Greening the curriculum

As this year’s community relations intern for the sustainability committee, I attended Bioneers Conference hoping to pick up tips on how to “green” our operations at Vassar. This year, the sustainability committee has several initiatives in the making, including perfecting and expanding the Retreat composting program, launching a campaign to encourage students to drink from the tap and use reusable water bottles, and implementing programs to reduce energy consumption in academic buildings as well as decrease waste in student-organized events.

But I was curious to know what the experts thought. What changes really need to be made in our colleges and how can we approach them?

In that spirit, I attended an afternoon session titled “Transforming Higher Education for the Age of Climate Change”. The speakers stressed that higher education can play a key role in the green movement because it is responsible for shaping our senators, journalists, CEO’s, basically the LEADERS of our society. Higher education has produced the people who have led us down the wrong path and it has the potential to turn out a generation of climate champions to set things right. Also, it is a large economic engine. In the US, colleges and universities manage 2.8% of GDP which means they can create important markets for green jobs and services.

Interestingly, the speakers seemed to agree that there was a trend: while there has been a significant move on the part of higher education institutions to transform their operations, there have hardly been any efforts to transform their curricula. So far, colleges have failed at fundamentally “greening” the education of all their students. Generally, environmental education is limited to students majoring in the field, an average of 5% of graduates.

At Vassar, we have geothermal heating in Davison and photovoltaic panels on the roof of Main. We now have pre- as well as post-consumer composting systems at ACDC and the Retreat. These are important initiatives and we need many more. But we also need to address the “learning” aspect of our institution of higher learning. How can Vassar begin to turn out environmentally conscious graduates – potential agents for change?

We need to make sure that all students understand the Earth’s basic functions. We need to offer and take classes that expose the largely invisible connections between human activity and environmental outcomes. Academics should challenge the idea that nature is there to serve us and teach us how to live off nature’s income, not its capital!

A “sustainability requirement”, anyone? I think it’s something we should consider.

Bioneers is over. Time for backpacking around San Francisco!

So Bioneers is over, technically. The point is that, in our heads, it isn´t. We have to carry the message on and live it and spread it and change the world.
On Sunday night, we had a last communal dinner, all five of us. We boiled a rich soup with lentils and potatoes and lots of kale. We cleaned up and we packed. The next morning, Danielle, Nadine, Charlene and I got on the ferry to the city. Vanessa didn´t come with us; she decided to stay at her sister´s house for a few more days. Charlene, on the other hand, continued on towards Berkeley. So suddenly it was me, Nadine and Danielle, the three of us in San Francisco, trying to figure out the public transportation system. Three girls with backpacks alone in this great West Coast city for three days.
We decided to stay at the cheapest hostel in town and to walk around and explore the parks and the museums and the streets.
We’ve begun to see everything from an environmentalist perspective. The first thing that we took a picture of in San Fran was a compost bin.
They have compost bins here! We had to do serious work to install a couple of those in the Retreat at Vassar, and it was a big deal, whereas here people compost everything possible, everywhere. Also, the transportation system. It works! You can get anywhere in SF by means of a trolley bus that says zero emissions vehicle on the side. Some of those also display ‘save nature’ messages in English and Spanish. An ad on the outside of one bus encouraged people to only do laundry when they have a full load.
Anyway, Nadine and Danielle and I took our meager luggage and got on a bus and traveled from the corporate part of town, through the hip part of town, all the way to an overlooked Latin neighborhood. We entered the dubious El Capitan hostel, allegedly an old 1906 theater building. It costs about 17 bucks a night, and looks dingy and worn-down. It’s just what we wanted - a place to crash for non-pretentious gals like us. Plus, there are good, cheap Mexican restaurants and thrift stores in the area.
We left our stuff in the room and we decided to walk. San Francisco is such a walkable city. Palms line the streets and, since it´s very hilly, you get great vistas of the parks and the architecture below and above you. On every corner, there are tiny cafes and grocery stores that sell things like freshly blended cranberry-pear juice. A McDonald´s is harder to find than local, organic produce. People here know how to live. One special place that lights up the entire city is the Castro - a neighborhood famous as the center of LGBT culture. Rainbow flags line the streets there, and the people look fabulous.
It´s fascinating how much and how good street art there is in this city. We saw a huge mural of funky flying houses – a dream city where you can slide down along a pipe to your friends’ place. We were also fascinated by a women´s center whose entire exterior walls were covered in flourishing images of diverse women and girls embracing each other, and of suns, and flowers…
It seems that, in San Fran, civil society – that wonderful concept many of the speakers at Bioneers talked about - is happening. People here talk to each other while they wait for the bus; they unite with their neighbors and paint images of a better world on their walls, and they compost, and they want to progress together. As we learned at Bioneers, to live better, we have to work together. It´s all about grassroots political engagement. Ah, this is the kind of city I want to live in. A sunny, bright city of mural artists and community organizers and hipsters who sell organic fruit smoothies during the day and gather to campaign against ocean pollution in the evening. You may say I’m a dreamer, but, man, I’m not the only one. Here, in San Francisco, you can feel some of that 60s vibe down the block.

What we're watching at Bioneers

Food, Inc.

(P.S. - Vassar Greens will be showing this film at Vassar in collaboration with Vassar Animal Rights Coalition and ViCE film league later this fall)

Genre: Documentary
Cast: Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser 
Director: Robert Kenner
Writer: Robert Kenner
Studio: Magnolia Pictures 

Plot:
An unflattering look inside America's corporate controlled food industry.

The Story of Stuff

(P.S. - The Vassar Greens showed this last year during Earth Month :)

Dirt! The Movie!

Official Site: www.dirtthemovie.org - directed and produced by Bill Benenson and Gene Rosow, DIRT takes you inside the wonders of the soil. It tells the story of Earth's most valuable and underappreciated source of fertility--from its miraculous beginning to its crippling degradation.

Earth Days

It is now all the rage in the Age of Al Gore and Obama, but can you remember when everyone in America was not Going Green? Visually stunning, vastly entertaining and awe-inspiring, Earth Days looks back to the dawn and development of the modern environmental movement—from its post-war rustlings in the 1950s and the 1962 publication of Rachel Carsons incendiary bestseller Silent Spring, to the first wildly successful 1970 Earth Day celebration and the subsequent firestorm of political action.

Earth Days secret weapon is a one-two punch of personal testimony and rare archival media. The extraordinary stories of the eras pioneers—among them Former Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall; biologist/Population Bomb author Paul Ehrlich; Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand; Apollo Nine astronaut Rusty Schweickart; and renewable energy pioneer Hunter Lovins—are beautifully illustrated with an incredible array of footage from candy-colored Eisenhower-era tableaux to classic tear-jerking 1970s anti-litterbug PSAs. Directed by acclaimed documentarian Robert Stone (Oswald's Ghost, Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst) Earth Days is both a poetic meditation on humanity's complex relationship with nature and an engaging history of the revolutionary achievements—and missed opportunities—of groundbreaking eco-activism.

For more information and to find out where to see the film visit http://www.earthdaysmovie.com

Farmer's Market: The Back to the Land Movement

We walked out of a plenary session earlier today and sneaked out to a farmers’ market that was happening close to the conference. There were bouncy castles and many kids, and hip tattooed farmers selling Italian and French bread. There were chairs hand-painted in flower patterns for sale, and a treasure trove of earrings, and cheese samplings, and grapes, and California berries, and ice-cream. Michael Pollan’s dream of local food networks, of the people, by the people, for the people, was happening right here. What a beautiful and flavorful way to take a shortcut around the corporations and share some nourishing food with your neighbors. It adds some value to the food that could never be translated into a barcode or a calorie count (“Beyond the Barcode” is the name of a talk Pollan once gave).

We got kale and tomatoes and potatoes for a stew tonight. We tried some fabulous cheese with herbs. We also couldn’t resist some pita stuffed with spinach paste and lentils, and a yogurt dip spiced with garlic and spearmint. I never knew garlic and mint went together so well. We ate our hearts out. Also, we felt connected. We were part of a gentle revolution happening on the land and in people’s kitchens.

The movie that we saw yesterday night, Earth Days, featured some 60s footage of naked hippie people tilling a strip of land, picking squash, and dancing. The voiceover commentary explained that the “back to the land” part of the environmental movement had not been too successful; nobody from those upper-middle class, college-educated people actually knew how to sustain him- or herself on the land. Anyone who tried had to give up in a couple of years.

Today, however, the “back to the land” movement is alive and well. In fact, it might be a few of the things we are doing better than back in the 60s and 70s. There are progressive hippie farmers out there, but they know what they are doing and many of them start successful businesses. Organic Valley, one of Bioneers’ sponsors, is the largest farmer-owned union of organic farms, and they are doing a great job. (Nobody is paying me to mention this. For the first time in my life, I actually feel like praising a business and supporting a brand, because I feel like they are worth it.)
When I came to Vassar a year ago, I was surprised by the fact that many people wanted to become farmers when they get out of college. I met a girl who just stayed on the Vassar Farm after she graduated. I recently met a guy named Andrew who wants to move to Latin America and establish an organic farm there. I know two other guys who participated in the Volunteers on Organic Farms program. Also, a family friend back in Bulgaria, my home country, recently dropped out of university to start an earthworm farm that would produce compost. What is going on? Having grown up in a city, I never even knew that was an option. It seemed retrograde to me to leave academia and go milk cows. Now I realize how wrong I was.

Getting involved with sustainable agriculture is a very progressive thing to do. It involves lots of critical thinking, initiative, and willpower. Also, it is moral and modern. Pollan said it: we need millions more farmers so that we can establish a new localized, diverse, intelligent food system. Local farms and farmers’ markets are today the bright vision of the future that skyscrapers were in the beginning of the 20th century. A folksy scene of bouncy castles and locally made pastries is the way I envision utopia.

Eater of Death

Each morning, between the plenary speeches and activists, there are talented performers that reinforce the message of saving the planet through their art. Saturday morning’s performance was the spoken word artist Shailja Patel who told the story of a woman in Afghanistan who lost her husband and six children at breakfast one morning to a US air strike. Her poem, “Eater of Death”, shook me and truly left me speechless.

She gave unbelievable descriptions of this poor mother who, after her family was ripped away from her, had to stay in an area set up by US troops for the survivors of the bombing. She was given packages that, like the bombs that had destroyed her family and her life earlier that week, were yellow and stamped with an American flag. She was forced to eat the food from those packages, as Patel described, to eat her children; the children that had grown inside of her, that she had named. The deaths of these children would not be recognized. They would not be remembered in the paper and no memorial would be constructed in their honor. Why? Because they were not American.

My description does not do her performance justice. As I listened to her words I felt the pain of that Afghani mother and the frustration of knowing that, in a world where economic power and bombs determine status, her children were seen as a disposable casualty in a greater war for democracy. Her children were less important than the American children. Patel exclaimed, through the mother’s mouth, “Have you no mothers, no children in America?”. Her words opened my eyes and made me ashamed to be associated with those that had dropped the bombs and destroyed so many lives. I wondered how people in America can wave their flags and exclaim their patriotism. How can they be proud to be American when it is associated with so much violence and destruction?

What I’ve realized is that we cannot focus only on the terrible things that have happened. Rather, we must join together to end the unjust destruction of Afghanistan and other countries and create a global community. Community has been a major motif of this conference because the environmental movement will not be successful unless it is a global effort. Climate change is going to affect every single living thing on this planet and it is largely the fault of major industrial nations, like the United States, that we have reached this pivotal point in the history of our planet. So the question remains, will we put aside our differences and forget the hatred or will we continue to drop bombs, destroying families and all chances at a global movement toward sustainable living?

Read Shailja Patel’s full poem here: http://shailja.com/work/eaterofdeath.html

Your health depends on the earth's health; Your health depends on your emotional health

“We need to debate health care, not health insurance!” Applause infects the audience as Dr. Andrew Weil begins to command the stage. “We don’t have a health care system, we have a disease management system.”

As a pre-med student aspiring to work as a doctor, these are sobering words, and yet they make so much sense. These days, we are trained to treat everything with pharmaceuticals. Not just doctors, who are rarely instructed in non-pharmaceutical treatments, but as consumers, we are constantly bombarded with the drug life style. The term Medicine itself, which as the good doctor Weil instructed us, used to mean “thoughtful action to establish order”, has now become synonymous with drugs. Today, ten times more drugs are used than were in the 1950s, and we are as much responsible as the companies.

So what does this have to do with the environment? Well, dependence on pharmaceuticals and expensive, unnecessary machinery isn’t the only thing driving up health care. As I learned from Dr. Russel Jaff at an afternoon session on “Integrative Medicine, Environmental health, and the Transformation of Health Care”, an absolutely astounding 92% (NINETY-TWO PERCENT!!!!) of ill health can be traced to life-style, while only 8% is genetic. This life style can be dissected in any number of ways, but ultimately has to do with our disconnection from the earth.

We suffer from poor nutrition as we practice damaging agricultural systems that destroy the earth and produce fewer healthy foods. Even the fruits and vegetables we grow today are less nutritious than those we grew a century ago. We are also suffering from our sedentary lifestyle, brought about by the wave of industry that allowed us to drive cars, take elevators, and work in offices instead of on the land. We also suffer tremendously from the chemicals we pump into the environment, and which we then breathe, and drink, and eat. "Carcinogens cause cancer" Annie Leonard reminded us. There is probably NO "safe" level for these chemicals.

Despite this overwhelming figure (92%... REALLY), we only spend 2-10% of research money on issues of lifestyle, and in finding solutions to evoke natural healing responses.

So back to the “medicine.” We have adopted a reductionist view of the human body as an imperfect machine that inevitably breaks down, and so needs fixing. We need to readopt an integrative view that acknowledges that our body is already perfect, and we need only protect it and maintain the miraculous system it already is.

According to Dr. Weil, health is an inner state of balance and resilience that we are born with. When we are healthy, we can fall and our body will repair the skin, we can interact with bacteria and not get infected, we can be exposed to viruses and not get sick. Our body can do this already, all we need to do is provide it with an environment conducive to good health. The power of nature to restore the body and calm the mind, has been proven for millennia, and is even now being proven using scientific techniques.

Your mental health is often ignored when looking at your physical health, but consider this study: A group of Harvard students was exposed to a strain of the common flu. Now, we can expect that these students already lead very stressful lives, and so their immune systems are already down and statistically, they should get sick. Half of the group that was exposed to the strain was told to just go out and live their lives, and as a no brainer, they got the cold. Duh. But the other half of the group was shown an inspiring film about Mother Teresa and the power of human compassion. And guess what? Students in this group were significantly less likely to contract the cold. Further studies showed that simply feeling compassion is enough to rev your immune system for hours, and to elevate your immune system’s response for weeks.

Perhaps if we had more faith and hope in humanity, and allowed ourselves more love and rejoice in the earth, we could finally allow ourselves to heal ourselves. We could create a system of caring for our health, instead of having to insure it.

The Mountain View

Last night, after watching "Earth Days" by Robert Stone at the tail end of a long, invigorating day full of big ideas and seemingly impossible projects, I became so confused and depressed and concerned for the sake of the world, that I actually wanted to give up. I told myself: just give up, drop our of school, live on a farm, forget about the world's larger problems. But I knew that I could never forget, and I could never escape my personal anguishing and yearning to make a difference. So in the growing darkness, I climbed to the top of the hill where we had all traveled as a group that morning when dawn was just breaking. And I wrote. The reflection was necessary, and this morning I awoke with a renewed passion to make change.

Here is a bit of what ran through my mind on that hill in the night:


For millennia, humans have been heading to the mountains in search of wisdom. Perhaps that's simply because mountains give you the best vantage point. Sitting at the precipice of the world, you can examine a scene in which all the details bled together to give you one whole image- one single manifestation of the question. And from that oneness, we seek the truth.

As I write this, I sit on top of a hill in the Marin headlands. I’ve come here because my mind is full of questions, full of doubts, full of the re-realization of the magnitude of the environmental issues I am meant to solve.

Before me, I see our mother nature’s luscious peaks curving down to the sacred valley from which point springs forth the ocean. Out to the horizon stretches the Pacific, obscured only by fog, rolling gently up the bank, and winding up the slopes to feed the hills’ verdant offspring.

Behind me stretches the Golden Gate bridge: a feat of man-made brilliance, and dazzling in the night as its lights extend across the water. The vision of the bridge connecting to the equally well-lit city of San Francisco enlivens the senses, as the sight of stars and moonlight on the water must have long ago.

But as one of these vistas expands, gorging itself on the wastes and excesses of ill-conceived human ingenuity, the other pales. The rolling fog spreading up the hills is smog, and trash washes up on mother’s naked shores. And all things we can’t see, greenhouse-gas-intangibles, waft around us; mustard gas that slowly asphyxiates us even if we ignore its presence.

In the 1960s, we already knew this. We could already see the effects of unchecked growth and a human-centric relationship with the earth. In the 1960s, we already had the solutions. We had electric cars, we had solar panels, we had wind turbines. In the 1960s, we had social will. We had people returning to the earth, people demanding responsible action, people seeking change. And in the 1960s we had political will. We had clean air acts, clean water acts, clean energy acts, and in 1970, we had Earth Day. And by 1980, we had nothing. Nothing except political rhetoric, empty of all the words used to mean to a generation.

A movement that developed over 30 years collapsed as another portion of Americans fought back to maintain our way of life in the face of a movement that seemed to drain this life of all that was familiar. “Why should we destroy all that we care about America!” people cried out from both sides. “Why should we compromise one American vista, the Golden Gate bridge, a symbol of our way of life,” some shouted. “Why should we destroy the natural world around us that we depend on for our very lives,” others pleaded in return.

From here on the hill, I hear the hooting of the owls, the fog-horns of ships, the chirping of crickets, and the distant rumbling of cars. And together they form what my brain knows as the sounds of life. These sounds are equal parts of the land in which I was raised. But which sounds do I value more, and which sounds are more deserving of protection? And how can that possibly be done.

The problem with seeking wisdom on mountains, is that the view from the top is too expansive. The problem is too huge, the forces at work too plentiful and powerful, to possibly be changed. Staring at the magnitude of the issue is overwhelming, over burdening, and ultimately debilitating. It traps you out on the mountain’s edge, unable to climb back down, but unable to leap; unable to go forth and solve the problems you cared for so deeply to begin with.
But if you never ventured to that mountain at all, how would you know the vastness of what is at stake?

Today, at the Bioneers Conference, I was first stimulated by the beauty of nature, then inspired by the work of humans to protect that beauty, then frustrated by the complexities of the seemingly simple solutions, and then utterly depressed by the knowledge that we’ve been here before. They tell me that the next ten years will be crucial, and that we have to mobilize within that time or face near-certain loss of our existence- no just our way of life. And while it is at some level invigorating- The Time is Now! We are Ready! We Have the Solutions! –it is at the same instance terrifyingly, paralyzingly daunting.

But we must have hope. The country was mobilized before. And we must have hope that we’ve learned since then. We can move forward when we stop dwelling on our failures and our insecurities. As Joanna Macy reminded us today, we need to awaken to the gifts of uncertainty. “When you recognize that hopefulness and hopelessness are just feelings,” you stop putting so much weight on them, she tells us. “You don’t stop David on his way to battling Goliath and ask him ‘Are you hopeful?’”

They say our generation is one of idealists without hope. We must retain that piece of naïve idealism if we are going to maintain our hope and energy for change. Never underestimate the power of your motivation. Without that drive, we have nothing to intend, and so we have nothing. Listen to the ache, to the all-consuming drive that sits in the folds of your body and cries- what can I do. And never fall to the world’s desire to pathologize your pain, because it is that pain that will drive your strength.

We must descend from the mountains, and learn to find truth in the small details of the universe, with the uncertain faith that they add up to the big picture we know instinctively.

But we must still continue to climb! We cannot look only at the details, as it gives us the distorted sense that we can pick and choose the solutions that are comfortable or convenient for us. We must climb the mountains and see the world as it is, and appreciate the size and the weight of our efforts.

Every small-scale solution that I’ve heard of this weekend sounds fantastic, sounds perfect, sounds like the answer to all our problems. We need to reform agriculture, we need to stop the proliferation of chemicals, we need biomimicry technology, we need to preserve wilderness, we need to abolish a culture based on consumption, and we need to embrace not only biodiversity, but our own diversity and human community. But do I have the power as only one person to support it all? If we don’t embrace all the solutions together under one agenda, there are simply too many to hold up on our own.

But again, we must reawaken our hope! Annie Leonard taught us today that 70% of Americans are sympathetic with environmental issues. That is a higher percentage that supporters of abolition, or women’s rights, or other movements of equality and justice. Here we can find our new optimism. We need only invigorate this 70% to become active, in any one of the possible pillars of environmental action we will need to lift ourselves from our descent.

We have so much to do. But as I sit here on the hill, I know that the solutions must start with the understanding that this landscape has thrived without the Golden Gate bridge, and will thrive again without it, but that this great bridge, and all the human ingenuity and history that went into it, could never have been without the mountains and the valleys and the birthing water stretching to the dawn.

What we have now that we didn't have then

Yesterday, we attended a screening of “Earth Days”, a documentary film by Robert Stone on the history of the environmental movement. It is a movement that arose in the 1960s and deflated in the in the 90s, only to be taken up more recently by our generation. The film helped put things into perspective by showing that, 40 years ago, we were fighting largely the same problems and attitudes that we continue to confront today. While the focus back then was on issues like air pollution and deforestation instead of climate change, they, like us, were working to dispel the fundamental notion that humans should control nature and exploit it to their convenience.

The economic boom that followed WWII gave rise to a culture that equated the accumulation of material goods with success and happiness. What developed then was a definition of progress as unrestricted GDP growth which did not take into account the distribution of the benefits of that growth or its impacts on the environment. But not only the environment: those who looked ahead were able to predict the toll that unchecked industrial proliferation and resource exploitation would eventually take on the health and quality of life of people. It was a growing discontent with this warped notion of development that galvanized visionaries into launching an environmental movement. The young and progressive all over the country got inspired. This was to be “the beginning of the end of pollution or the beginning of the end”.

On April 22, 1970, the nation’s first Earth Day was held. In practically every major city, people came together to deplore the environmental abuses of American industry and society. Denis Hayes, national coordinator for the event, spoke about challenging the ethics of the U.S.’s utilization of 50% of the planet’s resources while only holding 6% of global population. The environmental movement then became active in more formal political sectors, managing to influence important decisions and pass groundbreaking legislations. Although global issues such as climate change were not addressed, the early environmental movement was able to make significant progress in the cleaning up of lakes and the reduction of air pollution within the United States.

But then came Ronald Reagan, who ran for President promising to thwart the environmentalists’ agenda of “constraint”, “privation” and “lowered lifestyle”. Under his leadership, parents would not have to deprive their children of a life as full and prosperous as the one they had had. And that was the end of the partnership between government and the environmentalists. With Reagan, it was said, “we lost 30 years”.

How did this happen? How could a movement that was already underway lose traction and die out so quickly? Personally, I can only explain this by drawing on the comments of one of the film’s primary subjects (unfortunately, I couldn’t tell you his name). He said that there is no benefit for politicians in acting on long-term environmental problems because only by focusing on the short-term will they get reelected. I would extend this idea to the rest of society: we are unwilling to act until it is almost too late. We are reluctant to give up our comforts to prevent a crisis that is not yet inevitable. 20 years ago, we were not yet aware of the imminence of anthropogenic climate change or the effects it would have on life on Earth. For that reason, there was no real popular support for a true transition towards sustainable living.

This is a sad fact, but it is also empowering. Today, we DO have all the facts. We also have the technology to make change happen. The awareness, meanwhile, is spreading slowly but surely. Climate change has come to be seen as the most pressing problem currently facing humanity and this urgency is something we can harness! We can act, even if only in the nick of time. And this time there will be no Ronald Reagan to dissuade us.

And where should we start? I shall quote another unnamed film subject: “environmental problems emerge out of daily life” and so must the solutions. Change needs to happen within each one of us first, and when it has, we have to transform it into political power and present it to our leaders. It’s time to team up again!

Annie Leonard! The Story of Stuff and of People

I saw Annie Leonard! The superstar of the progressive movement! Yes, the one who made The Story of Stuff movie! What a powerful woman. She’s on a mission to make people think rather than obey the system, to value each other rather than possessions, and to get more fulfillment from life.
Annie Leonard is so passionate and so determined about something everybody else refuses to engage with – garbage. This overlooked, subversive aspect of our civilization is a symptom of what we’ve done wrong. Annie has spent 20 years researching “global waste trafficking.” She’s gotten down to dumps and landfills and wastelands in places like China and Haiti. Annie has the rare talent of putting profound insights into simple words. She brings to our awareness what we’re determined at not seeing. And, by shoving our faults in our face, she empowers us.
The 20-minute-long Story of Stuff film, which you can see for free online, summarizes the way the consumer economy works – measuring our societal value by the things we own and dubbing them obsolete fast so that we need to buy new things… All of it is just Annie talking in front of a white background, supplemented by stickman animation. Incredible.
We have that faint sense that something wasn’t working out right. That tinge of guilt when we throw away a garbage bag full of plastic or when we put away a new birthday present in the closet (because we have too much stuff and there’s no room for it). But we prefer to suppress that tinge. We don’t want to be disturbed. We chose to comply with the way things are. All those many, many things.
Surprisingly, being aware, angry, and involved gives much more fulfillment than, well… stuff. Realizing what is wrong is not a sad thing. It’s the way to positive change. We have to allow ourselves to live through the crisis. Only then can we become better.
So Annie did not spare us; she said, “We’re trashing the planet. We’re trashing each other. And we’re not even having fun.”
The first problem is the environment. Pollution, climate change run wild, extinguished biodiversity… Annie said, “At this point, if you don’t know we’re trashing the planet, you either live in a cave or you work at Fox News.”
Second, our communities suffer together with nature. The value shift to commodities, orchestrated by the American government after World War II, has given us a passive, sick, and increasingly discontent society. Current studies show that the American nation is not happy. We don’t know our neighbors. We spend more time alone. A quarter of the population say that they don’t have anyone to speak to about what personally concerns them. How sad is that? As Annie said, what is the value of a fancy new Ikea kitchen table if you don’t have a gang of neighbors and friends to crowd around it?
“We are increasingly forgetting how to be engaged citizens in a democracy.” When Annie speaks to groups of people, they often ask her what kind of things they should buy to make a change. But “solutions are not for sale at the store!” We have become so submissive and inert that we cannot see possibilities beyond this corporate system. Buying organic is a good thing, but it will not rebuild society. In fact, a better thing to do would be to turn to the person next to you on the line behind the counter and to talk to them and invite them to dinner and discuss what you could do together! Annie has a theory that there are two parts in our brain – a consumer and a citizen. The first is nurtured constantly, while the second has atrophied. With it, a part of our happiness is gone. Because nothing makes us happier than constructive relationships.
70% of American citizens say they sympathize with environmental problems. What we need to do now is engage in “informed, rational, respectful discourse.” This comes back to the issue of politics – Bioneers’ underlying theme. It’s about regrouping and strategizing and, most of all, just being together. Communism? You could call it that. I understand it as true, inclusive democracy. One in which we all put the effort into being “intentional [in our actions], intelligent, compassionate, and just.”
The word “politics” comes from the Greek polis, which means “city.” We have to be citizens in our communities, to participate in groups, to voice our opinions, to listen, and to demand structural change. No more abuse of the land. Support for progressive farmers… At Bioneers, we want nothing short of a better society. We need to stop looking at stuff as the way to fulfillment (which would only bring “debt, depression, anxiety, and isolation” – Kenny Ausubel). We need to look at each other.


If you have somehow not seen the Story of Stuff yet, please visit www.storyofstuff.com.

Lecture Schedules for Bioneers

After all our postings about the inspiring lectures, I'm sure you would like to know more about the exact timetable of the Bioneers conference, to help you learn more about the content of the Bioneers.
Our timetables for Oct. 16-18, Bioneers 20th Annual Conference at San Rafael are on the website of
http://www.bioneers.org/conference/2009-conference-schedule-overview


Other details of the conference are on http://www.bioneers.org/.

Biomimicry--Nature Itself is the Solution

So, after seeing this title, you might ask, what exactly is Biomimicry? The definition of the technique Biomimicry is exactly what we can see tell from the composition of the word. It is the mimicry adaption of some specific biological characters which belong to the nature—its species, habitats, systems and so on. It’s neither bio-utilization where we chop trunks into woods, nor bio-assistance where we brew the vintage. It is making use of the process instead of the product. Constant designing and reinventing will be playing a large part in the creation of biomimicry.

For years people have been feeling they’re the most advanced species. Sure, we can perceive things in a way that no other living objects are capable of. We have systematic language. We develop special tools for our specific needs. We invent things that make the world function better for us. But nature always has a better design in the most effective and friendly fashion, because nature doesn’t just plug in random and awkward stuff arbitrarily. Every product of nature is the most reasonable result that human beings alone can never create. It is the result of balance. That’s why while kidneys can filter and liver can de-toxic for us in a manner so natural and simple that we just find it so difficult to reproduce. That’s why no matter how much we would like to learn to get energy like plants, to camouflage like chameleon, to produce the bouncing power of a flea, to survive almost without water like the cactus, or to regrow body parts like the gecko—we find it insanely difficult. So while we’re still having so many problems interpreting all these productions of nature, including ourselves, how can we have even the slightest arrogance to claim that we control the nature? It is nature that’s operating us, and waiting calmly yet desperately to see whether or not we can retreat before it’s too late.

That's how Biomimicry came into action. To retreat from further damage, we need to bow to the nature and learn from it everything that we've been so ignorant of in the past. When we're trying to save the nature, biommicry tells us that nature itself is the solution.

After this amazingly informative forum of Biomimicry, I somehow found path that I would be so willing to dedicate myself to, though it’s still too vague due to my lack of technological knowledge and practical experience. However, I could still see this shine of hope through the daunting and rushing currents of life, as I finally found something that I might be able hold on to.

In the first part of the lecture, we were introduced to some most fascinating products that can save the nature by this implementation of nature’s method. They learnt how to store water from the dessert genius—cactus, making use of the function of its inner and outer layer rigid cells. They could soon improve the self-cleaning of solar panels with some special skin layer like sandfish that makes sand naturally roll off its back, which would be a leap for advancing solar energy. As for energy saving, they studied beaver’s dam and created smaller dams to minimize the impact on fish migration, and they also followed the structure of sea plants on how they would wave back and forth in the sea to create Bio-wave energy. Also the incredible transportation of water through the xylem system in redwood trees, if completely controlled and implemented in Biomimicry to pump water up with energy only coming from the nature, the world will be saved. Moreover, want to know how the disproportional distribution of water might be solved without building those exhausting and complicated systems and pipes? Well, there’s this magical beetle in drought areas, with wings that would be spread out at dusk or dawn to let water condense onto it and then roll exactly into its mouth. Without exploiting any resources and only by collecting water that might otherwise be off into the water cycle and fall somewhere where it’s a lot less needed, this beetle lives on. But what it doesn’t know is that those tiny pair of the wings may one day carry the weight of the world.

Who are we exactly?

So you might be reading this blog and have no idea who the Vassar Greens are or what we're all about, so I thought I might expand a little on that so you can better understand where we're all coming from.

The “Vassar Greens” is a student run organization seeking to increase awareness of local, national, and global environmental issues on campus. We accomplish this goal by dispersing information to students, sponsoring lectures, organizing film screenings and coordinating panel discussions on a variety of environmental issues. We provide a student forum for discussion, and by working with the Vassar College Sustainability Committee, we evaluate the state of campus ecology while serving as a vehicle for action on these concerns. Membership is voluntary and open to all students in the Vassar College community.

As this year’s Chair of the Vassar Greens, I hope to expand our role further. While I want the Greens to continue to be a resource to students on campus, I want to see our organization working actively to connect students to their greater communities. On a local scale, I want us work with environmental and community groups in Poughkeepsie. We already have very strong ties with some groups, such as the Poughkeepsie Farm Project where Vassar students can often be found working as farming interns or volunteers. To build on that, this year I am trying to continuously provide students with volunteer opportunities in the community to expose students to the innumerable ways that they can be involved in environmental work in the Hudson valley. On a National scale, the Greens also have a history of political action. This past year, we successfully lobbied to add an adaptation fund for developing countries to climate change legislation, and two years ago, we lobbied along with other Vassar organizations for the Farm Bill. Next spring, we will be taking a large group to the capital, where we will again lobby our senators for environmental legislation. The purpose of these trips is not only to learn about environmental issues and help pass new legislation, but also to empower students to become active members of our local and national community.

Bringing a group to the Bioneers conference is helping us fulfill these objectives in a myriad of ways. First and foremost, the conference is instructing us in contemporary environmental issues and solutions being discusses by the environmental community. We would be able to bring this knowledge back to Vassar to share with our community. The conference would also help us be more effective in the work we already do, especially through the many afternoon sessions being offered on the greening of education and how youth can be instrumental in this change. Finally, attending the conference would allow the Greens to tap more directly into the environmental community, giving us greater resources to provide to our students.

I hope you enjoy our blog, and learn even a tiny bit more of what’s going on in the environmental world, and in our actual world itself.

Michael Pollan!

I saw Michael Pollan! The superstar of the sustainable food movement! Yes, that same guy who wrote The Omnivore´s Dilemma! He was amazing. He came in with a burger from McDonald´s, four cups, and a bottle filled with a dark, viscous liquid. Oil. He poured the thick brown stuff into the cups. Yes, it takes 26 ounces of oil, or more than 3 cups, to produce a burger. This will release 13 pounds of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Pollan tasted a drop of water on his finger. “Disgusting!” he said. Then he added, “Don´t worry, it´s just chocolate syrup!” But then he rubbed it in again. “We´re eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases.”
Pollan emphasized how long the movement has gone in the last three years since his bestseller was published. People´s discontent with the American food lobby is now reflected in mainstream media; this year´s movie Food, Inc. reiterates the issues; and Obama is planning reforms. “These fringy voices are now inside,” Pollan said. But still, he openly talked of the “catastrophe of the American diet.” That guy has no mercy.
Pollan is no longer merely a “reporter.” “Activist” describes his occupation way better these days. He has a clear agenda of what needs to be changed about the system. First, farm policy. New incentives should reward farmers for growing diverse crops rather than monocultures, for keeping the fields green more days per year, and for reducing artificial fertilizers and pesticides. Second, new marketplaces and distribution networks. We need to rebuild the routes so that salmon from Alaska is no longer filleted in China and flown back into the US. We need to decentralize the system and keep it based on the land, not floating on oil. Third, ourselves. We need a food culture that doesn´t stem from the values of “fast, cheap and easy.” We need gardens, and longer lunch times, and we need to start cooking again.


(This is us following Pollan's advice in practice)


We need to be conscious and involved consumers. We need to organize ourselves and stand up for a cleaner environment and healthier people. We need the social movement to grow so that change can work on a higher, political level. Gandhi named four stages of the resistance movement: First, they ignore you. Then, they ridicule you. Then they fight you. And then you win. Pollan said that we´re in the third stage now. “We´re against powerful forces,” he said. “It won´t be easy.”
It is now 7 years since I saw Hair for the first time. And finally, here I am, in San Francisco of all places, taking part in the hippie movement of my own generation. It is time for regeneration. I´m with 2,500 beautiful people who want to live and eat together and tune in with nature and build a better society.

Get a Fire Extinguisher

Bioneers´underlying theme seems to be… politics. Social movements and politics. Many speakers today emphasized the fact that we already have the technology necessary to improve the situation and save ourselves. It just takes… just what? Concern? Action? A better-functioning democracy? We definitely need to get involved. Join a movement or start a movement. Talk to people. At least talk to people. My friends already know that I can be annoying like that: for instance, I tell them how they should reuse their beer pong cups rather than waste so much plastic. Not now, they say, what the hell, it´s Friday night, we had a rough week. But no, we need to talk about this. There is no bad time to talk about nature and climate change and about being involved. There are things we can prevent. It seems no big deal – until it´s too late.
Two moments today blew my mind. The first was when Kenny Ausubel, the CEO of the conference, spoke. He talked about people who find phrases like “civilization´s fast-forward collapse” and “runaway climate change destabilization” depressing. They find it too gloomy. Kenny Ausubel had a great analogy. He said it´s as if seeing your kitchen is on fire and sitting on the sofa in the living room and getting totally depressed. And then you wait until the fire moves to the living room and you are all down and melancholic. No! You should jump up and reach for a fire extinguisher! Yes, it is bad. But it is not depressing. It is alarming. We need to stand up and act. Now. I am urging you. And I won´t be apologetic about it.
The second great moment was when Kari Fulton was speaking. She is a beautiful young Black girl with an afro and red stilettos. She showed up together with a DJ. Her talk was as much a talk as a hip-hop jam. Real hip-hop, I mean: the biting, socially active kind. At one point, she was speaking about Hurricane Katrina; and she said: here we are, about 2,000 people in this hall. Imagine what it would be if we all died this moment. That many people died in the hurricane. Because of greenhouse gases that we all emit, you, and you, and you. We didn´t have to do this. We could have prevented it. Is this the fate of our generation? Neglect and pointless death? No, this is not our fate, she said. But we gotta act. Now. Kari Fulton had a great slogan. “Not in my back yard! And not in anyone else´s.” We`re a global community and we`re all in this together. And there ain`t no way out.
Am I depressing you? Well, good. Now go get yourself a fire extinguisher.

This is not a sustainable burger.

Wow I just went to the Friday morning session entitled “In Defense of Food: The Omnivore’s Solution”, (clearly a Michael Pollan thing), and I can truly say that I have been inspired. Speaking alongside Pollan were middle school students from New Orleans that have really made a difference in their school’s dining. These students are part of a group called Rethink that focuses on rebuilding the public schools of New Orleans. Recently they decided to focus on the food, or lack thereof, in their cafeterias. By talking to local food distributors, chefs, students, and administrators they have created a new dining system that is more sustainable and, equally importantly, tasty and will be included in all of the public schools in New Orleans. Changes that have been implemented include the removal of styrofoam trays in school cafeterias, the addition of garden space, and the installation of dishwashers and sinks in the cafeterias so that students can wash their hands before and after meals and so that they can begin to use reusable plates and silverware. Perhaps most important to them was the removal of the dreaded spork, which had been the only utensil available to students prior to the reforms. These students truly inspired me to go back to my own high school and try to get some changes made (something I will be doing as soon as I get home next week). Administrators have got to listen because pretty soon they will have no choice but to change school dining. Michael Pollan noted that next on the political agenda after healthcare will be school lunches, and even healthcare will bring up a ton of food issues since most of our “preventable chronic diseases” stem from our diets of junk “food”.

            Another speaker was Lucy (I didn’t write down her last name). She is a high school student who participates in Rooted in Community, a national network of rural and urban youth (mostly lower-class youth of color) who are all interested in making a difference in agriculture. You can check out their site at rootedincommunity.org. Tim Garlarien (probably not his last name but I can’t read my scribbles) then mentioned how universities and colleges in the United States spend 4 billion dollars on feeding students each year. We need to reallocate that money to include spending on local and organic foods instead of fast food chains, a process that also must start in our country’s hospitals. A point that Tim and Michael Pollan both emphasized, however, was educating people, mostly students, about where food comes from, actually SHOWING them what it is exactly that we are eating, and giving them the power and tools necessary to plant their own food and make sustainable eating choices in their daily lives. As Pollan noted, if people are armed with knowledge about food, there is no need to tell them what to eat, they will make the right decisions on their own.

We must “decondition” ourselves from the junk that we are currently labeling food and eating, even if it is often the cheaper option. In America, counterintuitively (not a word but I’ll leave it), it is the poor that are part of this obesity epidemic. Pollan noted that a dollar at the grocery store buys much more chips, cookies, and soda than broccoli. It is also easier to swing through the drive through at McDonald’s than to take the time to go to the grocery store or local farmer’s market and prepare a real dinner each night. We need to take a leaf out of our ancestor’s books and start cooking again. In the words of one of the students from Rethink, “Nature won’t hurt you.” McDonalds and over-processed, chemical-infused, pseudo-foods, however, will.

Thoughts inspired by the Pacific

When we arrived at the San Francisco airport, we were met by my sister’s red-headed hippy fiancé, stuffed ourselves into their bio-diesel sedan, and drove off to the beats of Michael Franti. We headed strait to the YMCA Center at point Bonita in the Golden Gate National Park, where my sister teaches environmental education. We walked around their garden, ate some kale picked fresh off the stalks, and harvested some basil to put in our dinner. We hiked around the beach before driving back to their house in the park where we ate dinner from the farmers market, went to sleep early and woke up bright and early, eager to begin the new day.


One of the session I attended yesterday, “Re-Weaving the Web of Life: Conserving Global Biodiversity”, focused on how we can start repairing the ecosystems that we have so vehemently degraded. The first speaker opened impatiently and powerfully: We are from Nature and we need the Natural world; we are separating ourselves from Nature at our peril; and environmental education is crucial for our return to our Natural roots, which we must do in order to survive. “We are living in a tumultuous but pivotal time,” he went on. Nature is becoming an abstract concept as it disappears around us. If children never go outside, “who will be the environmentalists of the future?"


As media disseminates a disproportionate amount of fear into our daily lives - in an hour the average cable news channel gives over 26 minutes of their time to crime coverage - the radius we let ourselves travel into nature shrivels. Since the 1950s, the area in which children are allowed to roam and play has shrunk by 90%, and the amount of time they are given to play has drastically diminished as well. Some of this “bogeyman syndrome” also translates over to the environment. Fears of snakes and sharks keep people from enjoying their natural habitats, and are grossly out of proportion with reality. 80% of snakes are not venomous, and 50% of snake bites are dry. You are more likely to be killed by a falling coconut than by a shark attack. And on the other hand, kids who don’t spend time outside are statistically more likely to be obese, and that can kill you too.


This warped view of nature is occurring at the same time as we’re developing a warped view of science. In that same hour of coverage, cable news channels might cover 1 minute of scientific reports. Over 90% of Americans say that they are “Interested in Science” but at the same time, these surveys show that 50% think that humans lived at the same time as dinosaurs. But on a happier note- zoos, aquariums, and museums in America are better attended than sporting events. This is important, as it shows that we can still feel our deep connections to Nature and still yearn to learn more, and it reveals to us a hope for the future.


WE NEED ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION. We need Nature in the classroom and for Nature to be the classroom. Then we need children to be outside, in unstructured, un-programmed free play. We need children in national parks plucking fresh kale and walking the beach with sand in their toes.


On that first day, at the YMCA, we took a walk down to the beach and were immediately swept away into a cloud of fog and refracted light. I took my shoes off and felt the waves lick my ankles and the sand cling between my toes. Walking the edge of the pacific ocean, you remember that this earth is sacred. Seeing the footprints you leave behind, you remember to the impact you make. And watching them get swept away, you remember our time here is short. We need to make a difference, while we still can.

2˚ for 2˚?

So this morning plenaries are complete and its time to reflect on all the wonderful things we’ve learned! One of the major themes that I noticed all the speakers touching upon is the environmental illiteracy of Americans, (specifically), and the need to get the message out there and create a real, visible movement in order to make real change. As Jack Hidary noted, Americans today are connected more than ever through technology (he specifically talked about facebook). His whole idea was 2˚ for 2˚, meaning that since there is (about) two degrees of separation between people these days (this my be a bit of an exaggeration but let’s go with the idea…), we need to join together to change things in a much bigger way. The second 2˚ is a reference to the two degree Celsius change in the mean global temperature that we need to work to keep from turning into a globally lethal six degree change.

            Facebook, though powerful, will not change the world. We need to realize the direct effects of our actions on the environment and to decide that WE need to make changes NOW instead of waiting for the government to figure out our problems for us in the future. Michael Pollan noted that Barack Obama, while in the position and willing to be one to push sustainable living on the country, will not do it unless the people tell him that that is what we want and what we need. It’s time then, to show him that we, as his constituents, demand a political movement toward sustainable living, and the time to show him is right now. 

Landing in San Francisco

Getting up at 5 a.m. was difficult. I did not hear my alarm, but, thankfully, Nadine called me and woke me up. I did not have strength to wash my teeth. I just pulled on a sweatshirt and grabbed my bags and made my way from Noyes to Ferry House, where everyone was meeting. Vassar Campus looked desolate at this time in the morning. At Ferry, though, the girls were up and running. Danielle arrived with her car and soon, way before sunrise, we were on the highway to JFK. We listened to the Beatles on the way (Help! I need somebody… Help! Not just anybody… but the Bioneers, haha). Danielle had not gone to bed at all that night, so we tried to stay up and cheer her on. We were at the airport before 8. We had time for a chill long breakfast; munching on toast with jam, we discussed the strengths and limits of academia, food policy, co-ops and all kinds of inspiring topics.
On the flight, we slept. We needed it. Then, before we were even able to realize it, we had arrived from midterms and rushed ACDC meals to a whole new world of sunny skies and smiling people. We landed in San Francisco! “California skies got room to spare,” like that Red Hot Chili Peppers song goes. The sun felt like heaven. My friend Zach texted me saying that it snowed in Poughkeepsie that day. Well, lucky us.
We will stay with Vanessa´s sister, Kyyio, who lives and works in a nature preserve in the hills right above the Golden Gate. Kyyio´s fiance, Sam, picked us up from the airport with a rickety car that runs on home-made biodiesel (it´s from used cooking oil he gets for free at restaurants). We listened to West Coast reggae on the way. Two of us – Nadine and I – had to travel in the trunk with the luggage, which was great. We made funny faces at people in the cars behind us. The San Francisco suburbs we drove through looked so beautiful: stuccoed houses in earthy colors like ochre and brown and pink, with windows of all shapes and sizes – pointed-arch and crenellated, and wrought-iron railings… As if the buildings had absorbed the warmth of the south and the spirit of the people. Or maybe it was just that I was so happy to be in California.
After a turn in the road, we found ourselves right above the Golden Gate. And the bay, and the ocean! And the San Fran skyline! And hills covered in eucalyptus trees and pines and palms here and there… We stopped for pictures and we told each other how great it is to be alive.


At Sam and Kyyio´s place, we got a short tour of their organic garden. We met Ember, their bright, fiery red-headed, three-year-old daughter. We walked down to a small beach; I took my shoes off and I felt the sand between my toes and the biting cold of the waves. Sam gave us a rite of passage: we got to touch sea anemones, which gently closed around our fingers, giving us a sticky, cold sensation. The mist and the rocks looked ages old and magical.


As a nice end to the day, we all cut up local veggies and we made a stir-fry together. Zucchini and eggplant and fresh basil and mushrooms… Savory.
We are here to talk about the planet´s most pressing problems. We are here to hear about the threat to civilization´s very existence. We are here to be scared and terrified and urged to act fast. But to be able to deal with that, you have to start with a drive over the Golden Gate and a walk on the beach and a home-made communal meal. You have to see how incredibly beautiful this world is. It is so beautiful. Ember´s red hair and the sea foam and the sunshine and the ochre and pink earthy houses… It´s a perfect place. Now I really want to save this world.

Heading Towards a Greener Day

10.15 So we’re heading off to Bioneers!

After a cramming one week’s work and test into the first three days, we all let out the most relieved sigh ever as we gathered in the Ferry house earlier Thursday morning, ready for the adventure ahead.
It was still completely dark outside when we set off, but all we could think of then is the bright California sunshine that we will be facing soon.

Why Bioneers
Ok, enough for the why essay during college application, right?

I know it sounds pretentious yet it’s simply so true--this quest for reasons shall never and will never end.
I could still remember how I set off on this green journey in high school, with the old experience and the new innovations. Gradually, my team and I set up campus recycling systems, finished zoo enrichment projects and accomplished propagandas, but I know we still could’ve made more differences. Could I have done better with neater publicizing work, more precise plans, larger media involvements, or wider cooperation? Now I’ve crossed oceans to meet America, how can I feel any less avid to get a panorama of all the environmental accomplishments in this greenly-developed country?

This Bioneer Conference came as a perfect surprise and a perfect chance at a perfect time.

I’ve read about the lecturers, the clean technology initiator, the wildlife conservationist, national campus campaign coordinator… Each one is building his or her own unique army and fighting for a better world. I look up to the road they lead and the miracles they create. They will soon lecture me clearly on how, with the correct tools, by the correct means, in the correct directions and with the correct goals, just one or several crucial central cores can gradually attract hundreds of thousands of others to revolve around it, together forming a system powerful enough that it can easily shake the whole wide world.

Hello California!
Danielle drove us sleepy ladies all the way down to JFK. There the morning breeze greeted me again and blew back my memory of arriving in US at this same airport only just less than two months ago. Half a semester felt so short that October break cut me off just when I was starting to feel a little familiar with everything that’s going on. But in the JFK all I can think of is the surprising fact that I have been in the US for almost two months, which never exactly crossed my mind until that exact moment.

Two month earlier, I was just contemplating over my last words of the Bioneers application, and wildly imagining what it would be like if I was really lucky enough to get accepted. Two months later, here I am, walking through some unknown only to face more.

Plane rides are always a pleasure for me. With no phone signals, no web connections and of course no direct confrontations all the way up there, plane trips are the perfect getaway from any terrifying reality. However I wasn’t as lucky this time. I was one essay away from a complete free holiday and the plane was somehow able to maintain WiFi service high up in the air too. So I was operating on my computer for the whole trip, unable to fully embrace the excitement of such a marvelous journey up front at the moment.

However it wasn’t until later that I was reminded of the pollution that air travel brings about. It scared me to the depth that this thought had never even crossed my mind when I was all obsessed about the joy of air travel. The same thing happened to me with firecrackers. I was too immersed in their beauty that I just don’t know how to face the unbearable pollution they produce. But these are things that we have to give up—convenience, luxurious beauty and such things—so that the earth wouldn’t end up giving up on us. If we had be half as kind and patient as the earth has been with us, the world would never have been receiving these deadly alerts. Besides, isn’t it we ourselves that have pushed things to such a limit that it left no chance of tolerance towards any excuses?

Six hours later we landed in San Francisco. I always felt that I have been here because of this familiar name, but it is actually the first time for us all to land in this city. I’ve always known that it’s famous for its Asian population and that’s completely true. Looking around I’d be whelmed by the illusion that I’ve just got back to China.

Anyway, hello San Francisco, California!

Sand in My Shoes
Vanessa’s sister was so kind to offer us a shelter at her family house up in the mountains. It’s like the mountain village where I spent my holidays in, except it’s even more remote here that we have no phone signals or internet receptions.

I’ve never been to a more sustainable household. Most of the food in her house was either in her ecological garden or locally grown. They had separate compostable garbage bins inside the house. Most of the meals they have are raw or boiled, and almost everything that can be organic here is organic. They’re doing environmental education for the kids in local areas, which is something that is I found so seriously lacking in the urban areas. Later we went on a trip along the beach that the kids would go on when they’re receiving this education, and it was the same inspiring for us. I was reminded of the week I spent in South Africa, which was the first time for me to actually appreciate the beach and the only time that I’ve ever seen the Milky Way. Vanessa said that it’s only after you found how precious these natural sceneries are that you’ll have a more determined route towards their salvation. That couldn’t be truer. How lucky are these kids who can start to perceive nature as a treasure from such a young age, and how lucky are their community to have such kids who would no doubt grow up to support everything against the destruction of this beauty that has been imprinted in their mind since they were four.

I felt ashamed. Although I lead Roots & Shoots, there was nothing so persuasive that I could provide to the members to make all of them feel as ardent about the environment as I do. Although I call myself an environmentalist, I was not maintaining a completely environmentally friendly and minimum energy costing lifestyle.

I’ve been simply amused and puzzled by so much there is yet to learn, and it’s even before Bioneers has kicked off. How much more overwhelming could the next three days be?

We’ll see.

Commonly used Terms at Bioneers; A Glossary for Youth Participants

Here's information from a packet we got on arrival. Hope it can help you as it has helped many youth at the conference!

Biomimicry: The practice of developing sustainable technologies inspired by ideas from Nature. Energy efficient buildings inspired by passive cooling in termite mounds and non-toxic fabric finishes inspired by water repellent lotus plants are examples of biomimicry changing out world today. While humans have a long way to go towards living sustainably on this planet, millions of species- each with nearly 4 billion years of field testing – contain technological ideas to help us succeed in our all-important quest to become a sustainable species on a biodiverse planet.

Biotechnology: A form of technology that involves mixing and matching plant and animal DNA at the cellular level. It is often found in agriculture, food science, and medicine. The methods used in and products that result from biotechnology are potentially dangerous and are beyond the “natural” technologies such as hybridization or plant grafting.

Boreal: The term refers to a specific forest ecosystem, found in the northern hemisphere below the Arctic, or in the southern hemisphere above the Antarctic. Another word for a boreal forest is the taiga.

Ecology: The study of our local habitats, which includes the living and non-living pieces of the world, for example: a study of the ecology of coastal Marin might include: the geologic formations that created the soils in which the native plants like coastal sage, lupine grow, and the animals that consume some of these plants, or each other.

Environmental health: Various factors in the environment- physical, chemical, biological, social- can influence and impact human health. Environmental health explores the ways in which these factors can affect the health of present and future generations, and looks for ways to fix, control, or prevent these factors from having negative impacts.

Environmental Justice: According to the EPA, environmental justive is defined as fair treatment, meaning that “no groups of people, including racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic groups, should bear a disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences resulting from industrial, municipal, and commercial operations or the execution of federal, state, local, and tribal programs and policies.” Another way of stating that would be that all people are able to enjoy and have equal access to clean natural resources, such as air, water, soil, and food.

Environmentalism: The belief that the environment, which encompasses the places where we live, work, and play, is an important factor in the development of an individual or a community. It is also a movement that places the natural world at the center of human concerns as the foundation of all life and fights to defend its health and vitality.

Indigenous peoples: The original inhabitants of the land. Another term that is used is “First peoples.”

Mycology: The study of mushrooms and fungus. A mycologist is a scientist who researches mushrooms and fungus.

Permaculture: As defined by its founder, Bill Mollison, permaulture is a design sustem for creating sustaibale human environments, It is a hybrid of the phrase “permanent agriculture”, and utilizes pairts of ecology, landscape design, organic gardening, architecture, and community buildings to create relationships which are greater that the sum of its parts.

Philanthropy: Financial support of charitable causes in the community. A philanthropist is one who provides financial support to the community.

Restoration: A term that is often used in reference to reestablishing the health of natural ecosystems/habitats. This could involve removing invasive species, planting native plants.

Social Entrepreneur: A person who sees a problem in society and uses pioneering ways to provide innovative solutions to the problem. As described by the Ashoka Scholars program: social entrepreneurs are not content just to vie a fish or teach how to fish. They will not rest until they have revolutionized the fishing industry.

Self-Governance: A term that describes an individual or community’s right to represent themselves. Self-governance could be used to describe an ethnic group that is advocating for autonomy (self-rule) because they don’t feel that they are being represented in their national government.

Sustainability: A process that enable people to meet their current resource needs (e.g. transportation, food, water, social interaction, etc) but also preserves the biodiversity of the environment. Sustainability is also about planning for the future, so that the resources and way of life that we currently have will be around for many generations to come.