1-8: Thoughts on Environmental Studies

Weekly Blog Posts

The following is an assignment for my Intro to Environmental Studies Class.

09/04/2024

What is my Environmental History?

My environmental history can be traced way back to elementary school where I had a project of adopting a tree on my street and learning it's history. This project doubles as the furthest back memory I have of environmental issues, as while using a crayon to trace the bark I discovered green shiny beetle. I told my teacher about it and was given a brief rundown of the emerald ash borer, an invasive species that humans unintentionally brought from China on shipping crates. These small beetles that I would think nothing of are actually the cause of millions of ash trees dying in our region. This exact thing played out as the street tree I did the project on just 7 months later was removed by the city due to concerns of hollowed out sections of the tree. That introduced me to the unseen world, and untold damages, of invasive species.

Calculate your personal ecological footprint and discuss your results.
Does it contradict your environmental history and reasons for taking this class?

a) # of biologically productive hectares needed: 7.2 gha/year

b) CO2 Emissions: 10.7 tonnes/year

c) Earths to sustain your lifestyle: 4.2 Earths

I'm not particularly surprised by my results, as I recognize most Americans live in significant excess of resources the planet can provide. What surprises me most is that the results aren't worse honestly, I live in a very old house, with old folks and old lifestyles.I guess it is nice to know that my mitigation methods have helped stave off egregious amounts of excess footprint (took this in middle-school and was around 7 earths).

Personally, the results don't contrast all too much with my environmental history and reasons for taking this class. I recognize the sheer amount of excess I, or you, use is a drop in the bucket of the real harm caused by industry and the wealthiest among us. So while I'll try and reduce my own number, even if as a self gratifying act, I devote much more energy and focus to pushing the big polluters and resource wasters.

09/11/2024

What environmental problem is on your mind?
What are some possible solutions and associated pros and cons?

The environmental problem most on my mind, specific to where I live, is Heat Vulnerability. East Flatbush is the hottest neighborhood in NYC, but has the least access to cooling. With less than 1% of the area being green space, only some residential areas having street trees, the concentration of elderly and youth who are especially vulnerable to heat related illness, the outdated infrastructure of housing and schools, among many more, East Flatbush is a place especially harmed by climate change induced heatwaves/domes.

Excerpt from Overheated and Underserved by NYC Comptroller Brad Lander 2022

There are many solutions, some groups advocate for more park space, the inclusion of more street trees, introducing green infrastructure, reducing car usage (we have some of the most heavily driven on streets this side of the city, which produce an insane amount of gas further heating up the area), vouchers for AC unit installations, expanded access to pools, and free access to buildings with cooling.

Some of these solutions require exhaustive legislation but would have substantive and permanent impact, others involve the reallocation of funds but introduce the issue of costs and politics, some are quick and easy but fail to address systemic issues, others are great policy that would never pass in the current policy window. All have pros and cons that vary depending on what stakeholders are involved and the timeline of actually applying the solution.

09/19/2024

I find it interesting the breakdown of biodiversity into components. It makes sense, but for most of the science I've engaged with, "biodiversity" tends to be more of a generic phrase thrown around without much specificity or depth. Of the 4 components, functional diversity is a type I never thought of but makes sense as to why it's important. Having a great diversity of biochemical process to support an ecosystem would be incredibly important to efficient transfer of energy or matter in a cycle. Forest ecosystems come to mind when I think of functional diversity because of the efficient rate leaves decompose, and can be recycled back into the soil.

09/25/2024

I find interesting how, returning to something we mentioned a few classes back, that fossil fuel energy is at an artificially low price. From the sheer amount of subsidizing, global dependence, and lack of true cost pricing. I think these chapters re contextualized that in how we talk about which energy source is better, pros and cons, that many times we're still comparing true cost renewables to this artificially low cost coal/oil/natural gas and renewables still come out on top. Moreover, when discussing nuclear energy, the thousand years it'll take for the waste to become safe is a cost. A cost that should be factored in when we talk about how cheap, clean, or green something is.

To ramble a bit into chapter 16, I think the textbook does a good job transitioning focus to "we need more renewables" to "we need to use energy differently". The sheer wastes of energy from outdated inefficient technology, and ventures that are inessential, contribute more to the energy and climate crisis than we often recognize.

10/02/2024

Reflect on an event, or events, from Climate Week.

On September 26th, I had the privilege of being a panelist at the “Imagining Climate Resilient and Thriving Communities” event on Governors Island. I was invited as an alumnus of the Youth Leadership Council under the NYCDOE Office of Energy and Sustainability, to join a colleague in speaking from a youth perspective on the benefits of youth education and inclusion into spaces and strategy. What I found interesting, what was immediately apparent, was who was in the room. Largely directors of NGOs, University administrators, an elected official, in what I could only describe as a room full of suits and business cards.

Despite how beneficial, universal, and community oriented our section of the panel was, there weren't many average people there. In fact, of the intended demographic, students and educators, the only group of students was there for a class assignment, and the only active teachers were ours from DOE. An issue with events like these, more standard “official” climate week events, is access. Who is told about panels? Who’s invited? Who can reasonably hop on the ferry at this time? Who are we marketing toward? All of these questions determine the types of attendees we’ll see and, frankly, they failed at ensuring those who I’d want to hear our talk most were present.

Nevertheless, we did a great job at recontextualizing climate change education and discussion against the backdrop of Environmental Justice. Particularly, having an interesting Q&A about why society is quick to recognize youth as the bearers of climate problems, but so apprehensive about youth inclusion as change makers of climate solutions.

10/09/2024

I find Chapter 8 had the most intriguing quotes of "Reform environmentalism has been unable to develop a meaningful political vision of how to create an ecologically sustainable society". A lot of our work as people attempting to create a better world revolves around a "theory of change". Evidence, empirical analysis, and scientific approaches are insufficient when it comes down to this generative processes. There is a necessity to a sociological and political perspective through which you actually chart out a path to victory, no amount of preaching or Euclidean models will supplement that. And I think Chapter 8 accurately points out the hyper professionalization of discourse, wherein scientists oftentimes take an ivory tower approach as though society doesn't exist. Even when it says how it results in "authoritarian management of the environment and society" it often mirrors well-meaning liberals statements of "listen to the scientists, listen to the experts". While true, contextually scientists aren't some monolithic angel who wave wands to accurately describe problems and solutions, front line communities have a concrete experience that I value significantly more than some grad intern who's never left campus.

Well-intentioned people often forget that models are not reality, and the perspectives of survivors or those of different fields is significantly more essential to our theory of change than just quantifying the amount of millibars a climate fueled Hurricane might drop in 24 hours. We still need that data, but my theory of change requires significantly more outside the lab. It requires those frontline communities, boots on the ground who can speak to the humanity, empathy, and lived history. You can’t get that with a degree.

10/16/2024

I think the additional reading consumer or citizen really put to words an aspect of the issue I never considered. Particularly how consumerism is a source of an aspect of the political dissaray of America. American exceptionalism has always necessitates egoistic selfish, but usually as a collective. It was America herself being selfish, which in and of itself usually meant rich white people. But the advent of consumer culture meant American exceptionalism had a new frontier that every individual could partake in. Greed could flourish even amongst the poor, so long as they could buy, they could hoard, and showcase some abstract power of wants and influence. Environmental plastic pollution, degradation at large was just a necessary consequence of this culture. Not an independent circumstance, but a product of an underlying cultural perspective. Which makes so much more sense as even knowing the push companies made, unless they had an American populace of consumers willing to take(demand) anything supplied, it couldn't spiral out of control.