Coy Cow

Here at Hunter College, we students have been working on saving the world. Our most recent project involves saving the world by way of fixing the problems with milk production. Below is an entry in a brand-spankin’-new blog that we made (entitled “Udder Madness”), which will show you how you can help fix the problems with the dairy industry. Then we’ll find another victim, like the problems with corn production, which should be a piece of cake (no pun intended).

If you have a blog of your own and you care about saving the world, please help us get “plugged-in” with other, similar efforts, by spreading the word and laying it on thick.

Entry from the new blog:

By Mike,

Russ wrote in an earlier blog:

“Ron’s advice to consumers is to know your farmer. That’s our advice, too. Are smaller farms better, in terms of human, animal, and environmental health? We certainly think that it’s easier for a smaller farm to use better practices, but larger farms aren’t necessarily an evil. But unless you know your farmer, you have no way of knowing what kind of farm you’re supporting.”

This is the central message of our campaign – know where your milk comes from. Another important message that comes with this, then, is be willing to pay more for your milk. This does not just mean buy the milk that has the highest price tag. It means be willing to take a few extra steps to try to find out where your milk comes from.  Doing a little research, asking questions, and contributing to the cause of campaigns like this one are the kinds of ways of paying more that we have in mind.

When you start to think about where your milk comes from you may develop a better understanding of the costs to society, animals, and the environment that aren’t sufficiently captured in market prices. This is a central theme to our outreach (see our multi-media outreach materials on the blog). These unquantifiable costs provide wiggle room in terms of farm production styles and it is really up to the farm in most cases to determine which and how much of these costs they will incur. The incentive to be neglectful with these other costs surely is there—it’s cheaper, in terms of time, money, and effort—you name it, so it’s up to the rest of us to do a little quality assurance.

It’s costly to follow sound farming practices. For example, why pay more for a larger plot of land when you can squeeze hundreds or thousands of cows uncomfortably on a smaller plot? The product will still be the same (all else being equal) and can be sold for the same price as the milk from another farm that opted for the larger plot size-to-cow ratio. With more cows huddled closer together, it becomes easier to produce more and therefore make more profit (all else being equal). Cow well-being is just one example of an unquantifiable cost. With a little thought you could come up with many more, anything from employee stress to cutting corners with environmental stewardship – pick your favorite unquantifiable cost and run with it.

Without being checked, these “other” costs have the potential to continue to get worse and impose indirect costs to you, society, and the environment, etc. This is because in a competitive market environment, farmers always need to increase profit. One way to do this is to increase capital and become more efficient (e.g., more land, cows, labor, machinery, etc.). The problem is that when there is more, say, cows to manage and machinery to operate, it becomes increasingly difficult (therefore costly) to continue with sound practices. For example, as mentioned in an earlier blog, the managers at Ronnybrook Farm know the names of all of their cows, presumably translating into more consideration for each. If they tacked on an extra hundred cows then they would have to develop a more costly system for keeping track, maybe even causing them to scrap that aspect of their practice.

Similar to the wiggle room for which suite of unquantifiable costs to opt for, farmers have the option to decide how to develop their operations to increase profit and remain in business. The mega farms in California that operate thousands of cows might opt to simply buy more cows and pack them in or go into contract with processing companies that are aligning themselves with popular marketing schemes (such as the organic market). Other farms might be a little more creative, especially if profit is not their only motivating factor. This is the case for Ronnybrook Farm. To remain competitive, they decided to invest in machinery that would allow them to bottle their milk onsite, making it possible for them to sell directly to the public. This was an attempt to increase profit, but it has also served to undermine the very problem that we’ve identified in our campaign – there is no way for us to know the source of most of the milk we buy. By investing in a means to sell directly to the public, Ronnybrook has made it possible for consumers to see how their milk is made and can therefore keep track of any indirect costs that they don’t want to support.

We don’t expect people to drive from NYC up to Ronnybrook Farm every time they run out of milk. Although commendable, that would incur undue costs of its own – e.g., adding to the unemployment count. Traveling upstate for a gallon of milk would not even solve the problem. The fact is that no individual can fix the problems with milk farming. This is something that needs to be done on a collective level, to limit the collective costs that neglectful practices incur. All we are asking is that people think about where their milk comes from and think twice before they reach for a gallon of milk in the local food market. It is hoped that this thought will lead to other actions, such as contributing to campaign efforts to help reveal the sources of the milk we buy.

Ill Urban Cyclist

Earlier in the year we blogged about Ride the City, a clever Web-based application to route safe bike routes in large urban areas.  The resource has recently been entered into the NYC BigApps competition, which will award useful & creative applications that have been built with free NYC data. As noted in the earlier blog, applications like Ride the City make it easier (and safer) to use alternative transportation and increase city accessibility.

The competition involves a monetary award, which will give this small group support to further develop their efforts and expand their reach to other large cities (in addition to their already covered 6 locations). That said, consider voting for this application. Just go to the website, go through the quick set up and vote. http://www.nycbigapps.com

See the Ride the City announcement on their blog.

Democrats will need 60 votes in the Senate to approve the legislation. With that said, proponents of the energy and climate bill need to help secure these votes by pressing the Senate.

Repower America: Help send 100,000 letters to the Senate.

Repower America has set a goal to send 100,000 letters expressing support for the bill to the Senate. They are 30,000 letters shy from reaching their goal. Take two minutes to fill-in a couple of boxes and hit the submit button to send the letter and help get the votes.

Chaos at rush-hour... downtown Providence, Rhode Island as the storm surge of the 1938 Hurricane submerges downtown (RI Historical Society).

Since we are in the midst of hurricane season and Hurricane Bill got our attention, I thought it would be a good time to discuss urban sustainability challenges with respect to natural hazards.

This entry is inspired by an iRevolution blog entitled Disaster for Techies, which does an excellent job teasing out subtle attributes of a disaster by separating the concept from its cousin—the natural hazard.

“There is a subtle but fundamental difference between disasters (processes) and hazards (events); a distinction that Jean-Jacques Rousseau first articulated in 1755 when Portugal was shaken by an earthquake. In a letter to Voltaire one year later, Rousseau notes that, “nature had not built [process] the houses which collapsed and suggested that Lisbon’s high population density [process] contributed to the toll (1)”

A short summary of definitions: A disaster is measured by the extent to which society is impacted by a hazard event (or indirectly by a changed environment), which depends on the vulnerability and resilience of a population, and supporting systems. Vulnerability describes how exposed social and natural systems are to hazards while resilience is a measure of how well systems can absorb hazard impacts and rebound.

The above quote points out that there is really no such thing as a natural disaster, so to speak about disasters in terms of phases, e.g., pre-and post-disaster phases with respect to a natural hazard event can be deceiving. The extent to which a hazard can potentially cause a disaster is governed by a complex product of past social, economic, and political processes that has ordered current social and physical infrastructure regimes, and consequently, global, regional, and local vulnerability distributions. When referring to a disaster only in relation to a specific hazard event, it becomes all too easy to focus on the event and the condition of a place at the time and not emphasize the processes that allowed the event to result in a disaster. That is, the tendency to drown-out the causes of vulnerability by focusing on the strength of a given storm (or any other natural hazard) or the geography of an impacted place (as a static phenomenon), etc. Since disasters are ongoing processes that do not depend on the actual occurrence of a hazard event, describing the phases of a situation as post- or pre-disaster obscures the social processes that are the underlying causes of disasters. To drive this point home—as a society rebuilds during a “post-disaster phase,” another disaster may be being constructed (in the processes), resulting in another pre-disaster condition.

Focusing on a specific hazard event and the static geographical situation as the causes of a disaster obscures complex issues that are deep-seated in past social processes.

To properly assess a disaster, we need to look at the processes that have resulted in a geographical situation and assess it in light of best estimates of hazard risk. For example, the industrial revolution brought people to the coastal area of the Gulf of Mexico to take advantage of an advantageous location to bring oil into the United States. The oil industry, in turn, attracted workers, increasing the population along the coast as people flocked to earn a living. (Of course there are many other processes that have caused the the population in the Gulf of Mexico—this is just an example.)

The Gulf of Mexico is subject to hurricanes and land subsidence, which makes populations in this region vulnerable. The processes above increase vulnerability as population grows and economic activity increases rates of land subsidence (fluid extraction—water/oil; build environment—buildings, homes, bridges, and levees that prevent sediment replenishment from the Mississippi River that would offset land subsidence rates), as relative sea rise further exposes the region to natural hazard risk.

When using the word “disaster,” these are the kinds of processes that we are referring to. Of course the risk of a hazard event is part of the assessment of vulnerability, which describes the potential for a disaster, but a specific hazard event itself is not a disaster.

City designs that do not view disasters as ongoing processes will not address to true underlying causes, making inhabitants vulnerable to natural hazards.

Ken Salazar, Courtesy of EarthFirst.com (not Earth First!)

Expansion of renewable energies should appreciably improve the health status of the 700,000 US workers employed in the energy sector, according to a commentary by Medical College of Wisconsin researchers, in Milwaukee. Their review is published in the August 19, 2009, issue of JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Read the ScienceDaily report here

NYC Community Garden, Courtesy of GreenThumb

Want to eat from your own garden, but think you don’t have enough space? Learn the design elements for a good container or window-box garden — the perfect solution when you’re short on growing space — as well as soil mixtures that work well, and tips for planting and maintaining containers all year.

Come check out featured speaker BILEN BERHANU from GREEN THUMB NYC this Saturday, in an event sponsored by the CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities’ Summer Speaker Series and Art & Science Exhibition on Governors Island.

Green Thumb remains the nation’s largest urban gardening program, assisting over 600 gardens and nearly 20,000 garden members throughout New York City. If you are interested in gardening at home or would like to learn more about this community-based organization, join us for Bilen’s lecture. Pack a picnic, bring your bike, and use this as an excuse to enjoy one of NYC’s quietest and greenest open spaces. Be sure to catch the noon ferry because the event will begin at 12:30. Transportation to Governors Island is free and easy! For more information, including ferry schedules, check out govisland.com.

Bilen’s presentation is part of a summer-long series (every Saturday) put on by the very same Institute that has brought you this blog. You can check out the full list of events on our website. Also check out our Art for Sustainability and Science Research Poster Contests, exhibited every Saturday in Pershing Hall on Governors Island from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., all summer long.

For more information on the CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities and our other events on Governors Island throughout the summer, check out http://cunysustainablecities.orgor email ciscevents@gmail.com.

Marine pest species costing billions in damage to fisheries, coastal communities and infrastructure are spreading as the world’s shipping nations continue to largely neglect bringing into effect an international treaty setting out requirements for consistent handling and treatment of ships’ ballast water, according to new report.

Comb Jelly (Euplokamis dunlapae), Kvitsoy islands, Stavaner, Norway. Species of Jellies are just one of many species that typically get sucked into ballast water. (Credit: Copyright Erling Svensen / WWF-Canon)

Global warming presents an obscure increased threat of the introduction of nonindigenous aquatic nuisance species to ports around the world. Cargo ships congest anchorage zones in harbors as they wait for authorization to proceed to their destination. The rate that ships proceed through the port is constrained by vessel traffic volume and lunar tide. A ship may be given the go-ahead to proceed to port from an anchorage station with merely inches of clearance between the bottom of the hull and the river bed. It takes only minutes for this window of opportunity afforded by the tide to pass, so often times ships may be held-up until the tide rolls in again. As average global temperatures increase, and the waters expand and rise, ports around the world can expect greater volumes of vessel traffic at any given time as more are able to make way, courtesy of higher water levels and less hold-ups at anchorage stations.

While more vessel traffic will increase the risk of species introduction to ports around the world, the NY/NJ Harbor is likely to be relatively less adversely impacted from the increased shipping volume caused by global warming. This is because our port is primarily a consuming one as we import far more than we export–we are the main gateway for goods to enter the U.S. economy via the east coast (we do, however, export a good deal of grains and scrap metals, but this is small potatoes compared to the amount of goods that come in). Since most ships are taking on ballast water after they offload here and bringing it elsewhere to be discharged (when they load cargo again), other ports have to worry more about our aqueous species wreaking havoc in their neighborhoods. Ballast water is just one way that a ship can tranport and introduce invasive species around the world. We’ll leave that for another (even more dry) blog entry.

Read the full ScienceDaily report here

An MIT Lecture Provide by MIT World

Current models that governments and developers use in Western-centric cities still thrive primarily off of early 20^th Century technology such as the automobile. To a large extent, cars have been a principle driving force for function and form of modern cities and continue to widely influence city planning today. Allowing people to travel independently has encouraged vast urban expansion and economic growth, so providing an adequate physical infrastructure that accommodates automobile traffic has been a priority for city design. As noted by Dennis Frenchman in the video, this priority to focus primarily on the physical framework of a city is being met by the equally important need to develop a digital framework that addresses 21^st Century needs and emerging sustainability values.

The purpose of developing a digital framework for a city is to instill mechanisms that allow city infrastructure to change, or respond, to feedback provided by people or the environment–like equipping a city with a nervous system. Similar to how the human brain adapts, or any other complex adaptive system, the form and function of city infrastructure will change according to the feedback that it receives. For very interesting examples of such systems, watch Dennis Frenchman’s (the first speaker’s) talk in the video above.

Green Workspace, Courtesy of Copperwiki

Since we spend a majority of our time in our workplace, wouldn’t it be nice if it was not only a little more earth friendly, but also healthier and more people friendly? Learn why workplace greening is critical—even the smallest steps count—and how to do it for yourself and your workplace.

Dan Miner, Chair of the Sierra Club New York City–”America’s oldest and largest environmental orgranization,” will cover this issue and answer questions on Governors Island this Saturday. Pack a picnic, bring your bike, and use this as an excuse to enjoy one of NYC’s quietest and greenest open spaces. Be sure to catch the noon ferry (it’s all free, by the way) because the event will begin at 12:30.

Dan’s presentation is part of a summer-long series (every Saturday) put on by the very same Institute that has brought you this blog. You can check out the full list of events on our website.