Updated footprint and final current event

Well, I guess I was successful with a few of my goals (1. Reduce our energy bill; 2. Make sustainable purchasing decisions; 3. Reduce my water consumption; 4. Reduce my transportation needs). If I had to rank them in order of how successful I was at each one, I'd  say I did the best at reducing my water consumption and in making more sustainable purchase decisions. Our power bill, while never making it under $200, has definitely been reduced by keeping my heat off and my power strips turned off when not in use. My transportation needs were met by catching a ride with my roommate when he drives south.

At the beginning of the quarter, I found that I scored 5.21 Earths. 

Through my footprint reduction strategies, I was able to bring that down to 4.01 Earths, which is a start!

I was able to reduce my footprint in global acres from 202.26 to 155.66

The only thing that didn't really change was my pie chart showing the proportion of each impact category

Final Current Event: 

I recently finished reading The Sixth Extinction, by Elizabeth Kolbert

This book was first brought to my attention when I saw John Stewart interview the author on The Daily Show, and my first thought was, "Oh, we're touching on similar topics in class!"

I purchased the book a few days later and then sped through it in the past two weeks.

It was very well written and very engaging, switching back and forth between the stories of Kolbert's research for the book and historical stories covering the development of the concept of extinction and the discovery of various fossils. The book was very eye opening. In the course of her research, Kolbert traveled around the globe, from a frog sanctuary in Peru to the reefs in the Southern Pacific to bat caves in upper New Jersey, talking to experts in various scientific fields. 

It was kind of a sad book too. There were many stories about disappearing fauna, such as the Golden Frog in Peru and the po'ouli, a bird endemic to Hawaii that has gone extinct in the wild, but survives on through frozen cells.

So there was this inherent sadness to the book, but also an uplifting hope; learning about the conservation efforts in progress in the Amazon and in America and in places all around the globe helped ease the inherent uncomfortableness of having the evidence of human cause mass extinction brought to light.

Current event 9

We've talked about how unsustainable palm oil actually was in class multiple times, so it was interesting to me to see this article on Triple Pundit addressing sustainability concerns of the popular cosmetics and candy ingredient.

Palm oil is sourced from forests in Indonesia and Malaysia, and harvesting practices haven't been the best in the past. Unilever had already committed to switching to a more sustainable sourcing plan, but other companies are now jumping on board. The Palm Oil Scorecard developed by the Union of Concerned Scientists lists the major companies that use palm oil in their products and identifies how committed each is to the sustainability initiative. Five companies total are fully committed to deforestation-free palm oil: Nestle, Unilever, Mondelez, L'Oreal, and Reckitt Benckiser. That is five out of 30 of the biggest companies that use palm oil, so clearly there's a lot of room for improvement, but the Palm Oil Scorecard is a very useful tool for transparency of sustainability initiatives.

Current event 8

There's a new wind farm coming to the Northwest coast. A Seattle company named Principle Power has just recently been approved to move forward on a lease of 15 square miles of federal waters off the coast of Oregon. Their formal plan is just waiting on final approval. 

The WindFloat Project is a series of wind turbines that will float offshore to capture the latent energy of strong winds off the coast. Principle Power already operates a prototype of their "Windfloat Project" off the coast of Portugal, which has been successful in delivering 8.4 gigawatt-hours of wind energy to the grid since its construction in 2011. 

Of course questions arise as to how these turbines could affect coastal ecosystems. I am optimistic though that they won't cause any major impacts, and will be a great source of renewable energy in the future.

Quote from the US Department of Interior 

"The West Coast holds an offshore capability of more than 800 gigawatts of wind energy potential, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which is equivalent to more than three quarters of the nation’s entire power generation capacity. Total U.S. deepwater wind energy resource potential is estimated to be nearly 2,000 gigawatts."

New Current Event: Deforestation Patrol

The World Resources Institute and Google have teamed up along with 40 other businesses and government organizations to bring to life the Global Forest Watch. The GFW (for short) utilizes Google Maps to show deforestation in real-time, as well as providing the ability to display deforestation patterns over time. Using their map, a person is able to look all around the globe at how forest levels have either increased or decreased in any user-defined span of time from 2000 at the earliest to current.

These maps are intended to be used by businesses and consumers alike to track the integrity of sustainable logging claims. A business can check their supplier to make sure there is no over-consumption or illegal logging taking place. They are confident that this will help reduce global deforestation, based upon a similar forest mapping system utilized in Brazil to monitor illegal deforestation activity. Under that system, the rate of forest loss in Brazil has dropped by 70% since 2004.

Current Event 6

Droughts currently occurring in Southern Brazil are affecting the local coffee growing industry there. Coffee production requires well-maintained trees and droughts caused by climate change are affecting many coffee plantations, reducing the total amount produced. While there won't be a huge shortage anytime soon, the yield of plantations will continue to slowly drop, driving up prices. Demand for coffee worldwide is increasing, so that will drive prices further up as well. The article linked also highlights how the current Brazilian drought is also affecting other commodities such as oranges, soy, cattle, and sugar, increasing the prices of all four. Of course, exact proven link, but extreme weather conditions are a result of climate change, so it's not too far of a leap to make that climate change is contributing to the reduction in commodity yield.


Goals update:
I've been doing really well with keeping the heat off and turning off my power strip when it's not in use. Turing off the strip has actually become a habit now, and I sometimes find myself having forgotten to turn it back on when I do need it.
Shower time reduction has also been going well. I use my phone as a timer and am able to keep it to around 6-10 minutes when I don't wash my hair.
I haven't been as strict on my grocery budget, but I am buying mainly organic foods. They just have that price premium that makes it tough to stick to the $30 limit I set for myself each week

Possible Ecotoxicity in the Pacific Northwest?

After testing shipments of geoducks and oysters and seeing positive results for Arsenic and PSP (a biotoxin produced by algae) China banned all shellfish imports originating from the West Coast. More specifically, geoducks harvested from Poverty Bay in Redondo, Washington were targeted as having high levels of Arsenic. It is believed that China uses a much stricter measurement system than America, as Poverty Bay had been recently tested to determine the safety of the shellfish harvested there. American studies found the shellfish to be safe for human consumption, but really, how acceptable is any level of arsenic in your food? It's understandable that China would halt imports of shellfish if there was even the slightest possibility of it harming someone. Because of the results of the American study, it has led some to think that the ban was more rooted in political issues with the health concern being a convenient excuse to implement the ban.

Current event from Sunday

On the 16th, Secretary of State John Kerry gave a speech in Jakarta, Indonesia in which he covered global warming and the recent agreement between China and the US to work on climate change. China and America are the top two greenhouse gas emitters, so this agreement to work together on curbing their emissions is a big step. It seems that there is a plan to substantially reduce emissions by 2020. Next year, there will be an international meeting in Paris to try to develop a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which was issued in 1997 (even though America never ratified the deal).

I think that it will be critical for America to get on board with a new deal designed similarly to the Kyoto Protocol, which was aimed at a global commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The recent agreement between the US and China concerning their greenhouse gas emissions gives me confidence though that we'll be more open to ratifying such a document now.


Goals update:
-I finally got a shower down to 6 minutes, so pretty proud of that. I got a small clock that I keep in the bathroom, and that's how I time myself
-We got our power bill, and it came to $245, so a little more expensive than last time, meaning we used a bit more. My one consideration though is that the last billing cycle came to $235, but it covered winter break, when there wasn't really anyone around in the house. Now that everyone's been back for a month, our energy usage was just barely more than what was used over a period of time most of us were gone. So, in my mind that's a victory that we were able to at least keep the per cost down