Climate Strategy- Sustainability on campus!

This week I was blown away by what the CSBSJU campuses have already done making strides towards sustainability. Remember, coming into this class I knew close to nothing about climate change and sustainability. This week really hit home for me since we were talking more personally, about my college, my campus, my home. CSB has taken great consideration of sustainability as they build new buildings. A new apartment unit, centennial commons is a LEED certified building. LEED is a widely used green building rating system. As CSB makes new renovations and builds new buildings they are trying to follow green building guidelines. Another awesome implementation on campus is composting. We now have compost which the sustainability office gives out free recycled yogurt containers to put your compost in. CSB also has rehydration stations, and has gone to all reusable water bottles. CSB also went tray less a few years ago to reduce the amount of waste. SJU has not gone tray less yet but plans to do trial runs of it soon and hopefully be tray less by next year. In between campuses the Link bus runs constantly all day long increasing our carbon footprint. But, we now have 2 propane buses!! The future goal as we buy more buses is to have 50% propane 50% diesel. Both campuses also have an energy week where student resident halls compete to lower energy. Both campuses also offer options to recycle furniture and other things. CSB does a sale where you donate furniture and they sell your used furniture during move in. SJU has a swap shop where you can swap your furniture for other furniture. SJU has also made several strides towards sustainability which a lot of students don't know about. They have a solar farm on campus! Overall I am so glad to live on a campus that supports sustainability and the cultural of the outdoors. We are a very outdoorsy campus that has so many options of things you can do outside. They have bike rentals, a lake for fishing, swimming, ice skating, hiking trails, and more. Implementing sustainability on college campuses is so smart because as humans developmentally this is the perfect time. We are open-minded and ready to learn. Our first year at college is our first time alone and if you teach sustainability habits right away they will last. Also we are the next generation to hit the market. Not only are we the future consumers but we also are the next people to hold powerful positions.

This week talked about a lot of different interesting points so I am just going to jumble them all in this fun blog:) Our most interesting reading was professor Jessy's article in Climate Cultures on her anthropogenic research of the culture of climate change politics and groups. We talked about the editing process of these climate reports. I was very surprised to learn that anyone can sign up to edit these reports and they have to reply back to every edit! Specifically she looked into an editing error in a report that said that the west antartic ice sheet will disappear in 2035 rather than what it was supposed to be predicted of 2350. One tiny typo ended up raising millions of questions on acuracy on the document as a whole!!! That is what is really difficult of translating science to policies/reports. The deliver of information is so important in its value to the rest of the world. But, at the end of the day we are all human and can,will, and do make mistakes.

We finished the week discussing about the science policy interface. We drew an interconnecting web of all that goes into climate policy: Science(IPCC), UN, executives/implementers, research and development ngos, activists, governments, corporations/ businesses, and a lot more.

I also revived my assignment cluster. I am in the science and technology cluster. I am really excited to get going on my research. The cluster will be working together through our own individual research on a common aspect of climate change. Two of the 5 of us are actually going to Paris for the UNFCCC meeting so the will be tracking how our cluster topic play out in Paris and we will be tracking the media and how it plays out there. Our cluster's mission statement is·     

The sci-tech group is dedicated to examining the effects of climate change on the biosphere/atmosphere, how the science and technology sector will influence policy at the UNFCCC, and what technologies are being developed to mitigate climate change.

Climate futures and development- SCALEing it down

This week we talked about development in several different aspects of climate futures. The most interesting to me was the reading in Climate Cultures by Jessica Barnes titled Scale and Agency: Climate Change and the Future of Egypt’s Water. Often when I think of climate change I think of it on global scale, which can be a very limited way to think in regards of development. Development is political and subjective; meaning people on all scales, scientists, government officials, international experts, irrigation engineers, and farmers, are all crucial to understand the future of climate-linked development. Barnes talked about one specific interview with a farmer who controlled the water flow in the canal. The river was low one day and he admitted to not showing up adjust the water levels one day because of a holiday which resulted in very low water levels. This isn’t a “one person can change the world” rant but more so a realization of human agency and the importance of all systems within climate change. We must realize it is this intersection of natural and human agency that shapes environmental outcome and we must not undermine human capability.

The Polar Bears are dying! No but really, that’s sad.

Do you think about the future? If so, how do you think about the future? How does the way you think about the future, or the absence of thought, influence the future?

The future is full of a lot of uncertainties.  Our world is made up of several complex systems that are threatened by collapse everyday, and we wonder what will happen? Instead of thinking about the future as something to predict, lets look at it as a pattern. If we use pattern recognition in the complex system of climate we can think about inventing the future. Climate leaves its mark on us through its fingerprint, its DNA for say. If we look at it from a larger scale we see a warm weather pattern, and those couple cold days no longer matter. These patterns, climate’s fingerprint, validates our climate models supporting predictions.

            In general, when we think about climate change many think of the sad visuals of the polar bears, the Arctic as the Bellwether for climate change. In Fingerprint, bellwether, model event: Climate change as speculative anthropology Jerome Whitington says, “What about the future? The idea of a bellwether, which reads the future into present-day patterns, foregrounds the flickering anticipation of circumpolar political ecology and the geological time of fossil energy. As we can see by using this approach, climate change’s presence is established through many uncertain features, which can be used as a powerful tool when thinking about the future. The polar bear idea seems to show the actuality of climate change.

            We should think about the future, but not with fear, instead with anticipation. We must think also with the knowledge of how this thinking will shape our future of climate change.

Climate Denial for Dummies: A how to guide and why it works!

        To begin know that it is your human right to have doubt and be skeptical, let everyone else in your life know they should be doubtful of all this crazy climate science stuff too!! If you have trouble getting everyone else to join your denial club PLEASE let them know their individual rights are being threatened. They must get on board now or what will be next, our freedom of speech taken away? Now, when sifting through climate science data you may actually agree with some of the scary facts... Don't worry! Cherry pick the data you can use and put it out there in the media. I mean, have you seen that graph showing the world has actually been getting colder? Everyone needs to see that, screw global "warming" I need to go buy another $200 north face and some $100 Sorel boots! You must also be careful getting this information back out to the public. Since you aren't a real scientist you actually can just use the same formatted article as the climate scientist and just keep the graphs you like and add your commentary. Don't feel bad about it. They are the ones that keep trying to blame us for this so called climate change! Create a blame shift and make them realize that even if some of their data is correct it is not human, it is natural like those sun spots and stuff. Humans were meant to live on this earth and we live in America land of the free. We don't need people, scientists, who can't even claim ANYTHING with 100% certainty,to have us completely change our lifestyles just because they just want to make money! Lastly, make sure when spreading the denial that you give yourself credentials. I mean you have read this whole how to guide now and probably watch the news every morning, you are practically an expert, RIGHT!?