Utopia

Dome at the Farm

Tonight I approach utopia.

In class.

I am always amazed that students don't know about the hundreds of utopian societies we have had in America and how they changed our cultural landscape.

We have had more utopian societies in our past than probably any other country in the world. We are that city on a hill, that place where all things are possible. And still are.

But we have gone seriously wrong. Not only do we not know about our utopias, we may be afraid to dream any more.

We need more utopian thinkers who have the freedom to dream. Most of our utopians societies (the most recent were the hippies of the 60s and 70s) have gone the wayside, because we are overwhelmed by the problems. We retreat now into ipods and turn to the old survival of the fittest mode and not that of Mutual Aid (Kropotkin). That's how far off the mark we are. We think that we must fight and not cooperate to find utopia.

The granary at New Harmony, Indiana a short-lived
utopian venture in the early nineteenth century.

But there is room for utopia amongst humans. Though utopian attempts have almost always failed, (finding perfection for humans has not been easy... if it were we would all be doing it!) there are a few that stay the course.* We learn from the utopian dreamers. I went to the Farm in Tennessee to learn and I did (see video below). I read about past utopian societies and visit their sites and I learn about hope and another form of progress.

What did utopians of America bring us? Universal education, women's rights, abolition, labor rights. They also worked for communal aspects that many still embrace in intentional communities such as co-housing, student co-ops, and ecovillages (I have hyperlinked to a few in Michigan). Utopians believe there is a better way. Some of their ideas have been adopted and some have failed (celibacy, polygamy). But they tried to reach beyond the status quo to find a better way. A better more sustainable way to live, love and build a new life.

* Utopians that have remained are the remaining communes such as the Farm (which is not actually a commune any more but does practice within commune ideas), and the Amish. Did you know the Amish get electricity from wind turbine power?

Shock and Awe

This is no 5.13, but it is climbing in Alaska at Turnagain Arm near Anchorage.

10-13-08 So my friend asked me to show her a paper I had written so she could model my style. The paper I showed her was on sustainable development. She read the paper and asked, what is sustainable development? Within the paper was an analysis of different approaches cities have taken throughout the world to develop in a more sustainable fashion. It was a rough draft and not by any means groundbreaking. It did not have huge technical terms either.

I was in shock and awe that she had never even heard the term sustainable development. This lack of knowledge was coming from someone with a professional job who was also a current college student. How has she never heard of this? And I speak to her about environmental things all the time. I am almost sure that I have mentioned this concept to her, but I guess not. The point is, that how on Earth are we as a human race going to come into sync with our planet if college educated people have never heard of sustainable development? This along with quite a few other key terms need to be at the forefront of our American Lexicon. If not, then we are in HUGE trouble. Innovation and motivation are only effective if the language has been distributed along with the knowledge, skills and tools.
---Liz Cosby (EMU student)


Sustainability is not a class. Sustainability is not a major. Sustainability is not some class you take and get it over with. Sustainability is a way of life, and needs to be at the forefront of the American lexicon as Liz points out. How can it be that people do NOT know what the idea is? It is like not knowing what Enlightenment was as the world changed to that model. Sustainability is the model of today and the future, but only, if, if, if, we educate people to its presence, its meaning, its worth.

However, this will not be easy. When you live at the edge of one paradigm and in front of another, it is the equivalent of stepping out over an abyss and having the faith that you will reach the other side. We are at the edge, in fact we may be already falling and having to pull ourselves up, branch by struggling branch, outcrop by 5.13 outcrop along one cliff, and then still have to leap to the other side. (The 5.13 was a reference to rock climbing. A 5.13 is a tenuous hold, about equal to the bumps in a latex painted wall, and about where we are today with our economy.) As I said it will not be easy. It will be even more difficult for those who have only known the industrial revolution economy. It is over. Time to learn about where we are going. We cannot live in the world with 6.7 billion people as we did when the world was at 1 billion (the start of the industrial revolution).

It is difficult to make changes like this if you have been working in another paradigm. All the people of the former Soviet Union can affirm this. They knew only the centrally planned Soviet system, and when it broke up so many of the older people, or the youth who were not prepared for the breakup have been struggling to adjust to a market economy.* However, many of the young who were educated were able to move right into the market economy. (Now don't go thinking I am endorsing what happened in the former Soviet states. I know that it is horridly corrupt and not a cake walk, but the point is, that if there had been education to prepare ALL the people there might NOT have been the vacuum that was created).

We are in a similar situation now. Only now it is the whole world. We are facing a paradigm shift as large as the Renaissance was from the Medieval world. Some students are ready to accept the new paradigm and are educating themselves by learning about how sustainability is part of every major, every subject. Sustainability is thinking in a new way. Who better to prepare for the future than our students who will be going out in the world and making it better by living with nature rather than conquering it? Hundreds of schools across America (including just about every major university including U of M just a few miles down the road from EMU) are adding not only sustainable classes, but departments and institutes. Hundreds of schools are incorporating sustainable (recycling, scholarship for sustainable educations, business, sustainable audits) and energy efficient ideas (solar panels, wind turbines, geothermal, and biomass) at their campus. The schools are being the role models that students can see and believe in.**

And EMU has been sitting on its rear. Though there has been some effort to reduce our energy use, it is only to save money, not to make a statement about sustainability. It is like WalMart saving money. No investment into the triple bottom line of environment, equality and economy. It is only thinking economy, and not about what a university should be about - education first. Meanwhile, when the administrators cut the budget (yet again!) in the past week, they only cut academics (two positions of the 13 being cut are in my department BTW).

Note that the administration has officially cancelled 13 of the 44
faculty searches for next fall. Therefore, in the face of a budget
crisis, the first decision made was to reduce faculty. No other area of
the university has faced a cut at this time.
(From Howard Bunsis, Pres. of our Union chapter)

Kind of like the role model the auto companies made when they flew into Washington this week on their corporate jets (not the cars they make) and made a dispassionate demand for more money. Bland and forgettable. Who wants to save them??? A role model for our administration and Board of Regents at this school. Bland and forgettable and luxuriating rather than living the life they superciliously demand of their workers. Doesn't work guys. We need leaders who can see a future that is much better than we have now. We need leaders who are there for something much more than the money. Not a Mulally who defends his $21 million when others are out of work because of executives who are not the leaders we need. Sure the future cannot be predicted, but we can work toward one that is far more enlightened than what we have been doing, and possibly change the world - for the better I might add.

To use the old cliche: If we keep on doing what we have been doing and expect different results - we are insane. We need change. We need to adjust life to live with the natural world and not conquer it. We need a sustainable future. But to get there we need for everyone to know what sustainability is. We need to educate everyone to know about a choice beyond the current system - sustainability.

* From "Economic Reform, the Free Market and Agriculture in Poland" W. B. Morgan The Geographical Journal, Vol. 158, No. 2 (Jul., 1992), pp. 145-156 It will take a long time for a new generation of adequately trained dealers and market managers to be put into place. Meanwhile, the existing managers need training courses....No doubt there is a need to avoid giving the kinds of support for inefficient farm production that are given in the European Community, but rewards for developing productive efficiency are essential if decline into low level,mainly subsistence production is to be avoided.


** The following are a sample of what schools across America did during ONE week: the week of November 7, 2008. (Sorry the links are not active)
1. Pomona Completes Sustainability Audit
2. U Maine Introduces Business & Sustainability MBA
3. Florida Gulf Coast U Begins Construction on 2 MW Solar Farm
4. Delta College Develops Wind Technology Program
5. Ohio U Partners with 8 HBCUs for Increased Opportunities
6. Indiana U Student Government Appoints Director of Sustainability
7. Western Michigan U Launches Sustainability Website
8. Portland State U Dining Hall to be Zero Waste
9. Centre College to Purchase Renewable Energy Credits with Green Fee
10. U Georgia Reduces Water Consumption by 28%
11. U Minnesota Twin Cities' U-Pass Usage Increases by 40%
12. Indiana U Offers Sustainability Research Grants
13. Northern Maine CC to Launch Go! Green! Contest
14. Unity College Partners for Sustainability and Art
15. Point Park U Dance Complex Achieves LEED Gold
16. Western Illinois U, George Washing U Install Green Roofs
17. Florida Atlantic U Unveils Solar Power System
18. Southern Utah U Installs Solar Panels
19. San Diego Union-Tribune Covers Green Campus Transportation Prgms
20. CU Boulder Receives Donation of 50 Bikes
21. Birmingham U Receives $4 M in Funding for Solar Research
22. Carnegie Mellon Receives Environmental Fellowship Grant
23. College of Southern Idaho Launches Composting Program
24. Dalhousie U Expands Recycling Program
25. Vanderbilt to Offer Recycling at Last 3 Football Games
26. Baylor U to Recycle at Homecoming Game
27. Sinclair CC Converts Tractor to Biodiesel

Just like the Auto Industry

The Hummer is sold by GM, an excellent example of them being out of touch with what is needed in the real, climate changing, CO2 challenged world. I took this photo when at a auto show a few years ago. It was the ONLY photo I took of a US made car (they were mostly fuel guzzlers and boring), and that was because the Hummer was so obviously egregiously out of touch. And now they want billions while I watch Michigan fall apart because of their inept actions. Shame on them for doing this to the state, for being the role model that brought a state down. Their executives are still paid millions to bring down millions of people.

Cultural geography is fascinating, and students of the subject find constant joy and frustration at how we learn. We learn by looking at the world around us and imitating. When we are children, we have our parents as role models. It is difficult to break that pattern. The pattern is now having to be broken around Michigan because most of those who thought they too would work in the auto industry find there will be no room for them, and in fact, there may be no auto industry.

To digress for a moment about cultural imitation. I once had the good luck to teach in a prison. While there I gained the confidence and stories of many of my students, all convicted felons. I really liked them, and they found they liked me. So we traded stories about our lives. What I found fascinating about many of them (mostly Blacks and Hispanics) was that they were only doing what they saw every day in their ordinary lives. Gangs and drugs. They did not have good role models.

So, now I found myself in Michigan, a long way from California and find that the culture of Michigan is caught up in the same rut that those prisoners were in. We have the auto companies, corrupt officials, and the greedy unions as our role models. Is it any wonder that the problems at EMU are what they are?

Yes, I am having a very bad day dealing with incompetency, greed, and lack of clear thinking, much as the auto industry has demonstrated so well for our state. If we want to get things done, then we have to decide to do it, and not rely on useless and outdated regulations and rules that are meant to slow down the wheels of moving into the twenty-first century. We have become complacent in the success of 1950 and we do not live there any more, and nothing is going to bring it back. Change by definition is not keeping things as they have been. It is not done by being conservative. It is done by conservation. Ummm same word, entirely different ways of thinking. One out of the past (conservative) one out of the now (conservation).

We need to have better role models, a more stimulating cultural geography to influence and build our lives. And for me, surprise, surprise, it is creating a sustainable economy. One that creates role models that are accountable, conserve energy, and treat all with respect.

Sustainable Math

Self similarity is important in nature and what the study of fractals is all about. Study of fractals has taken people well beyond the paisley curves of the 70s and into the rainforest. In studies that are also tied into biomimicry and what we can learn from nature, scientists are finding that studying one tree in a rainforest can tell a great deal about the rest of the forest. Why? Self similarity.

I was good at math back in the day, but at trig the way math was taught lost me. It was no longer connected to the world I live in. It became abstract. Now maybe I am not a total formula driven geek, but math DID work for me at one time and became lost because of the way it has been taught. That has bothered me for a long, long time.

The other day I was talking to my son about his studying for the GRE and told me he forgot how to do long division. Math had become remote from his life as well - and he went to calculus. He regained that lost knowledge in his studying, but it made me think about something I have done for the next Sustainable Development class this Winter. I am connecting the dots. We are going to do math and it is not going to be separated from the world, but integrated into the subject we are learning. I am going to do it too. And I found the perfect book for this.

View larger cover

Environmental Issues: An Introduction to Sustainability, 3/E
Robert L. McConnell
Daniel C. Abel

ISBN-10: 0131566504
ISBN-13: 9780131566507

This book is cool, and I have ordered it for my class. I ordered it because it integrates sustainability with math... oh, and the metric system. It is time.

The new world of sustainable life is going to require that we are math proficient. Isaac Newton was the mathematical genius for the linear revolution of science, but it is time we move beyond that and enter the quantum and hopefully unified field world of math. We don't have to start with calculus (Newton), or Fractal or Quantum math (Bohr, Mandelbrot +), but we will never get there if we don't become comfortable with everyday math, and see how it integrates with our lives and what the possibilities are.

I am a long way from knowing where we are going, but believe that math integrated into our lives, sustainable math, can do a lot for our future.

For a look at the fractal math of the forest and fractals in general please go to http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/fractals/program.html

Reference

Bailey, Joseph K. , Randy K. Bangert, Jennifer A. Schweitzer, R. Talbot Trotter III, Stephen M. Shuster and Thomas G. Whitham. "Fractal Geometry Is Heritable in Trees," Evolution, 58:9 Sep., 2004.

Sole, Ricard V. and Susanna C. Manrubia. "Are rainforests self-organized in a critical state?"Journal of Theoretical Biology, 1731, March 1995

EMUbikes at EMU

EMUbikes comes on Campus!

After months of storage by students and the help of the Ypsilanti Police Department we moved the first bikes for EMUbikes on campus Thursday.

Student help made this all happen and we should all be proud of these students who care about making EMU a healthier and more sustainable campus. By implementing the program we will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, open up parking areas for those who live far from campus, and begin a new realm of possibilities for traveling on campus.

The next step is to attract those who are interested in bicycling to help with maintenance and repair for our spring grand opening. We have a space on campus now to work and are eager to find new recruits to work with us, as well as train those who would like to know more about bikes. Please contact this blog if you have interest is working to make EMUbikes a reality.

We also need to find donors who can help us set up our permanent shop in the spring. We need everything! Tires, tubes, locks, helmets, tools, compressor, bike stands, lubricants, shift cables, work bench, vise, and bike specific tools. Yikes! Anyone who has access or knows of tools available please let us know through this blog. Same if you are interested in making EMU a greener campus and would like to donate money to EMUbikes to purchase this equipment.

It is a small step to being greener, but we are moving in the right direction.

So many bikes! So little money, but we will prevail. Believe.

After the hiatus

One lonely bike awaiting refurbishing for EMUbikes. More to come this week!

Still working on sustainable issues. Really not much has happened at the school, but there are some hopeful signs.

EMUbikes seems to be taking shape, and people are riding more bikes generally on campus. We need more bike racks! There is hope as students begin to find the way to sustainability.

We actually got some temporary space last week. the photo is of my bike holding down the fort until we can get transport to transfer the bikes in Jen's yard and at Ypsi police to the space. Then learning how to fix bikes. I have learned a little over the past few weeks, but a long way to go, and a lot to learn. It is hard when we have such limited time and funds. We might have some interested alumni funds, but first I have to make a business plan, and I just don't have that much spare time to first learn what a business plan is, and then to actually write it. But if you want something done, give it to a busy person.

Sustainable development and EMUbikes

Not many people ride bikes at EMU, and sometimes the weather is less than favorable. We can't change the weather (or are we doing it- climate change?) but we can bring bikes to EMU

The sustainable development class was amazing. For the first time many of us who felt like the proverbial fish out of water found others who cared about what is happening on campus, in the world. And as all wanted to do, we are doing something about it.

I began the class with a call to revolution. EMU could not stay the way it was. We could do something about it. Well, maybe we didn't overturn the school, but we have met a lot of interested parties on campus who care about changing the world and our campus, and along the way we came up with a few ideas of things we could do to mark our tenure at the school and in our class. And from this has come our contribution, EMUbikes.

Several students have supported the idea by going to meetings, researching what needs to be done in order to make our dream a reality - bring bikes on to campus for use by all. Right now we are seeking facilities for the program. We have several possibilities that are being studied now. We have several bikes that have been donated and many more coming soon. We will need though some equipment, accessories, and people to work in the maintenance shop. Volunteers accepted!

The other project that students strongly support and we have heard some support from faculty too is a garden, specifically a hoop garden that will grow vegetables 10 out of 12 months a year. This one is going to required more money, but if we start now, we can get this as well. At least the ball has started to roll. But one thing at a time. Let's get EMUbikes rolling and then we can move on to a garden and serving the food on campus. Local food!

Things go crazy

It has been a long time. A lot has happened. The time has gone very quickly and at times crazy. With 4 full classes (including the first sustainable development class) and the completion of a book, well, there has been little free time.

I have not entered anything new, not because nothing was happening, but because too much was happening. Good stuff.

1. I completed the final draft of my book of a sustainable geography of the US and Canada. This took most of my time between the last blog entry and now. It was a hard core anxiety ridden deadline that had to be met, and with far too much work for one person to do. fortunately at the last minute (in relation to the 5+ years working alone with no support) several students came to my rescue. God bless them.

2. The sustainable development class began with the new year, and it has been a refreshing look at the beliefs of a new group growing at our school and within Michigan. They have heartened me immensely.

3. Sustainable development has taken root in several other places on campus. Among them are a group out of the business department aiming for a sustainability center, a resolution before the faculty council to identify and begin corrections of sustainability on campus. There are many professors who are also embracing sustainability, but still no vision to hold them together. i guess there will be more on that in future entries, but it seems that perhaps sustainability is at last taking hold on campus. Though we are still not a part of AASHE, perhaps that is soon to come. There is hope.