Teach children to be good stewards

I (Peter Buckland) was recently invited to write an opinion piece for the Centre Daily Times on my vision of education. It is a broad appeal for democratic place-based education. I wrote:

There are three ways to retool school and society for a sustainable future: First, most schools are not democratic. Children generally do not have meaningful influence on school policies. But the sustainable future will require people to fully participate in civic life, to make the decisions that affect their lives. Given opportunities to help govern their schools with caring adults working with them, children will have an opportunity to learn the skills of self-governance by self-governing: informing themselves of issues and perspectives, persuading others to adopt new points of view, negotiating compromises and implementing solutions.

Second, most schools reflect the biases of the larger economic system, minimizing the crucial historic and current roles of indigenous people, nonwhite immigrants and women. We need to honor and focus on those roles and live into their cultural practices and beliefs. By grounding ourselves in part in movements for justice and how they changed society in the past, the sustainability movement can build on those successes.

Third, schools should better connect children with the places where they live. Here in central Pennsylvania, our children can learn the histories of Penns Valley, Bellefonte and surrounding towns. They can learn how the stream water in Galbraith Gap Run flows from Bear Meadows to meet Spring Creek. They can come to know the subtle changes in tree stands in Cooper’s Gap,learn to recognize by sight and sound the myriad birds that cohabitate with us and understand the cyclical seasons of the wild and domesticated plants and animals we live among.

Read the entire piece at this link.

Spanier notes us in the Board of Trustees speech

All. Check it out from President Spanier.

I'm proud to report another student accomplishment — this one on our University Park campus. Thanks to the work of a student ecology group from the College of Education, we're experimenting with new drinking water filling stations around campus. These sensor-activated filling stations accommodate reusable drinking cups and larger containers. The group collaborated with the Office of Physical Plant to install the new hydration stations as well as to upgrade some of the college's water fountains. The intention is to reduce the use of disposable plastic bottles, which will reduce our environmental footprint and keep our campus clean.

Now we're getting somewhere. Maybe we can go to a meeting sometime. That would be nice.

In Memoriam Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn was one of the greatest historians, public intellectuals, teachers, and activists of the last 50 years. He died January 27th, 2010. He is probably most well-known for his numerous public lectures and books on history that raise our critical consciousness, most notably People's History of the United States.

Our own Jacqueline Edmondson connected me with Truthout's eulogy to Zinn written by former Penn State professor Henry Giroux who is now at McMaster. It's both fierce and lovely.

Contained within it is a kernel from Zinn's autobiography that I think we all hope for.

"From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than 'objectivity'; I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble."

But what brilliant trouble it is to enable people to become agents of good instead of reliquaries for the status quo's most prized assumptions and sacred cows. Where would the civil rights movement have gone?

I relish the trouble that recognizes the power of not just standing for something, but moving for it and inviting our students to move for good. That is the path of ecological literacy, ecological justice, and ecopedagogy. It is a path that is not objective but recognizes that the facts of history, science, politics, economics, literature, and art have to serve someone. To follow in Zinn's footsteps would be to have these disciplines serve our good, not to have us serve them nor to have us serve unjust masters. This is "trouble" that comes from people who "believe that addressing human suffering and social issues matter[s], and never flinche[s] from that belief." We should add the Earth's suffering to that.

But in this suffering we can find our greatest meaning and greatest joy. This is not pie-in-the-sky thinking and Polly Anna smiling stupidly in the face of the overwhelming. It is the recognition of constant and chronic suffering, that we are a part of it, and that as we move on this Earth and in our lives in the most economically and militarily powerful nation the Earth has ever had, that we can do something about it where and when we are. As a teacher, we can do great things. Just look at Zinn!

We miss you Howard Zinn. Most of all, we thank you for your great work and shining example. May we be accomplish some portion of your good in our quest for justice.

Update from Sweden

Hi dear 3E-COE members and friends! I arrived two weeks ago in Uppsala, Sweden, where I'll be living for the next two years and finishing my studies long-distance. I'm sorry that I had to leave at the moment when the anti-disposable water bottle campaign has been heating up, but I'm thrilled to hear about all of the exciting developments and progress you've been making there!

Some of you may know of Sweden's record of being very progressive on the environmental concern/protection front. Well, reading about these developments from afar was great, but seeing many of them in action is even cooler. For example, in our apartment complex, we have recycling bins for plastics, metals, cardboard (paper must be brought to one of four municipal facilities), compost (yay!!), and trash, of course.

While all of these options are exciting, what blows me away the most is what happens to the trash. According to an excellent report of the city's developments, seventy percent of household waste gets converted into fuel for 50 city buses. Seventy percent!! The report also states that the facility that converts waste to fuel is being expanded so that 100% of the city's household trash can be used as fuel for public transit. Amazing, huh?

Something else that's quite exciting is how many people ride their bikes here and how the city accommodates/encourages cycling. For example, there are bike paths, many streets have dedicated bike lanes, and in some cases there are separate traffic signals for bicycles. Further, part of Uppsala's "Stop the Unnecessary 2.0" campaign includes encouraging individuals to bike to work. Other parts of that campaign include having e-meetings, keeping an eye on how much we print, turning off lights, etc.

If you have the time and interest, there are several pages in the report that focus on environmental efforts that the city is taking to make life in Uppsala more sustainable. It's mind blowing and very inspiring...seeing all of these efforts here reminds me of how much hope there is of similar amazing things happening in the U.S. In State College, we already have the awesome bike paths...

E.O. Wilson interview on NPR

This morning NPR played a discussion between Will Wright, the developer of SimAnt and Spore - and entymologist and ecologist E.O. Wilson, the man who coined the term I love so much, "biophilia/biophile."
If our group members ever wonder where this term comes from and about the mind and character of the man who made it, I highly suggest you listen to this interview in which they discuss, among other things, their shared love of ants and the biological roots of human behavior and nature (the field of sociobiology, "the application of evolutionary theory to social behavior").

The teetering boreal forests

Well, I guess it's good that Penn State's Eco-Action, MBA programs, along with Greenpeace's Kleerkut campaign worked together to get Kimberly-Clark out of the business of cutting from pristine boreal forests (see here as well). Problem is, homo economicus has encroached on these forests so much that it might be too late.

Science Daily reports,

The world's last remaining "pristine" forest -- the boreal forest across large stretches of Russia, Canada and other northern countries -- is under increasing threat, a team of international researchers has found.

The researchers from the University of Adelaide in Australia, Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada and the National University of Singapore have called for the urgent preservation of existing boreal forests in order to secure biodiversity and prevent the loss of this major global carbon sink.

The boreal forest comprises about one-third of the world's forested area and one-third of the world's stored carbon, covering a large proportion of Russia, Canada, Alaska and Scandinavia.

If you've seen Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth or have been following conservation reports for the last few years, you've heard about the "drunken forests." These are the boreal forests where the permafrost has melted and turned to mud. The large conifers tilt, sink, and fall from their own weight and lack of soil integrity to hold them up. So the problem, like so many others with climate change issues, is complex and difficult.

When I read things like this I can't help but wonder about the incredible nearsightedness of our economic systems and be baffled at the way that the simple language of the profit system we have in place simply places some questions out of bounds. The question, "Should humans cut down boreal forests to make tissues?" never crossed their minds. The "should" of that question comes from a moral concern not just for the forest as a thing that might have intrinsic value (something a lot of environmentalists might believe) but also as a thing that has instrumental value to other organisms - from the moose that wander these forests to the lichens at the trees' bases - and to humans as producers of oxygen.

The problem is that the ethical concern is simply excised from our talk about tissues. "How can tissues be an ethical matter?" As soon as an ecologically sensitive person sees a tissue - or any mass-produced commodity - they ought (uh-oh! another ought!) to wonder about the ecological and social impact of that commodity and evaluate its potential impacts on the natural environment(s), the human social or cultural environment(s), and the economic environment(s). What this means, ethically speaking anyway, is that our economy's speed and growth might actually need to slow and retract.

I have a bit of trouble now wondering how a nation that is "the most educated in the world" simply does not ask questions like this about its own practices. How can "educated" people believe that it is in their own "enlightened self-interest" to have an endless growth economy when it's very clear natural consequence is the contraction or death of the very systems that sustain them? That might be a begged question. I've assumed that the answer is that we can't be "educated" and "enlightened" if as a people we are willfully committing ecocide.

Be that as it may (because I am prone to doom and gloom), I think it's worthwhile applauding Kimberly-Clark for responding appropriately. But note that they only did this because of an enormous amount of public and business pressure. They did not do this because of their own ethical concerns; they did it to prevent more profits from bleeding. Now, if we can just "educate" people in primary, secondary, and higher education to understand that economic actions ought to really be ecological, social, and economic. Perhaps, as future teachers with sustainability in mind, this can be part of what we do.

David Suzuki to visit Penn State

Hi everyone,

Environmentalist David Suzuki will be visiting Penn State on April 20. The details are below in the press release:

PRESS RELEASE!
David Suzuki, former host of the CSB science magazine show The Nature of Things, to speak on campus

David Suzuki, an award-winning scientist, environmentalist, and broadcaster, is the keynote speaker for the 5th annual Colloquium on the Environment. He will give the talk "The Challenge of the 21st Century: Setting the Real Bottom Line" on Monday April 20, 2009. The event will be held at 5:00 p.m. in the HUB-Robeson Auditorium and it is open to all faculty, staff, students, and to the general public.

David Suzuki co-founded the David Suzuki Foundation in 1990 and the Foundation has worked to find ways for society to live in balance with the natural world that sustains us. Focusing on four program areas oceans and sustainable fishing, climate change and clean energy, sustainability, and the Nature Challenge - the Foundation uses science and education to promote solutions that conserve nature and help achieve sustainability within a generation.

Suzuki is renowned for his radio and television programs that explain the complexities of the natural sciences in a compelling, easily understood way. His television career began with CBC in 1971 when he wrote and hosted Suzuki on Science. He then created and hosted a number of television specials, and in 1979 became the host of the award-winning The Nature of Things. Suzuki is also recognized as a world leader in sustainable ecology. He is the recipient of UNESCO's Kalinga Prize for Science, the United Nations Environment Program Medal and the Global 500. He is a fellow of the American Association of the Advancement of Science and recognized by Time Magazine as a Hero for the Environment. Dr. Suzuki earned a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Chicago, and spent 40 years on the genetics faculty at the University of British Columbia before retiring in 2001.

His visit follows keynote presentations by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the inaugural Colloquium on the Environment in 2004, Christine Todd Whitman in 2005, William McDonough in 2006, and Amory Lovins in 2008. The Colloquium is sponsored by the Penn State Institutes of Energy and the Environment and the University's Finance and Business Environmental Stewardship Strategy.

For more information please visit: http://www.psiee.psu.edu/default.asp. The event is free and open to the public.

Vandana Shiva on food

This was left as a comment on a post. If you can't get to Vandana Shiva's lecture on Monday afternoon, then please check this out:


Organic Food, Diverse Food, Abundant Food: Dr. Vandana Shiva from Kevin Hansen on Vimeo.

Want to see why I love evolution and ecology so much?

The Tree of Life is one of the most brilliant webtools I have seen that shows our relatedness to other living things. Brilliant.

This video sets it up for us, showing the evolutionary diversification over time. Descent with modification has made our living systems what they are, from the bacteria to the moss to the turtle to us and our cousins the chimpanzee.

The coal ash spill in Tennessee

I watched this report (audio mp3) yesterday on the NewsHour about the Tennessee Valley Authority coal ash spill.

Tom Bearden reports from Tennessee on the lingering effects of one of the largest coal ash spills in the nation's history.

It's an absolute tragedy.

Learn more from some Tennessee environmental defenders, United Mountain Defense.

The ethics of climate change: James Garvey

I listen to a weekly podcast called Ethics Bites through the BBC's Open University. Recently, the practical philosopher James Garvey (pictured at right courtesy of BBC) who works at the Royal Institute of Philosophy spoke with host Nigel Warburton about the ethics of climate change. He considers climate change as an ongoing event, the role that the "developed" world has played in catastrophic climate change, the role that the "developed" world should play, and what individual people can and should do to prevent possible global calamity.

Nigel: The topic we’re focusing on today is ethics and climate change. I know you’re not a scientist but you have done a lot of research into the effects of climate change; I wonder if you can sketch what’s going to happen unless we take very serious action.

James: Well the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has done a lot of surveys of the literature and they give us a range of 1.1 to 6.4 degrees Celsius as the amount of warming we can expect in the next century. The bottom end of that is associated with a world in which we don’t emit another whisper of carbon dioxide. The changes that are already underway are things like retreat of snow cover. That’s worrying because 1/6^th of the population gets its water from melting snow and ice. Hot extremes will become more frequent. Typhoons and hurricanes will become more intense. Precipitation will change throughout the world – places that are already wet will become more so, and there’ll be more flooding. Places that are dry will experience more drought. There’s a possibility of worse to come; things like the gulf-stream could shut down in the future if things carry on as they are. And also of course the sea level will rise. If you think in terms of plants and animals, something like 15% to 37% of plants and animals will be locked into extinction by 2050. We’re living through the 6^th major extinction our planet has experienced. The last one did in the dinosaurs. In 2003, 35,000 people died as a result of just heat in Europe, so the heat alone can kill us. And it’s also true that as the sea level rises, peoples’ lives will have to change: half the people on the planet currently live on the coast...

So it continues. To listen to the podcast, click here to download the mp3. If you want to read it, click here.

Penn State Ecology Seminar Series

The following comes from the Huck Institute of the Life Sciences at Penn State. I will surely be at Judge John E. Jones's presentation on March 16th for his presentation on the Constitution. He was the judge in the landmark Kitzmiller v. Dover "intelligent design" trial in 2005 that found intelligent design creationism unconstitutional to teach in public schools.

"Upcoming talks in the Ecology Seminar Series, presented by the Penn State Intercollege Graduate Degree Program in Ecology. Most talks take place on Mondays at 1.30pm in 101 Agricultural Science and Industries Building (ASI) on the University Park campus. However, there are a few exceptions to this."

Mon Feb 09 at 04:00PM	Beth Shapiro (Penn State) Sequencing the dead: using DNA from fossil remains to reconstruct demographic history	112 Borland
Mon Feb 16 at 04:00PM	Warren Abrahamson (Bucknell University) Three decades of study on goldenrod galls: a medley of questions and approaches	112 Borland
Mon Mar 02 at 04:00PM	Andrew Read (Penn State) Vaccination: the evolutionary consequences of humankind’s biggest attempts to deliberately perturb organismal ecology	112 Borland
Mon Mar 16 at 04:00PM	Norm Ellstrand (University of California-Riverside) Lessons from crop (trans)genes out of place – environmental & other implications	112 Borland
Mon Mar 16 at 07:00PM	Judge John Jones Our Constitution's Intelligent Design	Berg Auditorium (101 Life Sciences Bldg)
Mon Mar 23 at 04:00PM	David Winkler (Cornell University) Title to be announced	112 Borland
Mon Mar 30 at 04:00PM	Fred Gould (North Carolina State University) Can release of genetically engineered pests help sustain biodiversity?	112 Borland
Mon Apr 06 at 04:00PM	Susan Kalisz (University of Pittsburgh) Finding Darwinian Heroes: Among family variance in inbreeding depressions	112 Borland
Mon Apr 13 at 04:00PM	Al Savitsky (NSF) Purloined Poisons: Sequestered chemical defense in a Japanese snake	112 Borland
Mon Apr 20 at 04:00PM	Stephen Hubbell (University of California- Los Angeles) Title to be announced	112 Borland
Tue Apr 21 at 04:00PM	Bill Hansson (Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology) The contrivances by which orchids and other flowers are pollinated	101 Althouse
Tue Apr 28 at 04:00PM	Craig Benkman (University of Wyoming) Specialization and coevolution in the adaptive radiation of crossbills	101 Althouse