Quotes and Current Events (contribute here)
This is a good place to share interesting quotes and news relevant to USP2. The professor will check the comments under this post before every class. And we will draw attention to the new ones at the beginning of class. I just added the first "commnet" which includes a news item about the 2004 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, click on the comments link below to learn more (and be sure to share some interesting observations of your own --including other news headlines). --keith
24 Comments:
Quote by Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai who urged democratic reform and an end to corporate greed after becoming the first African woman to collect the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. december 10, 2004:
"...industry and global institutions must appreciate that ensuring economic justice, equity and ecological integrity are of greater value than profits at any cost." She emphasized that grassroots citizens' movements should be encouraged. Maathai founded a campaign that planted 30 million trees across Africa to slow deforestation.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/12/10/nobel.awards.reut/
Wangari Maathai is the first environmentalist, as well as the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize. The Nobel selection committee recognized that environmental initiatives can be a major contribution to Peace. This link goes to an NPR interview with Maathai.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4212195
By Keith Pezzoli, at 9:23 AM
Revelle 40th Anniversary Symposia in honor of Roger Revelle. The web site is http://revelle.ucsd.edu/seminar/globalwarming.html
The first symposium is about global warming: Jan 11 (Tues: 7:30pm-9:00pm) in York Hall 2622
By Keith Pezzoli, at 9:19 PM
EARTH OBSERVATIONS:
THE VIEW FROM SCRIPPS INSTITUTION OF OCEANOGRAPHY
Monday, January 10: 6:30-8:00 pm
(Doors open at 6:30 pm. Presentation begins at 7:00 pm)
Presentation by Charles Kennel, Ph.D.
Join us for an in-depth look into the Global Earth Observing System - a massive network that provides a comprehensive picture of the Earth and its environment. Scripps Institution of Oceanography's director Dr. Charles Kennel will discuss the U.S. contributions to this international initiative and the Earth observing capabilities at the institution.
Location: Birch Aquarium at Scripps, 2300 Expedition Way, La Jolla.
Prices: (Aquarium admission, parking, and refreshments are included)
Scripps Oceanographic Society Members FREE
General Public $8
UCSD students/faculty/staff $5
Other students/teachers $5
Please RSVP by calling 858/534-5771.
For a complete listing of upcoming Perspectives on Ocean Science presentations (which take place the second Monday of each month from 6:30-8:00 pm) please visit http://www.aquarium.ucsd.edu/public/persp_on_sci.cfm/
By Keith Pezzoli, at 2:55 PM
PREP presents:
Jim Bell, ecological designer, author, and lecturer
presentation is: "Long Range Planning: Creating a Sustainable Economy and Future in the San Diego/Tijuana Region - A Case Study"
takes place on: Thursday Jan 6, 2005
5:30 pm
Room 1103 Muir Bio Building
By Chris Marino, at 8:52 AM
For fellow classmates and others interested in USP related topics and events.
I am the San Diego Chapter of the American Planning Association's student liaison for UCSD. Although I had initially planned on organizing some events for last quarter, due to several factors, the USP club and myself were unable to get the ball rolling early enough for any plans to materialize. Well, it is now a whole new quarter and I am determined to make things happen. In a couple of weeks, (most likely on a Monday evening) I will be having two planners from the county come in and speak with anyone who is interested in hearing them talk. If you are considering a career in planning, then you should be interested! One of the speakers graduated from UCSD's USP program and she will be talking about how it prepared her for a job in planning, as well as offering some criticism and pointers on the areas that she felt were weaknesses for the program. The other speaker has worked in both public and private sectors and will be a valuable resource for helping you to determine what might be the better fit for you. The APA will be sponsoring the event, and so that means there will be some snacks and refreshments available. I am hoping this will be the first in a series of informative and valuable events that can be a resource for networking (jobs after graduating) and promoting awareness of our major and future careers. Hope you all can make it. More info will be coming shortly.
Regards,
Daniel Humbarger
By daniel_h, at 10:28 PM
hey,
i was looking over the weekend paper and i found an article in LIFE magazine titled; Your Morning Coffee's Amazing Journey.
i found the article linked to some of the stuff we have been talking about in class; among others, ecological footprint, globalization and invisible paths. the article tells the story of the journey the morning coffee we drink at starbucks takes. the path starts in Colombia, where over 500,000 coffee farmers are employed and where the coffee beans go through the first couple of stages which include hand picking the coffee bushes, planting future harvests, then they are sorted by quality (the best go to Starbucks),from there the coffee is sent to a taster, then they are thrown into mills which remove any dirt . from there the beans are sent to the US (East coast) where they sit, get sorted again, get roasted and finally get sent all over the US to the local starbucks. man, that is a long way....dont you think. just think how many hands the morning coffee is past on by. we can say that we dring a very internatinal coffe.
some More interesting facts that i found in the article include;
***Eleven billion pounds of Coffee is consumed would wide every year.
***Forty nine percent of Americans drink coffee every-day.
***Each downs an average of 3.4 pounds. total number of specialty coffeehouses ***In the US in 1989:585. in 2003:17,400.
***All coffee is grown within 2,000 miles of the equarter.
***A pound of roasted coffee requires 4,000 beans, most of which are handpicked.
The article was published on the weekend of January 14, 2005.
yours, shlomo.
By shlomo, at 11:52 AM
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
By shlomo, at 11:58 AM
I was reading this article in the New York Times about how the world's countries stack up in the Environmental Sustainability Index, which is written in conjunction with the World Economic Forum. The link to the article is http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/24/science/24enviro.html?oref=login Not surprisingly, Scandanavia is leading the effort toward sustainability, but I was pretty surprised that 3 South American countries were in the top 10. Here's a short list of the countries:
1. Finland
2. Norway
3. Uruguay
4. Sweden
5. Iceland
6. Canada
7. Switzerland
8. Guyana
9. Argentina
10. Austria
45. United States
146. (last) North Korea
By Adam Gardner, at 5:23 PM
*An article from the thursday, january 20 2005 edition of the LA Times explains how the 3,100 residents of Nanjie, China are living happily thanks to reverting back to communism. "The only thing I had to buy
myself was the microwave and these plastic tulips," said one villager. Another villager named Wang Hongbin said,"The widening gap between the rich and the poor. Corruption. Crime. What is the root cause of all
these social ills? Privatization. Our goal is to realize communism. But communism needs to make big money--only big money can make communism better. There is no contradiction in that." A nineteen-year-old student summed it up best, however, saying, "I wouldn't want to move here. It's too far removed from reality." Perhaps this student needs to stop and
smell the plastic tulips.
By jeff wilson, at 9:47 AM
*from the jan.14, 2005 union tribune: "According to the report 'Mapping the Global Future' the main driver world trends will be globalization, the
ever-expanding international flows of goods, services, capital, people,and information. Barring wide-ranging war or a worldwide depression, the global economy is expected to be about 80 percent larger in 2020 than it
was in 2000, with average per capita income roughly 50 percent more." Also mentioned in the article: "By 2020 China's gross domestic product will be greater than that of any Western country except the U.S., and
India's GDP will have overtaken or will be about to overtake European economies."
By jeff wilson, at 9:48 AM
*from the thursday jan.20, 2005 union tribune: it seems that the U.S.-Mexico border has become the dumping site for America's used tires.
"The EPA estimates that as many as 40 million scrap tires end up in the border region. Old tires are breeding grounds for mosquitos and pollute the air when they catch fire." Across the Texas border, Ciudad Juarez is trying to figure out what to do with 4.5 million used tires. Baja California has an estimated 3 million scrap tires. Scrap tires are expensive to transport and burn/grind into asphalt, which is creating the biggest headache for border communities. As if these people needed more things to worry about...
By jeff wilson, at 9:50 AM
Hi everyone: Some interesting and relevant articles on the NY Times website this week. First, one on global warming from today (2/1/05):
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/01/science/earth/01warm.html
Second, a multimedia presentation on inequality in China. No link, but if you go to the Times website's international page, and scroll down, you'll see it. It's called "China's Great Divide" by Joseph Kahn and Jim Yardley.
By Caroline L. (TA), at 10:26 AM
El Salvador: Child Labor on Sugar Plantations
Foreign Firms Use End Product of Children’s Hazardous Work
(New York, June 10, 2004)—Businesses purchasing sugar from El Salvador, including The Coca-Cola Company, are using the product of child labor that is both hazardous and widespread, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.
Harvesting cane requires children to use machetes and other sharp knives to cut sugarcane and strip the leaves off the stalks, work they perform for up to nine hours each day in the hot sun. Nearly every child interviewed by Human Rights Watch for its 139-page report , “Turning a Blind Eye: Hazardous Child Labor in El Salvador’s Sugarcane Cultivation,” said that he or she had suffered machete gashes on the hands or legs while cutting cane. These risks led one former labor inspector to characterize sugarcane as the most dangerous of all forms of agricultural work.
“Child labor is rampant on El Salvador’s sugarcane plantations,” said Michael Bochenek, counsel to the Children’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. “Companies that buy or use Salvadoran sugar should realize that fact and take responsibility for doing something about it.”
Up to one-third of the workers on El Salvador’s sugarcane plantations are children under the age of 18, many of whom began to work in the fields between the ages of eight and 13. The International Labor Organization estimates that at least 5,000 and as many as 30,000 children under age 18 work on Salvadoran sugar plantations. El Salvador sets a minimum working age of 18 for dangerous occupations and 14 for most other forms of work.
Medical care is often not available on the plantations, and children must frequently pay for the cost of their medical treatment. They are not reimbursed by their employers despite a provision in the Salvadoran labor code that makes employers responsible for medical expenses resulting from on-the-job injuries.
El Salvador’s sugar mills and the businesses that purchase or use Salvadoran sugar know or should know that the sugar is in part the product of child labor. For example, Coca-Cola Co. uses Salvadoran sugar in its bottled beverages for domestic consumption in El Salvador. The company’s local bottler purchases sugar refined at El Salvador’s largest mill, Central Izalco. At least four of the plantations that supply sugarcane to Central Izalco regularly use child labor, Human Rights Watch found after interviewing workers.
When Human Rights Watch brought this information to the attention of Coca-Cola Co., the soft-drink manufacturer did not contradict these findings. Coca-Cola has a code of conduct for its suppliers, known as the “Guiding Principles for Suppliers to The Coca-Cola Company,” but it is narrowly drawn to cover only direct suppliers, which includes sugar mills but excludes plantations. The guiding principles provide, for example, that the Coca-Cola Co.’s direct suppliers “will not use child labor as defined by local law,” but they do not address the responsibility of direct suppliers to ensure that their own suppliers do not use hazardous child labor.
“If Coca-Cola is serious about avoiding complicity in the use of hazardous child labor, the company should recognize that its responsibility to ensure that respect for human rights extends beyond its direct suppliers,” said Bochenek.
In addition, children who work on sugarcane plantations often miss the first several weeks or months of school. For example, a teacher in a rural community north of the capital San Salvador estimated that about 20 percent of her class did not attend school during the harvest. Other children drop out of school altogether. Some children who want to attend school are driven into hazardous work because it is the only way their families can afford the cost of their education.
El Salvador is one of five countries in Latin America to participate in an International Labor Organization Time-Bound Program, an initiative to address the worst forms of child labor. But officials in the Salvadoran Ministry of Labor told Human Rights Watch that most children who cut cane are simply their parents’ “helpers.”
Human Rights Watch urged El Salvador’s sugar mills, Coca-Cola Co. and other businesses that purchase Salvadoran sugar to incorporate international standards in their contractual relationships with suppliers and require their suppliers to do the same throughout the supply chain. They should also adopt effective monitoring systems to verify that labor conditions on their suppliers’ sugarcane plantations comply with international standards.
By mw, at 9:34 AM
Hi everyone: An article from the NY Times today discusses how industry benefits from environmental deregulation-- in this case, the Clear Skies Initiative. It's definitely worth reading for understanding the role of today's EPA in policy enforcement and promotion.
"E.P.A. Accused of a Predetermined Finding on Mercury"
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/04/national/04mercury.html
By Caroline L. (TA), at 9:48 AM
An interesting example of biomimicry. You can find a guided tour of the process at http://www.waterrecycling.com/index.htm
TECHNOLOGY
has come full circle.
For years governments have dictated that we treat our wastewater with an array of chemicals using complex, high tech systems built of concrete and metal, tanks and tubes (see photo above). This "treated" water is then deposited into a natural body of water or directly onto the ground. Ultimately, the communities of microbes that transform waste in these high tech systems are the same as those used in nature.
Scientists are now recognizing the simplicity and effectiveness of nature's processes and are blending technology with natural systems to create more efficient wastewater management.
Natural wetlands purify water by acting like a sponge, soaking up rainwater that runs off the land before it enters rivers and streams. Particles of sediment and metals are removed as the water flows through wetland vegetation. Other pollutants such as nutrients and pesticides are partially extracted as the water percolates through wetland soils[Waterwise, Winter 1995]. Sand dunes also act as natural soil filters, trapping particles which later become food for microorganisms.
With the goal of managing wastewater effectively, economically, and ecologically, scientists are mimicking nature's processes in the design of ecosystems for wastewater processing based on sand dunes and natural marshes. Combinations of designed ecosystems, such as a constructed wetland and a soil filter in the same system, are known as hybrid systems. These designs have already been shown to effectively process wastewater, and at a much lower cost than conventional systems.
------
Other resources for biomimicry and sustainable development at http://www.oceanarks.org/education/resources/
http://www.oceanarks.org/education/resources/
By sarah palmer, at 5:40 PM
Here's an article posted on Yahoo Business from the Associated Press related to affordable housing in Mexico City in a town called Tecamac, now a growing city the size of Pittsburgh(385,000)expected to grow to 1 Million by 2020...very similar to all the stuff we studied before the midterm.
"TECAMAC, Mexico - Outside Melesio Rivero's city hall office, workmen shouldering bags of cement squeeze past suit-wearing developers waiting for building permits. Dust and the rap of hammers filter through a building under sudden expansion.
The planning maps spread over Rivero's desk show why. Over the past two decades, Tecamac has grown from a scattering of farm towns into a Pittsburgh-sized city of 350,000.
Tecamac is also a showplace for the explosion in organized housing construction since President Vicente Fox (news - web sites) took office in December 2000 — a result of loan programs that take advantage of interest rates lowered by years of fiscal austerity.
Most people in Mexico City, 20 miles to the south, couldn't find Tecamac on a map. But by 2020, Rivero says, the capital's urban sprawl will turn Tecamac into an inflated suburb of 1 million people.
"This is the natural point for growth. That's the tendency. It's irreversible," says Rivero, a Tecamac native who is deputy director for planning.
On the southern edge of Tecamac, the development company Sadasi is building Los Heroes, a middle-class neighborhood whose broad streets are lined with 30,000 eerily identical two-story attached houses of 670 square feet each.
Within a few years, Rivero said, the area will have 100,000 homes.
Many Mexicans are disappointed with Fox's achievements since he came to office in 2000 as an outsider promising a virtual revolution after 71 years of single-party rule.
But the housing boom stands out as a clear accomplishment. Fox boasts that the main federal housing lender, Infonavit, will have given out 2 million loans during his administration, surpassing the total in its previous 28-year history.
His government has granted 1.6 million housing credits through its first four years and hopes to reach 750,000 credits per year by the end of his term in 2006.
That would accommodate population growth and start to erode a 4-million-unit backlog of substandard or overcrowded housing, said Carlos Gutierrez, head of the government's National Commission for Promotion of Housing.
The loans, grants and subsidies come in a growing array of programs, some of which allow people who have earned points for years of work to avoid down payments altogether.
By loaning would-be homeowners the money to buy their own homes, rather than doing the building itself, the government has spawned "a very strong, very solid private market," Gutierrez said.
The industry has been growing by up to 20 percent a year, and Fox says overall housing investment in 2004 was 130 billion pesos ($11.5 billion).
Mexico's private banks also are starting to creep back into the housing market they abandoned after a credit crisis sent some interest rates past 100 percent a year in 1995.
Immediately south of Tecamac is a vast example of the problems with Mexico's current housing: Ecatepec, a chaotic city of 1 million people. Mexico State housing officials say half of them live in housing that is technically illegal.
People there have flooded onto just about any available land — sometimes buying it in legally questionable deals, sometimes just taking it.
Starved of credit, families have built their own houses helter-skelter and step by step, adding a second story, then a third, and perhaps a back room to accommodate new children or offspring who marry.
With guidance, planning and services, that can work well, said Jose Maria Gutierrez, president of the Mexican Academy of Architects.
But 70 percent of homes in the Mexico City area "are self-produced by people without any intervention by any professional. Those are not good houses. More than half have lighting and ventilation problems or aren't structurally sound," he said.
Haphazard eruptions of self-built concrete-block houses climb Ecatepec's hills. Tarpaper shacks almost hug the guard rail of the expressway. Streets built for a small town are strangled by the traffic of a metropolis.
While Ecatepec struggles to bring services to makeshift neighborhoods and to find ways of legalizing their existence, Rivero said Tecamac hopes to push development into areas where it's easier to provide power, water and other services.
Developments such as Los Heroes come with their own services, as well as parks, school buildings and systems that replenish strained groundwater supplies.
Gutierrez said about 380,000 new legal houses were self-built across Mexico last year. Nobody is sure how many more were built illegally.
And the organized housing boom so far has missed most of Mexico's population.
Roughly half of Mexico's workers make less than 3,000 pesos — about $270 — a month, making even Los Heroes houses expensive at $23,900 each.
Sales manager Graciela Ortega said most buyers make more than twice that median wage. The lowest monthly payments at Los Heroes are about $70, but most pay closer to double that, leaving the average Mexican worker with less than $5 a day for the family's food, transportation, medical and other expenses.
There's also little help for the millions of Mexicans who are self-employed or who work at informal jobs and have no paycheck to show lenders. The government is weighing plans to give the poor more help, while self-employed workers can qualify for a government credit by establishing a pattern of savings over a six-month period, Gutierrez said.
As elsewhere, many at Los Heroes are trying to turn their houses into sources of income, ignoring rules banning home businesses. Hundreds of beauty salons, miniature grocery stores, Internet cafes and taco stands have blossomed. One thing missing, though, is bars.
"It's more peaceful here. There aren't any drunks. There aren't any gangs," said Jose Guadalupe Villordo, 72, who was helping his son paint a front-yard cage to protect his car against theft.
Along a dust-choked dirt street about a mile away, Eli Posada spoke with vague longing about the concrete-block house where he is a self-employed metalworker.
"How would I pay for one of those houses?" he asked. "For that, you have to work in a factory." "
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=509&ncid=509&e=1&u=/ap/20050206/ap_on_bi_ge/mexico_housing_boom
By JDupont, at 1:00 AM
Stemming from Professor Pezzoli's lecture on 2.08.2005 about the need for improving infrastructure (contradicitons in cost crisis) and as well as the topic for Week 6, I found an article about improvements that are being made in the Baja California region- specifically the Mexicali Area.
"Section 1 Purpose and Need for Action 1.1 Background Mexicali, Baja California, in the United States-Mexico border region, has been growing rapidly (Figure 1-1). Population growth is exceeding the capacity of the community’s infrastructure and new and
upgraded facilities are needed to accommodate the current and future growth. The Mexicali
Wastewater Collection and Treatment project has been undertaken in an effort to improve water quality
in the New River, with the goal of achieving Mexican water quality standards established in the NOMECOL-
001-1996...The New River flows northward from Mexico into the United States within the Colorado River Basin,
which is located partly in the southeastern portion of the State of California. The Colorado River
Basin covers approximately 13 million acres (20,000 square miles) (RWQCB, 1994) and includes the
Salton Sea, a landlocked, saline lake into which the New River, Alamo River, Whitewater River, and
agricultural drains discharge. The New River was formed in the early 1900s by flooding from the
Colorado River. Water has continuously flowed in the New River since irrigate agriculture began in
the Mexicali and Imperial Valleys early in the 19th Century...• Installation of telemetry equipment at pump stations and treatment facilities
Mexicali II: Current Conditions
Wastewater generated by the Mexicali II area was originally intended to be treated at a proposed new
wastewater treatment plant in El Choropo, but this plant has not been built because of public
opposition from local residents. Consequently, approximately 13.7 mgd (600 lps) of untreated
wastewater enter the New River. Pump station No. 4 was built with Comisión Estatal de Servicios
Públicos de Mexicali (CESPM) financing."
(http://www.epa.gov/region09/border/mexicali/ea.pdf)
By Andrea M. Aguirre, at 10:12 PM
Another article that reflects the topic from Week 6, with a technological twist.
"The GIS technology transfer approach described here addresses the issue of sustainable
technology transfer in a development setting. It was prompted by a growing discontent
within the development community, and the Bureau for Africa, USAID in particular, with
the high cost and inconsistent results of GIS technology transfer projects in the area of
environmental management.These poor results are due to the fact that most interventions
primarily address the technological issues of the technology transfer process and not the
more substantive issues that relate to the organizational and social issues of the process. In
contrast to a traditional approach to technology transfer we have come to shape what we
call the Ecological Approach -- one which is focused not on the technology per se, but
rather, on the organization which adopts the technology, its role in society, and the manner
in which the technology enhances or detracts from an organization's ability to function in
a responsible, productive and sustainable fashion. [The] goals are to strengthen the
capacities of the Ministry of Research and Environmental Affairs (MOREA) and other line
agencies to more effectively carry out the routine tasks related to environmental
monitoring, and ultimately, to strengthen the efficient flow of information to effect
environmental decision making."
(http://www.afr-sd.org/publications/17-1text.pdf#search='sustainable%20development%20with%20an%20ecological%20approach')
By Andrea M. Aguirre, at 10:25 PM
Hi everyone: From the NY Times today, on global warming. Best, Caroline
2004 Was Fourth-Warmest Year Ever Recorded
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/10/science/10warm.html
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: February 10, 2005
Last year was the fourth warmest since systematic temperature measurements began around the world in the 19th century, NASA scientists said yesterday.
Particularly high temperatures were measured over Alaska, the Caspian Sea region of Europe and the Antarctic Peninsula, while the United States was unusually cool. But the global average continued a 30-year rise that is "due primarily to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere," said Dr. James E. Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in Manhattan.
The main source of such gases is smokestack and tailpipe emissions from burning coal and oil.
The highest global average was measured in 1998, when temperatures were raised by a strong cycle of El Niño in the Pacific Ocean; 2002 and 2003 were second and third warmest.
Dr. Hansen said a weak Niño pattern was likely to make 2005 at least the second warmest year and could push it beyond 1998 and set a record.
The unusual nature of the recent warming was corroborated separately yesterday by a new analysis of 2,000 years of indirect temperature records in tree rings, stalagmites, seabed layers, and other evidence from around the Northern Hemisphere.
That study, published in the journal Nature, found that previous peaks of warming, particularly during medieval times about 1,000 years ago, were as warm as the 20th-century average but that no spikes in the last 2,000 years matched the warming since 1990.
It is one of several recent studies challenging a longstanding view that temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere were relatively unvarying until the recent warming, a pattern enshrined in a graph scientists have taken to calling the hockey stick for its long horizontal "shaft" and upward-hooking "blade."
The lead author of the new paper, Anders Moberg of Stockholm University in Sweden, said it was important to recognize that natural influences on climate could either amplify or mask human-caused warming in years to come.
But his paper "should not be a fuel for greenhouse skeptics in their arguments," Mr. Moberg said, adding that there were ample signs that the warming was now outside nature's recent bounds.
By Caroline L. (TA), at 8:39 PM
I found an article on CNN.com today regarding global warming and a sort of agenda 21 "Long road to Kyoto - Global warming accord to take effect."
Here's a link to the article:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/02/15/kyoto.advancer.ap/index.html
I found this kind of ironic:
"The United States, which envisaged a 7 percent reduction, signed the
protocol in 1997, but the U.S. Senate had resolved in advance not to
accept it, citing potential damage to the U.S. economy and demanding
that such emerging polluters as China and India be covered."
Cosmin B.
By Anonymous, at 12:58 PM
Hi everyone: Two interesting op-ed pieces regarding sustainability science and industry in the times today, one on the Clear Skies Initiative and another on wind power. Best, Caroline
Here are the links:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/16/opinion/16mckibben.html
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Tilting at Windmills
By BILL MCKIBBEN
Local environmentalism is undermining one of our best options for slowing global warming.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/16/opinion/16easterbrook.html
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Clear Skies, No Lies
By GREGG EASTERBROOK
The underlying idea of the president's environmental proposal is sound and deserves support.
By Caroline L. (TA), at 1:02 PM
I saw this article in the l.a. times about housing shortages, particulary in Hollywood. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-housing23feb23,0,962334.story?coll=la-home-local
It mentioned that some cities have opted to build revenue generating institutions such as clubs etc. instead of affordable housing. This relates to [that one speaker talked about it...I don't remember his name]how because municipal governments have an increased demand placed on them, have become more concerned with generating revenue. I also thought it was interesting that cops had to be called to disperse the crowd trying to apply for a low cost apt complex.
By Candace, at 12:50 AM
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/001622.html Going back to what we were talking about in discussion last week about simcities and their practicality in planning, i found this article that addresses the issue in regard to the simcity computer games in particular. Their ideas seem fairly accurate to me and i would tend to agree that simcity has its place as something to get a person started with some fundamental ideas. I don't know if the game really belongs in any classrooms, but i guess its better than alot of things i did in classes in highschool.
By rgertz, at 11:57 PM
I just saw an interesting article that corresponds to border issues and a presentation given by Daniel the other night in class.
According to the article, Prez. Bush is considering a plan under which Mexican immigrants could sign up to work legally in America if they agree to return to Mexico in a certian amount of time.
The program might help cut back on illegal border crossings, but what about illegal 'stays' after work is completed?
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/tijuana/20050304-1541-ca-immigrantsurvey.html
By J Dupont, at 9:28 PM
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