My first blog!

My name is Bridgette and I’m excited to write my first blog here today! When I was brainstorming what kind of issue I wanted to talk about, my first thought was to look into the field of environmental sciences. This is a topic that has been of interest to me since I can remember. As a kid I grew up in nature. Our family had a cabin up North around Walker Minnesota and we frequented it all the time. Our cabin was on a beautiful lake that surrounded indigenous forest and a State Park. I spent most of my time on the lake with my brothers and friends. You could most likely catch me fishing or swimming or just observing the natural world. And when I wasn’t up north at my cabin I was in my hometown of Plymouth Minnesota going on hikes or exploring other lakes in the area. So its safe to say that I have a strong connection to nature and this planet; it means a great deal to me. 

When I wasn’t actually outside in nature, you could find me watching documentaries on any variety of topics that had to do with this beautiful planet. They were so captivating to me and were always portrayed in a cheerful and happy way. Fast forward a few years and I started to notice this changing. Documentaries would start to include concerning footage and information on new ways in which planet Earth was starting to suffer. They would go into detail on the destruction and devastation human impact was having on Earth and all its inhabitants. They would talk about deforestation and habitat loss due to humans making way for new housing development. These earlier videos would be about 95% upbeat and delightful while the remaining 5% would include these issues. 

As the years went by, more documentaries would be published and I started to realize something. That small 5% of the videos that mentioned the dreadful consequences of human actions to our planet would start to become greater and greater as time went by. Now, nearly a decade later, I’ve come to almost avoid any kind of nature documentary because it’s just too unbearable to watch. I log on to see the beauty of the natural world and all I seem to get is catastrophe and destruction. And I know I’m not the only one. 

While I know these issues are important to be aware of, I ask myself, is there a better way to get some of these issues across to the public without doing it in such a way that it just brings feelings of dread and overwhelm? How can a person be informed on these important matters but not be blasted with overwhelming info that leads them to disengage completely? This is a question I still ask myself and one I personally am trying to find the answer to. 

In the end, mother nature will always be close to my heart and I will never stop fighting to protect it. From my first memories up north on my lake cabin to exploring natural areas in the twin cities, I’ll always have a connection with the natural world. Maybe I just need to adjust the ways in which I consume news about our environment and do it in a way that I can realistically be a part of. Can anyone else relate? Has anyone else found some solution and happy medium that they’d like to share their experience on? Thank you and Happy Earth Day 2023! 

Below is a link to an article discussing this topic.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190917075833.htm

It’s Time to Save the World

“Is my English OK? Is the microphone on?” asked Greta Thunberg, in one of her most recent addresses. “Because I’m beginning to wonder.”

Laughter from the audience.

It wasn’t a joke. No one seems to be listening.

Nine years ago, when I was Greta’s age, I wasn’t aware. I wasn’t politically, globally, socially, environmentally aware. I wasn’t aware of what our biggest problems were–or that I, as a kid, could do anything about it, even if I did know what was happening in the world.

Nine years ago, I was LARPing (live-action role playing). For those who don’t know, LARP is a game wherein you create a character for yourself, dress up in costume, and run around in the woods at night, fighting faux villains with foam sticks. It’s like playing make-believe in the backyard when you were little, but on a larger scale, with maybe a better production value.

LARP comes in a number of forms, but the game I played was mostly like Dungeons & Dragons. It was a fantasy game. Swords and sorcery. Lightning bolts. Storming the castle. All of that.

While I knew that the events in the game weren’t “real” and that the character I played wasn’t “real,” they always felt important. They felt bigger than the small “reality” I actually lived in. I often felt that my character was better than me. She was stronger, prettier, freer. She had more goodness in her; more to give. I wanted to be like her in real life.

This disconnect–the idea that my character was false and somehow separate from me–affected my growth in a number of ways. I could write a book on it. There’s a lot to unpack. But the point here is that even after I managed to quit the game, I had a hard time developing an idea of who I was without that character.

Recently, with the changing of the seasons, I was hit by a wave of nostalgia. It would be the start of LARP season now, if I was still playing.

I’m still sorting through it, but one of the things that finally occurred to me was that I could be like the heroic character I used to play. I already was like her. She came from me.

But there were still situational differences, systematic differences between that character’s world and mine, dragging me down.

I posted this on Facebook:

And, only days later, the sentiment was echoed by somebody else:

I’ve been flailing for a solution. Something I could do to help the environment, and reconcile the reality of my apparent helplessness with the idea of once having played at being someone courageous and able to create change.

In this video, Jane Goodall advises people to act locally. “Quite honestly,” she says, “if you think globally, you get depressed.” Break it down, then. Start with what you know you can do. Do something. Even if it might seem small. “We’re all interconnected.”

I’ve been worrying myself sick. I woke up today with a sore throat, and a headache, presumably from my newfangled teeth grinding habit. In an anxious, somewhat dissociated haze, I drove to the store for some groceries, just to get out of the house. Everywhere, meat and dairy. Things packaged in plastic. Delicious things that I only felt bad about craving. I bought one of those chocolate bars that claims to help endangered species, and felt doubtful about its impact, but I hoped.

On my way home, it seemed like all I could see was trash. Scattered along the side of the road, accumulating in the ditches, washed up along the curb. Plastic bags blowing in the wind and caught up in bushes.

Enough is enough.

I found a metal stick–one of those garden hooks for hanging bird feeders or little candle pots–and I filed the end to a point on my dad’s bench grinder. I walked across the street to the park outside my house, and I attacked the garbage in the rain garden. I chased it through the foliage, piercing it with my makeshift rapier, collecting its remains.

Maybe this will help.

Photo by Robert Stuart Lowden

I’m an adventurer. It’s my job.

And for all the shitheads out there who consume without thinking, and leave their trash lying around; for the people who continue to make a mess of the world, I have just one message:

The Thing About Taxes

I will preface this by saying I am not well-researched in the areas of politics, national financing, or whatever actually goes into this mess, in the United States or elsewhere.

But I think it might be worth mentioning my thoughts on a few things, based on personal experiences, and some things I’ve heard that just… don’t make a lot of sense.

Taxes aren’t inherently bad.

The word “tax” in itself has come to have largely negative connotations–if you’re being “taxed” by something, you’re being weighed down or put upon. We have classic examples of people, like the Sheriff of Nottingham from the Robin Hood stories, who abuse taxes.

In a truly ironic state of affairs, my dad is adamantly against any kind of raise in taxes, but he also works for the state of Minnesota, and part of our taxes are what pay his own wages.

But if taxes are being abused, for things like… oh, say, a giant wall, or a football stadium… then, yeah, I wholeheartedly understand the aversion.

I don’t think anyone is ever entirely sure what taxes are used for, but there’s obviously some mismanagement going on somewhere, and that’s the bad thing. Taxes themselves? They have some truly positive possibilities.

Let’s just, for the sake of imagination, pretend that a perfect world is possible. What should taxes, in a perfect world (and my opinion) be used for?

• Protecting/conserving the environment
• Researching and developing important new innovations in energy, transportation, and health (cure for cancer, anyone?)
• Providing/maintaining a basic standard of health and well-being for everyone
• Paying first responders, health professionals, and peace-keepers
• Educating people well
• Preserving culture by investing in arts, museums, libraries, archives, and community centers
• Community improvements, like road construction, parks & rec, etc.
• Providing some kind of safety net and/or rehabilitation programs for those who are  out of work and/or homeless. (This would include retirement, and being out of work due to an injury, veteran benefits, and other things of that nature, in addition to being in a bad situation for other reasons.)

Some people are really put out by the thought of providing for others. Which… I get, to some extent. At the moment, it’s hard to fathom providing for myself, let alone anyone else in the country–but that’s because a lot of things in “the system” are broken. They’re not being used the way they should.

If I had the peace of mind that came with guaranteed good health, the basic ability to learn the things I need to know without being in debt for the foreseeable future, and the reassurance that life as we know it wasn’t on its way to being toasted out of the Earth like a bad virus, I would happily give away a third or more of my income for the rest of my life.

In a perfect world, what would your taxes be used for?

What would you be willing to provide, to make your own life and the lives of others easier?

Our World to Save

Our World to Save

Nobody is perfect and as a population we sure haven’t been making the smartest decisions that we could.  A major issue we have found ourselves in is a planet full of waste. Recycling is an easy and effective solution to keep our planet healthy for future generations. If you create waste then you should learn about recycling.

A single person choosing to recycle does make a difference. An average person could save 1,100 pounds of waste in a year by caring enough to recycle. If 15 people can be reached from this blog and make the switch we are saving 16,500 pounds of waste from sitting in a landfill and harming the environment with toxins. We could be saving natural resources that support wildlife and conserving energy for new materials to be made. When producing aluminum companies can save 95% of energy! It has the potential to save millions for businesses and can then help boost the economy. More job opportunities can be created if the trend continues to grow. Please be aware and take action in recycling.

Items not recycled can and do also end up in the ocean. This can be catastrophic for animals who become trapped or confuse our waste as food. There’s no excuse for not being responsible with our trash besides the convenience of being extra lazy.

Right now is the time to start practicing healthy habits such as recycling so generations following us grow up taking care of their planet without even thinking about it. Just as we want our kids to put their seat belts on automatically to potentially save their lives, we should want them to automatically take care of their world with simple practices.

I am trying to take the approach of mass self-communication by myself choosing the channel of blogging to send my message of recycling in hope that the message will spread. There are a lot of environmentalist around because it is such a vital part of living in the world we do and it could potentially reach multiplicity of receivers. As Castells discusses in Networks of Outrage Opening, it could just be “connecting to endless networks that transmit digitized information around the neighborhood or around the world”. I am using a horizontal network of communication by starting with my classmates and then who they decide to share with. No person is having more power than another.

Healing Nature by Becoming Mindful Consumers

 

Even though we know something is inherently wrong why do we continue to do these things? Finding a cohesive resolution for dealing with humans negative affects on the environment can leave many feeling overwhelmed and unmotivated to take action since the scope is vast. We’ve all seen videos of Arctic ice melting around a baby polar bear left to its demise. We know that this is a result of global warming and that all of those consequences are due to human’s disregard for the environment. Constantly showing people the penalties of their actions often times desensitizes their abilities to see past the issue which in turn will hamper their ability to even begin to deal with resolutions. We must modify the narrative by displaying opportunities for people to take responsibility with simple solutions they can adopt in their daily life. Teaching a dog a new trick through punishment of a whip will leave behind a battered spirit afraid to show affection. Take the same dog and apply a different method involving an incentive such as a treat and you’ll get the same results and an ally for life. Let’s use this in relation to how we speak to people about changing their ways on how they interact with environmental issues to encourage motivation not fear. The United States Environmental Protection Agency coined a motto “ reduce, reuse, and recycle”. This slogan has created a movement that promotes individuals gaining knowledge on how they can take action with simple solutions to help them, their community and the environment by saving money, energy and natural resources.

Here are a few simple choices you can make that lead to a better planet:

• Do Meatless Monday, you can save 2,400 gallons of water, which would save more water than you can by not showering for six months.
• Reusing clothing instead of trashing last season’s threads will not only save you money but you’d be happy to know your not supporting an industry that uses 16% of the world’s pesticides.
• Recycling food waste by using left over scraps to fertilize your garden not only cuts down on your trash bill but also can reduce your carbon footprint and give life to your plants.

There’s a ton of ways that one can alter their day in a positive way to contribute to healing humans stamp on Mother Nature. With the preceding examples I aspire to suggest an alternate to the punishment versus reward method to reframe our approach to how we solicit responses to environmental issues through narratives. Simple actions individuals make can lead to a snowball effect of others adopting the same habits, which can create a vessel for a socially conscious movement towards legislation and regulations supporting environmental healing. To elicit change one must sacrifice the comforts of their privileges. Your individual action directly affects industries that are notoriously costly to the environment. Consumer choices will drive the market in a different direction, which in turn makes companies change their products to ensure they’re meeting the demands of their consumers. Ask for what is right by putting your money where your mouth is and become a Mindful Consumer.

 

GMO or Non-GMO

If you Google the term GMO nearly every search result you receive is negative.

I have always been against Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), and I have always felt confident in my belief. Everything I read about GMOs indicated that they were anti-environment, increasing the need for stronger pesticides and exacerbating the strained agricultural system.

Recently, however, I have started to think quite a lot differently about this issue.

 

Can GMOs be lifesaving technology?

Bill Gates thinks so. For the past several years, he has supported GMOs as a means for sustainable crops in starving nations. Listen to his points about the benefits of GMO crops in the following video.

Some of the other pro-GMO arguments include:

• Keeping global food prices lower
• Farming with less chemicals, using fewer natural resources
• Creating drought or flood resistant crops

Are GMOs safe?

There are many conflicting arguments about the safety of GMOs. Recently, several scientific organizations have stated plainly that GMOs are safe for consumption. A 2013 essay in Scientific American makes a convincing argument that the GMO practices of an agricultural giant like Monsanto are not only safe but also environmentally beneficial.

I still struggle with where to stand on this issue.  IF GMOs are safe, why is there such resistance to labeling them? Moreover, why are consumers still, for the most part, afraid of them?

 

 

Someone Has Never Seen Google Timelapse

Believe Your Eyes

Many would agree that the debate regarding global climate change isn’t really much of a debate. Advances in technology allow us to bear witness to the changing face of our globe. Dan McGrath has  somehow managed to bury his head in the sand, despite the permafrost of the polar vortex that is holding steady in the United States. In a blog article for www.globalclimatescam.com, Dan points to one glacier (the Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica) as evidence against global climate change. His claim is that its melting rate has slowed in the past few years, and that it was not melting from human-induced climate shifts. He instead uses non-cited research from a British Antarctic survey to claim that the glacier was grinding on a marine shelf, allowing warm seawater inside the glacier, causing the prior melting that was recorded by the Brits.

Where Climate Change Deniers Go Wrong

The problem with the blog posts and rants of climate change deniers is that the majority of the evidence and broader scientific community doesn’t corroborate their position. Dan’s blog post is a perfect example in that it mentions research that it doesn’t cite. It does have a link to another website, but it isn’t a credible source and it does not mention the Pine Island Glacier at all.

GlobalClimateScam.com	Science
One Glacier	The Polar Ice Caps
Claims Without Reference or Citation	Countless Independent Scientific Studies
No Photo Documentation	Satellite Images

The Facts

Global climate change is happening. Many will acknowledge this shift, but they deny the fact that increased levels of CO₂ are the root cause. Scientists first suspected that certain gases could create a ‘greenhouse effect’ over 150 years ago, according to the Scientific American. Since then, countless studies and a number of scientists have given merit to the claim that humans are having an increasing impact on the climate. Nasa’s website mentions that 97% of climate scientists agree that climate change is a result of human activity. The site also lists a number of scientific societies and includes quotes from them regarding their perspective on human-induced climate change.

The American Meteorological Society has also released a statement that  acknowledges the fact that the climate has always been changing, but attributes recent changes to human activity. It includes peer-reviewed research to back up its claims, and also proposes some predictions for the future of climate change. The weight of science and peer-reviewed research makes for a strong case, unlike the case presented by bloggers who rant without credible references. I believe in critical thinking and don’t take things at face value. That said, I do give creedence to peer-reviewed research and data. I also believe what I see in satellite imagery.