Integrated Research on Climate Change and Hazards in the Americas

I just returned from Panama where I was a participant in "C2HEKE", Climate Change Hazards Education and Knowledge Environment. Click here for the webcast. About 35 participants from the US, Canada, Jamaica, Argentina, Colombia, Panama and elsewhere were chosen to be a part of lectures and GIS training. Most of the participants were from the fields of geography and communications. Not surprisingly, the focus of the conference quickly congealed around bringing accurate climate change science to the public. The word of the two weeks was "uncertainty."

Participants clearly assumed that the public would not believe in climate change if there was the slightest bit of uncertainty. As a sociologist (who has spent alot of time studying marketing and the media), I find this hard to believe. For example, parents are far too eager to believe that Fruit Loops are healthy (it says "fortified with vitamins" after all!) even though there is plenty of evidence that continuous consumption of junk food like this could lead to obesity. No one is really questioning that driving cars leads to climate change, but drivers still drive. As a sociologist, I have to argue that the way our cities are built and the ideas we have come to believe about how people "should" live are the root causes of people's inability to change their behavior. I personally choose to live in cities where I don't need to own a car, but this does not work well for many Americans.

Even in New Orleans where I live now, most places are within easy biking distance. However, in hurricane season, I don't want to be stranded. The public transportation system, while it exists, is not comprehensive enough. This in a city where nearly 30% of residents don't own a car AND WHERE THAT VERY FACT LEFT PEOPLE STRANDED HURRICANE KATRINA! I'm floored by America's refusal to get the connection here. People who are polluting the least are in the most danger. At the conference, Craig Colten from Louisiana State University gave a presentation on hurricanes in the Gulf Coast. He argued that much of disaster response has to do with social memory. For example, during Hurricane Betsy, the evacuation plan was to set up emergency shelters in the brick schools. They would stock up the schools with water, food and basic necessities. That way, people did not have to travel far to find shelter. In Katrina, however, that plan was forgotten. The new evacuation plan was to get in your car and drive to Baton Rouge. Did I mention that almost a third of the city did not own cars. You know what happened next.

So what does this have to do with Fruit Loops and uncertainty? The problem is we know all this. Everyone is well aware by now the dangers of climate change. We're aware that disasters suck, and they suck more for poor people than for rich people. We're even aware that what we do every day (drive, eat meat, take a plastic bag at the grocery store) contributes to the larger problem. So, for me, the problem is not better communication. You can communicate all you want about the dangers of Fruit Loops, but that doesn't make them more expensive. It doesn't put them on the highest shelf in the grocery store so you can't reach them. It doesn't make your kids throw a tantrum for organic apples. Fruit loops are cheap and easy. The problem should be re-framed as how do we set up society, our infrastructure and our ideologies, to support better choices for Americans. We can only choose from the options before us, and right now, our options suck.

Enhance Global Literacy at Columbia University

Oh, to have a PhD...


2010-2011 INTERACT Postdoctoral Fellowship
The Institute for Comparative Literature and Society invites
applications for a postdoctoral fellowship through the new
International Network to Expand Regional and Collaborative Teaching
(INTERACT) program at Columbia University, being launched during the
2010-2011 academic year. The fellowship will cover a 10-month period
beginning August 1, 2010, and comes with a stipend of $45,000 plus
benefits.

About INTERACT
INTERACT is a pioneering program at Columbia University that focuses
on developing global studies in the undergraduate curriculum through
a network of postdoctoral scholars focused on cross-regional, trans-
regional, and interdisciplinary study. A total of six Columbia
University INTERACT Postdoctoral Fellowships will be offered in the
2010-2011 academic year, with candidates selected by centers and
institutes across the University. Candidates will function as
liaisons between their home office and the INTERACT network of
scholars with other regional and disciplinary specializations.

INTERACT’s primary goal is to improve global literacy among Columbia
students and equip them to be leaders in a globalizing world. These
objectives will be met through innovative courses, participating in
institute programs and events and an annual educator workshop organized
collaboratively by INTERACT Fellows.

About ICLS
The Institute for Comparative Literature and Society (ICLS) was
founded at Columbia University in 1998 to promote a global
perspective in the study of literature, culture, and their social
and historical context. It houses the interdepartmental
undergraduate and graduate programs in Comparative Literature and
Society and draws its faculty from the humanities, the social
sciences, and the Schools of Architecture and Law.

I like this definition of globalization

globalization, the radical intensification of flows of capital,
people, services, expertise, goods, texts, images, and technologies around the world
and across national and regional borders.
Hull et al.: Youth, Risk, and Equity

I need to digest this.

"The
modern cultural ethos-which some have called cosmopolitanism-
does not acknowledge living well in a particular
place as a condition of what philosophers have always
considered to be the good life. Instead, the modern ethos
privileges mobility, acquisitiveness, and status as the essentials
of a happy life.. The difference between a happy life and a good life
is the difference between lives governed principally by ethical
deliberation and lives governed principally by pleasureseeking.
I According to Wendell Berry, in the modern era
people [began] to live lives of a purely theoretical
reality, day-dreams based on the economics of
success. It was as if they had risen off the earth
into the purely hypothetical air of their ambition
and greed. They were rushing around in the clouds,
"getting somewhere," while their native ground,
the only meaningful destination, if not the only
possible one, lay far below them, abandoned and
forgotten, colonized by machines. (1989, p. 66)"

Sense of Place Among Rural Youth in Appalachia
Craig B. Howley, Hobart L. Harmon, and Gregory D. Leopold

Another awesome-sounding conference for people wanting to merge the social scienes with ecology!

SAVE THESE DATES! >> April 20-23, 2011 - 1st announcement

XVIIIth International Conference of the Society for Human Ecology

Human Responsibility & Environmental Change: Planning, Process, and Policy

MonteLago Village Resort - Lake Las Vegas, Nevada, USA - April 20-23, 2011

http://www.montelagovillage.com

Take part in a diverse international and interdisciplinary gathering in the beautiful landscape of southern Nevada, a retreat-like setting, and a short drive away from the excitement of Las Vegas.

First Call for Participation will be sent out within two weeks.

Suggestions from all areas of human ecology - theory, education, research and practice - are welcomed.

Program suggestions can be mailed to Conference Committee via email to:

shelasvegas2011@gmail.com

Quote of the Day

I feel a little lame that lately I've been posting things other people said, but some people are just more eloquent than me.

"One person can make a difference and every person should try"
~JFK

Quote of the Day

The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life. –-Jane Addams