a) one paragraph on any refinements on your top of the hourglass since your last update post
(b) one or two paragraphs discussing your middle of hourglass work today, and (super important!) linking to your updated portfolio with details
(c) a paragraph summarizing your team’s discussions re. possible bottom of hourglass implications.
As we worked more on our research project focusing on the “Wasteocene” the majority of our original findings have held true. We aimed to focus on how the neglect of waste and resource management in the development of countries can end up effecting them. As we did more research it became clear that waste management is an issue that is often set aside when countries are developing. This leads to poor environmental standards as well as poor environmental health. This also related us to the Kuznet curve which we had addressed in earlier capitaloscene labs where, less developed and low income countries tend to have a lower EPI score which, according to the Kuznet curve, may be due to industrialization. Our framing question is aiming to look at how countries deal with waste effectively in order to minimize their environmental impact in the long run, as well as examining reasons for large waste and pollution during development.
One of the larger issues we identified through our research so far is solid waste. As a country develops, their population grows and their becomes are very large need for effective solid waste management as this directly affects human health. Another interesting thing we found is that more developed countries have the resources to effectively control and plan for waste management as it can be quite expensive. While less developed, or currently developing countries struggle with this because they are still developing their economy.
In terms of Chile, one of the bigger issues they have is properly recycling and managing electronic waste. Chileans each produce 9.9 kilos of e-waste annually, according to a recent United Nations report. This is twice the global average, so Chile is beginning to launch specific initiatives to formalize the recycling of electronic products. Their main focus is products of telecommunication as these are the most prominent and are extremely harmful to the environment. As we do more research it will be interesting to look at how other countries have started to launch environmental initiatives, or lack thereof, based on how important their environmental standards are to them.
We have also created a concept map of important points so far which can be found, along with updates of progress on our Wasteocene project, on my Wasteocene summary page.
Featured Image Link: https://sites.sph.harvard.edu/hoffman-program/2016/08/26/formal-e-recycling-the-complexity-of-solving-the-e-waste-problem-worldwide/
Vegan, vegetarian, NO animal products! All diet trends that are becoming more common in society today, but are they more than just a fad? I love bacon, I wont lie, and I love a good burger, but I had to ask myself, why are all these people switching to a meatless or animal product free diets? The meat industry is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gases in our atmosphere as well as deforestation, droughts and pollution from sewage and pesticides. In this reflection post I’m aiming to look at the facts of the meat industry and how they actually affect our climate, not only to learn more myself, but also to give a more clear general understanding of how all these things come into play.
The EWG (environmental working group), an activist group focusing on research and advocacy in areas such as agriculture, did a study on the different effects meat has on the environment. They studied the production and distribution lifecycle of 20 different agricultural products. Through this study they found that the meat industry uses huge amounts of pesticides, fertilizers, fuel, feed and water. But how do these processes effect the greenhouse gas emissions in our environment and how are they all interconnected in a “lifecycle”? Starting at the source, livestock are fed large amount of grains, like corn, which take an immense of land, fertilizer and water to be grown. To put this into perspective and numbers, the EWG estimates livestock feed requires 167 million pounds of pesticides and 17 billion pounds of nitrogen fertilizer. This process not only puts large amounts of greenhouse gases into our atmosphere, but also is creating food that could go directly to our large population to feed more people. Continuing on, because cattle ranching needs so much land, the affects of deforestation are tremendous. Forests are not only a carbon sink but they also provide important homes and ecosystems for biodiversity.
While all of these steps may seem very daunting, it becomes more clear as you read that the meat industry not only uses so many of our precious resources but continually builds on its negative impacts on the environment. To simplify the process I included a graphic below to compare how meat is produced.
Photo courtesy of: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/06/27/155527365/visualizing-a-nation-of-meat-eaters
While there are so many articles and propoganda out there about what we should and shouldn’t eat I think a couple things are important to consider when reading and making environmental decisions. A lot of these stats are daunting and it seems as if you as one person can’t do anything, but that’s not true! Even if you cut meat out of your diet a couple days a week, there is always something you can do to change your carbon footprint. I also believe it is imparative to stick to the facts and figures and not get bogged down in propoganda and flashy articles. I hope this article was helpful in gettting the facts straight in your mind and maybe even convincing you to at least cut some small portions of meat of your diet. Check out meat consumption per capita below to see where your country falls in meat consumption.
Map courtesy of: https://ourworldindata.org/meat-and-seafood-production-consumption
Featured Image Courtesy of: http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-130949000/stock-photo-funny-cow-on-a-green-summer-meadow.html
Background:
We are aiming to look at the “Wasteocene” which is mainly looking at how countries deal with waste and waste management. We found this to be a big environmental issue as well as one that directly affects human health and citizens. Our draft framing and situated context question is below. We plan to possibly alter these as we do more research.
These questions will help us research the general issues around waste management in countries all around the world. From there we can also research specifically Chile and what kind of environmental and waste issues they face.
Procedure:
In order to find key literature for our research project we used Google Scholar, Primo, Ebso and researchgate. We searched key terms like, Chile, Municipal Solid Waste, Waste-to-energy, environmental issues in developing countries, Waste Management. These key words helped us find articles to relate to our general framing question about waste management as well as to find specific articles about our situated context in Chile. In order to organize our articles and books once we found them, we used a database called Zotero. This allowed us to add all of our research to one shared library between the three of us and organize it using tags. These tags allowed us to categorize and process different articles and find key themes that were found throughout multiple articles. Zotero also allows us to share our annotated bibliography which you can find below.
Results:
The link to our full annotated bibliography and library you can find here. From our findings it is clear that waste management is a key environmental issues especially in developing countries. Electronic waste and solid waste management were the largest issues that were cited and discussed multiple times. Looking at our specific situated context articles there are other environmental issues such as indigenous land rights, that became specific to Chile as we researched. You can find all articles in this library and click on the separate tags to look at specific resources we found.
Discussion:
As we researched it became clear that waste management is a large environmental issue today as it was cited and researched many times in multiple different countries. I think it would be helpful to research a little more on Chile specifically and look at if they are working on fixing their waste management issue or if their government is more focused on economic development. Our annotated bibliography right now gives us a really strong base for waste management in Chile as well as in developing countries and I think the tags we utilized on Zotero are a great tool for relating different research.
Featured Image picture: https://www.croda.com/en-gb/careers/our-locations/latin-america/chile
Background
Over the past 3 weeks we have been looking at different environmental data in different locations around the world in order to analyze the Capitalocene. In general, the Capitalocene analyzes how as countries become more economically advanced the worse their effect on the environment is. In our first lab we use EPI and World bank data to compare income level with region their environmental impact. Graphing this data showed us that less developed and poorer countries tended to have a worse EPI level. Our second lab we wanted to look at more factors that contribute to the Capitalocene to potentially see further correlation, and then map these findings on to ARCGIS. From this lab I actually found that more developed countries, especially in Europe, actually had a worse pollution score compared to less developed countries. Look at this specific data mapped it was clear we needed to further look at Capitalocene data to make a clear connection. So, for our third lab we analyzed world values survey v.s income level. We specifically looked at citizens responses to Economic development v.s Environmental protection, by finding a hypothesis and a p value based on our data, we proved that the lower the countries income the higher they’ll prioritize economic growth over environmental protection. All these labs helped us analyze the ideas of the Capitalocene and how the world’s current environmental data correlates.
For this final Capitalocene lab we shifted our focus to EJ, environmental justice. The U.S EPA defines environmental justice as ““the fair treatment and meaningful involvement [emph. added] of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies”. We analyzed this data while relating it to the Capitalocene by looking at race v.s class, specifically we wanted to look at environmental injustice having to do with toxicities. We also utilized multiple Portland Air Toxicity Reports (PATS) in order to look at pollution that affects the Portland area. We specifically focused on polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which is pollution from wood combustion. We chose this because based on PATS report, this is the pollutant they were most worried about. We did this in order to see spacial coincidences with waste and race/class. While it may connect to the Capitalocene in some ways, some issues with analyzing this type of data is that spatial correlation may not imply causation. We will further talk about factors that might affect our data when we discuss our maps.
Procedure
We first began this lab by importing data from ACS and PATS. The PATS data, like i mentioned above, is from the Portland Air Toxics Solutions, a database that gathers information on toxic air pollutants in Portland. The ACS data is a census community survey that regularly gathers information on different demographics. We utilized the information about the toxin PAH15, or Poly Aromatic Hydrocarbons. This toxin is an outcome from wood combustion and we used it because it is the pollutant PATS is most concerned about. The ACS data gave us information on income level and race demographics from citizens in Portland. We were able to manipulate this data by combining income over $100,000 to make a high income group and combining low income (under $50,000) groups. Additionally we combined the black and hispanic groups to create a minority race group to compare to the residence location of white citizens.
Results:
Toxicity level of wood combustion based on race –
Toxicity v.s Income ( x < 49,000)
Toxicity v.s Income (100,000 ≤ x ≤ 200,000)
Heat Map of Toxicity levels for wood combustion pollutant
From our maps we can start to see some correlation between class and race v.s toxicity levels in an area. EJ focuses more on race when looking at environmental justice and injustices. We chose to look at it from multiple angles as to really flush out a true correlation or conclusion. As you can see from our two income level maps, lower income areas and residents are more central to these toxicities compared to higher income. This same thing is true if you compare our white residents map to our black and hispanic map, there are more concentrated areas of black and hispanic residents where the toxins are more concentrated. While this might point out environmental injustices in Portland as well as the Capitalocene, which I will discuss below, it is important to recognize other factors. Some of these being geographic influences as where more concentrated populations live are going to have more toxins as well as non-human used areas. Overall, it is important not to generalize when looking at smaller pieces of data as you don’t always have to come to an immediate and clear solution.
Discussion:
Based on our mapping, the high income group seems to reside farther outside the city, which is farther away from these toxins. We found one exception on the map which is a cluster in the center of the city which also happens to be an expensive place to live. A lot of the low income group resides not in the center of the city but also not on the far out cleaner suburban areas. The minority residents seemed to be living in closer proximity to the city in higher toxin areas. Compared to white residents who are settled on the outside of the city in lower population areas illustrating an even larger divide between white residents and black and hispanic ones.
We only have demographics on these residents and not where they are employed. This factor could affect the ACS groups as proximity to work is an important factor to where you live. This is a limitation of what our data allows us to look at. Our results seem to indicate that minority and low income groups are more exposed to air pollutants and toxins. I believe it would be interesting to look at low income minority groups and low income white groups to see if race is important or if it depends mostly on the income level. This would be especially interesting having to do with EJ because it would allow us to really look at environmental injustices specifically with race. This further showed us how the Capitolscene affects the environmental as we look at specific environmental factors and how different groups are affected by industrialization. I think it would also be interesting to see if minorities make up the majority of the low income sections.
Featured Image: Courtesy Ricardo Levins Morales
Daryl Davis is a famous musician, activist and author famously known for his engagement with members of the Ku Klux Klan. As an African American man he is responsible for around 40 people leaving the KKK. But, you’re probably wondering, how was he capable of this? And, what does this have to do with environmental studies? Well, in this post I’m going to focus on a lot of the ideas Daryl talked about in how to engage people with severely different views then you and how this relates to the environment and climate change.
Daryl Davis’s presentation at Lewis and Clark spoke a lot to how we engage across boundaries and difference. For him, he was also confused about how someone could be racists towards him as he stated, “how can you hate me when you don’t even know me?”. This question brought him to meet with many KKK members, even in dangerous situations just to basically ask them that question. Daryl believes that when it comes to different, we must address issues immediately in order to open the conversation. Fear, he says, is our biggest weapon because ignorance fuels fear which fuels hate and then destruction. Daryl strongly believes in personal connections, as these have shown him time after time that when you can sit down and talk to someone you begin to feel empathy for the other. Rodger Kelley, the leader of a KKK group, who ended up leaving the klan after many years of being friends with Daryl, stated, “at least he respects me enough to listen to what I have to say”. This respect that he felt from Daryl made their friendship open to conversation about sensitive topics and eventually changed Rodger Kelleys mind. Without this feeling of mutual respect, conversations can never begin.
Now, what exactly does this have to do with environmental studies? Daryl Davis, after all, is a man who has been fighting racism for years through his relationships with KKK members. Well, his ideas about how to engage with people with wildly different views then you hold true to environmental studies. Per my last post, I talked about how climate change today can be incredibly frustrating and scary as more looming statistics come out about how we need to make change now while not even our president believes it’s happening. But, with the ideas of Daryl Davis, even though there are people who don’t believe in climate change or are not willing to do anything about it, it’s important to stay kind and patient and simply have a conversation. Many times we let fear kick in and we get so angry at “the other side” who don’t believe what we believe so we just talk to people who share our ideas because that feels easier. This type of approach gets nothing done and truly splits people into “the other”. Instead of being fearful and discouraged we have to engage people and discuss like we respect and care about everyones opinions. This is a very important step when it comes to climate change, one that very few people take, and one that is very easily forgotten as people become more fearful from current science articles and statistics.
Daryl Davis is an incredibly interesting and intelligent man and I feel grateful to have seen him speak. He truly gave me a different outlook on engaging across difference, no matter the subject.
Featured Image Picture Link: https://college.lclark.edu/programs/environmental_studies/symposium/
Background:
In order to look at the Capitalocene we have been analyzing different world data the past two weeks. The Capitalocene looks at how as countries become more economically advanced, their impact on the environment worsens. We’ve been analyzing EPI and World country data in order to look at how different countries environmental standards compare to their level of development. For this lab, we used the World Values Survey to look at how the Capitalocene can explain significant environmental values and beliefs among people from country to country. These views we assume are related to each countries correlating environmental practices, which was measured through EPI. This survey gives us an entirely new perspective on different countries environmental impact because it gives individual citizens views on how they value the environment as well as how they feel their government should deal with the environment.
Procedure:
We first selected three countries we wanted to look at in the World values survey, one of each income group. We chose Haiti (low income), Algeria (Middle income) and Argentina (High income). We extracted each of these countries data from the world values survey and picked a variable, or specific survey question, we wanted to look at. We chose protecting the Environment v.s Economic growth, with a 1 representing a priority for protecting the environment even if it causes slower economic growth and some loss of jobs, and a 2 representing a priority on economic growth and creating jobs even if the environment suffers. We then graphed each countries response to this question into a histogram in order to look at the number of responses compared to whether the majority answered 1 or 2. From there, we calculated the average and standard deviation for all three countries in order to map the varying degree of responses from each country. From this information we came up with a hypothesis in order to later find a null hypothesis and do a t-test to test our hypothesis. Our hypothesis stated, the lower the countries income the higher they’ll prioritize economic growth over environmental protection. In order to find a p variable to compare the data we had to do a t-test for each country, i.e Haiti v.s Algeria, Haiti v.s Argentina and Argentina v.s Algeria. Our null hypothesis stated, the higher the countries income the lower they’ll prioritize environmental protection. We calculated the p-value for each set of countries, and found they were very small, as you can see in the analysis. These very small P-values make sense though, because of our huge sample size. After we found this, we compared our values in order to decide if we should reject or discard our null hypothesis.
Results:
These three histograms are showing the responses (either 1 or 2) of the citizens of each country. These responses correlate with our hypothesis because for the lower income country (Haiti), the majority of responses fall towards 2 which is economic growth as a priority. Where as the higher income country (Argentina), mostly falls to 1 which puts environmental protection as more important.
This graph is our mean for each countries response, which we calculated from the world values survey data. The bars in the middle represent the standard deviation for each countries data. This helped us look at the different information country to country and see how much they differed.
Discussion:
These findings further back up our hypothesis we made stating, the lower the countries income the higher they’ll prioritize economic growth over environmental protection. From our results you can see that Argentina was the most concerned about their environmental impact, followed by Algeria and the Haiti. From my first Capitalocene lab I found similar results, which suggested that higher income regions also had higher EPI scores. Without further research from lab 1, I wasn’t confident to make a strong link between the Capitalocene due to the EPI being based off of performance goals. In lab 2 I compared Exports and Trade % of GDP to air pollution and overall emissions, which actually showed the opposite findings from my first lab. The data showed that more developed countries in Europe and some parts of Asia actually had a worse EPI indicator for pollution and emissions compared to less developed countries. From that lab I found that the data you map and find is very dependent on the data you pick, so it has the possibility to not give you a good overall look at the Capitalocene country to country. This lab, although, had the ability to give a more broad look at countries view on the environment which I believe is more accurate in terms of the Capitalocene. From this lab, I found that there may be a correlation to attitudes about the environment and protection based off of income level. The higher income countries have a larger emphasis on the environment compared to lower income countries who prioritize economic development. This suggests, there is a trend which shows that the better and more stable the economy may mean that people can focus on other issues such as the environment and their impact.
In an environmental analysis class we are often focusing on taking information in and figuring out why a or how a certain event is occurring. This type of research and learning is important but when looking at climate change today it can be incredibly alarming. Words such as crisis, extinction, mass migration, and irreversible destruction ring in my head time after time while reading articles about climate change. Not only that but the seemingly more detrimental words of President Trump who not only does not believe in climate change, but is actively trying to pull the United States out of the Paris agreement. It’s all a lot to read and digest, but it is important to do especially as someone who is an environmental studies major.
My thoughts on climate change today are that it’s important to get your voice and scientific voices heard in a world so divided by politics that some won’t even admit environmental threats are right outside their door. I also think it’s important to make changes in your lifestyle, no matter how small, that can positively affect the environment. As environmentalist, and especially environmentalist in an analysis class I find it hard not to get caught up in the daunting question of how do we solve it? What can we do? And while these are very important questions, they can drown you in all the negative things that people around the world will and wont do. A way to focus on positivity is focus on the facts, and especially for this class, the analysis. Reading information, knowing the facts, and analyzing what is going on.
I find it interesting how articles often focus on “saving the world or earth”, but in reality the earth would be much better without us, in fact the earth was doing great before humanity. It’s in reality the human race which we have to save which is ironic cause it is us as humans that are causing these issues to arise. It’s hard not to see the overall human race as selfish and unwilling to recognize when theres a problem, but I’ve also met so many smart and angry individuals who will fight for our climate and the human race.
In todays world, climate change is not only real, but right around the corner, and every individual should make small changes in their lives to work towards a better future. While the people in power, especially in economically powerful countries, don’t seem to see climate change as an issue, there still are so many of us who are willing to fight this and fight for our place on the earth. As environmentalists specifically in this class, being open, skeptical and being able to reflect on all the information out there is a very important skill to learn and use. The world may be changing, and it may feel devastating and out of our control, but we aren’t alone.
Featured Image link: http://www.theeventchronicle.com/study/strange-things-california-fires/
Over the past 4 weeks we’ve been doing research and having discussions in order to situate land cover change in our local environment. We researched land use cover change in three different areas, Lewis and Clark College campus, Collins view neighborhood and Riverview national area. From our data collection and comparison we were able to make connections and find unique differences in all three areas. From this research we were able to develop some thoughts and hypotheses about broader land cover changes. In order to synthesize our thoughts and findings, you can find our story map here where we situate our data in terms of our findings, as well as the broader context of land use cover change.
While doing environmental studies, it’s hard not to look at change in a negative light. Words like development are often associated with change in an area. For example, the land use cover change labs we’ve been doing the best month have been analyzing the change in the greater Portland area since 1931. I found that when analyzing data that has had a change over a certain amount of years, whether it is positive or negative change, it is hard to not give change a negative connotation. As our population rises and the demand for housing, public transport, water system, paved roads etc. rises, we tend to focus on the negative impacts expanding will have. But, during our Lewis and Clark vicinity panel I realized that while mass development can have a negative impact on the environment, it’s not always set in stone when local change can be a large shifting factor. In River view natural area, one of the areas studied in our land use cover change lab, there had been requests to the city to develop it. The city denied this request as river view has been an especially natural and reserved area for the neighborhood and greater Portland area. John Miller, one of our panelists who lives in the neighborhood, even told us that Tryon creek was targeted for development but was stopped as the locals and neighbors would not allow it.
These stories from people who have lived in this neighborhood made me realize that small changes in an area may not inherently be negative, but big changes can be. Although, despite the grim look on our ever diminishing environment, not everyone is out to develop on top of our natural areas. Local solutions really shown through at this panel, as these 5 people and most of their neighbors love the environment and the natural areas set aside, and they are determined to keep them that way. I found this very inspiring considering our outlook is often grim for the future of the environment with climate change and people in power always pushing the environment aside. The panel really showed me that small fights can make a big difference even if it is in a small neighborhood just outside of Portland.
This panel was really interesting not only to get more information on our labs but it also illustrated how important getting local opinions on change, especially having to do with the environment, really is. Using our lab as an example, we had been looking at data points and photos of the area in order to make assumptions about the change in the area. But, after talking with these people who have actually seen the change and fought for different areas to be kept natural, my view on the land has changed completely. The local and personal perspective is a very important aspect in doing environmental studies, because it is very easy to see areas as data points rather than an actual environmental area with different types of people living near it.
Mackenzie Hoult 