Author: chrislau

The proposed project for Masdar definitely has a lot of good points that could help the environment, but also many hidden flaws that may not be clear on the surface. Environmentally, the project looks to reduce all forms of different pollution and create city where cars aren’t even allowed to roam it, which is something you don’t see anymore today in modern cities. The ways Masdar is receiving its energy is also seemingly very self efficient, with most of the energy coming from the sun instead of traditional sources. One thing that really interested me was the personal rapid transit train cars, which looked liked a personal cart that could bring you to different destinations within the city. It is definitely good to find new ways of transportation and promote more healthy means of transportation like walking and biking, but I was just curious how the city would make sure there would be no cars. Would there be laws passed banning cars and how strict would the enforcement be regarding those laws.

Another part of the article that was interesting was the equity section, where the authors mentioned that the residents in Masdar would be relatively wealthy people, with many workers not being able to reside there because of their low income. This matches a trend in our class discussions this semester where we talked about how the environmentally friendly programs are usually implemented in areas where the wealthy live, and the poor generally don’t even emphasize green space or infrastructure in their neighborhoods. There was also some irony surrounding how the project would be funded because the article mentions that most of the money will be coming from oil being sold in the UAE, which is contradictory to the city of Masdar. It is just another cycle where you are selling fossil fuels to others to make money to try and help the environment.

Finally, the comparisons between Masdar and other popular sites in the UAE was very interesting because those sites like famous hotels, indoor skiing resorts, and the other eye catching structures needs to use a lot of natural resources to run because of how they operate. Once again, it is kind of ironic to have these environment consuming structures on one hand, and then you are trying to build a city to environmentally sustain itself. However, even with these doubts surrounding the project, it still seems that we need to do something to help the environment, and if we don’t take action, nothing will be done anyways. We might as well take the risk and implement the project, and if it works it will be revolutionary, if it doesn’t at least we tried.

This study focuses on China, which is a growing concern relating to environmental pollution because of their growing population and the fact that the country hosts so many manufacturing plants. There is always mention of air pollution in China, but as we can see in this article plastic pollution is also an area of concern when discussing pollution in China. The legislation passed to reduce the use of plastic bags is definitely making some progress in China from the statistics shown in the article, and it seems that more and more people are learning about the negative effects of using plastic bags and supporting the legislation passed to reduce them. One key point that the article mentions is that people tend to consume a lot more of free items than items that need to be purchased, but it still seems that there are a lot of Chinese consumers willing to pay for plastic bags because of its convenience and relatively low cost in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps the prices for these bags should be further increased, so if somebody is consistently purchasing many plastic bags a week, he or she can feel the economic consequences and maybe consider using environmental friendly bags and refrain from using plastic bags.

The examples of illegally providing plastic bags in farmer’s markets just show that there needs to be stricter enforcement regarding the plastic bag laws. If there is even one case of harsh enforcement in these farmer’s markets, it will scare the others into ceasing their illegal activity regarding selling the bags. The fines will simply outweigh what the farmers can earn, and they will soon realize that they must cooperate with the law for their own sake even if they don’t care about the environment. Actions always speak louder than words, and it is clear in this article that the consumers say they support the plastic bag legislation, but on the other hand are just purchasing the bags for cents. We want to believe that people will stop doing damage to the environment, but we simply can’t trust them and if we want the environment to become a better place, there will need to be strict actions taken by the government and other organizations to make people save the environment.

Hey Everybody,

In case my earlier post got buried in the blog, here is my article again.

The article I will be using is titled “Missing the Dark, Health Effects of Light Pollution.” The link to this article is here:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2627884/

I suggest reading it in the PDF format available for download on the website, so the pictures and graphs are incorporated with the text.

Chris

The community gardens mentioned in this article seemed like a great way to incorporated more green infrastructure into NYC while also providing some major benefits such as reducing storm water runoff. The city should be a place where these gardens can thrive because they have been proven to absorb thousands of gallons of storm water runoff, but there seems to be a lack of these gardens due to implementation and maintenance costs. The grant numbers provided in the study seem trivial, which means there is not enough money being spent on these green projects. If the gardens are proven to be successful, but not implemented, the only reason behind it is money, which is the reason why a lot of good ideas are never put into place. However, there seems to be hope in the future as the mayor is implementing is OneNYC plan where he plans to implement 9000 curbside gardens by 2018, and even though the motives behind these gardens don’t mention storm water reduction, it is still a positive sign for green infrastructure to come in NYC.

One underlying issue I think the article hinted at was the fact that so many decision makers today need tons of quantitative reports to make sure nothing can go wrong before they implement a project. There has already been plenty of data showing how effective community gardens can be, but it seems that the people in charge of implementing these projects still hunger for more and more data to make sure these gardens are absolutely perfect before any action is done. This conservative behavior and thinking is what is hindering a lot of these projects and these planners have to realize that anything done in this world is going to have a certain amount of risk, but if you sit around and do nothing but ponder on the idea, the environment is going to continue to wither because ordinary people don’t stop and ponder when they are about to commit an action that damages the environment. Every great project was never perfect at the start, so environmental projects aren’t an exception.

Hey Everybody,

The article I will be using is titled “Missing the Dark, Health Effects of Light Pollution.” The link to this article is here:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2627884/

I suggest reading it in the PDF format available for download on the website, so the pictures and graphs are incorporated with the text.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Chris

This study did a really good job reinforcing the idea that spending more time with our environment can help us reduce stress. Even though the experiment took place just in Finland, it did include three locations, which helped the study be more comprehensive in a way because a park is really not truly 100% nature when compared to the forest that the participants also visited. The results obviously showed massive amounts of improvement in stress levels for many of the participants when they visited the park or the forest compared to just sitting on the street observing the flow of the city. One thing mentioned in the study was that the participants usually underwent the study around 3PM after work, which in my opinion was a smart time because people usually are stressed out during work or after work, which made measuring the changes in stress levels a lot easier. One area of concern is the lopsided number of female participants compared to the male participants, which should raise some alarm to a study like this because there are always significant differences in the body between males and females.

Now, even if people see these results of the increasing amount of studies done to prove the health benefits of the environment, will that motivate them to spend more time outside and with nature. The chances are that not many people are reading these scientific studies on their spare time, and even if they knew that the environment can get them healthier in terms of stress and other benefits, are they willing to give up their other activities to spend time outdoors. A lot of people constantly enjoy doing negative things to their bodies such as drinking, smoking, and other drugs, so we have to wonder if the human population is actually striving to become healthier. Many people obviously will say they are trying to live a healthier lifestyle, but many people who say this don’t take the necessary steps to becoming healthy. Death to most people is a long term problem that is unsolvable and will eventually claim everybody, and since humans are already so short term in their thought processes, what makes us think that they don’t want to live a happy, crazy 5-10 years of life and then suffer the consequences later. Sure, they might reflect in the future when they have suffered all the consequences to their health, but most people would choose the path of fun for a few years than living a full healthy life without doing the actions that give them the fun and excitement for a couple of years in their lives. People will continue to keep complaining about their stress, but they probably will also keep doing other activities like watching TV or something else that they think reduces their stress than spending more time with mother nature.

 

Waste and trash has always seemed to me as a problem that really can’t be solved and can only be reduced to a certain level because trash will always be generated at a consistent basis faster than we can get rid of it. The article mentions how trash is usually concentrated in one area after it is transported such as in the Fresh Kill’s Landfill dump and how residents in those areas where the trash is concentrated often complain about it because of the negative effects of the noise and also too much stray garbage floating around. However, this problem really won’t be solved because if you move the plant to another location, then you just have another area’s residents complaining about the plant, which shows how difficult it really is to find a good location for a waste management plant. Even when the waste plants reach full capacity, the waste there still takes a while to deteriorate, while new plants are built at new locations, which will cause complaints for more people.

The recycling habits of the city also shows how everybody contributes to generating excess waste. The article mentions a drop in 8% of recycling from 2001 to now, which is a significant drop off and shows that New Yorkers aren’t properly disposing their trash. One thing that really surprised me was that large commercial entities are not required by law to recycle. In this modern age, where protecting the environment is so emphasized by corporations, how can they make these statements when they aren’t even saving the environment in the simplest ways. Shouldn’t these commercial entities be required by law to recycle their waste since they produce nearly 75% of NYC’s waste? Even New Yorkers at their homes are required to recycle a lot of their waste by law, so why do these commercial entities get exemptions.

Recycling seems to be a “free rider” problem where people have mindsets like what is the harm I can do for not recycling this bottle if everybody else recycles, we should be fine. Well, if everybody is thinking like this, then most people will not recycle and the trash just continues to pile up. One final point that I found interesting was when the article mentions the 5 cent reward for bringing in a recyclable bottle and how that sum is too measly for people today. I totally agree with this point because if people aren’t motivated to recycle based on conserving the environment alone, then there is no other choice but to put in a monetary reward to get people motivated, but 5 cents for bottle is definitely not motivating enough. You can barely get a meal for $5 in NYC and that would take 200 scavenged bottles to accumulate. It would probably be faster to collect coins on the ground to get to five dollars then go around looking for 200 bottles in trash bins. Overall, trash is just another one of the piling issues of the environment that will never really go away, and if we don’t find any solutions soon, we might live in a city where trash fills the streets and everywhere else.

Wow, this project conducted in the Bronx combines many of the necessary elements we felt as a class were important to conserving the environment. The fact that many children are the ones responsible for building the “thirsty playground” shows that it is possible to get kids to love nature via our education system. Instead of conducting boring classroom lessons about trees and plants, these schools took a bold step and directed a project that these kids will remember for the rest of their lives. Not only are these kids getting great exposure to the environment, they are also learning how to plant trees and other plants and will no doubt feel a deeper connection with the environment around them especially since they had a part in contributing to the growth and development of the plants at the playgrounds. Not only did the project teach a valuable lesson to the children about the environment, they also learned how to budget and plan their project, which are essential skills that they will need when they become adults.

This is definitely a big step towards the ideas of saving the environment because it included both green infrastructure and also education for the young generation, and shows if children can do it so effectively why can’t adults do it on a larger scale. The article mentions that one playground only took about one million dollars to renovate, which isn’t that much money in the grand scheme of things since you are providing children with a great learning experience and also significantly reducing water pollution levels for years to come. Projects like these will help children foster their relationships with nature around them and when they become adults, they will consider ways to further improve the environment because they were brought up to love and save it. I feel that projects like these should be a required part of the school curriculum because its a win win situation for both the children and the government. The government is essentially getting free labor from the kids to help implement green infrastructure while the children are spending time outside the classroom doing something fun and interactive with nature around them. I guarantee that the kids would rather go outside and plant a few plants rather than listening to boring lessons about how trees grow and develop. Projects like these are definitely heading in the right direction and I hope to see more of them in the near future.

This experiment reinforces the ideas that being more exposed to nature does have significant health benefits on humans. Even though this experiment only focused on improved affect and cognition, it gives an easy to understand experimental design and produced results that clearly showed some benefits for people who are around nature more. I really enjoyed how the experiment was structured and also the tests the researchers used to measure the affect and cognition levels within the participants. The experimental tests really weren’t hard to understand, but still tested certain areas of the human brain such as memory, anxiety, and mood levels within the participants. People today always complain about their stress levels and poor mood, so maybe they just need to get outside more and stop staying indoors or in the office most of the time.

Another area of the study I found to be impressive was how the researchers pointed out some of the possible flaws within the experiment, which included the small and narrow sample size and also just focusing on one park being used in their study. Even the cognition tests weren’t absolutely perfect with their hypothesis and they brought that up within the paper saying that only some parts of cognition correlated positively with the nature walk group, while other parts seemed to have no benefits correlated to being exposed to nature. Looking towards the future, perhaps there should be larger scale experiments done in different areas of the United States to see if nature really improves health for people of all age groups across the country, and there might even be new benefits to health that we previously did not know of.

Today, more and more people are locking themselves indoors whether due to their jobs or the increase of new forms of technological entertainment. For a lot of children growing up today, they are spending more time on their technological devices and less time outdoors. Parents are also forcing them to go to more prep classes and other indoor activity instead of letting their kids just spend free time outdoors exploring what is around them. If these kids never experience the benefits of nature, as adults they also won’t know the benefits of nature towards their health and will likely live their whole life spending most of it indoors. It might be important for the education systems across the world to stress the importance of getting exposure to nature, so people will know what benefits they can receive from being outdoors.

This paper mentions a few interesting points regarding the human mindset and attitudes towards nature. The first point that Adams hit was the human sense of superiority and dominance, which encourages us to do whatever we want regarding the environment because there is no other species that can blatantly stop us. Even though there are turns towards reintegrating humans back together with nature via environmental psychology and ecopsychology, I still feel that most of the human race will still not change their mindsets because when people have power, they tend to not let go at all. We can’t really revert back to the mindsets that benefit our environment because a lot of people are taught growing up to properly use the environment and also we have been living the dominance mindset for too long that a major change will be very unlikely in my opinion. A change in our education system might be the only way to steer our mindsets to be more environmental friendly, but that change really isn’t happening right now in our school systems and may take many years to implement. Our economic culture of harvesting everything until it is completely dry definitely doesn’t favor nature, but how are we going to stop these corporations and large entities from abusing the environment when they have most of the money and power in today’s world.

When Adams mentions the human being “call” analogy to the woodpecker call analogy to try to show us how these endangered or near extinct species feel, I felt that most people wouldn’t really feel much sorrow over that. They might reflect a bit upon that scenario, but would then just laugh it off because there are more than seven billion human beings living on Earth right now. People would also think that there are tons of woodpecker species left even if that certain species dies. Most importantly, is it really plausible to imagine a huge and powerful corporation stopping a big project that will reap them millions of dollars of profit just to save a woodpecker? These project managers and CEOs wouldn’t even consider stopping their projects if it meant harming other humans, why would they stop for a tiny bird. Adams also mentions that we know the raw definition of what extinction means, but don’t really grasp the meaningful lived experience about that term, which I found was a pretty odd statement to make. I’m sure most people have a lot more problems to worry about regarding themselves than consider all the about to be extinct species in the world currently. Unless somehow the ivory-billed woodpecker saved a person’s life, I don’t think the average person would have such a deep connection with species outside of the human race.

Overall, I think the paper does do a great job mentioning the flaws of our mentality in relation to our environment, but shifting our mentality to become more environmental friendly is where the problem really is. You can’t just instill deep connections with nature over a short period of time and these positive relationships and mentalities with nature will probably take generations and generations to instill and develop into our human brains.