so poor so people have other things on the top of their minds to worry about besides littering, but if people were educated about the health of the environment, maybe they would realize that we are all part of one big cycle and polluting the land just comes back around to hurt you. 

Blog #13

Prompt: "What do you think of ecofemisnism before you read, and after? Did you have any strong reactions? What do forms of dominance do you see in the world around you?"

I am part of the ecofeminism presentation team, but reading the articles a few weeks ago was not my first experience with ecofeminism. Freshman year I was in a philosophy class that looked at humans and technology.  We had to do a group project at the end of the semester and I do not remember exactly what my project was all about but I do remember researching Vandana Shiva. She was my first look at ecofeminism. So my general understanding of ecofeminism was that men think they are better than women so they dominate them, and women are associated with nature so men dominate nature too. And that all comes together in a real world example when men running big businesses in the United States tell men and women in Indian (and elsewhere) how to interact with nature through agricultural practices. The land and the people are being degraded and dominated by western masculine ideals. I reacted strongly to the domination of anyone who cannot stand up for themselves, just because you have the power doesn’t mean you have to wield it in a harmful manner.

And there are forms of dominance all over the world, men over women, adults over children, developed countries over developing countries, people over nature, etc. 

Blog #12

Prompt: "Would you join the Green Party or not?  What aspects of green values do you believe should be ideally incorporated into a "green" party?  Do these align, do you think, with the Green Party? Also, are the Earth First! activists justified in their actions?"

I think that my view on what a Green Party should be has changed since I entered this class.  Before taking POLI 477 the word “green” to me really only had environmental implications. Therefore, a Green Party would be one whose main concern is the environment. I would expect a platform that included things such as sustainable agriculture subsidies and alternative energy subsidies as well as increase in acreage of protected lands. Now that I’ve been in POLI 477 for a couple months, “green” has a broader meaning.  “Green” now encompasses social aspects of equality and openness. So I would expect a Green Party platform to have social facets as well such as improved local participation and decision making and increased availability of resources and opportunities.

After reading through the Green Party’s 10 key values, I think that they line up well with my current view on the meaning of the word green. There were still concepts in there that would not have immediately come to my mind as being “green” (such as non-violence), but I think everything works together well on their values page. And I would join the Green Party!

First of all when it comes to Earth First! I love the term ecodefender. I would feel empowered being called something like that. But I also don’t support vandalism and destroying private property. I understand wanting to make a point and to monetarily hurt a company seems like a good way to do that, but I still don’t agree with it. 

Blog #10

Prompt: "What is Social Ecology? What are your reactions to the readings? What forms of hierarchy are in our world today? Are these hierarchies natural? Are there any better alternatives?"

I’m not sure if I fully grasp what Social Ecology is all about so I’m looking forward to class discussion. But, from what I gathered, social ecology is about restructuring our current social paradigms to a system where there is a more level playing field. Social ecology addresses the demonization of nature and the separation of humans from nature for the sake of dominating nature.

In terms of the readings I had a hard time with the “what is social ecology” one because there were so many words in quotations and I just couldn’t really follow the train of thought very well. But from that paper I liked the idea of restructuring our view of nature and changing it so the natural world is not viewed as something cold and separate and unimportant intrinsically. I think the paper went too far when it was trying to counter the survival of the fittest theory. I do believe that in nature survival of the fittest and competition for resources is a main driving factor. Symbiosis is also important, and maybe it should be more emphasized, but that doesn’t de-value the instinctual need to fight for survival, especially in a world of dwindling natural resources.

I enjoyed the paper about the third world countries. There are obvious correlations between super consumerism in the developed world and poverty and need in developing countries. It is a radical idea that their misfortune is completely reliant upon our frivolous lifestyle, but I think it would be good for people to read that at least to get them thinking. My only problem with the paper is that it only talked about need in third world counties but there is also plenty of instances in the US where people are going without necessities.

I think you can find hierarchies just about everywhere. From dynamics in a high school to developing vs. developed nations. I think that within the story that we are all accustomed to, hierarchies are part of the status quo. I don’t know how things would be structured without hierarchies, I would be interested to hear other peoples’ ideas for different social structures. 

Blog #9

Prompt: "Explain your view on deep ecology. How can you relate these views to your lifestyle or society? Which principle do you agree most with and which do you agree least with? Why? What concerns do you have about Deep Ecology? "

My view on Deep Ecology is that it is all about viewing things holistically. No one person or species is better than the rest and you have to look at the whole picture in order to improve the quality of the lives of everyone/everything involved. I think that generally that is true when looking at just about any problem faced either in my daily life or by society as a whole. Looking at only part of the picture usually leads to incomplete solutions.

The principle that I liked the most is “Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to try to implement the necessary changes”. I’m a big believer in the power of small (or large!) personal changes. It is easy to get discouraged by the magnitude of a problem and to take no action at all, but then nothing is ever going to change. If you believe in the principles of deep ecology and think that there is room for improvement in yourself and in others when it comes to our relationship with the rest of the world, then it only makes sense for you to do something about it!

A concern I have of Deep Ecology is its perception. Most people probably do not want to read about how human population needs to decrease and that humans do not inherently have the right to dominate anything else in nature because everything has value. 

Blog #8

Prompt: "What are the preconditions necessary for using consensus decision making in a group or organization?  What are the strengths and weaknesses of the process?"

From what I gather, there are two key points when it comes to consensus decision-making. The first thing necessity is that everyone has the same or very similar goals. It would be impossible to come to a decision if people did not have the same ideals in mind. The point of consensus decision-making is that everyone wants to achieve the same things; it is the path to get there that needs to be decided upon. A second necessity is trust. When working in a group and using consensus decision-making, you must trust that those around you are trying to reach the same goals and you must trust that they know what they are talking about.

I think that the concept of consensus decision-making is great. But I think in order for it to fully work at its highest potential, you would have to be in a situation where you had the two necessities I talked about earlier. I don’t think I personally have been in many group decision-making processes where we even had those two things. Trust is something that must develop over time which I think is a weakness for this system because it seems to me like you would already have to have relationships with the people in the group before being able to use consensus decision-making. One thing from one of the papers that I really liked was when she was talking about blocking. Estes said that you should only block a decision when you have an instinctual reaction that this is wrong and you wouldn’t want to lead your friends down that path. Therefore, the decision making process isn’t about ego or showing off or knowing the most, its about what is best for the entire group. 

Blog #6

 Prompt: "What are your reactions to your GTP reading?  What are your preliminary ideas for leading a class meeting focused on this topic?" 

These papers were not exactly what I was expecting for ecofeminism. I expected to read about how patriarchal society is designed to put down women and subsequently that mindset is used also to degrade and over-use nature and its resources. That general concept was discussed in the papers, but they tended to have a more historical viewpoint than I was expecting. Ecofeminism is about a viewpoint and how that has shaped society so it does make sense to look back in history and see how these ideas were shaped. It was very interesting to read about people’s theories on how relationships between men and women and nature formed over time. But I am most interested in how those viewpoints can change in the future. The part of one of the papers I found intriguing was the one that talked about empowering women in developing countries. The author touched on how women’s reproductive rights are viewed as something to be controlled which is always a touchy subject but definitely an interesting one. I would like to look more into papers surrounding topics like that. I think that the way to change a lot of what ecofeminists take issue with is through the empowerment of women, and especially the empowerment of women in developing nations where the environment tends to be an integral, tangible part of everyday life. 

Blog #4

Prompt: "What do you think of “green values?”  Which ones do you most believe in?  What surprised you the most about the readings?"

I think that green values are great! Many of the issues and concepts brought up in the readings echo my own thoughts and concerns. By working within a system where people and the environment are cared for and considered, it seems like that would be more efficient than exploiting others.  By choosing exploitation, the world becomes a giant example of the tragedy of the commons. The environment is neglected for the sake of personal gain and in the end everyone suffers. I like that green values look at how the future will be affected by current decisions. Instant gratification is not usually conducive to future sustainability.

The reading I liked the most and that I most identified with was the Ten Key Values of the Green Party. It just all makes sense. Within those ten values, personal and global responsibility is very important to me.  I believe that you have to make a change in yourself before you expect others to change. And also making small (or big!) personal changes does make a difference. Every little bit counts.  So if people start taking responsibility for their actions and work to promote green values, hopefully others will catch on and it can spread.

I was surprised by the tone of the Left Green Network reading. There were many situations described in the paper that I do not believe are attainable in the near future, or even the slightly distant future. But there was no hesitation in the tone and not meeting these goals did not seem like an option. A lot of it just seemed unrealistic to me, such as seeking to “change the social realities of the relationship between women, men, the political realm, the domestic realm, and all of these to nature”.  I have no idea how you would go about doing that, and I do not think that is the most pressing of concerns at the moment. 

Blog #3

Prompt: "For the AASHE and Sustainable Carolina websites, describe the specific program that you find most interesting in each one and explain why you find it interesting. Plus, write one question for Margaret Bounds, based on the Sustainable Carolina website."

On the AASHE website the program I found most interesting is the Campaign for Environmental Literacy.  I think that in terms of many issues, education is part of the solution.  By making sure that people are educated about the environment and the issues surrounding it, intelligent conversations can be had.  By knowing the components of the problem, solutions can be worked toward.  I think it is very important that this program helps work to provide funding for environmental education.

On the Sustainable Carolina website, my favorite team is the Campus Food Team and within that category my favorite project is the Sustainability in Campus Dining discussed in the Annual Report. I have grown up with a compost bin in my backyard.  In my mind, composting is one of the most natural and logical things a person can do.  After walking through the dining halls and seeing all the food that is prepared, it is great to read that the pre-consumer waste is going to composting instead of the landfill.  I hate seeing food thrown away, such a waste. I also think its fun that the compost is collected using solar powered golf carts!

My question for Margaret Bounds would be: As more students become interested in sustainability on campus, is there any plan to expand the amount of garden space available in green quad? Or is there any talk of growing food on campus for Sodexo to use? 

Blog #2

Prompt: Create a short biography on your blog to introduce yourself to the class, including a picture of yourself, a brief summary of your life, and a summary of your academic interests and career plans.  Be creative! 

Well to start my name is Erica Hellmich and I am a third year Environmental Science student.  I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio and came to South Carolina to enjoy the beautiful weather J I’ve always been passionate about the environment but I didn’t decide to do Environmental Science until I was at USC.  I actually decided on my major after taking a class freshman year which Dr. Whiteman was a co-professor for.  Something along the lines of Local Food Systems: A Catalyst for Change, not sure on the exact title, it was something long like that!  The class piqued my interest in sustainable food systems and agriculture and how those avenues can help alleviate some of the environmental issues around the globe. 

Besides the environment, I am also very passionate about animals! Especially cats J I’ve always grown up with cats and now that I live off campus I adopted a cat of my own, Sophia. There are also a handful of feral cats in my backyard that I have been trapping and getting fixed and re-releasing back into my backyard. I’m following a system referred to as Trap-Neuter-Release. I truly am a crazy cat lady!

I keep going back and forth with my career goals. I don’t know if I want to focus on the environment or on animals! I would love to find a career that would incorporate the outdoors, environmental sustainability, animals, and helping people. Not really sure what that career would look like, but if it’s out there, I’ll find it. 

Blog #1

Prompt: "What do you want to get out of the course?  What interests you about “green politics?”  What do you want to explore?"

            Even though I am passionate about the environment and enjoy being able to say I am an environmental science student, I don’t really know what I want to do with my life after graduation.  People always ask me what I can do with an environmental science degree and I give them a fairly generic answer saying I could get a job doing research or could be a consultant, etc.  But I don’t see myself doing any of the things I tell people. 

            So part of the reason I am taking this class is to open myself up to another side of environmental science.  I took a class that talked about policy while I was studying abroad in New Zealand and even though a lot of what I learned doesn’t translate to the US, I still found it very fascinating.  I am interested to learn about the theories behind different facets of “green” political thought.  I like the fact that we will be getting a hands-on education by working with sustainably minded groups on campus. I am excited to explore how learning about green political thought will play into our community action plans for the course.

            By taking this course I hope to build good connections with the professors and with fellow students.  I am also looking to learn about an aspect of environmental science I do not know much about.  Maybe learning about politics and working with community/university groups will spark an interest than will lead to a possible career path.