Author: Emily Kian (Page 1 of 2)

In a shocking turn of events, I will not be writing about algae! I found it hard to make it activism-themed, so instead I will be writing about another environmental topic that is very near and dear to my heart: environmental activism among youth.

Anthropogenic climate change is increasingly threatening our society with drastic and irreversible health threats to our planet and all of the species that call it home. Politicians fight over the best way to combat the consequences of climate change, but they have been largely unsuccessful in creating the change we need. So many of the individuals that are blockading the environmental movement should be almost irrelevant to this conversation. These oil company owners, conservative politicians, and other old, white, wealthy men with stakes in the oil industry are going to be dead before the more toxic, dystopian-like effects of climate change begin to seep into society. However, if we continue to let these individuals use their power to influence environmental legislation, the youngest generations could be living in a world not too far off from many of the dystopias described by Margaret Atwood and other authors whose works we read in class. It is absolutely essential that our youth — especially Generation Z —  become educated and engaged with environmental issues such as climate change. Fortunately, there is already a wave of budding young environmental activists, from the 21 kids who sued the federal government for their lack of responsible climate action to the preschoolers in my mom’s class who have pledged to give up plastic straws to our very own “Acting Environmentally” class, the voices behind April 3 Plastic Free and Duke Divestment. In this paper I am going to discuss youth environmental activism from a number of angles. I will review research on environmental literacy among youth, analyze case studies of environmental youth activists, discuss some of my own experiences with climate change education to elementary schoolers, and attempt to conduct long-distance interviews with some of my mom’s preschool students who recently had an environmental unit that included the straw-free pledge.

Although Pedro and Paul did not talk about monuments/art as environmental activism, I still greatly enjoyed their presentation and the discussion we had in class on Friday. Something that I had never even thought about was the question of what space do you put the monument on? You have to consider the demographics of the area and who will be walking by that monument. There are also questions of ownership; what defines a space as public and do we have a right to place anything we want to in this public space? These are all things I have never even considered as I’ve walked by countless monuments or even other forms of artful activism, such as graffiti. One Robertson alumnus dedicated her summers to looking at graffiti and art festivals’ impact on local communities. I thought it was pretty rad: https://www.startstreetart.com/about

Another question that I thought was interesting was what makes something a monument? Like Dr. Gould said, you can really make anything a monument if you give meaning to it. There is a whole market around American monuments; people spend so much money going to see the Washington Monument and the Statue of Liberty! I wonder what causes something to become a significant monument, like those ones are.

One last thing that I thought was SUPER interesting was the Data Refuge project. I definitely want to learn more about digital activism, because I think it has the potential to be somme of the most influential forms of activism out there. It is not flashy and in our face like a monument, and it may not be as raucous-causing protests, but it sure does have an impact. To think that our entire history of climate change data could have been deleted and unrecoverable is absolutely mind-boggling! I might even go so far to say that these Penn students have been the greatest activists we have learned about in this class. They obstructed irreversible damage and changed the fate of climate change discourse forever — in a positive manner. They also made the private data public, which I think makes it even more activism-like as it puts important facts/statistic out there for people to come across.  As a total digital-dummy and lover of protests, I never thought I would say that the digital activists take the cake, but I think it’s true!

I love permaculture!! Listening and reading about permaculture reminded me a lot of a farmer who’s farm I visited last semester. I volunteered at the Carrboro Farmers’ Market, and so I visited the farm of one of the sellers at the Market. His name is Ben, and he is the owner of Dawnbreaker Farms. He does not explicitly refer to his business as permaculture, but I think it matches the description quite well, although his farm is largely comprised of livestock animals, and we did not see any examples of permaculture practices with livestock animals in the documentary or in One Straw Revolution. When Ben told me that livestock was the best agricultural practice we can be doing for our planet, I was a bit taken aback as I gave up meat almost exclusively due to its devastating effects on the environment. He then began to explain his “regenerative practices”, which I now think must be very similar to permaculture. He uses a grazing practice that mimics nature. He based his practice off of the fact that animals naturally move around while grazing, and their trampling and defecating creates a dynamic system that creates extremely fertile soil. The organic matter is a huge contributor of essential nutrients for the soil. Ben considers himself a farmer of micro organisms rather than a livestock farmer — his primarily goal is to grow microorganisms, and the livestock products are sort of an added bonus that stems from the process. He uses a number of different grazing animals because he said the more diversity of species you can stack in a single pasture, the more equal the grazing will be and the better the land ecosystem will be.

I was very interested in his method, and it made me consider possibly eating meat again from sources such as his farm. However, I think with the number of meat-eaters on Earth and the limited arable land that we have to go towards large grazing pastures, I think it is unrealistic and unsustainable to rely on his strategy on a global scale. Some of the featured forms of permaculture in the documentary, such as the rooftop gardens, seemed like a more viable option to be implemented on a wide scale. The rooftop gardens was probably my favorite permaculture practice we learned about because it makes SO much sense. Rooftops provide so much open space that cannot be used for any other function. Turning every rooftop into a garden could have a profound impact on food security, sustainability, AND employment opportunities!

On a final note, could algae cultivation be considered permaculture? In Introduction to Permaculture, Bill Mollison writes: ““The aim is to create systems that are ecologically-sound and economically viable, which provide for their own needs, do not exploit or pollute, and are therefore sustainable in the long term.”

“Permaculture uses the inherent qualities of plants and animals combined with the natural characteristics of landscapes and structures to produce a life-supporting system for city and country, using the smallest practical area.”

I feel like macroalgae cultivate satisfies all of these requirements! Perhaps I am an aspiring permaculturist.

Mollison, B. C., & Slay, R. M. (2011). Introduction to permaculture. Sisters Creek, Tasmania, Australia: Tagari Publications.

The messages in these two readings were really eye-opening to me! And it is quite important that they opened my eyes. Before reading these pieces, I had sort of believed that having a slightly dramatic, dystopian twist on environmental news was a good thing. Dystopian wasn’t the word that came to my mind, but I did believe that it was important to over-exaggerate the consequences of our potential fate were we not to take action against climate change. I remember reading the dire scenario that Margaret Atwood laid out in the first article that we read and thinking, “This is good. We need more people reading this, we need to frighten people into caring.”

But these pieces have me thinking otherwise, which is pretty important considering I am currently working on a venture that requires us pitching the consequences of climate change over and over again.  It is, of course, a fine balance between not being overly pessimistic but also not underemphasizing the risks. The opposite of dystopia is utopia, but I don’t think we should be infecting our stories with utopias because everyone’s utopia is different and so many utopias are often actually quite harmful. Hope is the correct thing to infect our news and stories with because we can still present factual information about list all of the threats of climate change, but we can instill a sense of hope in readers in doing this so that they can be inspired to take action, which seems to be much more effective than terrifying them into action (since, as we discussed in class, usually people just decide if there’s no hope at all, why should they even bother?). Solnit’s “Grounds for Hope” did a great job of doing this, in my opinion. She expresses a lot of the same concerns as Mieville: people find hope in the wrong things, widespread pessimism/lack of hope often prevents people from acting at all, we losing track of hope in general. However, her tone throughout the piece is a hopeful one, so the reader finishes the piece feeling inspired. Mieville, hypocritically enough, writes about how we must get the depressing stuff out of reports and climate news, yet writes with such a tone in this piece that you are left feeling kind of depressed at the end of it.

Learning the value of sharing stories of hope and using positive tones when writing about the complex issue of climate change is of great use to me. I plan to not present the consequences of climate change in such a drastic and depressing light the next time I pitch Phyta, our algae farm initiative. Additionally, my backup career (in case I can’t be an algae farmer forever) is to do something environmental communications-related. My current top choice would probably be PR for an environmental organization, but no matter what option I may pursue, it is important to remember to keep hope at the forefront of my writing.

I thought that Catherine Flowers was super badass! She is so incredibly humble and laid back for someone who is as accomplished and acclaimed as she is. A lot of what she said resonated a lot with me because I spent the summer teaching in Conetoe, NC, which is an extremely rural and impoverished town in Eastern NC. She discussed the lack of policy for Americans living in poverty in rural areas. Most of our welfare efforts and policies tend to be focused on urban areas. I definitely witnessed this in Conetoe, where many of the kids I taught lived in trailers and other poorly built housing structures. She talked about the racial disparities and inequalities that are so widespread through these rural areas, and that was also quite evident in Conetoe. Conetoe was about a 10 minute drive from Tarboro, a small town that had a lot of wealthier white families. There was a clear line between the end of the wealthier suburbs of Tarboro, which was filled with charming old Southern houses with white picket fences, and the poor neighborhoods of Conetoe. She also talked about climate refugees, specially citing some communities in LA on the coast. Princeville, a town slightly east of Conetoe that is also quite poor, was devastated by floods from Hurricane Matthew, and that caused many people to be displaced from their homes as well.

There was one thing that Catherine said that I did not quite agree with on all fronts. She said that she didn’t think there should be a push to move people into cities. She said people who are living in rural areas are there because they want to stay there. However, I have mixed feelings about this. It’s obviously not my place as a white, upper middle class girl who grew up in very white, upper middle class suburban neighborhood to form any sound judgement on this matter. However, the director of the Conetoe Family Life Center (the education organization that I worked for) did have a differing opinion, and I do think that he had the experience to back up his opinion. His name is Dr. Garrie Moore, and in the past couple years, he and Reverend Joyner have completely transformed the town of Conetoe through their Family Life Center. Conetoe was a food dessert with poor health rates and no summer or after school opportunities for children. The CFLC has drastically helped change all of this through its garden and education programs. Dr. Moore has spent much of his life in eastern NC, in both more rural areas like Conetoe and more urban areas like Greenville (a city about 25 min from Conetoe). For the past year, he has been ardently working on a vision of his to start a charter boarding school in Greenville. He secured a location for it and has been trying to attain funds to hire top notch teachers. Once he establishes this school, he wants to move kids from Conetoe to this boarding school in Greenville. Why? Because he is ADAMANT that the rural community of Conetoe has nothing to offer for these kids. He told me time and time again that the urban setting of Greenville offered so much more for them in terms of both health infrastructure and opportunities. He said it is so hard for children in Conetoe to stay motivated to continue their education and pursue a meaningful career. He frequently referenced one of the kids who went through the CFLC as a kid but then shot and killed a man a few years after graduating high school. I know that it is heartbreaking for him to see good kids go through his program but then not have any opportunities because of the rural environment that they live in. And after spending a summer with some of these kids, I wholeheartedly agree with him. I know that Catherine said that we need to change the infrastructure of these rural communities, but in order to have them offer the same opportunities and benefits as urban areas, we really will ultimately just end up converting them to cities (which I feel like Catherine is against, since she valued the historical importance of rural settings). Rural areas need improvements in education, housing infrastructure, medical/health centers, and food options. Also, rural areas are not as sustainable as cities. Catherine said that her family all lives in the city but still owns their historically owned land, but no one is living on it. When we are running out of arable land to use to house and feed our growing populations, it seems problematic to me to hold on to land for sentimental value.

I’m definitely way beyond word count, but I do want to emphasize that I did love her lecture despite having a few qualms with her beliefs on rural environments! I thought that what she said about climate gentrification was extremely interesting and concerning — I had not really heard about it before, and I think it is problematic that more people aren’t talking about it because it seems like something that we really need to fight. I also really liked her idea that anytime we act, we should look at how it would impact seven generations from now. Lastly, I loved that she said we need to find something to hold onto to give us hope, “even if it’s your dog”. I think that remaining positive/hopeful is one of the best things you can do for yourself in any situation, but especially within the context of environmentalism.

Eeek! I just realized I forgot to do last week’s blog post on mapping! Being in Australia for 10 days threw me off my blogging game, I promise I will not miss another one! Here is my mapping one:

I thought that the presentation on GIS/mapping as a ~radical tool for activists~ was pretty awesome!! I have to say, I went into the presentation with a supreme negative bias. I took an intro to GIS class in the very Carolina Hall that they talked about, and I HATED it. I loved my professor and I loved my TA, but I just despised ArcMap and QGIS. QGIS always crashed at the worst possible moment for me (i.e. every time I was almost finished with a quiz but had also been woefully remiss in saving my work), and I was in the GIS lab from 3 pm – 12 am on one afternoon georectifying images of of Wake county circa 1950. It was dreadful.

HOWEVER, my perspective on GIS and mapping was positively changed after the mapping for social movements presentation. First of all, I didn’t know there were so many applications of mapping. Maps can be used as representation, as communication tools, as a universal science. There are so many different forms of GIS that I had no idea existed, despite taking a class on it. Critical GIS, feminist GIS, participatory GIS, the list goes on. They also said a few bold statements that really made me think maps were pretty cool. They said “Maps never need to be considered finished” – This made me feel like maps are one big adventure that you can just continue to add on to as you keep exploring. They also said, “All maps are sort of fictions… map to make the truths that we want or find useful. Map to call the world we want into being” and “Maps = storytelling platforms”. These statements were particularly interesting to me because I actually work on a storytelling campaign. I work for an education organization called My Name My Story, and we recently launched a storytelling campaign called “Voices”, that aims to showcase the raw beauty of the human narrative through short videos. It has absolutely nothing to do with mapping, but after hearing this presentation, I have been trying to figure out if/how we could incorporate mapping into our campaign because I just think the idea of maps as a storytelling platform is so fresh and unique. I’m also trying to figure out how I can use maps for my algae farm. Potentially mapping all of the algae farms as we expand! I’m also really excited to map the Greenpeace social movements for our class project. I remember my UNC environmental advisor telling me that GIS is the future of environmentalism. He said that GIS can be applied in so many different environmental health contexts, and that is why I decided to take the intro to GIS class. I just hope that the renewed excitement I have for GIS after seeing this presentation doesn’t become once again deflated when I actually begin to take a stab at the computer mapping software again!

As we move forward in our activist pursuits pushing for divestment and increased sustainability in Duke dining facilities, it has been extremely helpful to learn the ropes from some of the pros. We were able to gain insight from Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals as well as Robin Kirk’s awesome lecture to our class. From these two sources, we learned from activists of the past and present, and activists. I’m not sure how old Robin is, but I think it’s likely that she could have read Rules for Radicals at its peak; she could have been part of the group that Alinsky continuously refers to as “the present generation” or “our youth” in his book, the passionate young activists of his time who were the target audience for Rules for Radicals.

I think two of the most practical takeaways from Rules for Radicals were 1) change takes time and we cannot be impatient in our activist endeavors, and 2) we must recognize the world for what it is and not what we wish it to be. I think that these two concepts are pretty applicable to the work our divestment team has been doing. I think our goal would be for Duke to see our efforts and immediately acquiesce to our request, but this will likely not happen. We need to recognize that change happens over time and we can improve things in baby steps as we reach our end goal. We also need to recognize that Duke has certain reasons for investing in coal/gas/oil industries, as then-President Broadhead stated in his letter to the last group of divestment activists.

I loved that Robin emphasized local activism and its importance within the realm of activism. This is obviously applicable to our class’s activism projects as both of our teams are working on local issues. I also really loved her emphasis on history. I think it is so important for activists to have a thorough understanding of the history of the issue that they are advocating for. Our group has made researching the history of Duke’s investments and the past divestment activism efforts a critical aspect of our plan. By doing this, we can both build on the great ideas of our elder activist friends and learn from their mistakes.

I absolutely loved Helon Habila’s Oil on Water. I think it was my favorite reading we have had thus far in the course. My favorite thing about this book was its vivid imagery. I think this greatly added to the appeal and activism of the novel, making it more engaging and enjoyable but also calling attention to the issues that Habila is advocating for. I think this was likely due to a mix of my reading it all in a couple of days and Habila’s beautiful, detailed descriptions, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt so immersed in a book (except maybe the Harry Potter series, but I actively convinced myself I was a witch while reading those!!) as I did while reading Oil on Water. I read half of the book on Thursday, went to bed, and dreamed of the book — that’s how engaged I was! I think that Habila’s vivid descriptions and use of sensory details made the activism aspects of her novel more effective because by throwing readers into the dying environment of the Nigerian Delta, she made readers so much more aware of the situation. By including horrific details like dead birds draped over trees while making the reader feel like they are there, Habila almost forces us to care more about the issue and (hopefully) feel compelled to do something to change this upsetting fate. I think the vivid imagery is the top reason that I am glad that Habila chose to make this a fictional story rather than a nonfiction account.

Something that really stood out to me during our class discussion was the idea that oil is an issue for everyone, and that it pollutes more than just the landscape. We discussed the idea that if it weren’t for oil, there would be no story of fighting and death and corruption. Oil is what pollutes the land, what poisons the water that we drink, what kills the fish that we eat. This is why the people are so angered. One of the militant groups said this when they are talking to Rufus and Zaq. — they were defending the planet, they were the people of Earth. This part reminded me of Bidder 70, when they talk about the various defenses that Tim DeChristopher could have used (the greater of two evils, defending his right to a healthy planet/future). I think that the fact that every single group of characters were negatively affected by oil demonstrates that idea that oil is everyone’s issue. Even the local villagers, who are healers that live in an indigenous type of environment, suffer greatly because of oil. Even Zaq and Rufus, who are supposed to be the “neutral” characters of the novel, suffer greatly, with Zaq dying at the end of the book due to a disease (I believe the book said it was an unknown strain of dengue fever) that was most likely mosquito-borne. I think this is an indirect allusion to climate change because climate change is causing an increase in mosquito-borne diseases. As we said in class, none of Habila’s decisions were unintentional! Also, I believe that the story of the doctor telling the dangers that the “orange flare” (the introduction of oil companies) bring to villages and the increasing levels of toxins that he found was included to emphasize the destructive nature of oil. Finally, I think that oil pollutes people in a non-physical way as well. It makes wealthy people who have ties to these companies corrupt, greedy, and malevolent. The government and the rich, white people in the book were connected to the oil companies, and they were put in a very negative light in this novel. I think that there are many people today who are tied to the oil industry (CEOs, politicians, etc) that make poor decisions that have devastating effects on the lives of many. I do not think that all of these people are malevolent by nature necessarily, but the oil has polluted their morals.

Nnedi Okorafor’s “Spider the Artist” made for an extremely interesting class discussion. There was a TON going on in this short story. When I first read the story, I was almost confused as to what the message or takeaway was supposed to be. It seemed clear to me that the short story was a form of activism (and not just because it was required reading for this class!); however, I was having difficulty discerning what exactly the author was advocating for. A few themes seemed obvious — the dangers of exploitation, colonialism, capitalism, etc. But there were so many little things woven into the story — characters, stories, symbols — that I knew were intentional and loaded with meaning, but I just couldn’t figure it out. Our class discussion led some light on a few questions I had. We talked about how the dad and grandpa were included to provide historical context, and we discussed how the role of music represented the role of escape, healing, and art in the role of human nature. However, there is one question that I am struggling with: Who are the enemies? We discussed this question in class, but I’m still not convinced of a set answer. The zombies are confusing. On the one hand, they’re murderous, corporate-created robots that might imply that technology/AI is the enemy. However, one of the zombies, Udide, ends up being a hero and one of the most likable characters in the story. The “everyday” human, the husband, is one of the least likable characters. So many of the other human characters, everyone except the narrator, are shown to be useless and expendable in the end when they are all killed. Ultimately, I would argue that is the oil corporations who are the enemy. They are the reasons that the world has become the dystopian society that it appears to be in this short story. I want to know how the ending, with the narrator ending up pregnant, has anything to do with this theme, though. I feel like there is significance behind her choosing that as the ending, I just can’t figure out what it was. I plan to reread this short story at some point in the future in hopes that I may find new enlightenment in a second reading.

One of my favorite literary techniques that Linda Hogan utilized in Power was her use of nature and animals to symbolize issues she is passionate about. Hogan is an environmentalist and advocate for Native American rights and culture. She is an activist, and I think that her book Power is a form of activism. It is more indirect than most of the other examples of activism that we have looked at. I would argue that The Monkey Wrench Gang was more widespread and significant in regards to its effects as a work of activism; however, the beauty of Power lies not within its popularity but within its subtlety. The use of animal and nature symbols is evidence of this. I believe that the hurricane, the panther, and the kudzu all had dual “activist” meanings; they represented environmental issues and issues regarding westernization of Native American culture. Hurricanes and other natural disasters increase with severity and frequency due to climate change. I think the presence of the extremely destructive hurricane that Omishto and Ama were caught in was Hogan’s cry for readers to take action against global warming. It also can be seen as a metaphor for the westernization of Native American tribes. The hurricane is the western influence wreaking havoc on Native American culture, leaving behind remnants of what it once was. The panther is an endangered species, and I believe that Hogan purposefully chose this specific animal to call attention to the issue endangered species and the threats that humans pose to them. The starved panther also represents the Native American culture and traditions — it is an endangered species that is dying out. Because of westernization, so many Native Americans are abandoning their backgrounds to fully embrace the western culture (as seen in the case of Oshmito’s mom and sister). The number of people practicing Native American traditions is dwindling, just like the panther population. The kudzu is Hogan’s way of bringing attention to the growing issue of invasive species. It also represents western influence, invading the Native American tribes and having devastating effects on them. All three of these symbols represented two different issues that Hogan is an advocate for, but were extremely subtle and indirect. This is what makes Power such a unique and beautiful form of activism.