Shameless Self-Promotion and Interdisciplinarity

Speaking with as little bias as possible, I think this program is really cool.  Honestly, much cooler than I was expecting.  I knew vaguely coming here that we would be studying phosphorous pollution in the lake and that there would be several teams of students of different disciplines.  I did not expect us to work so closely with the community or with each other though.

They let me drive! (yikes)

Last week the biologists were kind enough to let me and Megan follow them around and take up seats in their boat.  They taught us economists how to take water tests and explained to us why they were measuring certain variables.  All summer they have been carefully collecting data on two forms of phosphorus, ammonium and nitrate (forms of nitrogen), turbidity, and cholorphyll.  I learned that they use chlorophyll measurements as a way to monitor algae growth, and that they look at nitrogen as well as phosphorous to gain a better understanding of whether nitrogen runoff is also a contributing factor to the problem.

While I had a great time cruising around with the biologists (especially when Steve let me drive), I did not appreciate how important understanding their portion of the project was until I was canvassing that weekend.  Last Saturday Megan and I set up a table at the farmer's market to try to lure people over and get them to take our survey.  In the process of doing this we answered a lot of questions that were completely unrelated to economics.  The ultimate question that everyone is asking of course is, what is the solution?  It was important that we be able to explain what the biologists were doing and how this was leading to a better understanding of the problem which would ultimately lead to a solution.  We then had to explain the same thing about our own and the other groups' projects.  Having gone out on the water earlier that week with the biologists and participating a little in their project made me much more confident doing this.  What's cool about this project and working in this community is that it forces you to do this-- it forces you to think about the interdisciplinarity of this problem and to convey the importance of this to other people.

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On Environmental Justice And Why Environmentalism Is Not Elitism

Relevant spoken word by a woman from the Marshall Islands, UN Climate Summit 2014

       In many ways this blog is an expansion on my post from last week on how I came to care about environmentalism and in many ways it’s a rant.  When I was applying to colleges I wrote many essays like this post, but the one that I remember most was in response to the very broad prompt, “What matters to you most and why?”  My 17 year old self was appalled.  How was I supposed to answer a question like that?  Narrow in on the single thing you care about most and say why?  I had no idea where to begin.  In the end, I wrote an essay about people.  I wrote that I liked talking to people, that I liked learning about people, and that ultimately I wanted to do something to help people.  While this is all still true, the way I think about these things and the way I envision my future has changed so much.

I quote my 17 year old self, “Environmental issues concern me, but they are not what I feel most passionately about and I cannot envision myself devoting my life to them.”  The irony in this is pretty obvious as I now plan to do just that.  I never would have pictured myself studying the things I have been or pursuing a career centered around environmental issues (and especially not as an economist), but my understanding of environmentalism has deeply changed over the past few years. 

I used to think of environmentalism as a scientific issue rather than a social issue.  I thought it was all about diverting wasting, finding alternative fuels, and reducing emissions.  In some ways it is, but environmental issues are also deeply social.  Environmentalism is as much about race and class as it is about measuring biodiversity.  Too often we forget this.  We think of environmental activism as driving hybrid cars, eating organic, and purchasing Patagonia fleeces.  While all these are good things, this is a very narrow definition of environmentalism which is problematic in that it excludes a large portion of the population who can’t afford to do these things.  So often I have heard that environmentalism is an elitist movement, that it is a cause for the wealthy.  This is not only false, but it obscures the fact that low-income people are disproportionately affected by environmental hazards and changing climates.  A factory is never permitted to pollute the air of a wealthy neighborhood, we pay poorer countries to take on our electronic waste, and increasingly severe droughts in the Middle East hurt the farmers not the wealthy politicians.  What is most unjust is that these are not the people who actually produce the largest portion of the pollution.  This is why we must take action to address climate change and adopt more sustainable practices, because when we hurt the Earth we also hurt someone else who relies on this planet, and when we cause irreparable damage we harm future generations.  This is why I plan to study environmental issues, so that I may pursue a career which promotes environmental justice, and hopefully this will ultimately allow me to do something that helps people just as I always planned. 

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Acorny post on being a treehugger

Backpacking in Point Reyes National Park

            I’ve always really enjoyed being outdoors.  It just doesn’t feel right to me to spend a whole day inside.  I grew up swimming, playing soccer, and camping during the summers with my family.  As I got older I started camping and backpacking with my friends. 

            I took environmental science my senior year and really enjoyed it.  I loved being able to go on a hike and feel like I better understood the world around me.  However, I didn’t see myself seriously pursuing environmentalism further as an academic or professional interest.  I was pretty set on studying development, but I continued to hike, bike, camp, and casually take environmental science courses. 

It wasn’t until my sophomore year when I took a political ecology class that I started to see the connections between environmentalism and the things I was studying.  Before I had failed to see the connections between environmental issues and social issues, but this class helped me understand how interconnected the two are.  I completely rewrote my major concentration to focus on sustainable development and enrolled in biology and the core environmental science class for the next semester.  The next thing I knew I was in upper-division ecology classes and working in a conservation biology lab. 

This is probably as far I will go with science; I don’t think I’ll take any science courses in graduate school or ever be a scientist, but I’ve learned more about environmental science than I ever anticipated.  Moving forward I still plan to focus my studies and career on environmentalism, but probably from a policy or economic perspective.  I think the science courses I’ve taken will help me do this well.  Hopefully, I’ll even be to apply some of the things I’ve learned on this project.  

On relearning things

In school I’ve learned how to cram what seems like an impossible amount of information into my head, how to predict test questions, and how to write an essay really, really fast.  It’s easy when you’re in school to get wrapped up in deadlines and GPA’s.  The irony in this is that while I’m pushing myself to learn as much as possible, it’s at these times where I lose sight of the bigger picture of why education matters so much.  I could easily rattle off facts from my study guides, but actually applying the things that I’ve learned over the past few years is completely different.  The opportunity to actually apply these concepts to an issue that interest me is the thing that I value most about this project.

                                                                                               Photo of calf borrowed from internet

This past week planning my project with Dr. Ferguson I’ve come to better understand and appreciate both the utility and the complexity of the things I’ve been studying.  Thinking back to tangents my professors have gone on which I previously brushed aside as being something that wouldn’t matter for the class, I now finally understand what my professors were trying to get at.  My greatest hope for myself this summer is to understand economics through the eyes of someone other than a student. By actually carrying out research and closely studying a real problem, I hope to gain a better idea of what working as an economist as opposed actually implies,          
and whether this is a field that I seriously want to pursue. 

            
What else have I learned? I’ve learned that healthy soil smells earthy, about rotational grazing, that cheese curds beat mozzarella sticks, and that on rare occasions the Northern Lights can be seen from Wisconsin.

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Menomonie (muh-nom-uh-nee)

            The first thing I did when I was accepted to this program was look up Menomonie (a name which only upon arriving did I find out I was painfully mispronouncing) on Google maps.  I had never heard of the small town half way across the country from my home in the San Francisco Bay Area, and it is definitely different from where I live.  Menomonie is the sort of small town that has been depicted in movies countless times and seems to embody American values.  I’ll miss the vibrant and boisterous city of Berkeley which has been my home for the past three years, and of course I’ll miss my friends and family, but I am excited to grow to know this small town. 

In many ways Menomonie and the sense of community that I see here is refreshing.  It seems like everyone knows each other here.  People stop to chat on the street and our professors know the names of the people who run the countless small landmarks.  On Tuesday we went to see the Ludington Guard Band, the longest running town band in the country I’ve been told, and I was amazed by the number of people supporting them.  The opportunity to work within this community is thing I am most looking forward to this summer.  It is so exciting to participate in a project that is so closely tied to the community, and it is even more exciting to see a community that actually cares about the project.  Accepting this position I was really just hoping to learn some more about economics and build my resume a bit, but having realized that this research has the potential to actually be meaningful in the community has made me all the more enthusiastic to be a part of this team.  I’m excited to get to work and maybe also drink some Wisconsin beer.

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