ESD Students

So after weeks of preparation with Susan and the International Environmental Policy class...we finally did it! The 350.org campaign was present on our campus on October 23. Dozens of students gathered in the fitness center quad and then paraded around campus in ghost costumes ending in the Peggy Ryan Williams Center to promote bringing our carbon in the atmosphere down to 350 ppm. Great work climate caspers!

Check out the video from the Ithacan online!

And be sure to check out the climate casper photo album put together by Jeff Godwin!

O! And look at the 350.org photo album too! We are in there representing our area to the world.

This past summer I ventured into the Southern Hemisphere just in time to experience my first of two winter solstices in 2008 (one in each hemisphere!).  IPEC (Instituto de Permacultura e Ecovilas do Cerrado) is an ecological education center located in the state of Goias in central Brazil.  I ended up there through Living Routes, a program with UMass Amherst that allows students to study abroad in Ecovillages around the world.  The program at IPEC was a three-week Permaculture Design Course.  We had students and teachers from all over the states and the globe, emphasizing one of the important aspects of permaculture – that it can be applied to any lifestyle, climate, or scale.  Permaculture can be defined many ways, but I like to think about it as a way of living that works with nature in order to meet your own needs and the needs of your ecosystem. 

Throughout the design course, we learned about water, soils, natural building methods, microclimates and concluded by using permaculture principles to design an ecovillage to be added to the education center.  Before I left for the course, I never thought I would be able to design an entire ecovillage, but our project came together and was well received by the soon-to-be residents.  For the more practical part of the course, we worked on a house just outside of IPEC.  Students in an earlier course had made the design, and we implemented it by building a 30-foot wide mandala garden, a cob oven, superadobe benches, mosaic tables, herb spirals, swales for drainage and holding water, and planted banana trees for treating grey and black water.

Being able to implement a design and get my hands dirty was an incredible learning experience.  What was even more amazing about IPEC was that every element in their system was very deliberately placed according to permaculture principles, so you were constantly learning about permaculture by walking to the outdoor kitchen or even going to the bathroom.  Compost toilets are used exclusively at IPEC and the waste is eventually used to fertilize many of the gardens.  I previously had been a little skeptical of compost toilets – thought they would be gross, smelly, hard to maintain, etc.  I think it truly takes seeing a productive system in working order to really understand how easy it can be to live without many of the things we use daily without much thought.  Now when I flush the toilet with 1.6 gallons of water, I can’t help but think about how we can make better use of our clean water, and how most people in the world don’t have that luxury.  In Brazil there is a dry season and a rainy season, so when we arrived they told us, “Drink all the water you need, we don’t want anyone being dehydrated.  But beyond that, only use what is necessary.  The water in the tanks is all we have until it rains again in 3 months.”  This minimalist attitude may seem extreme to some, but thinking like that for just 3 weeks has made an impact on the way I behave as a consumer. 

I won’t lie – the program was pretty expensive, but I would do it all over again if I had the chance.   Going to IPEC gave me the chance to get into the global permaculture network, which even extends here to Ithaca with the Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute.  If you’d like to learn more about IPEC, permaculture, compost toilets, or Living Routes, I am always ready to share this knowledge with anyone who is interested!

 “Your Impact” is a radio talk show with a sustainable focus.  We discuss issues of social equity and the environment and communicate to our audience ways that they can have an impact in their every day lives.  Whether it’s interviewing members of the Ithaca community or discussing subjects of national interest, we cover all aspects of sustainability.  We’ve done interviews with Ten Thousand Villages, New Roots Charter School, SewGreen, Tompkins County Solid Waste, Cornell Cooperative Extension, Ithaca Farmer’s Market, and many more.  We’ve also carried out topic discussions on international sustainability, eco-friendly celebrities, deer overpopulation, actions Obama is taking towards sustainability, Power Shift 2009, and more.  Every show also includes a quick “easy thing” that anyone can do to make their lives more eco-friendly.

I’ve spoken to a number of people in the Ithaca community who have heard of our show and tune in regularly.  It’s exciting to know that we are reaching out to people and encouraging interest in the sustainability movement.  There are so many people out there taking action to make our community more sustainable every day, but they are often not recognized.  Your Impact seeks to reveal these leading lights, providing inspiration and awareness for everyone who tunes in to the show.  We hope that the sustainable actions and ideas discussed on our show will plant seeds in the minds of our listeners, which will some day spawn into new, innovative schemes of sustainability.

Hey Guys! This is a real quick blog to tell you about an equally amazing blog! Did you know that the Poland UN Climate Change Convention has a blog?! Well, it does! Visit it at icpoznanclimateconference.blogspot.com/. The blog not only has past posts about the climate conference but it also posts about sustainability and climate change in general. Check it out!

Here's my story: I canvassed for Greenpeace for three summers in high school which got me really into environmental politics, then went to Ithaca College because they had a great financial aid package for me and I was very attracted to their attention to sustainability. I majored in Politics and minored in Environmental Studies, and on top of that I worked heavily with the IC Environmental Society on all sorts of campaigns and events. On top of that, I was one of the IC Students that got to attend the UNFCCC in Montreal and see the whole world working together on climate change, the ecological elephant of our time, and the US just didn't get it; their presentation made everyone in the room upset or angry. So, even though I was working on local sustainability issues in Ithaca and changed some practices, after attending the UNFCCC and learning about the global impacts of climate change, I realized I wanted to spend my career working on these issues and making a big impact on them.

That's when I found Green Corps. I was interning at Greenpeace through the Washington, D.C. program the fall of my senior year, applied to Green Corps, went to the interview weekend in Boston, and learned what an exciting and impactful program it is working on environmental campaigns through grassroots organizing. I was accepted! And took the job on the spot. It started the August after I graduated and has lived up to the expectations I had of: learning a lot, making a huge impact, having fun, and running 3-5 campaigns all over the US. The first campaign I worked on was the 1Sky Campaign in Des Moines, IA to build visibility for bold federal climate solutions including 5 million green jobs. After 3 weeks on the ground, I built up this big group of activists who were asking presidential candidates their stance on global warming, holding press events, and even lobbying their members of congress. It was awesome.

My advice to current ESP students and especially seniors is that you should weigh the options of post college life with Green Corps in mind. Some say it's like a 7 year training in 1 year and you learn everything about the environmental nonprofit world, what you want to focus in, and what's effective for you. I love the program, I'd recommend it to anyone who's passionate about environmental problems and willing to work hard for victories! The ES Program at Ithaca helped me work out the severity of these issues and to understand the scope of the problems, now I am getting to understand the scope of the solutions through organizing with Green Corps.

I'm more than happy to discuss this with anyone who's wondering about what to do after school! Email me at: anjuli@greencorps.org. Best of Luck!"

-A