Guest Speaker: Joe Medeiros

Global warming and the mulitple ailments of the environment make headlines every day. By investing your future into sustainable careers, not only does it ensure that your job will be needed and be keeping up with the times but you'll be helping to turn our global environmental situation around--as everyday work! When I was growing up and even still I have impossible expectations of myself to make a huge difference for the world and the environment but then I get dissapointed when the rest of my life gets in the way. Joe opened my eyes to realize that you can adapt essentially any career path to be more sustainable. If your an artist, you can use your skills to work and develop campaigns for sustainability or for new more sustainable company practices to be advertised. If your an outdoorsmen, you can work outside and take data on the environment and the climate. Business people can adapt their businesses to be more efficient and produce less waste; for example, my sister is a dental hygienist and they throw away alot of plastic on a day to day basis...which isn't biodegradable. If they used cloth on the chairs rather than throwing away plastic for each patient, they would just have a really big load of laundry but wouldn't be filling landfills. I love the idea that you can adapt sustainability into any career path and into everyday life. On campus we've started integrating online and on ground classes to be paperless... which saves alot of resources of trees over the semester. Sustainable careers are the future, and they need to be. It is just so exciting to me that we really can make a difference in any situation we're in. If we are all careful to do so, it will make a large difference!

Guest Speaker: Gary Liss

Gary Liss talked to our class today about zero waste. It was an interesting and new concept to me... in order to be considered as producing zero waste you have to have 97% clean, recycled, non-producing waste. Its interesting to think about because even recycling plastics produces waste and uses energy in the recycling process, so how do we achieve zero waste? The most alarming yet unsurprising thing I learned was that landfills are the number one largest source of greenhouse gases, over our cars and factories.... it is our trash that continues to trash and harm the environment. It was really interesting to hear about companies that produce zero waste, like this carpet company that just uses squares that are free of glues and all the toxic stuff---and they recycle their own carpet rather than having it go to a landfill. Gary talked about how in order to have zero waste, people and companies must practice more than just reduce, reuse, recycle, but also practice refuse and return. There is no pressure like consumer pressure, companies will respond if you won't accept their product and its practices. It wasn't surprising that San Francisco and Santa Cruz are zero waste cities because they are typically on the verge of environmental revolutions. It was really awesome to learn of how many cities have already achieved zero waste. It is awesome because it shows the rest of the world that it is possible. We just have to change our thinking from a merely recycle concept, to include more sustainable practices and seek our companies that abide by our standards of non-polluting operations. The stage has been set and we've seen that its possible, now the public just has to act. Its an awesome concept and we shouldn't and don't have the time to wait any longer.

My Feelings About Earth Day

Earth Day is nice for a friendly reminder to help do your part in keeping the Earth healthy. It not only reminds us to turn off our lights but it also gives us a day to learn more about the things we can do to help be more sustainable and reduce our carbon footprint. Not to mention, it is a day of celebration for the amazing things, creatures, and places that are on this earth and helps to remind us that the earth is more than just humans going to work and school and coming home every day. What we do directly affects the planet we live on. If I make two trips to the store a week, rather than planning in advance and making a single trip a week, I'm wasting my money-- as well as releasing more CO2 into the air from my extra driving and wasting our limited fossil fuels. Although I recognize Earth Day as a time of celebrating all living things on earth and a time to help wake people up again to restart or adopt new habits to be more eco-friendly, I have mixed feelings about an Earth Day. I like the idea of waking people up to remind them that they directly affect everything on earth in the decisions they make; however, I do not believe that it should only be once a year. It makes me sad that we have an excuse once a year to wake up, when the world needs us to be aware of its needs everyday. We become so busy, but we can't afford to do something good for the Earth one week out of the year. I do feel that it is important in bringing about new information and reminding people to do their part though... without any reminders and awareness, many people would not think anything about their bad habits. Earth Day has only been around for 40 years or so and should continue to be around as long as earth is around, but people should act more like every day is earth day in their habits.

Guest Speaker: Joe Medeiros (ANWR)

I've always been against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; however, I've never actually had the knowledge of why to back up my argument. Before we listened to Joe's podcast on ANWR from last semester I didn't want them to drill in ANWR because it was a pristine wildlife refuge--true wilderness, and because i knew deep down that it would cause more harm than just displacing the caribou a little bit. I knew that it had hazards such as accidents that would spill oil and damage the surrounding wilderness. Also, i wondered about the potential air pollution that would occur in the process of extracting oil. Although I wasn't far off in my thinking, Joe Medeiros put it into perspective. ANWR is 19.5 million acres, also including 8 million acres of wilderness. The drilling project would take 375 acres of this land. They argue that its not much land to take; however, there is a large danger for spills and ugly tunnels connecting everything. It is too much of a danger to risk all of the migratory species that come there. It is amazing land to risk, 0 alien species. This is all crazy! If ANWR was our sole source of oil, we would only get enough oil to last us 9-12 months after the ten years it'd take to build!!! This is ridiculous that we even consider this risk! Instead, we should invest in alternative energy sources... and not risk an entire ecosystem.

Guest Speaker: Ray Darby

Ray Darby's talk was very insightful in how a person can save money and energy, all around living more "green". He brought up the fact that people don't think about transportation enough. They may live in a more energy efficient home, but if they're driving a hummer, they kinda cancel each other out. Also however, is transportation in regards to our food. If our food we buy is imported from across the country, or even from another country, it took alot of energy to get it to you. It took energy in storing it, fuel and oil to transport it by plane maybe and then by truck, not to mention the gasoline it took you to drive to the store where its at and back home. We need to start thinking about these things because they can make a big difference. If we buy locally grown food, it took less resources to make and is more sustainable. Also, buying lower on the food chain can make a big difference because it takes alot more resources to raise a cow than just eating the grass or vegetables directly. Another thing is considering a short term loss for a long term gain when building a house/thinking of getting solar panels and other more energy efficient remodelings...they save in the long run. In his own home, Ray Darby did simple things such as just not placing very many windows facing the south, where the sun will hit and absorb energy throughout the majority of the day. This reduces air conditioning costs without costing a cent more. Ray Darby provided us with simple things to consider about everyday life to significantly decrease our ecological footprint.

My Viewpoint on the Environment

Although I've had environmental classes before, they were more technical: inversion layer this, the coriolis affect that. While they were effective in teaching me about how the world works, and how important it is to keep our world working the way it should, they were so gloom and doom in the way they were taught that I always left class feeling like there was no hope. Over the semester, while i may have learned some more technicalities, i've learned realistic approaches to bringing about the change that we need. In this sense, this class has dramatically changed my viewpoint on the environment throughout the semester. I get so frustrated and feel so helpless about how to fix all of the problems that we've caused for ourselves and this world, and with the guest speakers and Keely, i've learned that every little thing adds up. This class has really helped to put into perspective how i directly affect my environment. Not just by how often and how far i drive my car, but by what i buy, if i unplug my cell phone charger, if i dump oil down the drain. While all of the little things can add up to help save our environment, I realize how it can all add up to harm it as well. Now when i'm washing cars, i think about where the soap is going to go, I already knew that soap in our water ways could cause great problems like eutrophication, but this class is bringing me and my affect on the environment full circle. I alone can both help or harm my environment, and it is up to me to decide which i'd rather do.

Guest Speaker: Laird Thompson

Today in class, Laird Thomspon came to talk to us about Oil- A History and a Future. It was really interesting because he presented us with facts that the common person doesn't know or ever think about oil. He had a good overall point in his lecture, since we as a society are so disconnected from oil, since 2/3 of our oil is imported from other countries, we don't think about how wasteful using this resource as our main source for fuel is. At the very best, 60-70 percent of oil is recovered from an oil well; however, most cases are only as good as 10-15 percent. As expensive and extensive the damage is when oiling, 10-15 percent is a small percentage to actually get from what is there. If we think about it, it has become such a limited resource, that we are extremely dependent upon, and we can only extract 50 percent, at best, of the oil thats actually there. There are alot of dangers and accidents associated with oil and extracting it but we aren't as aware because it doesnt occur in our country as much. Blowouts cause fires and can create lakes of oil that are extremely damaging to the surrounding environment. Laird Thompson talked about how in the '70's we imported only one third of our oil, and now we import two thirds forty years later. We are definitely an overconsuming and heavily dependent society on oil... in the U.S. in 2005, we used 21,930,000 barrels of oil a day. Laird talked about ways that we can reduce some of our oil consumption though... by using synthetic oil in our cars, it lasts longer by almost 10 times that of normal oil! Which is an incentive for people to use because you save money. Overall, it was really interesting to learn about something i use everyday but rarely think about. Its eye opening, I worry about the limited resource and the rate at which we consume it, but i think nothing about where it comes from. That isnt the way to bring about change. If oil runs out, what is our future?