The Principles of Sustainable Development.

Please watch a short video explaining the principles of SD by following the link below.

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/harringtontw/2218451

1.        Education:

It is impossible to enact any sort of change in the world if no one understands what you are trying to change.  In order to create a world where Sustainable Development is a reality instead of an ideal people have to know what Sustainable Development really is and its many benefits.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8c-F-ljEeM The Wombat Youtube video

http://www.storyofstuff.org/ Annie Leonard home page

2.       Personal Activism:

Every single person who steps in to make a difference counts.  Whether protesting an international corporation that dumps toxic waste into the ocean or a local business that doesn’t recycle every little step helps.  More important than resisting a single entity is pushing for policy change and that takes a large movement with many people at its back.

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4801/  Derrick Jensen “Forget Shorter Showers”

Battle in Seattle

3.       Corporate accountability:

Corporations across the world are destroying our environment.  It was once thought that the earth would act as an infinite dumping ground for our waste, but corporations have pushed our planet far beyond its limits.  They have created rivers that catch fire and trash floes in the oceans so large that they extend to the horizon.  Corporate accountability means that we make corporations pay for their pollution and even clean up after themselves.

http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/interview-with-judy-bonds  Judy Bonds “Mountain Memories”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCGTD5Bn1m0&list=PLFA50FBC214A6CE87&index=4&feature=plpp_video  The Corporation [4/23] Externalities

4.       Governmental responsibility to the people:

Does our government really do what is best for its citizens?  Or does it do what is best for whoever has the most money?  I think the answers to those questions are fairly obvious.  We need a government that does what is best for the people it supposedly represents.  A government responsible to its constituents would not continue to allow things like clear cutting, water pollution, and coal burning.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2011/10/03/141014592/denmark-taxes-butter-and-fat-but-will-it-work  April Fulton “Denmark Taxes Butter And Fat, But Will It Work?”

http://www.medialit.org/reading-room/news-beyond-myth-objectivity Jay Davis “Beyond the Myth of Objectivity”

5.       Economic reform-crash course:

One of the biggest problems with our country is our economic system.  Our system is designed to continuously grow even though this has been proven impossible.  At some point the planet will run out of fossil fuels and the type of heavy metals that are used in industrial production, but our we expect our economy to continue to grow when this happens?  This seems fairly idiotic, but many economic “experts” continue to lobby for more economic growth.  All they are accomplishing is increasing the rate at which we destroy our world.

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/5502 Eric Zencey “Theses on Sustainable Development” number five

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/299/ Wendell Berry “The Idea of a Local Economy”

6.       Dollar voting:

One of the simplest ways to make a difference is to buy more sustainable products.  If everyone stopped buying feedlot beef tomorrow then feedlots would close almost immediately.  The idea here is to buy better food in an effort to support it and to cut the profits of companies that are based on animal cruelty, companies who clip chickens beaks and don’t let cows even move until they are ready to be slaughtered.

http://www.highcountrylocalfirst.org/

Joel Salaltin “Declare Your Independence”

7.       Understanding Media:

The majority of mainstream media is owned by only five or six companies.  These companies can control what gets aired on the news and can support specific political positions and views.  Most of, if not all, their stories are poorly represented and biased.  Media can no longer be trusted to give us accurate information on current events and political debates.  It has to be analyzed for bias one sidedness.

http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/10ben_e/10b04_e.htm Please analyze this source for bias.

http://www.freepress.net/ownership/chart/main

8.       Investing in the future:

Instead of harvesting coal from the mountains of Appalachia, why don’t we build a network of wind turbines on them that will provide steady power and jobs to our nation for hundreds of years?  Investing in the future is simple and fairly easy, but gets shut down by companies that are acting on short term goals.  Our country needs to become more self sufficient and the best way to do that is to fund alternative energy research and development.

http://putsolaron.it/road-trip/

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4809/  Erik Reece “Hell Yeah, We Want Windmills”

9.       Environmental Protection:

I find this one fairly obvious.  Our consumer lifestyles are destroying the environment quite rapidly.  We throw our trash in gigantic piles on the ground, blow up mountains to mine coal, and clear cut thousands of acres to create farmland and harvest timber.  We need to find some way to halt and reverse the destruction that is all around us.  Our planet can only continue to support life if we protect and heal it.

http://ilovemountains.org/

http://asulearn.appstate.edu/file.php/51589/PowerPoint_PDFs/Limits_historical_basis_Fall_11_for_students.pdf

10.   Redefining success:

It is fairly clear what the average American associates with success.  We tend to focus on making money so that we can buy a nice house and raise a family in comfort.  By focusing on monetary success we often forget about our actual happiness.  Every person should eventually create their own definition of success instead of accepting what society has told us is successful.  The United States is one of the wealthiest nations in the world, but its people are often considered some of the least happy.  Redefining success is important because it helps slow down our frantic consumerism.

http://www.altruists.org/static/files/Buddhist%20Economics.htm  E.F. Schumacher “Buddhist Economics”

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/new-livelihoods/less-work-more-living  Juliet Schor “Less Work, More Living”

Mainstream Lies

                An extremely anti-mainstream media news site named NaturalNews featured an article detailing how the mainstream news downplayed the nuclear crisis in Japan by lying about the severity of the crisis, even as the crisis worsened.  The article titled “Mainstream media halts accurate reporting on Japan's worsening nuclear catastrophe; disinfo campaign now underway,” was one of the most clearly biased articles I have ever read.  It made unbacked claims about the lies the media was supposedly feeding us.  The only articles it referenced for its information were other articles on their own site or other sites like NaturalNews.  They claim that the news stopped reporting problems with the nuclear plant in Japan because the company that owns the news, General Electric, also owns the nuclear power plants in the U.S.  It is possible that General Electric does hold shares in both, but the rest of the story is simply ridiculous.  NaturalNews fabricates a story behind assumptions and opinions then throws in half-truths to make it seem credible. 

                I find the way that NaturalNews attempts to display media bias is horrible.  In creating fake stories about the mainstream media they become exactly what they are protesting.  I have studied the way that media is linked to democracy in my Sustainable Development class.  We found that most mainstream media sites have a very definite bias towards one viewpoint or another.  They would often bring on highly opinionated “experts,” on a subject, but only if that expert agreed with their views.  I do believe that we need news sources that can present other viewpoints in more nonbiased ways, but we do not need news sources specifically designed to prove how horrible a specific type of news is. 

                What the media shows to the public has become a very large part of politics.  Certain news programs are known for having one bias or another and the people know this is true.  The people compare what two different sources say about the same issue and then come to their own opinion.  Mainstream media self balances itself fairly well because everyone knows it’s biased.  Having news sites that are anti-bias creates news sites that people tend to believe present only facts, but by definition that news source is biased.  People can more easily fall into following one viewpoint because they no longer realize that there are other viewpoints.  In a way, shutting down mainstream media is like shutting down the different party’s voices.  The media is where they get to argue and debate about the issues they must deal with.  While arguing probably isn’t the best way to get things done, it does make sure that at least a few sides get heard.  When you try so hard to present a different opinion about a subject you create an opinion that goes unquestioned.  The core of democracy is that people do tend to question others views and opinions, by shutting down all but one opinion you are almost shutting down democracy.

                I know that no one really wants to shut down democracy, but the article is so biased that it presented a totally different side to the media argument to me.  It is easy to see the media debate as severely two-sided, because there are often only two sides shown, the same as many other issues.  The problem is that when you think about it in that way you are doing exactly what you shouldn’t.  The issue has been narrowed down and simplified into a two way split.  The obvious bias of the article made me realize that we almost automatically make subjects two sided and ignore the rest.  Media does need to portray more views, but we also need to check ourselves from time to time to make sure that we are still actually comparing the opinions and looking at an issue from many angles.

                The article can be found at http://www.naturalnews.com/031748_mainstream_media_nuclear_catastrophe.html                

Back to Credit

                A report done by Fox News states that credit card use is on the rise again.  Only three years after the United States big recession and credit card use is up by %10 when compared to last year.  Fox News speculates that this increase in credit card use is possibly due to banks cancelling their perks and reward points on debit cards and due to lower income families needing to pay for food and gas with credit because they don’t have enough cash on hand.  Fox portrays this credit increase in a very positive way that shows none of the problems with the trend.  They say that this trend will allow retailers to continue to grow over the holiday season which will in turn boost the economy. 

                I agree with Fox News in that the increasing credit trend will give the economy a little boost this holiday season, but what about after a year or two, when people are suddenly struggling to pay off their debt accumulated through high interest rates?  Will the current credit boom cause another recession later on?  There is no way to be sure about anything in the future, but I personally don’t see this as a good thing.  There are too many people out there who don’t understand how to properly save and invest their money and who don’t really understand how a credit card works.  These are the people who are likely to find themselves all of a sudden in a massive amount of debt because they have only been making minimum payments.   As their debt increases, so do their minimum payments, possibly to the point that they struggle just to pay that from month to month while they continue to use their credit cards because now all of their cash is going directly towards paying off the minimum payment.  When this happens the card holder eventually cannot pay of their debt, forcing the bank to take action. 

                When we studied the causes of the recession and the way the world’s economy works in our “Rethinking the American Economy,” section of my Sustainable Development class we saw a similar trend in the housing market.  People were buying homes with loans that they didn’t understand and couldn’t pay off.  This caused them to default on their loans and the banks to foreclose on them.  The loss of so much of the banks money and the foreclosure of so many houses caused the housing market to collapse leading to our recent recession.  I can see the same sort of thing happening with credit cards.  As people see the economy slowly improving they will become more willing to take risks and buy products that they can’t actually afford.  This could lead to a crash in the debit card market very similar to what occurred in the housing market three years ago.  Again this is all speculative, but I think, very possible. 

                Fox News never says any of this.  They quickly gloss over the idea that it might be a bad thing in the long run at the very beginning of the news clip then speak exclusively about how much this will benefit large corporate retailers.  They even directly state that people are using credit cards because they cannot actually pay for things, and then twist that fact into something positive.  This news clip was very obviously made to make the consumer feel confident enough to buy more even if they can’t afford to.  It clearly supports large retailers with no regard to the little man. 

The report can be found at http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/shepard-smith/index.html#/v/1311061491001/credit-card-use-on-the-rise/?playlist_id=86928

Kyoto Failure?

                A recent video about how countries are attempting to work together to reduce emissions can be found at pbs.org.  The focus of this video was on the Kyoto Protocol, its effectiveness, and if it will be followed up by any other sort of climate agreement.  The Kyoto Protocol has been mostly ineffectual.  Many of the countries that pledged to lower their emissions have actually increased the amount of carbon that they produce the United States and Canada being two of those.  A few countries have been able to accomplish this goal, specifically the majority of those in the European Union.  The Kyoto Protocol was meant to legally bind the countries that signed it so that there would be penalties if they failed.  With the deadline of Kyoto coming up in December 2012 and the vast majority of the countries who signed it having increased their emissions, it is beginning to look like a failure.  The video addressed what options the world faces and their consequences. 

                The overall world temperature is projected to increase eleven degrees by the end of this century.  The only way that we can prevent this from happening is if we can somehow reverse the trend of increasing emissions and reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.  I’m not really sure what specific theme to connect this to in my Sustainable Development class because it pretty much connects to all of them.  The problems addressed in this video are the major symptoms caused by the subjects we have studied.  Global Warming can be blamed on many different things; politics, mountaintop removal, the economic structure, environmental limits, and the modern definition of progress.  We have addressed all these in my class and I am now beginning to understand how they fit together, causing these monstrous problems like global warming.  Politics get in the way of governmental cooperation.  No government wants to reduce their emissions if it means lowering their GDP.  This in itself is a problem partially caused by what we consider progress.  Instead of focusing on raising the standard of living, we look only to consumption and GDP.  In this way many of our problems are connected.  We could easily reduce emissions, lower our dependence on foreign oil, and improve our economy by investing in more sustainable technology and lowering subsidies on oil products.  The reason that we haven’t done this is because the oil and coal companies are already so incredibly powerful.  They can lobby the government and prosecute any who get in their way, any who promotes cleaner alternative energy. 

                Because of these problems the world has not solved its global warming crisis.  Instead of working together to face the world’s greatest problem we sit around and argue about it.  Almost no one wants to extend the Kyoto protocol and in my opinion it wouldn’t really matter if it was extended.  The Kyoto Protocol is and always has been a way for political leaders to appease the people who do want change.  Governments are simply going through the motions of doing something simply so they can claim that they are taking steps to mend the environmental problems when in truth they are doing nothing.  Talk doesn’t save the environment, on action can, but all we have done so far is talk (specifically argue). 

                The fact that most nations have done next to nothing about carbon emissions does not surprise me.  Politics has almost always been more about showmanship than any real action.  While I do hope that something good comes out of the Kyoto Protocol and that it gets extended in a way that will actually be effective, I rather pessimistic in my opinions of its success.  It is simply human nature to procrastinate until the last second then to do a mediocre job or to hide the problem instead of actually fixing anything. 

                Lastly, was the video biased in any way?  It seemed to me that this video presented many of the facts about the Kyoto Protocol and its possible extension.  It stated the European Union’s eagerness to extend Kyoto very plainly and the statistics of how emissions have changed since 1997.  The video did try to blame political will on the problems with reducing emissions.  It stated that the United States simply could not unite in any way to reduce emissions.  I agree with the opinions of the video.  They tried to present most of the facts in an unbiased manner, but they obviously see many of the attempts at slowing and reducing climate change as ineffective.

“Blair Mountain Community Fights to Keep Mining History Above Ground.”

                In their October/November issue The Appalachian Voice featured a section titled “The Coal Report.”  The two pages that “The Coal Report” took up in the independent newspaper contained multiple short articles linked to coal mining and governmental policy.  One story in particular caught my eye.  “Blair Mountain Community Fights to Keep Mining History Above Ground.”  The title itself was what drew my attention to the short, two paragraph article.  In the Ancient Sunshine theme of my sustainable development course we had discussed mountaintop removal and the dangers it presents to us and our environment.  Mountaintop removal has destroyed many communities by making the people’s land toxic and unlivable.  By forcing people off of their land mountaintop removal has also utterly destroyed their culture, their way of life.  The reason that this specific article made me look twice was because it wasn’t just a group of people worried about their homes and way of life, they were worried about their history. 

                The article describes a new community center and museum that is meant to showcase many historic artifacts and documents from the 1921 coal miner uprising which happened only two miles from the site the museum now sits on.   The second section of the article simply states that the community is asking the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection to look into the Camp Branch mine permit that threatens at least one important portion of the battlefield.  I found this extremely significant because it shows another aspect of how mining can hurt a community. 

                Considering the location of the Blair Mountain community, it seems safe to assume that the inhabitants have probably seen the destruction of mountaintop removal first hand in other parts of West Virginia.  They have heard stories like the ones we studied in class: stories of sludge ponds breaking their dams and drowning innocent children, or of cancers killing 16 year old children.  Now they face the problem head on.  A strip mine has a permit to mine on land that includes a part of their history that has shaped who they see themselves as today.  It is not the giant devil-being that we know of as mountaintop removal, just a simple strip mine.  In many ways it is far preferable to the barbarous practice that destroys whole mountains, but that is also the point of what I am saying.  Any type of modern day mining causes destruction in some way.  It could be underground mining that kills workers slowly with black lung, strip mining, or the diabolical mountaintop removal. 

                To put it simply, “Blair Mountain Community Fights to Keep Mining History Above Ground,” presents two new sides to the story that I didn’t really get from the readings I did for class.  The simple one is that it demonstrates strip mining’s ability to destroy.  Strip mining has properties that, while extremely detrimental, are severely overlooked because they pale in comparison to the effects of mountaintop removal.   The more complex aspect of the story is a simple fact that it presents to us.  Our culture is very much tied to and developed by our surroundings and our history.  When any part of this is changed or destroyed, so is a piece of who we are.  That is why the people of the Blair Mountain Community are trying to stop the strip mine.  If the Camp Branch mine destroys part of a local historic battlefield, it also destroys a part of the communities past, a part of them. 

                As for the accuracy of the article, “Blair Mountain Community Fights to Keep Mining History Above Ground,” was a simple presentation of facts.  It told us that a community center and museum had opened near a battle ground and that the people there wanted to preserve that land against a strip mine.  There is a slight bias in the article leaning in favor of the people opposed to the mine as the article only states their intention and actions.  Other than that, it is well written and to the point.