Global Climate Change - What About the Food?

During these times, global climate change is a major concern for everyone. Scientists are inventing different alternatives to help save our environment. Many people are trying to reduce their carbon footprints by carpooling and changing lightbulbs. However, not many people have thought about the inevitable. Although we're making an effort to lessen the blow of global climate change, change is always inevitable. Even though we’re doing our best as a population to change the way we live, it is impossible to turn the entire world “green”. Yes, it is a pessimistic outlook but it is true. Because of this reason, scientists are now trying to find crops that will last through the elements.

Approximately 1.5 million dollars have gone towards the Global Crop Diversity Trust. Scientists will be “... screening the world’s food supply for natural resistances to floods, temperature change, and droughts. The Trust is also looking for higher yielding crops that need little water and less space to grow” (PlanetSave.com). The organization’s main goal is “to ensure the conservation and availability of crop diversity for food security, worldwide” (PlanetSave.com). They recently opened the doors of a frozen vault dubbed the “Arctic Seed Vault” or the “Doomsday Vault”. The vault is located in the mountainside in Svalbard, nearly a thousand kilometers North of Norway. During the next two years, the researchers of Global Crop Diversity Trust will be compiling info on climate-proof traits in plants. They want to eventually gather enough information so that they can put it online for users in the future. Someone can simply enter their search criteria and they will be able to find details such as drought tolerance and heat resistance.

In this day and age, organizations like the Global Crop Diversity Trust are needed. If we want to survive through the elements, research needs to be done now so that we can be prepared later.

Eco Sustainability... Is It For You?

Have you ever thought about living in an ecovillage? It would mean raising your own food, making your own clothing, and using renewable energy. There are many small ecovillages all over the United States. Each of these communities make their own impact on the environment. However, a society can't become ecologically sustained by itself. It takes a "cultural revolution" to truly create a sustained environment.

Many ecovillages like Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage have their own culture. According to PlanetSave.com, the community within Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage "operates on consensus decision-making". They have developed their own government in which they rely on a consensus rather than a majority rule. They also value "non-violent communication" or NVC. NVC is based on compassion and clarity rather than criticisms and judgments.
Communities like Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage are perfect examples of an ecologically sustained community. The one thing to remember about these villages though, is that each of them have their own culture. According to PlanetSave.com, "Sustainability is defined as the capacity to maintain a certain process or state indefinitely." If you apply sustainability to the environment, it translates to an environment that can exist indefinitely. If a community can develop its own culture, it is more likely to be sustainable.

If you look at American society, it is obvious that the "community" is not sustainable. We feed off of other countries and the environment in order to survive. Having a job is based on the need, not the want to have one. In almost all industries, competition is the best way to get ahead of the game. In order to "fix" American society, we're going to have to go through a radical cultural change. "Ecological sustainability requires cultural sustainability. And vice versa. They go hand in hand. They support one another. To more successfully achieve sustainability, a cultural revolution is required" (PlanetSave.com).

Thinking Green - Reducing Your Carbon Footprint

Recently I've been really interested in the environment and being green. I subscribed to the feed from planetsave.com because they have really interesting articles. Reducing your carbon footprint has been becoming more and more important. Because of global warming, people are freaking out about saving the planet. While some people take it to the extreme, there are some things that you can do to help the environment.

Simple, small acts can help drastically in the race to save the planet. Things like "installing compact fluorescent bulbs, using warm or cold water to wash clothes rather than hot, and making sure the tires on your car are inflated" (Tell Ten People to Cut Their Emissions) can help reduce your carbon footprint. The power of ten website is a great resource with tons of different ways to reduce your emissions. It also gives you the "one-ton challenge" where you can reduce your carbon emissions by two thousand pounds or more right away. I know already that I'm reducing my emissions by one thousand seven hundred pounds just by replacing bulbs, washing my clothes with cold water, and turning the thermostat down in the winter and up in the summer.

The theory of "power of ten" is to reduce your carbon footprint and then tell ten people to do the same, then those ten people tell ten more people, and so on. I believe that if Tech High could get involved in something like this, we could make a huge impact on our community.

This New Techy Thing

So after subscribing and customizing everything that we need to sign up for in contemporary literature, I'm just a little overwhelmed. I can tell that the rest of my classmates are having trouble as well. It should definitely be an interesting class. I'm looking forward to not having stupid handouts anymore and being able to use computers more often in class. I think the whole "paperless" class thing is kind of fun and new. It's way better than having to submit separate drafts in to a teacher. Now we can use Google Docs and it'll show all of the changes we've made.

I only hope that this will still be a classroom and not a computer lab where everyone screws around and we never get work done. I'm sure our teacher will take care of that though. I'm still trying to find RSS feeds to subscribe to. I wish I could use StumbleUpon to find some things. I'm not sure what I want to read about yet. I think people's blogs are always interesting to read depending on what they write about.