SEEDlings
Follow us:
  • Home
  • About us
    • Announcements
    • Our People
    • Resources
    • Sustainable Development >
      • Principles of Agroecology
  • Contact us
  • Blogs & Media
    • SEEDlings Forum
    • Sustainable Recipes
  • Donate
  • Get Involved
    • Job/Internship Opportunities
    • Volunteer
    • Submit an Article
  • Earth Day
  • Sustainable Food

Blogs & Media

What's on your mind? Share your thoughts and ideas with SEEDlings!

E-mail your Blog

Climate Justice: The Knot of Complexities

10/28/2011

0 Comments

 
Submitted by: Erica Bodane
Picture
Climate justice is a recent, powerful movement which has evolved out of the global climate change crisis that the world faces today. Supporters of the climate justice movement believe that the costs and benefits of economic interests should be shared equally amongst all people of all countries. What this means is that outsourcing of polluting industries to less developed countries is the incorrect response to emissions standards in the home country and that when the wind blows a cloud of soot from a factory over state lines, the soot does not just disappear, it has consequences and negative externalities. Climate change impacts have been felt for years and continue to affect people and the biosphere at an accelerating rate, yet, not much has been successful at accomplishing this necessary change in global distribution of resources and access to those resources.
 
The climate justice movement emerged as a result of Kyoto Protocol failures. The Kyoto Protocol of 1990, linked with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), set goals to reduce pollution, regulate emissions via caps. Climate justice is an issue because the political north developed earlier than the south through the industrial revolution and more recent technologic breakthroughs such as automobiles and airplanes.
To support the seeming endless growth potential of these burgeoning economies, the north stripped the south of many valuable resources and often exploited these resources by taking far more than could be readily renewed by the ecosystem.

Today it is evident that the political south stands almost no chance of attaining the level of development that the north has reached. It is clear that a small percentage of the world's people consume the vast majority of its resources, an 80:20 ratio, actually. Eighty percent of the wealth is owned by 20% of the global human population. Thusly, resources are being consumed at a rate that exceeds what one could consider "renewable". The political south feels as though the north owes them a climate debt. The south wants to develop; people want their basic human rights to food and water access, yet many people are forced to collect water from highly polluted watersheds. The people of the political south want fair access to medicines and remedies to common but preventable illnesses such as malaria and diarrhea from toxic water sources.

The arguments for climate debt can be expressed ethically, scientifically, politically, and economically. Ethically, the north has a responsibility to do everything in their power to help raise the south up and out of poverty. The south cannot afford to pay for the climate changes that they are experiencing so harshly. Scientifically, it is observed that harvests are yielding less crop and the climate is becoming unsupportive of people's subsistence; water is becoming scarce; the rain forests are struggling and the coral reefs are vanishing while island nations lose ground and southeastern Asian countries experience the intense flooding and salination of necessary riparian zones used for agriculture that has been projected by climate experts and the IPCC (International Panel of Climate Change. Based upon this empirical evidence, the north absolutely ethically should settle the debt with the south.

Politically, there is a need for an international governance body who will develop and implement important policies, monitor the execution of those policies, and call free riders to justice for their inequities. This is difficult to accomplish because the north and south have different perspectives on the issue. The north is reluctant to face the facts and give up some of the conveniences of affluent living or to invest heavily in the research and development needed to get the world out of its current mess. 

Without transparency and international governance, climate debt will be difficult to resolve. Economically, climate debt makes sense because it opens markets, drives innovation, reduces cost, and thus generates jobs and profit on a longer timescale than the immediate gratification that comes with environmental degradation for resources. However, this top-down approach has not been working very well, and bottom-up approaches from community’s to the State have been popping up around the world, including across the USA.

Arguments against climate debt mostly stem from the Political North. Typically in a capitalist system, the rich lend to the poor and ask the poor to repay them. In the situation of climate debt the poor are asking the rich to pay them back for taking their resources and their chance at development. The poor have to develop to pull themselves up out of poverty. Another argument against climate debt is the difficulty in calculating the debt. There are many factors involved, not all of which are easy to trace, measure, and assign proper accountability for. For example, pollutants in the air may be very small but in high concentrations and they come from many sources. The wind blows at all levels of the atmosphere, mixing these pollutants - and pollutants do not respect national boundaries; they go over national boundaries without consideration. Political resistance may come from a background of misunderstanding of the severity of the issue of climate justice, or for fear of losing freedoms to an intergovernmental body. All of these issues illustrate the reason for the of climate debt and the reasons for working towards settling that debt through climate justice.


0 Comments

The Skinny on Recycling

10/11/2011

0 Comments

 
Submitted by: Katie LaPotin
Picture
There are a plethora of reasons why people do not recycle, including laziness, a lack of recycling facilities in one's area, or that they just don't believe recycling makes a difference. Yet recycling really does make a difference in helping save our environment, as the statistics below demonstrate. There are a plethora of reasons why people do not recycle, including laziness, a lack of recycling facilities in one's area, or that they just don't believe recycling makes a difference. Yet recycling really does make a difference in helping save our environment, as the statistics below demonstrate. 



  • A plant takes a minimum of 15-20 years to grow into a tree, but takes less than 10 minutes to be felled. In addition, on average one tree can yield about 700 paper grocery bags, which will be consumed in less than an hour by a supermarket. 
  • For every ton of paper that is recycled, the following are saved: 
    • 17 trees
    • 275 pounds of sulfur
    • 350 pounds of limestone
    • 9,000 pounds of steam
    • 60,000 gallons of water
    • 225 kilowatt hours
    • 3.3 cubic yards of landfill space
  • The average time taken by plastic bottle to decompose in a landfill is close to 700 years. 
  • Used plastic dumped into the sea kills and destroys sea life at an estimated 1 million sea creatures per year. 
  • Glass and plastic take the longest to decompose but are completely recyclable, therefore, it is important to purchase, recycle, and reuse both glass and plastic products. 
  • A Styrofoam coffee cup discarded today will remain in landfill space for close to 500 years. 
  • Aluminum cans can be recycled and reused within 60 days. 
  • Recycling aluminum saves money, energy and manpower because preparing aluminum products from virgin metal consumes closes to 100 times the power required to recycle aluminum. If all aluminum produced is regularly recycled, the energy saved is enough to light up a medium-sized city for close to five years!
  • The United States is one of the world's largest producers of trash. Trash is produced at an alarming rate of 1,609 pounds of trash per person, per year. 
  • For every product purchased, nearly 10% of the finished product contains packing material which is normally dumped. 
  • Nearly 60-70% of waste found in dustbins can be recycled and reused, and close to 50% of the same waste can be composted. 
  • Recycling tin, glass, and plastic containers or bottles can conserve energy to power light bulbs for 3 to 4 hours.
If these numbers don't make people want to recycle, I'm not totally sure what will!

For more recycling statistics and facts please visit:  http://tinyurl.com/42uabwu


0 Comments

    Mary Ensch

    President, SEEDlings

    View my profile on LinkedIn

    Kimberly Cozart

    VP, SEEDlings 

    View my profile on LinkedIn

    Katie LaPotin

    Board Member, SEEDlings 

    View my profile on LinkedIn

    Erica Bodane

    Board Member, SEEDlings

    Archives

    June 2012
    April 2012
    February 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011

    Categories

    All
    Anti-GMO
    Biking
    Climate Justice
    Environment
    Environmentally Friendly Tips
    Farmers Market
    Food Sovereignty
    Green Grilling
    Holidays
    Los Angeles
    New York City
    Recycle
    Sustainability
    Sustainable City
    Sustainable Development Recipes
    Urban Agriculture

    RSS Feed

Seedlings

About us
Contact us
Blog

Get Involved

Announcements
Resources
Jobs
Picture
©2012| SEEDlings Sustainable Ecological Economic Development, Corp. All rights reserved. | Ph: (949) 427.0224 | E-mail: info@seedlingscorp.org
Photos used under Creative Commons from Ernst Vikne, benketaro, hardworkinghippy, Steve & Jemma Copley, Leonid Mamchenkov, confusedmime, Sterling College, diongillard, Szymon Nitka, romana klee, magikalfolk, Montgomery Cty Division of Solid Waste Services, brockvicky