Mass consumers of meat

Dos Picachos Ranch, Calif.- The NY Times recently ran an interesting article on the industrial meat industry and it’s environmental impacts, Rethinking the meat guzzler, which gives a different perspective on the cattle industry than my article California branding. It starts out pretty imbalanced, but then the second page brings out not only the objectivity, but also something that this site tries to emphasize: the power of individual choices.

I think it’s important to note, as these two articles taken together do, the difference between industrial farming and the small family farm. Government subsidies for industrial farms have all but wiped out the small family farm. Meanwhile, the meat produced in these high density pens is full of growth hormones, antibiotics to fight off endemic disease related to that method of raising cattle and enzymes that allow the cattle to digest corn and grain rather than their natural diet of grass. The health issues that arise from this meat are becoming more and more costly to our economy. Is that to be blamed solely on the proprietors of industrial farms? Of course not. After-all, no one is forcing us as individuals to stuff our faces with Double Whoppers and Micky-D’s. Read more

Connecting to emptiness

There are two things that Wes Miner hopes not to see when he wakes early each morning and saddles up to survey the cattle left in his care,” Robert Draper writes in 21st-Century Cowboys, a National Geographic feature. “He does not wish to see a big black bird. Miner has nothing against crows or buzzards per se. But to view them wheeling solemnly across the sky, or scattering from the brush at his approach, is to feel his stomach tighten as he reckons with the knowledge that one or more of the animals entrusted to him have been killed.

“Men in Wes Miner’s trade love the riding, the roping, and the stark romanticism of a cow camp. But there is a bottom line, and it comes at the end of October, when the 4,100 head he is paid to tend are herded into corrals, and the cattle owners roll up in their dusty pickups to count and inspect their property…We go so hard those last two or three weeks—every day, go, go, GO . . . and then you look on the hills, and there’s nothing but those saddle horses. It’s an empty feeling.”

Since returning from the Grand Canyon, I’ve been in that same go, go, GO mode. Read more

Recreation pages

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Zinndeadly ft. Big Dro and Mystic-Choose One

In an effort to keep The Natural Life growing and more useful as a resource for outdoor recreation and environmental issues, I’ve just added Recreation pages to the site. I haven’t had a chance to add a whole lot of content to them yet but I’ve got some Reno/Tahoe mountain biking and some Alaska kayaking descriptions up. I’m trying to make this all publicly editable but I haven’t figured it out yet. So if you have a favorite trail, whitewater run, ski run, surf spot, etc. that you’d like to add, just post a comment on the page that it best belongs and I’ll add it to the guide. In addition to short descriptions though, the guides are linked to the updated Story Maps page so that you can easily see where the activity is and get directions to it. If the activity has a story or slideshow that goes with it, you can easily click to those from either the Recreation page or the Story Map page. I’ll be updating this regularly from now on and look forward to all of your feedback and more importantly, to learning about some cool new spots to play!

Alaska’s villages face a critical energy transition, by Becky Warren

Fairbanks, Alaska- Climate and rapid social change collectively pose numerous challenges for the viability of Alaska’s rural indigenous communities. Central amongst these challenges is the continued provision of heat and electricity in an environment of rising oil prices and uncertain global energy security. Transportation complications generated by increasing coastal storms and melting permafrost create further challenges for communities that depend upon oil for their heat and electricity needs. Many rural Alaskan communities are presently confronting the prospect that they will not survive if any one of the above factors diminishes their capacity to import oil and gas. This level of vulnerability amounts to a crisis, which must be integrated into community and cross-level institutional dialogue at once.

(See also: Sustainable Energy, Huslia Style)

The United Nations Development Program reports that nearly two billion people do not have access to electricity, a figure which has barely changed in the last twenty years. For many who have electricity, such as those in Alaska’s rural villages, the price of fuel used for electricity, heat and transportation, coupled with the high price paid for dependency on distant markets, is increasingly unbearable. The value of the natural environment lost to destructive mining, drilling, and polluting, largely due to fossil fuel extraction and combustion, is incalculable. As developing countries and international organizations seek to expand modern energy services in efforts to compete in industrialized markets and to alleviate poverty, the integration of clean energy technologies, policy, and education is critical for the reduction of human caused greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.

My decision to pursue graduate work at the University of Alaska Fairbanks stems from my commitment to the integration of scientific research, public policy, and renewable energy technologies in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and the sustainable management of social-ecological systems. Read more

Coffee powering cars and green candidates, what’s going on the world?

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Death Cab For Cutie-Expo ‘86©Barsuk, 2003

University of Nevada, Reno- Since I haven’t had a chance to actually do much reporting this week, I figured I’d pass along some of the interesting news pieces that I’ve picked up recently. Got some more interesting stuff to share? Post the links in the comment box below.

• Far and away the most interesting story I’ve read this week is a local story about a UNR professor who has figured out how to extract triglyceride from used coffee grounds to make biofuels. Considering how much coffee we consume in this house, I mean country, this would be huge. Rather than grow biofuels in inefficient ways, we could just use a waste product. I’ll follow up on this when I get a chance but for now, check out the story at the Reno Gazette Journal “Imagine your car buzzed on coffee”
• Read more

Volunteer Database

So far this week has entailed less reporting, more administering, but I think I’ve managed to add the beginnings of a couple of cool new resources to the site so it’s probably worth it. Today I’ve added my initial efforts at creating a Volunteer Database that will eventually list all the volunteer opportunities in the Tahoe area. The opportunities are listed in a table for now, but as it grows, (and as I figure out how to do it) the database will be searchable and hopefully soon, editable. Each listing is linked to the agencies Web site and description of the activity as well as linked to the Story Maps page so that driving directions can be easily obtained.

I have no intention of limiting any of what I’m doing to the Tahoe area in the long run, but for my grad program it’s necessary that I start there. However, I’m working on embedding wiki software that will allow the map, the volunteer database and the upcoming outdoor recreation guide to all be linked together and editable by all of you. Once I’ve got it all working the way it does in my head, I think it will make this site way more interactive, interesting and most importantly, useful.

I’d be siked to hear what you guys think about all this and how I might improve it and make it all even more useful and interesting though.

Story Maps: creating a sense of place

View Larger Map

To begin to return a sense of space to the the stories and conversation here at The Natural Life I’ve just added a publicly editable Google Maps element to the Web site. Story Maps is a way for us to share information in a spatial manner. Have a favorite hike in your area? Add it to the map. Know of a cool volunteer opportunity? Put it on the map so we can all get directions to it. Got a story to tell about environmental issues or outdoor recreation? Give us a sense of where these things are going on.

Rather than just create a Web site where we can all simply read stories, look at pictures and file the information away in the recesses of our mind, I’ve been working to make this an interactive site that runs on user generated content. The main goal of this site has been to connect people, both with each other through meaningful conversation and to our world through environmental/outdoor recreation focused content. However, up until this point, the only entry points I have provided have been to write stories or to post comments. I realize that for many people, writing is a painful experience, and to get involvement has been like pulling teeth. Writing stories isn’t the only way to create meaningful content to drive conversation though.

Read more

California branding

Dos Picachos Ranch, Calif.- This weekend marked the beginning of Branding Season in rural California, a time for ranch families to come together, help each other out and work to maintain a dwindling lifestyle. About 30 men, women and children gathered at Randy and Rebecca Wolf’s Dos Picachos (Two Peaks) Ranch just outside of Hollister, Calif. to vaccinate, brand and castrate this year’s calves, about 50 in all.

“I’ve been doing this for 82 years and things sure have changed,” life long cowboy Dick Viera said. “But like my wife says, we gotta change with the times. Fortunately, Hollister hasn’t changed too much. There’s still good people around here and there’s no better place to raise cattle and live with the land.” Read more

Where are the youth and why aren’t we involved?

Lake Tahoe, Nev./La Grande, Oreg.- This week I’ve been in heavy research mode trying to figure out exactly what my innovation in journalism is going to be for my Master’s project this spring. My idea is to incorporate this Web site into the folds of a broader project called Tahoe Outdoors, a multi faceted journalism site dedicated to getting outdoor recreationalists more involved in maintaining and conserving the recreation areas that we all love. The site will be part wiki guidebook with interactive maps, part volunteer database and of course the participatory journalism that is being built here at The Natural Life.

My objective has been to start with environmental organizations in the community around Reno/Tahoe to determine what issues and challenges they’re are dealing with and to try to figure out how I can use journalism to help. I’ve been working with the Sierra Front Recreation Coalition, the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, the U.S. Forest Service, a professor in the Department of Resource Economics here at UNR and the Tahoe Rim Trail Association to gather information about recreational use up at Tahoe and to compare that data with data about volunteers up there. So far I’ve done a lot of research but found out little.

However, in talking with Jill Falman, trails program manager for the TRTA, I learned that one of their biggest challenges is to get more young people involved in conservation efforts.

Read more

Green Engineering by Ann Marie Vollstedt

A few years ago, while getting my Master’s in Engineering at the University of Nevada Reno, I signed up for an alternative energies class. Previously, I had not given the topic much thought, but when a professor offers a new class, it’s usually interesting. I was your typical young American driving my SUV to the pump, filling up on gas that seemed cheap and running my heater or air conditioner on high without stopping to consider the damage to the environment or the amount of energy I was consuming.

During the class, we started discussing the energy crisis as well as all the alternatives to oil and coal that are available and earth friendly, but somehow not utilized regularly in our society. The class opened my eyes to many alternative energy sources as well as to the damage we were doing to the earth. I found this class inspiring and thought that when I graduated I would seek a job in the field. I looked forward to taking more classes about alternative energies, but the professor took a job at another university and that was the end of alternative energy classes offered in our department.

Fast forward a few years and I now find myself at the front of a classroom rather than sitting in the back row. A professor I teach with asked me to give a lecture on humanitarian engineering. “What the hell is that?” I asked. He said he heard I was into humanitarian engineering, but he was not sure what it was either. I am always up for a challenge, so I agreed to write a lecture for our class of 280 students.

It turns out humanitarian engineering is design to directly improve the wellbeing of impoverished populations. I kept researching and found an inspiring video about an inventor who is supplying small communities all over Africa with clean water via a pump powered by children playing on a merry-go-round. The heartwarming story of Stinkwater South Africa inspired me. A job as a humanitarian engineer would be much more fulfilling than a career designing slot machines here in Reno.

My roommate had recently traveled to Africa, so I showed him the video and he told me of a book titled Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World, written by Alan Weisman. Gaviotas tells the true story of an eco-village in Columbia’s desert that is self-sustaining despite harsh environmental and political climates. The book describes many engineering innovations that run off green energies. Thanks to Gaviotas, my lecture now included humanitarian and green engineering topics.The lecture went well. Students were listening intently and asking questions. I had students coming to office hours to discuss careers in humanitarian and green engineering and many complaints that there were no classes offered in these areas. Some students emailed me links to similar articles they had found on the Internet they found inspiring.

Student reactions to the lecture as well as my own fascination with humanitarian and green engineering inspired me to try to incorporate these topics as a theme in the class I’m teaching during the Spring semester this year. It was tough though, since the main objective of the class is for students to learn computer programming. After much discussion and debate with the other professors teaching the class, we decided that the projects required in the spring would all have either humanitarian or green engineering as a theme. In addition, students will spend the first 5 minutes of each class discussing a news article pertaining to these topics. Even if I can’t convince students that these fields are important to their future, it will at least get a discussion started. Ideally though, the class will increase student awareness of the environment as well as interest them in careers in humanitarian and green energy.

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