Looking for a way to be a "green" part of the economy?

This invitation to a "Green Careers Symposium" just came in from Penn State's Center for Sustainability:

The Symposium will take place on February 15 from 7:30 am to noon. At the event, a small group of employers will have the opportunity to discuss their sustainability-related career opportunities with a small group of invited students. After a facilitated personal networking session, there will be a panel discussion on green careers open to the entire Penn State community.

Large and small for-profit companies and non-profit organizations will be attending this event. Most, but not all, of the participating organizations/companies will also be participating in Spring Career Days.

Green Careers Leadership Symposium Itinerary:

7:30am - 8:30am: Arrival and breakfast, informal conversation

8:30am - 9:30am: Speed networking event, during which each employer will have the opportunity to chat briefly with each student in attendance (the format will be similar to speed dating). This portion of the event is by invitation only.

9:30am - 9:45am: Break; doors open to all interested individuals from the PSU community

9:45am - 10:45am: Panel Symposium on green careers—open to the public
Participants include Penn State alumni who are in green careers. Panelists will speak briefly about their own green career journey, or some larger issue in green careers. The floor will then be open for questions from the audience.

10:45am - 12:00pm: Open networking opportunity
Some employers will leave immediately for the Spring Career Fair, which begins at 11:00 AM. Others will have enough time to stay and converse with students until as late as noon.

If you are interested in participating in the Speed Networking portion should contact the Center for Sustainability by using this contact form.

Eat. Play. Love.

The sustainable food movement's roots are branching.

In June 2010, The American Dietetic Association, American Nurses Association, American Planning Association, and American Public Health Association met to develop a set of shared food system principles.

For the first time, national leaders in the nursing, nutrition, planning, and public health professions worked collaboratively to create a shared platform for systems-wide food policy change.

Endorsed by coalition members, the principles were written to support socially, economically and ecologically sustainable food systems that promote health — the current and future health of individuals, communities and the natural environment.

You can read their combined statement here (pdf). What are your thoughts on educating for a sustainable food system? How can we support it?

Lately, I've been wondering if gardening is enough. Sure, it gets our hands dirty and keeps us working out there with ourselves and our power instead of being plugged into this machine in front of me and eating crummy industrialized potato chips. I'm not in a car. Kids are working and playing and learning at the same time and using their senses, assuming they're actually doing what's asked of them. The potential richness of experience of place is right there. But is it enough?

A friend of mine, a fairly experienced English teacher and avid wilderness explorer, went to Norway last year and visited schools. He talked to teachers there about environmental education (EE). They don't have much of what we would call EE and this perplexed him. It is a highly industrialized nation with an incredible standard of living, healthy and happy people, a fairly high rate of consumption, but has incredible environmental conservation. Maybe it's not even fair to call it conservation because it is part of Norway's identity to preserve wilderness.

People in Norway do much of what their leisure outside. They recreate in action with the wilderness. According to the United States' Official Norway site, "adoration of nature is a vital ingredient in the country's national identity." This is part of schooling, with annual ski jaunts at school. Out you go. Can you imagine? Status quo is cross country skiing, hiking, going to the lakes, or playing outside in nature. Playing in nature breeds love of nature instead of an outdoor-phobic people who don't see the relationship between them, natural resources, and the more-than-human environment.

So gardens are a start. A great start that connects us to a particular place and its cycles and system. It lets us work and play right there and experience growth; growth we hope is external and internal. But I think that we need more than that. We need, I think desperately almost, to bring children and adults into nature where they are and beyond where they are.

Who wants to go hiking? We can bring some food from one of our local farmers and breathe in the air given to us by the hemlocks deep in Allen Seeger or walk the deer paths in the local game lands (wear your orange). Sustain food systems and sustain yourselves. All the while we'll be playing and learning. And maybe, if you're lucky, you can start to love a place and want to be in it and with even more.

Who's game?

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.

Penn State's Strategic Plan & Sustainability

Biophiles! This just in from Penn State's Office of Sustainability:

What would a sustainable Penn State look like to you? This is the key question to an ambitious sustainability strategic planning effort that was kicked off this fall with all the University’s top leadership—and the guidance of some of the world’s leading sustainable businesses. Town hall meetings and various other forums are being planned now to gather input. For more information, and to contribute, visit: http://www.green.psu.edu/SustPlan/default.asp

What do you think Penn State needs to do? What should the university's curriculum do to move us on a more sustainable path?

In Cancun, a movement for Mother Earth's Rights

It's not just about human rights anymore. Free speech. The free exercise of religion. The right to due process. Assembly. These are all noble things that we, as citizens of the United States take for granted and hope for more of the world's people.

What about the right to free water? To sanitation? Maude Barlowe argues that these are essential to sustainable human society. And they rest, perhaps, on something much deeper. The right of the Earth's biosphere to sustain itself.

Yes! Magazine reports that a group of concerned people have gathered at the Cancun climate talks to press the case for a broader and more sustainable vision of the rights that global society ought to guarantee and the responsibilities it must fulfill.

Activists in Cancún and Mexico City are rallying behind the idea of environmental rights. Many support a document called the “People’s Agreement on Climate Change,” which includes a “Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth.” It’s an idealistic name for a proposal that would sound either visionary or improbable, or both—if not for the fact that the declaration represents the work of representatives from 56 countries and of tens of thousands of people who attended a climate conference in Cochabamba, Bolivia, last April. The document declares that everybody has rights to basics like clean water and clean air, but it also says something even more extraordinary: that the planet’s ecosystems themselves have rights.

You can read the text of the document here. This is a renewed vision of humans on Earth. When the Rio conference happened in 1992, people envisioned something better and more sustainable for the world, including renewed interest in education for sustainable development under Article 21. In the years since, it has been sorely neglected and only paid with lip service by most national and global institutions.

Barlowe and others see new possibilities on this global action. And yet, maybe it is going to be most effective through the creation of local and regional stability and sustainability. I think it's fair to say that our so-called "leaders" continue to lead us into more monetary and ecological indebtedness, more consumption, and more growth. And yet, at least in this country and many others around the world from Bolivia to India to Australia, it is communities working together that make the difference. And in some of those places, change occurs when people see themselves in their places and their places in them and then love those places and recognize their limits and its limits.

So it might just be the wise thing to do (maybe) to press for a declaration of rights for Mother Earth. Without her, we would and will be nothing. But with her, we flourish.

Learning Progressions, National Standards, and Environmental Science Literacy

This just in:

Waterbury Lecture

Learning Progressions, National Standards, and Environmental Science Literacy

Professor Charles W. (Andy) Anderson

Department of Teacher Education, Michigan State University

December 9, 2010 11:00-1:00

Ballroom AB, Nittany Lion Inn

“Buffet Lunch Available Following Talk”

We are currently developing new national standards for science education. This gives us a rare chance to reconsider what is REALLY important in our science curriculum and teaching. This presentation focuses on research exploring two ideas. The first is "environmental science literacy:" We should prepare students who understand the environmental consequences of lifestyle, political, and economic decisions. The second is "learning progressions:" We should organize the curriculum around increasingly sophisticated ways of thinking about or understanding the most important scientific ideas and practices.

Charles W. (Andy) Anderson is Professor in the Department of Teacher Education, Michigan State University, where he has been since receiving his Ph.D. in science education from The University of Texas at Austin in 1979. He is past president of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching. He has been co-editor of the Journal of Research in Science Teaching and associate editor of Cognition and Instruction. He recently served as a member of NRC’s Committee on Science Learning, K-8 and of the NAEP Science Standing Committee, and NRC’s Climate Change Education Roundtable. His current research focuses on the development of learning progressions leading to environmental science literacy for K-12 and college students.

Contact Information: Jennifer Glasgow 814-865-180

Fiji fights Fiji

That's right. Fiji water*, one of the most overpriced single-use plastic water bottle companies is in trouble with the Fijian government. MSNBC, AlterNet, and others are reporting that there is a dispute on taxes between the corporation and the military junta government.

AlterNet reports:

It seems there is trouble in paradise. The boutique bottled water brand Fiji Water has announced that it is shutting down its operations in Fiji after the nation's government proposed a tax hike -- from 1/3 of a cent to 15 cents a liter. This comes just a week after one of the company's top executives, David Roth, was deported.

Ouch. On the one hand, how great is it that there is less bottled water coming from one of the worst collusions in corporate-governmental history. But how terrible is it that the junta will sell it to some other corporation to come in and exploit the people and the ecosystem in which they live to sell overpriced water primarily to people who don't need it but are stuck believing in a manufactured need for "convenient" and "glamorous" "Artesian water?" Companies like Coke, Pepsi, Nestle, Violia, Suez, and Thames are probably going to scramble all over each other to get at this one.

I'm with Maude Barlowe and Wenonah Hauter of Food and Water Watch who say the closure should be permanent. At Food and Water Watch today they write the following:

“Like oil in the 20^th century, water has become increasingly managed by corporate cartels that move it around the globe, where it flows out of communities and towards money. The commodification of water will continue to contribute to human rights abuses around the world, whether it helps bolster undemocratic governments or drives water from a community where it is needed.

“Water must be managed as a common resource, not as a market commodity. Unfortunately, celebrities, sports figures and American consumers pay a premium for the Fiji Water brand, buying it at approximately 3,300 times the cost of U.S. tap water. According to the EPA, a gallon of tap water costs consumers anywhere from .002 to .003 cents. A liter of Fiji Water costs approximately $2.19.

“Ironically, Fiji Water, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have been named finalists for the Secretary of State’s 2010 Award for Corporate Excellence. It would be extremely unwise for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to honor these corporations, which have been known to extract water from developing countries that are facing water scarcity or that otherwise cannot meet residents’ needs for clean water and sanitation.”

Hear here! Are you going to walk away from bottled water? Do it. And tell Take Back the Tap that you are on board by signing the pledge.

Hat tip to Vince and Jess for this one.

* You have to love the sound of the tropical rain forest coming through your computer to show you just how free and unblemished that water is. If only corporations really protected the wild that much. Maybe they'd leave the water there for the wildlife and the people. Just a thought.

World Sustainable Development Teach-In Day

This coming Friday, December 3rd, marks World Sustainable Development Teach-In Day.

Sustainable development is an issue all countries in the world are currently looking at. The degree of emphasis and the level investing resources invested however varies from one country to another; but regardless of whether we are talking about industrialised or developing countries, the quest for environmentally sound, socially just, economically viable and ethically acceptable development needs to be regarded as a priority by all nations of the world.

For many years now, a large number of initiatives have been carried out throughout the world to attempt to stoke up awareness about sustainable development and promote initiatives to achieve it.

The 1987 Report "Our Common Future" produced by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), "Agenda 21" produced by the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and the "Johannesburg Declaration" produced following the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002 are examples of the type of initiatives being worked on internationally. These have been complemented by the various "National Sustainable Development Strategies" produced prior to UNCED and after Johannesburg.

As a club committed to sustainability, this marks a great opportunity to learn from others around the world about the myriad faces and facets of this thing called "sustainable development."

What is being developed and what is being sustained? So far, much of sustainable development seems to have been a global corporate-governmental collusion that has served the advantage of the already wealthy and powerful. Looking at just water issues in India, Bolivia, and Africa, the idea and practice of sustainable development might seem an oxymoron. There is no doubt we have a conundrum on our hands if we hope to bring health and material prosperity to 6.8 billion people and counting. Maybe we should be going for what James Lovelock, father of the "Gaia theory" has called a "sustainable retraction" and/or get in on the Transitions Initiatives. Or maybe that's just doomsville.

As teachers, we have a significant role to play. What do hope to sustain? Who do we develop? What and whose purpose does all of this serve? In a world of uncertain futures, how and for whom do we conceive of our teaching? These are the biggest questions we have to answer. Ultimately, we are servants and we have to serve people well.

What should education for sustainable development look like right here at Penn State and in the Centre Region? Where should we go?

And the movement just keeps getting bigger

Do you know how many people are fed up with bottled water? Millions. And lots of people are getting together in all kinds of configurations to do something about it.

Yes! Magazine has this feature:

Restaurants in California, Oregon, New York, Maine, and other states are serving only tap water. Students at Brown University were inspired to start Beyond the Bottle after Washington University in St. Louis ended sales of bottled water on its campus.

Seattle University and Gonzaga University in Washington state, and the University of Portland in Oregon, have also ended sales of bottled water. Multnomah County became the first county in Oregon to ban bottled water from county meetings and functions. Efforts to prevent a bottling company from extracting millions of liters of water from the local aquifer led the city of Bundanoon, Australia, to ban the sale and production of bottled water. Toronto, London, and other cities in Ontario, Canada as well as school boards in Ottawa and Waterloo have stopped the sale of bottled water in municipal facilities.

Bottled water is marketed as superior to tap, but public water supplies are actually cleaner, less expensive, and more environmentally responsible, according to organizations like Take Back the Tap, Food and Water Watch, and Stop Corporate Abuse. They are mounting campaigns to combat misconceptions caused by bottled-water marketing.

That's right. Take back that tap. In the near future, we'll be expanding our work on this with some film projects, a musical project, and other humorous theatrics. Stay tuned!

Expanding Sustainability: Rights, Global Economics, and Human Transformation

Expanding Sustainability: Rights, Global Economics, and Human Transformation
A Public Talk with Chilean Environmental Economist, Diplomat and
Spiritual Teacher Alfredo Sfeir-Younis

Tuesday, Oct. 26
Noon —1:30 PM
124 Sparks

Brown Bag Lunch Talk (drinks and dessert provided)
Sponsored by Penn State’s Center for Sustainability & Global Studies Institute

"It is impossible to attain the aims of a sustainable civilization without agreeing on a bundle of rights, be it for this generation or future generations. Sustainable Development embodies a social contract which must unfold from a vision and a set of human values that prove essential to human transformation in our global reality.”
—Alfredo Sfeir-Younis

Learn more about our speaker at: http://www.policyinnovations.org/innovators/people/data/07539

Update: You can listen my interview with Alfredo Sfeir0-Younis here.