.This is from an article from NBC that was published in November of last year

.It’s about findings that were published Nov. 23 in the journal Environmental Research Letters by a pair of researchers from Harvard and Yale universities.

.project of atmospheric cooling ( solar engineering ) would not only be doable but also cheap at a Only cost only 3.5 billion

.Only cost 3.5 billion(Most of those funds would go into building planes able to carry big tanks of aerosol spray into the stratosphere, about double the cruising altitude of a Boeing 747.)

.Texas will have spent nearly a billion dollars replacing a single bridge in Corpus Christi. New York City subway-repair budgets routinely run into the tens of billions of dollars.

.That cooling wouldn’t reverse climate change. The greenhouse gases would still be there. And the earth will still be warming. Could cut the greenhouse contribution in half.

.What it does?

.Dump sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, reflect light back into space. SO2 is cheap, and there’s lots of it

.We would need to get it up into the stratosphere. it stays aloft for a year or 18 months.

.The recent studies shows the approach really could cool down the planet. But it would not reverse climate change

.It wouldn’t be able to create more glaciers

.Alternative idea is to suck co2 out of atmosphere

.solar geoengineering has the potential to be one of the only options left.

.That’s worrying for a number of reasons,almost certainly be side effects that the sprayers couldn’t anticipate. as soon as it’s stopped its effects would go away within 18 months.

.No politicians, he said, would want to take the blame for a bad weather event that occurred the year after they voted to spray SO2.

.Hurricane Sandy happened on the year after we started putting this material up

Questions about it

.how sulfur would interact with other chemicals in the atmosphere?

.How would a big new batch of SO2 in the atmosphere affect the ozone layer?

. How would individual regions, agriculture or local water systems react to the sudden change in sunlight?

. How would the public react?

Source

 www.nbc-2.com/story/39562206/scientists-say-controversial-plan-to-cool-the-planet-is-doable.

If I were to rate myself, I would say that I am more connected to the natural world than the average citizen. Undoubtedly, I believe this connection has strengthened over my lifetime as I have become more knowledgeable about the importance of the environment and focused my attention more to the value and power of nature. I’ve had multiple experiences and encounters that have increased and fueled my interest into the environment and natural world. Traveling to different countries has opened my eyes to both natural beauty and destruction, and I have learned that there is great value in preserving nature. As a result, I became a vegetarian to try to do my part in preserving the natural world, and have also changed my approach to medicine. I prefer to use holistic and homeopathic remedies to maintain my health. I also prefer to spend most of my time outside, and I believe that being connected to nature and environmental sustainability almost go hand in hand. They bounce off of one another and when combined have positive benefits for the person as well as the environment. I think that being connected to the natural world is important because it makes a person brighter and happier. Nature has instinctive calming effects that put everyone at ease, especially on a beautiful day. Connecting to nature allows us to be more environmentally friendly and conscience. It has also been studied that nature can reduce depression and just cause a person to overall “feel better”. Endless research has justified the fact that nature is correlated to better mental health and has calming effects. For these reasons, I believe we all should aim to connect with nature more.

For my five minutes in nature, I went outside on my porch. I love it out there as my roommates have the entire border covered with plants and herbs. It is very pretty and relaxing. The only drawback is that my porch is near a busy intersection on Vanderhorst. At five o’clock during the weekdays, you can see and hear the rush hour traffic. Fortunately for me, I decided to do this on a beautiful morning. When I was out there, I felt as though I could see and breathe clearer. Breathing in fresh air just made me at ease. I also felt the natural calmness and relaxing effect after being out there. Taking these five minutes alone allowed me to clear my head, and organize my thoughts in a better fashion.  I was able to prioritize my tasks at hand for the day and think about my busy, last week of college. As I was thinking about this, I was observing the cars and the pedestrians as they walked by. There were 2 different people going by that were walking their dogs. Another part of me thought about watering the plants on the porch as well, although I didn’t actually do this. I would honestly compare this small five minute experience to a mediation. I have done guided meditations in the past. This experience left me feeling the same way as guided meditations have, relaxed and with a clear mind.  Meditation in fact, is the process of quieting the mind in order to spend time in thought for relaxation purposes. (from https://www.yogapedia.com/definition/4949/meditation) I would definitely recommend this experience to anyone in need of a small break.

First off, it’s a great day to be alive. Happy Earth Day. The Earth is one of the many places to feel connected. I feel extremely connected to the natural world as a human because of everything that goes on in my life. For this assignment, I chose to use my time at the beach. I feel the beach is one of the more calming areas in the world. I enjoy the beach because it makes feel closer to the earth. I decided to use my time to pick up trash along the shores and the dunes. Most of the oceans are polluted with debris and have been killing off all the animals. Did you know 550 million straws are used by Americans daily, enough to circle the Earth five times. This has changed my perspective of the world and why it is so important to keep the earth clean. My connection to the earth has changed over the years as I became older. I feel as if I started caring more about the changes in the Earth this year as I started living on my own. I learned to recycle more and keep my area clean.

Over the past few years, traveling to new and exciting places has also opened my eyes to the good and bad in the world. One of the reasons I have started to care so much was because of my recent trip to Alaska. I encountered some native tribes known as the Trinkets. During our dancing and singing circle I felt so deeply connected with not only the people but with the most beautiful place in the world. Another activity we had was a quiet time, just like this assignment. We would spend five to ten minutes in the Alaskan air, journaling and gathering our thoughts. I found this a time to very open and connecting with the Earth.

Being connected to the natural world is very rewarding. As a human we encounter a great deal of things that we need to fix. With the oceans being polluted, animas going extinct, and global warming spiraling we need to be better humans to the earth. I feel being connected helps me day in and day out because the earth is our home and we should take care of it.

HAPPY EARTH DAY!

This past weekend I attended a trash cleanup through the Outdoors Club. This event was one of the last events that the Outdoors club put together to hopefully encourage people to get outside during the last, stressful week of classes and to benefit our environment and clean up the city we all love and live in. There were about 20 people there and we all split up and covered different ground. We began the cleanup by moving through campus and cleaning up around the cistern and through cougar mall. My group then walked along King Street and made it all the way to the Open Air Market. We figured this would be a good route to take because this is a tourist heavy area and an area that a lot of cars move through. We found a lot of small debris that were hard to pick up, mostly like cigarette butts and paper and plastic that had been broken down. While on the trash clean up I began to think about the sources of the pollution which in this case was obviously the trash. A main source of this trash would be the humans that disregard the environment and litter their trash. Another one would be the trash cans that are throughout campus and the city. The majority of the ones usually do not have tops, they are open bins which allows trash to be picked up from the wind and dispersed elsewhere. There also is not a lot of recycling bins around the city. Comparing Charleston to a big city like Chicago, the majority of their trash cans have a pull door on the front ensuring that any trash that goes in stays in. Chicago also has recycling bins separating paper, plastic and aluminum. This is a very simple initiative that could be carried through in Charleston to allow people to have a place to throw away any litter, and ensure that it gets disposed of elsewhere, and hopefully recycled.

It was very disheartening to see all of this trash in our city. My take away from the event was that many people have a complete disregard for their environment and community. But also, that our city doesn’t allow for people to have the option to recycle their recyclables. This also made me think of communities that participate in bottle returns. For example in Michigan, any sort of plastic, aluminum or glass bottle (usually drinking bottles) has an extra tax on them. This tax forces people to return their bottles to a recycling center to get their money back. Each bottle can be up to 5-20 cents, which can quickly add up. This simple system allows people to be rewarded for recycling which I am sure also encourages people to begin recycling other things and or finding other alternative ways to decrease their amount of waste.

Overall this event was a good way to bring people together and get people outside by benefiting the environment. After the clean up, we all felt as if this needed to be done multiple times, so I hope that we can organize these clean ups more often.

Smedley, T. (2019, March 17). Deadly Air in Our Cities: The Invisible Killer. The Guardian. Retrieved April 17, 2019, from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/17/air-pollution-london-low-emission-zone-deadly-toxic-fumes

• The source of the article
  • The Guardian
• The Questions:
  • What
    • This article is the about the recent and awful effects of air pollution for families, especially young children, located in/around busy cities. Parents and young children are being diagnosed with Asthma who have no prior family history of it.    
  • Who
    • The article primarily discusses families in London who are experiencing the negative health effects of air pollution. Although the article goes on to claim that, “studies around the world that have reached the same conclusion: children living near busy roads grow up with stunted lungs” (Smedley, 2019).
    • The article discusses the EXHALE study, that tested the lung volume of 8-9 year olds in over 25 schools in east London. “The data show that traffic pollution stops children’s lungs growing properly … by eight-to-nine-years-old, children from the most polluted areas have 5-10% less lung capacity and they may never get that back” (Smedley, 2019).
    • “The Californian Children’s Health Study, ongoing since 1993, measures the lung function of thousands of school children over five-to-seven-year periods. Living within a third of a mile from a motorway was associated with a 2% reduction in lung capacity” (Smedley, 2019).
    • “The 2015 smog in Beijing was so bad that it was dubbed the ‘Airpocalypse’”(Smedley, 2019).
    • “The toxic smog that covers Delhi every Diwali (religious festival of lights) now lasts for months at a time” (Smedley, 2019).
  • Why
    • Densely populated cities are clogged with diesel fumes from traffic, smoke from restaurants, and construction dust.
  • When
    • The Californian Children’s Health Study dates back to 1993 but families have been getting diagnosed with asthma since 2015, per the article. Policies all over the world have been enacted to combat this since 2015 as well. For example, in Edinburgh, London (northern London) in 2015, a school street turned the roads around a school into bus and bicycle-only areas during drop-off and pick-up times. Since then, this idea has spread to schools in London and Birmingham (Smedley, 2019).
  • Where
    • “Air pollution isn’t a London-only problem, or even a big-city problem. It’s an “anywhere with cars and smoke” problem. The answer isn’t to ban cars but it is to reduce exposure and to protect the most vulnerable” (Smedley, 2019). Mentioned by the article specifically was England, California, Beijing and Delhi.
  • How
    • This issue is persisting because community members and policy makers are not acting. The article itself states that the EPA and local health departments are claiming unsafe levels of air pollution but no one is doing anything about it.
• Impact of the event or finding / Relevance to society
  • The impact of the article is very large and should resonate with every breathing being around the world. Air pollution is actually making people sick. Children are diagnosed with asthma, parents are suffering from heart disease and grandparents are experiencing dementia. This is a public health issue and more should be done to combat it. We as people are are responsible for harming our own health and our own environment. Policies need be enacted for the protection of public health.
• Relevance to the course
  • This is relevant to the course because we had an entire lecture on pollution. We know that pollution is connected to land use as described in the article. Pollution is in fact any substance introduced into the environment that can be damaging to the environment or public health. The article speak of air pollution and its effects on human health.
• Any pertinent questions raised by the story
  • Why were there no public health advisories or warnings?
  • Could this be related to overpopulation?
  • If you had a family, would you move away from the pollution or stay and fight policy makers?

Today I was so happy that I got out of lab early because it was my last lab, but more importantly because I was able to attend the Winona LaDuke lecture. This lecture was beyond amazing. Winona LaDuke is an author, activist, and is the founder of and a part of many different organizations and nonprofits. Winona also ran for Vice President two different times through the Green Party. It is apparent that Winona has accomplished a lot, but she is still in the works of so many new projects, like Winona’s Hemp. This event was the final event put on through the Sustainability Literacy Institute in conjunction with the Year of the Women events.

Winona began her lecture by giving us some background of where she came from and what her life is like. Winona is a part of the White Earth tribe in Minnesota. She described to us her life and how they live off of the land. Winona talked about the wild rice and corn that grows and how there is a buffalo man that they go to for their meat. As miniscule as this may seem, this is sustainable living. Only taking what you need, and not rushing natural processes to accommodate yourself, but rather accommodating nature and animals. This way of life shows how nature provides and is a system that works that we have been ignoring and ruining.

After a small look into her life in Minnesota, she started to talk about the current situation in America. She talked about when America used to be great when there used to be 8,000 varieties of corn, 50 million buffalo, so much agrobiodiversity and multiple different species of grass, and how you could drink water from every creek and food was in an abundance. Today, there are only a couple species of corn, as we saw in Food Inc. with Monsanto, we are lacking agrobiodiversity because of monoculture and deforestation as it ruins our topsoil, and the buffalo all have now been replaced by cattle. Winona then related America’s current situation to the behavior of an addict. She explained that when people are addicted to things, drugs, alcohol, television, and so on, they act in extreme ways to get what they are addicted to. Today, we are taught and born into an addict lifestyle. From the point of view of consumerism, we are taught to continue this behavior. Consumerism continues because of planned obsolescence and perceived obsolescence, as we have learned in class. This addictive behavior is further visible because of the ignorance and incoherence of people, specifically leaders. There have been many advancements in technology and found alternatives to improving our environment, economy, and social life, yet they are pushed away.  

The lecture was not all focused on the sad/bad. There was a final portion on the things that you can do and the importance of speaking up and standing your ground. It is so important to fight for what you want. Winona urged the idea to begin to ask and demand for what you want instead of just saying no to what you don’t want. This resonated with me a lot, because if we all are just refusing things then we are not helping. We need to give alternatives and bring new ideas to the table and have the conversations that make us uncomfortable.

Winona was so welcoming and warm and invited everyone to come join her and volunteer/intern with her. If you were unable to go to Winona’s lecture I would highly recommend you check out her initiatives at https://www.winonashemp.com/ and or http://www.honorearth.org/.

The other Friday I signed up to do a litter sweep that was lead by one of my fellow classmates. We focused mostly on Coming street and a little part of Calhoun street. We were supposed to pick up all the litter we saw, but the main focus of the sweep was cigarette buds. We would have to collect, and then count each thing we found. My classmate who was leading it would put a category on the litter. For an example I would pick up 4 wrappers and it would go into plastic category, or I would pick up paper and ( no surprise ) it would go into the paper category.

The five of us started picking up trash on the sidewalk. We all worked on the same sidewalk walking down it. I walked and collected many cigarette buds and other plastics/paper.I went into a few bushes that were against a wall and, it was crazy to see how much litter was in them. I pulled out many beer cans, shirts, hoodies, and blankets. We assumed at some point someone might have slept in one of the bushes. We picked up pieces of plastic car parts, and pieces of glass. We then walked down Calhoun street for a little while; picked up more trash and mostly cigarette buds. We spend a total of an hour out there, only working a small section of Coming and Calhoun.

I learned a lot from this experience. There were many things that surprised me. It was really surprising the we spent a full hour picking up trash in a very small section, and we still did not pick up all the trash we saw. Something else that noticed, was that whenever I was looking for the litter; I could spot more and more around me. It was like the trash was never ending, and once I could easily spot it its like I couldn’t stop seeing it everywhere. This makes me think that I’ve just been so used to seeing litter around me, that my brain just doesn’t pay attention to it anymore. Even after the pick up, I noticed a lot more litter when I walked through the city.

The main thing from class that the litter sweep reminded me of was Tragedy of the Commons. It’s not like we are overusing the city, but it’s the idea that many people are only looking after themselves and not thinking about anything else when they throw their trash out on the street. The amount of litter in city makes me wonder what goes through peoples heads ( the ones who are intentional ) while they litter. It like they take the city for granted. There are many people that live, work, and converse in Charleston. Charleston is our commons, we all share this city. Compared to many other cities, we do have a relatively clean city. Even then that still doesn’t justify all the trash I saw just on the corner of Calhoun and Coming. It makes me wonder if there is an unjustifiable amount of trash just in that one small section, then how much trash could there possibly be laying around in certain sections of cities at least ten times bigger than ours. Cities like New York, LA, Mumbai, London, Mexico city, Beijing, ect. I could keep naming and fill up the rest of the page with more cities. The Tragedy is that no one likes litter, but we are so used to it that much of it just goes unnoticed. This was for sure an eye opening experience for me.

On Friday, to bring Sustainability Week to a close, there was an event in the Cistern called Self Care Friday. This event consisted of a bunch of different clubs that were not only tabling but offered a different activity that promoted mental and physical health. The Outdoors Club was asked to table, so Max Bisaha, Camden Brendlinger and I came up with a fun game to play. We are all on the board of the Outdoors club together and are in this class together, which is what made this event so cool. It was two of our worlds colliding!

Self Care Friday was a phone-free zone. I really liked this concept because it almost forced everyone to disconnect and actually participate in the event! It also made you connect with nature as we were in the middle of the beautiful Cistern surrounded by all of the trees and flowers. For our game, we prepared a game of Jeopardy, but the Outdoors Club Version. The Outdoors Club practices L.N.T. no matter where we go. L.N.T. stands for Leave No Trace, which is where a lot of our questions stemmed from. We wanted to teach people the principles of Leave No Trace since they usually are unknown. We asked questions regarding the ethics of leaving certain kinds of food/fruit peels behind, how to walk on a trail if it has rained recently and the proper way to use the restroom in nature since these are all valid things that come up on every Outdoors Club trip.  A lot of people were surprised when we told them that you are not supposed to leave fruit peels or any part of the food behind, even though it is biodegradable. The principles of Leave No Trace is to, well leave no trace! Whenever we are on a trip we always want to make it look like we were never there in the first place. Another question that was surprisingly a tough one for some people, were the three pillars of sustainability. The most common answer was reduce, reuse, recycle, not the triple bottom line that we have been learning about in class. Not that the 3 R’s are not important, but it is a common misconception of what sustainability focuses on. I think people very easily forget about the social aspect of sustainability in how sustainability is also a huge portion of fighting for equity and justice everywhere.

The best part of this event was that when you participated in a club’s activity you got raffle tickets to put towards some really cool prizes. Participants had the chance to win large plants, a gift basket from Artist & Craftsman supply, gift cards to many different stores and restaurants, and so much more! The raffle was a very fun and exhilarating event. Everyone got so excited when they won a surprise, but I think the most excited was Professor Saunders when she won her gift card to Gnome Cafe!

Overall this event was a very fun and diverse event that I know I am happy I participated in! Events like this that bring together so many different clubs show how interdisciplinary is so important.