Preserving NYC’s Natural Capital

New York City used to have a rich environmental history. Before the Dutch started claiming land away from the Native American tribes that had been inhabiting there for thousands of years, the island of Manhattan (or Mannahatta as it was called by the native tribes) was like a green emerald between the two rivers. It’s interesting for our modern mentalities to learn that the greatest metropolis of today used to be a giant pine forest, with streams running all through the island and marshlands making up most of the downtown area. Teaming with wildlife, like bears, otters, elk, and beavers, the island would have been akin to the greatest of today’s national parks. It’s sort of weird to think that today we need to designate land in special parks for naturally occurring ecological and wildlife activity to still flourish.

To remind us of the natural ecology and landscape that we so easily forget among the hustle and bustle of modern life, the Wildlife Conservation Society has constructed a cool interactive map called the Mannahatta Project that shows what NYC would have looked like in 1609. Here’s an interesting video explaining the project a little further. Not only is it a testament to our human ingenuity and ability to transform entire islands and landscapes to suit our needs and wants, it’s really interesting to know that under your apartment building was once a stream, or a bear habitat, or even all water. The geological extent of the island of Manhattan is naturally 30% smaller, because the majority of the waterfront (mostly downtown) is completely man-made. The natural history of the city is definitely a fascinating field, and it makes you question the direction we’re going in.

But what’s good about realizing that we have this immense potential to change the face of a landscape is the reverse. That also means we have the potential to change things for the better. In 2007 Mayor Bloomberg announced his PlaNYC idea, “a bold environmental agenda for the city of New York, to make the city a greener place.” PlaNYC calls for improvements that are necessary to meet the needs of our growing population; as well as revamping our aging infrastructure, especially transportation, and assess new needs from the changing climate and evolving economy. It’s a loaded task that looks bring together 25 city agencies to minimize the carbon impacts of existing and future developments while maximizing clean air and water for everyone. NYC ranks 17 out of 25 on a scale of air quality, so a number of traffic congestion initiatives have been implemented to help (such as an increased bridge toll, hybrid fuel buses,  and new green bike paths to cut down on the number of cars in the city). However, it’s not the loads of vehicles that cause NYC’s poor air quality but rather the fuel that heats the buildings, and so initiatives have been set to reduce and convert the need for buildings to run on crude, dirty fuel oils, to more purified and less-pollutive fuel methods. Along with it’s overall agenda to become the greenest city in the nation, PlaNYC aims to completely phase out these crude, dirty oils by 2030. It’s a necessary step that can open up further incentives to develop lesser emitting fuels. NYC is making great strides in keeping its title as the biggest walking city, with over half of its population not owning a car and the development of green ways and enlarging of pedestrian paths. After all, everyone in the city is a pedestrian most of the time. Through revitalizing infrastructural changes and new policies, the plan ultimately seeks to improve the quality life of all the city’s organisms.

A more current issue is the impact of what potential hydrofracking could have on the city’s main water supply. Fracturing the shale rock to get to the natural gas in the Marcellus shale under the watershed that directly supplies NYC with it’s famously pristine, high-quality drinking water would create a scenario similar to a Chris Nolan movie plot. It involves pumping water, sand, and highly toxic chemicals down into the shale rock to loosen up the rock and actually fracture it to release the natural gas. These chemicals and gas would then leach into the ground water and reduce our naturally pure water supply to something like a used bathtub. We are blessed to have such a well-functioning infrastructural extraction from the natural ecosystem service that is the southward flowing water from the Delaware-Catskill water system, and an interesting article in the New York Observer outlined Governor Cuomo’s plan to keep it clean. It turns out that most pollution control equipment is not only capital-intensive, but also expensive to operate and maintain. The good thing about the use of natural systems as pollution control devices is that they tend to be cheaper to build and much cheaper to maintain.It would cost $8 billion to build the new facilities to treat the water that New Yorkers get every day, whereas we spend $200 million a year to protect and maintain the natural ecosystems that allow for the watershed to be so naturally clean. The idea of stewardship of the very ecosystems that maintain our wellbeing is central to the safety of our future, unless we start fracking, then we’d be up the creek without a paddle.

Named after Jonas Bronck, who first purchased 500 acres of it from the native tribes, the current infrastructural disaster that is the Bronx is witnessing new innovations taken by groups to restore the ecology of much of what’s left of its green space and natural landscapes. No longer is it the green pastoral country side that inspired writers and poets like Edgar Allen Poe and Joseph Rodman Drake. Over the past 200 years the River’s course has been altered dramatically by human impact and industry. During the era of Robert Moses, the Bronx fell into a period of urban decay. The quality of life, particularly in the South Bronx decreased dramatically. Neighborhoods were fragmented by the construction of numerous highways. In particular, the construction of the Sheridan and Cross-Bronx Expressways further distanced the Bronx River communities from each other and from the River itself. The Bronx River Alliance is working to restore the Bronx River by reducing erosion, bank stabilization, and invasive plant removal. What it’s doing is essentially rebuilding the river to make it inhabitable again. This is aided by georeferencing, or using old maps to show what the landscape used to look like and then layering topography, water systems, and then biology over each other to recreate the naturally occurring landscape. Once life has a foothold in the environment again, then the real healing to the landscape can begin; as biodiversity is the key to any healthy ecosystem. An example of this is building up the shellfish population of the river, because shellfish like oysters and clams are essential to biofiltering the river water, and thus a healthier environment for all the life in the ecosystem. And when the ecosystem is healthier, the wildlife aren’t the only ones who benefit, but the community of people around it benefit as well.

Now what is Fordham doing to create a more green landscape? On their website, Fordham says it “is committed to sustainability as a central consideration in all aspects of its activities including its curriculum, student development and education, faculty and staff involvement, and physical plant operations.” With its main campus located in the Bronx, the university claims it ”will endeavor to design, construct and maintain its buildings, infrastructure and grounds in a manner that ensures environmental sustainability. Reaching beyond compliance in areas of environmental concern, Fordham will pursue sustainability best practices in a broad range of areas…” Given the set up of the university, it does have  a pretty green infrastructure. The ram van service that transports students from the Rose Hill and Lincoln Center campuses reduces the students’ need to take other methods of transportation, and each van can hold about 14 people maximum. 23% of the vehicles in Fordham’s fleet are electric. Fordham did sign on to mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 30% by the year 2017; and since signing on, the university has reduced its overall emissions by 23% since 2005. Another great accomplishment by the university is that all new construction must reach LEED Silver requirements, with two that meet silver standards already and three that meet LEED-EB standards. The new building being constructed at the Lincoln Center campus will also be LEED Silver certified. Fordham diverts 90 percent of construction and demolition waste from landfills. To conserve water, the university has installed dual-flush toilets, efficient laundry machines, low-flow faucets and showerheads, waterless urinals, and weather-informed irrigation systems. So then why was Fordham given a C+ on its College Sustainability Report Card?

It seems that the weakest grades were given to the shareholder engagement and endowment transparency. The shareholder engagement category examines how colleges conduct shareholder proxy voting. As investors, colleges have an opportunity to actively consider and vote on climate change and other sustainability-related shareholder resolutions. Forming a shareholder responsibility committee to advise the trustees allows schools to include students, faculty, and alumni in research and discussion of important corporate policies on sustainability. What I suppose would be a good way to increase our ratings in this category is to continue our work with the St. Rose’s Garden to promote healthy environmental practices and urban ecology, and publicize the progress to the greater faculty, student, and alumni, and neighborhood communities. The bourgeoning field of urban ecology in our city-strewn modern world could use some more national attention as we realize that cities aren’t just the dwellings of people, nor should they be. All New Yorkers are familiar with sharing the subways with our infamous rats, and every now and then the Central Park hawks make the news. At Fordham, our black squirrels have just as much chutzpah as the city pigeons, stubbornly refusing to move until death by sneaker is assuredly right over their heads. We know that biodiversity is one of the three main components of a well-functioning ecosystem, so what is to be said about a geographic area of land that is paved and primarily inhabited by homo sapiens?

The endowment transparency category evaluates the extent to which schools release information about their endowment investment holdings and shareholder proxy voting records. Access to endowment information is useful within a college community to foster dialogue about opportunities for investing in clean energy, and about using proxy votes to encourage responsible corporate practices. A week after Sandy hit, environmental mogul Bill McKibben and his organization, 350.org, have launched a nationwide program to have pension funds and university endowments divest themselves from fossil fuel stocks. I suggest we do as the experts do – that the university not only, obviously, provide better access to their endowment investments, but also offer more possibilities for green investment. With all the money we pay for this school, we have a right to know where all of it is going. A louder student and faculty voice can move the university to practice more green approaches to college life and community fostering.

Planning for a Better Tomorrow

Day 5: Cities & Sustainability, and Population, Consumption, and Sustainability

From a human ecological standpoint, the world looks very different now than it ever has before. The way people organize themselves and live, work, travel, pretty much conduct their lives in every way has changed more vastly in the last century than it ever has in most of our history. What does this mean for the environment? There are good and bad consequences. Luckily we have the advantage with our modern technology and ability anticipate change before it occurs to alter the plans we make before heading into a major development. A major example of this is in urbanization.

Urbanization continues to increase steadily and the numbers and sizes of urban areas are growing rapidly, especially in less-developed countries. Between the years of 1850 and 2009, the amount of people living in urban areas skyrocketed from 2% to 50%. Now about half of the world’s population lives in cities, and every week more than one million people area added to the world’s urban areas. Population grows in two ways: natural increase and immigration. Natural increase is the rate of births being slightly more than the rate of deaths of a population. If there are more people being born than there are dying, the population is increasing. It is not uncommon to think that urban areas are more environmentally harmful. This was certainly true in the beginnings of industrialization, when the Thames River was pretty much flowing death. However, when people live in more densely packed areas like cities they actually help to reduce their individual carbon footprint. Since 1920, many of the worst urban environmental problems in the U.S. have been reduced. Modern environmental study provides us with plans and solutions to make cities more sustainable (than living in suburbs or rurally), but there is still the negative effects of urban sprawl.

Urban sprawl has been a major negative side effect of urban development of cities, particularly in this country, and five factors have promoted it. In our country we’ve had amble amounts of land to freely develop on since the European conquest of North America. This is most noticeable in the differences between American cities and European cities, where the streets are narrower. Also, non-western cultures don’t prize privacy the way we do because people have been literally living in closer quarters for centuries. Another factor that has led to sprawl is our country’s low price for gas coupled with state funded highways that encouraged car use and land development. We are truly a car culture. Without a car it would be almost impossible for Americans to get to most of their destinations, both close and far. Also, post-WWII loans and tax loans have stimulated home ownership, supporting an economy of building and buying more homes and creating almost never-ending sprawl dispersing out from major city centers. Most state and local zoning laws favored large residential lots and separation of residential and commercial areas. This means that civil planning has promoted a life of living in one area of houses and another area for commercial, non-living building, meaning that you will almost always need to drive from your house to your source of groceries/supplies/shopping/whatever. And most urban areas have multiple local governments that don’t work together to manage growth and development, so unwanted effects of sprawl end up happening because of conflicting political interests. Again, progress requires a lot of maturity to say the least.

Most cities are unsustainable because of high levels of resource use, waste, pollution, and poverty. Cities themselves have large ecological footprints. They take up 2% of the earth’s geography and facilitate 72% of its consumption, as well as lead to 75% of greenhouse gas emissions. They usually lack vegetation and are associated with water, pollution, and health problems. They are known for the excessive noise they submit their residents to, in some areas can reach damaging decibel levels. Light pollution is a developing problem for neighboring animal species, and local climates are affected by the pollution and widespread air conditioning use. It’s well-known that, New York, for example, suffers from the urban heat island effect; making the temperature inside the city higher than the temperature outside of the city due to more solar radiation absorption on dark streets and rooftops and the reduction of moisture from the air from constantly running air conditioners leading to an actual altering of the (micro)atmosphere of the city. However there are also advantages to living in a city. Cities are centers of economic development, innovation, promise, education, technology, transportation, industry, commerce. Environmentally speaking, recycling is more economically feasible. Biodiversity is maintained because when people live in denser human populations, more room is left for the natural habitats of other species to go unharmed. Living in cities is more energy efficient through mass transit, reducing one of the largest individual contributors to climate change – use of the car.

2009 study published in the NYTimes showing amounts of street level air pollution from oil burners and high population densities

In some countries many people live in widely dispersed urban areas and depend mostly on motor vehicles for their transportation, which greatly expands their ecological footprint. Unfortunately the United States is deeply entrenched in its car culture and total separation from it seems almost impossible – at least right now. Our methods of mass transit are a poor example compared to the bullet trains in Japan and Germany and hugely efficient train system in Europe. The fault is in the original spread of people over the North American continent, paving their way westward, and old habits die hard. Our massive highway system is vital to our country’s functioning, but it is also a curse. 45% of all highways are regularly congested, and we consume about 1/3 of the global gasoline reserves in our cars. We spend an average of 2 years waiting in traffic and car accidents caused the death of more Americans than has every war combined, not to mention about 1.2 animals annually. We need a big reality check to this ridiculous, and rather embarrassing, blemish on our record as a society. Some major ways we could reduce car use is the user-pays principle, in which gas would cost the “true” price it takes to extract it, transport it, and the external damage it does. Such honest environmental pricing, or “full-cost pricing,” is would be estimated to be around $12 per gallon. The government could enforce this by educating the public about the hidden costs of gas so as to reduce animosity against another price increase. A really good idea is to use a gas tax to fund alternative mass transit and lesson other taxes (called a tax shift) Some small scale fixes are growing cities upward, rather than outward, reducing sprawl and to promoting mixed zoning. This would combine residential planning and commercial planning so that the car isn’t used as heavily in transportation to services that can be more easily and closely reached – how nice would biking or walking to a closer grocery store be?

A huge factor in our species’ ecological footprint is our outrageous population growth. Over the last 100 years, advancements in medical technology has made a slight imbalance in the ratio of deaths to births – more people are living longer and reproducing than they are dying. With an estimated 1.21% increase in world population per year, we don’t know how long we can continue increasing pressure on the earth’s carrying capacity for humans without seriously degrading the life support system that keeps us and many other species alive. A different question to ask is what would be the cultural carrying capacity, or the maximum number who could live in reasonable freedom and comfort, without decreasing sustainability? We don’t know. We do know that human activity has directly affected about 83% of the earth’s surface, and that more babies are born in lesser developed countries due to socioeconomic and cultural factors. Even if population growth were not a serious problem, the increasing use of resources per person is expanding the overall human ecological footprint and putting a strain on the earth’s resources. We can slow human population growth by reducing poverty through economic development, elevating the status of women, and encouraging family planning.

It’s going to take some upheavals from the way we have been planning not just our families but also our cities and urban areas if we want to make lasting changes for the better. Urban land use planning can help to reduce uncontrolled sprawl and slow the resulting degradation of air, water, land, biodiversity, and other natural resources. We can use the methods of zoning that have helped us form urban areas, but in much smarter ways where governments can control growth and protect areas, and encourage “smart growth” along mass transit corridors. This “smart growth” would make growth that’s inevitable better for people and the environment; some examples being green belts surrounding urban areas to stop sprawl and absorb carbon dioxide emissions. Smarter planning implementations lead to the development of “ecocities,” which are based on the concept that the city is built for the people, not cars. The ecocity allows people to choose walking, biking, or mass transit for most transportation needs, to recycle or reuse most of their wastes, to grow much of their food, and to protect biodiversity by preserving surrounding land that would otherwise be lost to sprawl. The socioeconomic idea/movement of “degrowth” follows somewhat along these lines, in which our culture’s overconsumption is encouraged to be sharply reduced, using and consuming only what we need, and eliminating the crazed obsession of unlimited economic growth, which we know is impossible. The cluster development style of urban growth can save 30% to 50% of open space by placing people in closer contact with the goods ans services they require. Most planners agree that the problem with new and continuing urban development isn’t growth, but failure to make cities more sustainable and livable. The bourgeoning concepts of “new urbanism” or “old villageism” are working to develop communities with walkability, mixed use and diversity, quality urban design, environmental standards, and smart transport. The values associated with this new lifestyle can be described as the environmentally good life, as exemplified in this video. Another video perfectly sums up the ideals, values, and ways we can implement new ideas and methods of reaching a better way of living in tandem with nature, sustainably, but without giving up the comforts of modern life. It’s a good combattant against accusations that environmentalism equates to “living in the stone age,” which is just too annoying to even put up with.

All in all, we need to promote a more educated culture of people with enough learned armor to defend themselves from the pro-ignorance campaigns they hear on tv, to understand that growth cannot be infinite, to accept that a change in lifestyle for the better benefits not just the planet but themselves, to re-evaluate, enjoy, and open our eyes to the place where we live, and help grow cities for people not cars. Sustainability isn’t just to extend the ability of our use of resources, but extends the quality of our lives, in both the present and the future, by reducing our financial costs, enhancing our personal lives, and improving most facets of modern life. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?

Cooperation

Day 4: Economics, Politics, and Sustainability

Many of the environmental problems that we see in our modern world are a result of our consumer culture, there is no doubt about it.. The problem is that our reliance on the capitalist economic system is too jaded by the opportunity for individual wealth, and we become blinded to the true nature of what’s going on. It is becoming less of a secret that capitalism and environmental integrity – at least until now – do not mix well, and in the past have been almost at complete opposite sides of the spectrum. Because ecosystem services are not fully ‘captured’ in commercial markets or adequately quantified in terms comparable with natural and manufactured capital, they are often given too little weight in policy decisions. This neglect ultimately compromises the sustainability of humans in the biosphere. Our economic system is based on the collection of natural resources for the production and consumption of goods and services, which we often forget come directly from ecosystem goods and services. In general, capital is considered to be a stock of materials or information that exists at a point in time. The human use of this flow of services may or may not leave the original capital stock intact. Capital stock takes different identifiable forms, most notably in physical forms including natural capital, such as trees, minerals, ecosystems, the atmosphere and so on; manufactured capital, such as machines and buildings; and the human capital of physical bodies (human resources). Ecosystem services consist of flows of materials, energy, and information from natural capital stocks which combine with manufactured and human capital services to produce human welfare. So what have we been doing to fix this?

Ecological economists and most sustainability experts regard human economic systems as subsystems of the biosystem, or secondary institutions supported by natural capital, human resources, and manufactured capital, and that this must not be forgotten. Ecological economists build their models on three major factors: 1) that resources are limited, not to be wasted, and substitutes are scarce/nonexistent; 2) that we should encourage environmentally beneficial or sustainable forms of economic development and discourage environmentally degrading forms; 3) that the harmful environmental and health effects of producing economic goods and services should be included in their market pricing, or “full-cost pricing” so that the customer will have more accurate information (in the hopes that they’ll care enough).  Economists have developed several ways to estimate the present and future value of a resource or ecological service and optimum levels of pollution control and resource use, such as the implementation of policies like cap-and-trade and pollution taxing.

Environmental security is necessary for economic security and is at least as important as national security – again, without the ecosystem goods and services that are naturally abundant, there would be no civilization. That said, another factor that needs to be addressed is poverty. Reducing poverty can help us to reduce population growth, resource use, and environmental degradation through the sole fact that more people = more consumption/harsher pressure on ecosystem goods and services. We are one of the world’s richest countries and we only give around 0.16% of our national income to help poor countries. If the universal lesson of “everything is connected” means anything, it means we need to realize that the environmental problem is so intertwined in all of the world’s evils, and solutions come in patches rather than sweeps. Helping to reduce poverty and to foster education reduces the global human footprint, which is good for everyone and everything, but it’ll take a global effort to solve a global problem. We can use resources more sustainably by including their harmful environmental impact and health costs in the market prices of goods and services we buy, by subsidizing environmentally beneficial goods and services, and by taxing pollution and waste instead of wages and profits. Using economic incentives this way is like fighting fire with fire, using economic tricks to combat the negative externalizing forces that are ingrained in the capitalist economic system. As a matter of fact, France, Japan, and Belgium have all phased out coal subsidies, Germany plans to do the same by 2018, China has cut them by about 73%. Germany also placed a green tax on fossil fuels in 1999 and created around 250,000 new jobs based on a greener economy. Costa Rica has had a similar carbon tax of 3.5% on the market values of any fossil fuels, the revenues of which go to supporting a national forest fund to pay indigenous communities to help protect the forests and reverse deforestation. So what’s our deal? The major conglomerates whose existence thrives on pollutive activities are so politically powerful that efforts to reduce processes that contradict their economic endeavors are quickly snuffed out. Author of The Ecology of Commerce Paul Hawken said, “At present we are stealing the future, selling it to the present, and calling it GDP. We can just as easily have an economy based on healing the future instead of stealing it.” The best long term solution to our environmental and resource problems is to shift from a high-throughput economy based on ever-increasing matter and energy flows to a more sustainable low-throughput economy. Paul Hawken’s own idea of natural capitalism based on making most jobs more green and involving an agenda of sustainability into the political and economic system from the start would contribute to his triple bottom line of improving profit, people, and the environment. But in order to get anything done, it’s going to take some serious politics.

Government can help to protect environmental and public interests and encourage more environmentally sustainable economic development through progressive policies. Some principles to keep in mind as precursors to policy making include: the humility principle: our understanding of nature and how our actions affect nature is quite limited; the reversibility principle: try not to make a decision that cannot be reversed later if anything goes wrong; the net energy principle: do not encourage the wide-spread use of energy alternatives or technologies with low net-energy yields; the precautionary principle: when substantial evidence indicates that and activity threatens human health or the environment, take precautionary measures to prevent or reduce such harm; the prevention principle: try to prevent problems from starting or becoming worse; the polluter-pays principle: develop regulations and use economic tools such as green taxes to ensure that polluters bear the costs of dealing with the pollutants and wastes they produce (full-pricing); the environmental justice principle: establish environmental policy so that no group of people bears an unfair share of the burden created by pollution, environmental degradation, or the execution of environmental laws. Our high standard of living built on outdated forms of energy extraction and commodity production is what creates the need for environmental laws and regulations to help control pollution, and set safety standards as well as encourage resource conservation, and protect species and ecosystems. Policy making involves enacting laws, funding programs, writing rules, and enforcing rules with government oversight. The field of environmental law refers to “the international treaties (conventions), statutes, regulations, and common law or national legislation that operate to regulate the interaction of humanity and the natural environment, toward the purpose of reducing the impacts of human activity;” and works to resolve pollution control/remediation and resource conservation. This is a complex process that is affected by each stage by the political process.

As a matter of fact, being “green” is not just good for the long run but actually overall better for business. These laws can be set up and indoctrinated into our commercial and political infrastructures so that no new endeavor goes forward without being inherently more sustainable than they would have previously been. What can we start to do to minimize our impact on future generations? Sustainable business, or “green business,” is “an enterprise that has no negative impact on the global or local environment, community, society, or economy; and it strives to meet the triple bottom line, of which there are four criteria. 1) Incorporate principles of sustainability into each of its business decisions, 2) supplies environmentally friendly products or services that replace demand for non-green products or services, 3) it must be greener than traditional competition, and 4) it must make the enduring commitment to environmental principles in its business practices. A good example of current strides in sustainability is the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification standard. There are six essential characteristics to the authentically sustainable business: 1) triple top-line value production, 2)nature-based knowledge and technology, 3) products of service to products of consumption, 4) solar, wind, geothermal and ocean energy, 5) local-based organizations and economies, 6) continuous improvement process. In short, a green business doesn’t just provide green things, it’s entire functionality must be green. The bottom line is that is it absurd to fall into the corporately contrived trap of “having to choose” between the environment and the economy. By making better, more informed choices – by being public citizens rather than private consumers – we can make a dent without really trying. It’s going to take education, education, and more education.

It is also important to realize that individuals matter, after all our government system is supposed to be built on the people. Individuals can work together to become part of political processes that influence how environmental policies are made and whether or not they succeed. Most conservation biologists and environmental economists and many free-market economists believe in four principles that should govern the use of public land: 1) they should be used primarily for protecting biodiversity, wildlife habitats, and ecosystems; 2) no one should receive government subsidies or tax breaks for using or extracting resources on public lands; 3) the American people deserve fair compensation for the use of their property; 4) all users of extractors of resources on public lands should be fully responsible for any environmental damage they cause.

Since combatting environmental degradation is such a profound issue and given the tendency of governmental corruption, grassroots groups are essential. Thankfully they’re growing and combining their efforts with those of large environmental organizations in a global sustainability movement. Some examples are the non-governmental organizations like WWF (World Wildlife Foundation), Greenpeace, The Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, and Grameen Bank. All politics is local, and environmental design teaches us that solutions come from place. Combatting degradation or wide-scale problems is no different. Probably one of the more famous examples of this is Lois Gibbs’ activism in shedding light on the toxic horrors in her town of Love Canal, and her triumph in helping influence the creation of the Superfund Act. Making the transition to more sustainable societies will require that nations and groups within nations cooperate and make the political and cultural commitment to achieve this transition.

Discussion questions: 1. How do we integrate the principles of sustainability for every day life without sounding too green-washy? (I believe education from an early age in order to make the environmental problem of a “normal” concern for growing citizens rather than reserving the study of it for those specially interested later on; make it as basic as the ABCs.) 2. How do we stop the disinformation campaign? (Again, education is key, at all ages. Use facts, tighten the gap between science and media, don’t allow disinformationalists to speak on air? Learn the meaning of “fair and balanced” media attention.)