Month: March 2017

During Earth month I will try to reduce my personal environmental impact by implementing the 4 following actions throughout the month. As well as educating my roommates and other peers about the importance of following similar actions, not just for the month of april but for the rest of their lives.

1.) I will use natural light as much as possible, and turn off the lights when they aren’t necessary. I will also unplug anything that I am not using to help conserve electricity. It may be difficult to remember to turn off the light when I leave the room or unplug anything not in use, so I will put a sign on the back of the door so before I leave I am reminded to do so.

2.) I will try to walk everywhere that I go if physically possible, and if not I will take a bus or a bike. To reduce my impact further I will not use food delivery services or uber/lyft when going places. It may be difficult to get used to walking more around campus to reduce my bus use but the weather is getting nicer and it is more enjoyable to be outside, so I don’t think this will be too hard. But by not using delivery services, I will have to make sure that I keep food in the dorm or go out to eat with my friends.

3.) I will try to recycle more, and reduce my use of paper/plastic products. I will recycle anything that I use that can be recycled and I will influence my roommates to do the same. I will only use reusable silverware and dishes from now on, no more plastic spoons and forks. I will use a towel to dry my hands instead of paper towels. It might be difficult to try to remember to recycle, so I’m moving our recycling bin next to the trash so that I can think before I throw something away.

4.) I will start to clean up trash around campus, in an attempt to reduce the littering around campus and promote a cleaner environment for any of the animals that live around here, like squirrels, rabbits, skunks, raccoons, moles, birds, etc. I will dedicate 1-2 hours to going around campus and cleaning up the trash, this might be difficult because campus is so large, but it will be made easier with use of the trashcans scattered throughout campus, so I don’t have to carry a bag of trash with me.

The speakers really opened up my eyes to how much non-profits actually rely on volunteers and the community that they are based in. I think when I was researching non-profit organizations, I viewed them a lot as just that, organizations, and I had disassociated the work they do from the people that work everyday to make the impact that the organization wants to achieve. I think that a lot that I need to consider while exploring the issue of climate change further is the impact that individual people have on the problem, whether they are working to fix it or working against progress. I need to stop viewing climate change as a problem for the government, and organizations to solve, and start seeing it for what it truly is, a problem for the people. We need to start to change the way we live our everyday lives to ever see a change begin to occur, we need to educate the people around us about the issue, and we need to help with volunteering for organizations that are actually making a change.

My biggest takeaway from this class was that the problems that the non-profits are working to fix are problems that impact all of us in one way or another, even if we don’t realize it. I never thought about refugees in Columbus until after this class session, and now I realize that they impact the economic balance in the city of Columbus. I also realize that there are a lot of issues that I want to help make an impact in and I think that the most difficult part is going to be deciding where to designate my time.

After the 2 lens assignments and the 4 class discussions, I think that I want to impact my issue by decreasing my daily energy usage, recycling more often, and only walking everywhere I need to go if it is in walking distance. I think doing these few things will greatly reduce my personal impact on climate change. And I will educate my roommates about the importance of trying to incorporate these things into their everyday lives as well.

Many non-profit organizations focus their resources on the environment, energy use, and sustainability, but not all of them make as large of an impact as you would hope. The way non-profits like NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) are impacting climate change is by encouraging countries, like China and the US, that have large carbon pollution output to implement policies that will limit carbon emissions. And they are trying to help these countries figure out clean energy solutions and boost energy efficiency. The NRDC also looks at ways to help low-income communities that are the most affected by fossil fuels by empowering the residents in these communities to stand up for their neighborhoods and create a healthier climate. Right now, most non-profits associated with climate change are looking at ways to encourage countries to switch to cleaner energy sources and implement policies reducing their carbon impact. For the most part, the best way for citizens to impact climate change globally is contacting your representatives and joining protests and rallies. But citizens can get involved on a local level to start a change that could eventually spread to make a larger global impact. On a local level, you can attempt to make your city a “climate sanctuary”, attempting to reduce food waste by starting composting and teaching other people in your community about how they can do the same. One of the key points of starting on a local level is making sure to focus on education of the community around you so that you can get more people involved and start a ripple effect as these people gain the ability to educate others. There are a lot of challenges that non-profits face, and one of the main challenges would be attempting to get country leadership on board with the policies that need to be implemented.

When viewing climate change through a non-profit lens, it is important to consider that not all non-profits can achieve the same goals. For the most part your non-profit needs to have a lot of public support/backing to get countries to listen to and hopefully implement your policies. Also, you have to think about the kind of impact that a particular non-profit can even have considering what they plan to do.

With the Justice Oriented Citizen model, non-profits take the role of a personally responsible citizen by encouraging recycling and reducing individual carbon footprints. The second level, the participatory citizen, is accomplished when a non-profit attempts to educate a community about the environment and how to start locally making an impact to improve public awareness of of climate change. And in the third level, the social-justice oriented citizen, non-profits are looking at ways to prevent further climate change and also looking at the reasons that climate change is an issue to begin with and trying to implement change that will hopefully influence a global change. Like, how the NRDC is attempting to educate citizens about their rights and how to fight back against local fossil fuel usage and fracking in their area, and helping impoverished areas by providing legal services and the tools necessary to influence the change that the community wants to achieve.

I watched the “Which Country Does the Most Good for the World?” TED Talk by Simon Anholt. In this TED Talk he talks about how there are 7 billion people on this planet all responsible for the decline of the environment and these same people have to be responsible for fixing the wrongs. But as he points out we need to be unified as one, and although out governmental systems work, they do not think as globally as they need to to fix the problems, they all act to provide help inwards, to their own people. I think this is where non-profits can come in, by helping each government come together to implement policies that go hand and hand to bettering our environment. He points out the fact that most countries act selfishly, or as though they are the only one to exist, that they have a microscopic view of the world. I think that non-profits can definitely come into play to help address this issue and hopefully bring about a change in the way that people see the world and issue that impact us on a global level.