I wish I spent more time in the dirt. I had spring-time dreams of generating enough greens to supplement my diet and quickly realized the many lessons of the soil I had yet to learn. The earth I put in my little garden is still new to me and I know it as living system which requires nurturing and nutrients…. Read more »
Image from UNICEF Bangladesh, https://www.unicef.org/bangladesh/education.html Woman’s access to education has been proven to drop birth rates “the difference between a woman with no years of schooling and with 12 years of schooling is almost four to five children per woman.” (Winthrop, 2016) This drop has a stabilizing effect by slowing the indefinite amount of people reliant on a limited food system. By looking… Read more »
We are protected, but not by much. Surrounding the earth’s atmosphere is a thin blue layer that protects use from harmful ultraviolet rays from the sun and from the various threats from outer space. The health of our ozone is dependent upon our decisions that we make down on the surface of our planet. We have seen the responses from… Read more »
(https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/climate-change-yes-global-warming-robin-limb) Climate Change is a heavily discussed and debated topic, especially in recent years. With terms frequently used throughout this course such as global warming, greenhouse gases, fuel emissions, and much more, it is clear that there is a serious problem occurring as I write this. While this topic is heavily discussed, seldom people are taking appropriate action to change… Read more »
With all the factors that influence climate change and the perception that individual choices have marginal effect in the grand scheme of things, it’s understandable why the issue of climate change seems to be constantly swept under the rug. In northern regions where contributions to global warming have been significant, the impacts felt thus far have been minimal enabling us… Read more »
Fossil fuels are everywhere, even in our food. As we learned in week 6, oil is used to power the heavy machinery used on industrialized farms, it is in the fertilizer in the form of petroleum, it is in the plastics that are used to neatly package our food, and it is used to power the planes, trains and automobiles… Read more »
Few people want to take responsibility for their actions that cause negative consequences and even fewer would want to take responsibility for someone else’s. Hearing that the U.S. alone emits four times the amount of greenhouse gasses compared to other countries is not something new to me and I have recently tried to take responsibility to minimize my impact on… Read more »
Food impacts not just our waistlines but also the environment in many startling ways- such as agriculture’s use of fossil fuels and its overall impact on climate change. In a separate UW course, State-Society Relations in Third World Countries, that has turned out to be surprisingly similar to this one, we’ve learned about petroleum extraction’s devastating effects on building up… Read more »
“North Cascades.” Pacific Northwest National Scenic Trail, USDA Forest Service. Looking back on the lesson 7 contemplative practice on climate complexity I was at first kind of glad to be living in the Pacific NorthWest. As we saw in one of the slides the pacific north west will have increased agriculture production because of climate change. However, I quickly realized… Read more »
What if I told you that soil was not lifeless dirt, but home to an entire microbial ecosystem? Now, what if I told you these microbes were the key to improving soil quality and reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? These are just a few of the innovations that spring from systems thinking. By thinking about soil… Read more »