Adventures outside this Western, air-conditioned box await...

Finally. My first year of graduate school almost completed. I breathe a little easier knowing I won’t look at this tiny computer screen, eternally scarring my vision, for longer than the minutes it takes to check my email once in a while for at least two months… Well, that is, once I finish my last final.

I am printing off my final Written Testimony to Congress (a faux committee, I’m not that important yet  ) for my Energy and Climate Change course today. This afternoon I will lock myself in my parlor for three hours to finish an essay final for Food and Water Security. A few errands around the house as the young fellow subleasing my apartment this summer is moving in this weekend. A week with my folks and friends around the great state of Colorado – running a 10K with 50,000 other runners in one of Colorado’s craziest races, touring the breweries via bicycle and barbeque-ing with some of my old friends in Fort Collins, a backpacking trip up to Conundrum Hot Springs for a couple days.

Insert – alteration of my mind… or at least for a few months. This summer, I am off to Yachana Foundation in the heart of the Ecuadorean Amazon, to complete my research proposal I have completed with a team of five others in my Multi-level Data Analysis class. Our discoveries will not be the sexy, risky research adventures doted on in international journals of development (those I have made myself all too familiar with); nonetheless, its important work we are doing.

Yachana, in Kichwa “A place for learning”, was founded in 1991 and is the best representation of holistic development I have yet to be introduced to. Perched alongside the banks of the Upper Napo River, a tributary to the Amazon, embedded in lush, serene rainforest, Yachana is a technical high school educating indigenous youth, an award-winning eco-lodge, an organic cacao production facility, an agricultural extension services provider, and a symbol of opportunity for a people previously untouched by opportunity, out of which flows dignity and self-sufficiency…. and jobs. Yachana focuses on education and conservation, preserving 1800 acres of precious landscape hosting some of the world’s most diverse flora and fauna, and some of histories most precious cultures fast losing their memory to oil exploitation and globalization. Last year, Yachana recieved a grant to open a post-secondary technical training institute where they will train high school graduates in three areas which are linked to available jobs in the area: eco-tourism (catering, gastronomy), Agroforestry, and Renewable Energy production. Hopes are to link students with apprenticeships with local businesses and/or to assist in the creative development micro-consignmnet. Yachana wants us to do some focus groups with potential students to better inform their development process of the school’s curriculum and structure. We will also do individual household surveys gathering socioeconomic data on the families in the area to track (in years to come) how the post-secondary institute has amended the economic vista of the community.

I sense, as the wander-lusting, vagabonding type usually do, I will learn more from my indigenous Kichwa partners than I could ever offer to them in my mere two months. I am humbled, actually, thinking of the intractable generosity and openness it must take to allow strangers to infiltrate their communities. I imagine elite Frenchmen galavanting around my neighborhood, knocking on my door, investigating my personal life with questions of monthly income, aspirations, nutritional intake, asset possession and contraceptive use. I would rightly say (shout, perhaps) a rather un-kind collection of uncommon words and shut the door in their face. I aim to do my best, utilizing the trust and relationships Yachana has built there in the last 20 years to make myself as human as possible, a partner, a companion willing to share the risk.

For at least a couple months, I will not stare this LCD lighting int he face. For at least two months, no endless, enervating, sometimes seemingly pointless reading of articles and academics pontificating in their esoteric circles, sitting in their air-conditioned corner offices sipping on their mass-produced Starbucks latte. For the next two months I get to see it, live it, experience it, share the risk. I humbly embed myself in a culture and a people, thriving ideas and brave attempts, experiential knowledge and welcomed challenges.

How Graduate School is Different

My professor said something to me last night that struck me. I guess professors say a lot of things and probably most of them should strike me; however, this one was a winner:”At this level of education, its all about skills. Knowledge is great, but knowledge is out there. You can always gain new knowledge. In grad school, we are trying to teach you skills.”

Okay, I really like this. I also don’t want to hear it. I’m one of those curiosity-driven people that loves new knowledge, obscure facts, and saturating my brain with (sometimes) useless tidbits that make my neurons giddy. I don’t know if I want the skills. The skills are harder to obtain, and harder to maintain. And they require a courage to improve.

For our class in Energy and Climate Change co-taught by the law, business and ecology professors, the final project is looming like a black cloud over my sunny spring fever: an oral testimony to a professional entity, arguing for or against the Genesis Solar Electrification Project in the Sonoran Desert of California. The State of California, in its true progressive, populist, independent style has called for 33% of its electricity retail sales to come from renewable sources by 2020. That date is rapidly approaching and corporations like NextEra energy are jumping on economic opportunities for solar farm projects like wildfire, Genesis Solar is just one of those projects.

Buried in the thousands of pages of legal briefings and documents I have engulfed myself in for preparation for the oral testimony, I have discovered that a solar farm is not the cure-all to our climate change woes. Solar Farms require a significant amount of water to heat the transfer fluid which flows through the parabolic troughs to gather the heat/energy; in this project, that water will be coming from sensitive, already-depleted resources that may be connected to the Colorado River. Solar farms are no small feat and the 1800 acres of desert this project covers will have significant impact on precious species and their habitat like the desert tortoise. Furthermore, this land is owned by the Federal Government, which means approval is required not only by the State but also by the Bureau of Land Management. And extensive Environmental Assessments must be made to prove there is no significant affect on environment or its inhabitants.

This is a clear case of the “not in my backyard” case. Californians want clean air, Californians want clean energy, Californians want to lead the way in the progressive march to mitigate climate change. But Californians don’t want ugly parabolic solar troughs muddying their serene desert vistas. The real question for my testimony, is what are the alternative approaches and what are the costs of those alternatives? As the project will produce 250 MW of energy output that can be used to power homes in L.A. with lesser emissions and more efficiency, would the benefits of scrubbers on coal-fired power plants be comparable at all? How bad are those acres of mirrors and a couple towers compared to the ever-present gray smoke stacks bustling out of power plants down the street?

The skills are plentiful: structuring a clear, concise argument which is backed by scientific evidence and supported by many, an argument that recognizes the opposing viewpoints and has adequate responses, an argument that is presented to a body of important people who don’t have much time to listen to what you have to say, a compelling argument, a creative argument.  This is where the skill becomes undesirable for me – you mean, I have to actually take a side?  I can’t stay in the grey area dancing in theoretical circles forever?

Sometimes I wish I could go back to my undergraduate degree where professors didn’t expect much out of you and the acquisition of knowledge of the arguments out there was really the only goal. Alas, I’m paying no small chunk of change to be in this school and I suppose a challenge is welcomed. I notice I procrastinate on things not because I’m lazy or too busy, but usually because I’m afraid of doing them – rather, I’m afraid of failing at them. I think grad school is about a number of things, including acquiring skills; its also about learning how to try, and sometimes fail. Its about learning to be brave, confident and to try. Because every time you speak in front of an entity of specialists regarding something you don’t know too much about, you’ll get a little better… at least I hope.

In Defense of Food

Okay, so I can’t claim the title, I did in fact steal it from Michael Pollan.

My seedlings sprouting up in my Southern-facing window of my apartment.

In addition to all the other enlightening luxuries of my classes this quarter, I was afforded the educational experience of our first workshop of the quarter: Urban Agriculture. After a disheartening introduction to current industrial agriculture and all its pernicious effects on humans (as Pollan says, we are sicker, fatter and poorer), the workshop turned its focus to an emerging alternative sweeping its way across the world – developed and developing countries: Permaculture.

More than half of the world’s people now lives in cities and the urbanizing population is only set to increase in the coming years. An average of 1500 miles is traversed by the apple, broccoli or bread on your table before its consumed by you, and it takes about 10 calories of fossil fuels to produce just one calorie of food. We are separated by many miles and many milieus from our food production; a bag of cheetos could grow out of the ground for all that the general public is concerned. With population overflow nearing 7 billion, more and more people piling on top of each other in concrete-laden metropolises, unsustainable extraction of natural resources, and greenhouse gas emissions destroying our life-giving ecosystem, a recreation of the way we think about our food is needed.

Often beginning with a fruit tree in the center, Permaculture mimcs natural ecosystems, aping the symbiotic relationships in nature between nitrogen fixers and worm decomposers and pollinators and pest controllers. Permaculture embraces the idea that problems can in fact be solutions, and that “waste” is actually a resource. A serene and artful intercropping of fruit trees, shrubs, herbs, and veggies represent a pleasant alternative to the mono-cropped, nutrient depleting monocroppings of corn in Iowa; and they offer a backyard portal to natural beauty and sustenance, reminding you that you are in fact part of that large natural ecosystem that is the Earth. Permaculture speaks not only to agriculture and food production, but to a greater ideal of societal change. As Garrett Hardin stated so eloquently in 1995, we used to bowl in leagues and now we bowl alone (Bowling Alone, 1995). Maybe a community permaculture garden can remind us that sharing is the way of survival.

We didn’t just spend our workshop days sitting indoors staring at powerpoints. Quite to the contrary, in MDP style, we got our hands dirty, literally. A permaculture garden was started out the front door of our Korbel building on DU campus last year, and Spring time beckons the planting of new fruit trees and several nitrogen-fixing shrubs. We dug the holes, immersed the plants, watered the roots, and mulched the soil with organic compost of leaves saved from last fall. It felt natural and it felt good to see progress in action out my front door.

If you want to be sustainable, consume less. If you want to consume less, share. If you want to share, you have to be part of a community, a community somewhat like the symbiotically related system of our permaculture garden. Wendell Berry, an agrarian poet, said, “We learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of our time: How much is enough?”

Whose Responsibility is it anyway?

Only when one signs up for an interdisciplinary degree program such as the MDP does one get to participate in a course on Climate Change co-taught by a professor of law, professor of business and a professor of ecology, only then do you get the intriguing discourse of the validity of corporate social responsibility practices done by your local mining monster, Newmont Mining Company.

Newmont, one of the world’s largest producers of gold, owns and operates one of the most productive and profitable mines in the world, the Yanacocha Mine in Peru. Newmont’s operations at the Yanacocha mine have been rebuked time and again not only for shady interactions with embezzling, ousted minister Montesinos, of Peru, but also for its environmental destruction of the land and nearby community of Cajamarca, including a seriously damaging mercury spill in 2000. In attempts to mitigate the affects of these pernicious stories being spread like wildfire with new social media tactics, disrupting consumer commitment to the industry, Newmont has tried to clean up its act a bit in Peru. The “new and improved Newmont portfolio includes the commencement of social health programs, education programs, the construction of roads and other infrastructure, all within the auspices of a a greater public participation with the local community. Sounds great, or sounds like a serious case of green washing?

A long discussion ensued in class last night with the typical players: recalcitrant, impassioned, justice-seeking graduate students relentlessly revealing the ‘skeletons in the closet’ if you will, and a well-read, well-experienced professor of business arguing against the idea of a Utopia where every great big multinational giant truly alters their objectives to that of altruism.

How good is good enough? Newmont meets with local village leaders, incorporating their authority, wisdom and opinion into new operation decisions. That local government may be infested with corruption, inefficiency or marked by dsitrust by a number of the local villagers, but, hey, a lot of tea-party members must feel the same way about Obama but Ahmedinijad still has a direct line to the Obama White House when he needs to talk business. “This is the journey businesses are on,” says Professor Bruce Hutton, “Their job is to make profit and try to do that in a way that gives people what they want/need, and in a way that doesn’t damage the environment. They are not god. There is no Nirvana out there that says that some people or some things don’t get hurt.”

Bottom line, we buy gold. Maybe not stocks of gold bars to put on display atop the mantle, but gold is a component of many devices and products we use daily. Somebody has to mine the gold until consumer demand changes; and mining gold is just never going to be a pretty process. Many local inhabitants of Cajamarca, despite the international headlines of rampant Newmont destruction, are in fact pleased with the presence of a job-producing, economy-boosting company such as Newmont in their community. They have new roads, schools and health programs, and more importantly they have money in their pockets. Consequently, they have pollutants in their air and water, perhaps mercury in their soil, and perhaps pneumonia in their lungs.

Is there consolation between these two ends? Can we truly alter the game of capitalist economics to make Newmont’s “bottom line” alter its appearance to one that represents social equity, environmental stewardship … <em>and</em> economic benefit? These are the challenges of our generation, and I personally believe we are forging ahead, slowly but surely, to a world more saturated with just and sustainable development. Washington D.C. imposed a mandatory tax on plastic bags used at the grocery store in 2008. The federal government, tea-party naysayers aside, wants to require the use of LED light bulbs in all lighting sources, equaling the carbon savings of 11 nuclear power plants if used by everyone. There are steps we are taking forward and for a company like Newmont to engage with local communities to allow participatory development in decision-making, greenwashing or not, is a sign of improvement in my eyes.

Springtime!... makes school difficult

Blooming Cherry Blossoms, hints of green sprouting out of every corner, and a Crayola crayon box of tulips giving their gratitude of salutation to the sun. Its spring time in Colorado which means a couple things: crazy 80 degree weather on Saturday and 21 degree flurries on Sunday; It means planting my carrots and broccoli; and it means (mostly) sunny days that beckon graduate students daily, through the creaks and cracks of windows and skylights, peering into the temperature-controlled and fluorescent-lit boxes they reside in all day, saying ‘come, adventure, enjoy! Forget your responsibilities!’

Alas, it’s already week three of a ten-week quarter and there is much work to be done.

 I’m catching up on some reading this morning on new innovations in sanitation efforts around the world, you know, composting toilets and methane gas generators from human excrement – pretty sexy stuff. If all goes well I will have my first assignment of the quarter turned in by Friday, an analysis of a solar electrification farm out in the Sonoran Desert of California. Solar? Renewable Energy? A cure-all to our carbon-emitting woes, you say? Well, as I’m only now learning, there are all kinds of trade-offs for powering our world with “clean” solar technology. Its a water-intensive project that is located in a place where there is not much water to retrieve, the components are made of some rare earth minerals that are only found in China (thwarting any effort to solve that “energy independence” issue) and the 1800 acres of photovoltaic cells would displace some seriously cute (and threatened) wildlife. I guess my assignment might not be as easy as I thought.

New Beginnings

Spring. A time that breeds new beginnings, blossoming flowers, rejuvenation of mojo after the cold winter…. and the weight of three more classes to tack on your “to-do” list. My week off in Sedona Arizona afforded me the luxurious relaxation of friends, hikes, rivers, climbing and sunshine amidst the backdrop of the serene Red Rocks of the Southwest.

 Here’s what the quarter looks like:

1. Climate Change and Energy course co-taught by a law professor and a biology professor.

2. Food and Water Security by the assistant director of the MDP, Dr. Suki Hoagland.

3. Multi-level Data Analysis, a course walking us through the steps of conducting sound research with, again, the great Suki.

Here’s what Day One of the Quarter looked like yesterday:

1. Of all the water on the planet, a mere 1% of it is available to humans in streams, rivers and lakes… and we're depleting it much faster than the natural recharge rate.

2. One drop of oil renders 25 liters of water undrinkable.

3. The production of ONE TON of grain requires ONE THOUSAND TONS of water.

Doomsday 101? No. Rather, an inspiring pairing of courses on the environment and how our decisions, both locally and globally, can affect the sustainable livelihoods of billions, yes billions of people. While the average American uses 100 gallons of water a day in the household alone, we were assigned various readings in National Geographic’s Special Issue on Water where I learned that African women may traverse difficult terrain for more than 8 hours a day just to retain 2.5 gallons for her entire family. Nearly 900 million people in the world do not have access to clean water. However, I was also enlightened with the thrilling innovation of people all over the world attempting to mitigate the negative impacts of Climate Change on marginalized populations: natural sand dams catching and filtering rainwater that would normally drain away, or toilets that generate Methane gas for new communal kitchens in small communities.

As Barbara Kingsolver says, “Water is life. Its the briny broth of our origins, the pounding circulatory system of the world, a precarious molecular edge on which we survive.” And we have overdrawn our accounts, to say the least. The three courses this spring should help me understand the greater discourse on this facet (among many others) of the intersection of climate change and people. Maybe we can learn together how to transform the reality into one in which those same African women can turn on a faucet just like ours, out of which flows not only the physical resource of water, but dignity as well.

The quest for Environmental Justice forges on to Washington D.C.

Ciel. A French word meaning, “heaven”. Also, another obscure acronym to add to the list of alphabetical agency jargon in Washington D.C. CIEL, the Center for International Environmental Law, is one among the many organizations we are visiting this week during our environmental policy making trip to Washington D.C.

Peace Corps economics volunteer in India, president of the student body at Harvard, and the former White House adviser, Mr. Dan Magraw, finished up teaching a class at Johns Hopkins before humbly offering his thoughts on human rights and the environment to the cohort. Donned in pink (yes, pink), strapped with a variegated bow tie, frazzled gray hair and a charming personality, I was comforted by his generous, humorous and passionate approach to engaging people all over the world.

Whether in the Maldives or the Amazon, CIEL is working on projects throughout the world, attempting to preserve the right to an environment capable of supporting a healthy society and an environment that allows for the realization of all other human rights. One project that piqued my interest was in the Arctic where Inuits are fighting for their rights to food, livelihood, property and culture amidst a climate of melting permafrost and changing sea temperatures. Through the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, CIEL has partnered with some of these Inuit people to amplify their voice in the spaces that have the power to alter the current state of affairs, literally suing the United States of America. Magraw says CIEL may have “lost” in technical report terms, but considers every case a success by “forcing the conversation”. The “loss” forces inter-agency processes; it forces silo-ed sectors of governance to unite, collaborate, and listen to the scientific findings of each other; these environmental cases force the EPA to have rich discourse with “foes” such as Senator Inhoffe of Oklahoma.

Magraw also highlighted the importance of the “normative power of the absolute”, arguing that by actually doing things, these environmental realities are transformed from “pie in the sky BS” to implemented policies.

Arriving Friday, we enjoyed a weekend of freedom (how appropriate in the nation’s capitol) to peruse the city, absorbing the richness of culture, diversity, and history represented in the illustrious, sublime mastery of architecture and design. Monuments and museums echo the sagacious utterances of so many great heroes, big and small, soldier and president, citizen and martyr, and patriotic emotions abound.

We began our week Monday with a workshop conducted by Conituum, a global innovation design consultancy firm, who led us through a creative process of designing a sustainable waste management system for Costa Rica. Tuesday through Friday were filled with experiences similar to the CIEL visit descried above. Via security gates at USAID, identification cards at the World Bank, and several non-governmental organizations like CIEL, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), we have been exploring the world of international environmental policy making – what do these people really do andhow do they do it?

After a few days traversing the bustling streets of one of the most powerful cities in the world in heels, I’m inspired by the vitality and vibrancy of this great city. So many people, so many great ideas, so much to do.