Repose to presentations

Today we heard multiple groups discuss chapters based of the same textbook. My chapter dealt with the urban sprawl of Atlanta. The main gist  of my chapter was the unequal industrialization and urbanization of different regions of Atlanta. The majority of the issues stems from divisions between the population based on race and income. It appeared that most other groups had chapters that deal with this division, especially when it come to transportation needs and reliance. Another main factor seemed to be the environment itself. The location of city plays a large role in the construction and needs of the city itself. Fore example, since Atlanta has no natural boundaries around it, the city can continue to grow outward. This is unlike New York, which centered on Manhattan Island, has only a limited space to grow and thus grew up.

Master Plan of Portland, Maine

The City of Portland Maine is the small in relative terms for the nation. However, it is the largest city in Maine and its urban area accounts for around a 1/3 of the total population. The master plan of the city has been updated for 2016 from the previous plan made in 2005.  The city lays out general guidelines for the future development of the city. Many of the policies reflect the continual buildup of Downtown, due to high economic and residential capabilities. The city also wants to gravitate away from auto dependency and move to a more pedestrian friendly environment. Also the parks and water front are also scheduled to be improved as public areas. Portland also mentions its desire to buildup, but still keep the feel and atmosphere of a small town, so buildings will be aesthetically pleasing and must fit in with community vibes.

Reaction to Inconvenient Truth

In class we watched Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth, a documentary detailing the causes and effects of climate change. It is unfortunate that even after the production and release of several other documentaries like Gore's that the same concerns and topics are discussed. I feel as thought the documentary route is a bit like crying wolf. Every time someone makes a new documentary it encompasses the same vernal bulk of the issue. And because nothing fully detrimental happened in the 10 years since the Inconvenient Truth was released, many people may lean to the notion that nothing will happen again after other films are released such as Dicaprio's Before the Flood. I feel as though environmentalists need to take a new approach on relaying climate change, because with each deadline we give for the "end of the world" we are only hindering our cause. That is because we have broken though many of the declines for change and yet nothing has changed of the average person and thus the average person will loose respect for the notion of climate change. This is something we must work on as a field. We need to find a way to cause a severity and understanding of the lack of time we have without sounding like another wolf scenario.


Source: David, L., Bender, L., & Burns, S. Z. (Producers), & Guggenheim, D. (Director).
(2006). An Inconvenient Truth [Motion Picture]. United States: Paramount Classics.

Luxembourg Urbanization

Luxembourg is already a highly urbanized nation. According to the UN World Urbanization Prospects Report, 90% of Luxembourg's population lives in cities. Of these Luxembourg city is the most dominant with about 1/5 of the nation's total population. It is expected that even more of the nation's population will be in urban centers by 2050 with 94%. This continual shift toward urbanization and Luxembourg's small geographic size could mean we could see the formation of another city state like nation such as Monaco and Singapore.  However, with a relatively slower growing population and the reinvention of its cities, Luxembourg may be able to balance and urbanizing population and the preservation wild spaces.

UN World Urbanization Prospects Report - https://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/Publications/Files/WUP2014-Highlights.pdf

Luxembourg sustainability and food security

Based on its small geographic size one may think that Luxembourg would have some issues with food security. However, the small nation has zero levels of malnutrition and the availability of certain food products has been on the rise (FAOSTAT). Also Luxembourg is a large donator to the World Food Program (WFP), a sub branch of the UN that fights hunger. Luxembourg has signed a four year deal with eh WFP and will donate up to 30.8 million euros to help mitigate hunger related problems in impoverished areas(UN new center).




UN News Center - http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=39560#.WB_ymTsxXzI
FAOSTAT - http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#country/256

Luxembourg Sustainability and Health

Luxembourg has a high per capita expenditure on health services in comparison to its surrounding region. The amount of money spent by individuals is just under 8k US$ in comparison to the average of 2k US$ for the Who region. This is one reason why Luxembourg is a healthy nation relatively. Like other affluent nations, the main causes of death are cancers and heart disease. This is similar to that of the US and other highly developed nations. One interesting aspect is that it appears women are greenly healthier than men in this nation. For both raised blood glucose and obesity, men were higher than the WHO region. The male glucose levels was 9.9% and the obesity rate was 24.5% compared to the WHO region of 9.6% and 20.4% receptively. For women the blood glucose level is 6.7% in comparison to the WHO region of 8% and the obesity rate is 22.2% versus 23.1% for the WHO region.

Social Integration in Luxembourg

Luxembourg is a nation that has three national languages, Luxembourgish, French, and German. However, a vast majority of the population in Luxembourg are actually foreigners. Many of these people do not speak one of these three languages and instead bring in their own. This causes Luxembourg to have even more linguistic groups inside its border. The other major languages spoken are English, Italian, and Portuguese, with the Portuguese being a highly populous group. This group is so prevalent that the newspaper my article is in has an option for Portuguese along with English, French, and German. This language barrier can be hard for newcomers and for foreign immigrants because it is hard to integrate in such a diverse area. This can cause there to be tension and turn "international talent" away. By opening a new English based primary school, children can gain an education in Luxembourg and help them become better integrated into society as they age. Also it allows native Luxembourgers to have more opportunities to learn English at a young age and thus allow them to be more integrated into the global community. This can hep mitigate social tension both domestically and internationally as well.

article can be found at Luxemburger Wort - link.

Luxembourg and planetary boundaries

Luxembourg does not have a large agriculture. Agriculture only employs 1% of the population of the workforce, and makes up .3% of the GDP (Official Portal of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg) However, Luxembourg has a heavy use of fertilizers,being nine out of the top ten nations to use fertilizer nutrients on arable and permeant crop land(FAOSTAT). This excessive use of fertilizer can be detrimental to the water supply in Luxembourg. This is because the excess nutrients can disturb the natural processes in the aquatic biomes and contaminate drinking water. Since Luxembourg is such a small nation, it has few natural resources and the pollution and destruction of its few resources can be highly detrimental. 

Luxembourg compared Germany and Denmark

In class we compared and contrasted multiple aspects of our nations with those of others that were similar in some way. As for my group all three of our nations are central European nations. Additionally all three have linked histories and have influenced one another in some fashion. All three speak germanic based languages and have had a history around the Holy Roman Empire. Also all three have high income economies and are leaders in equality. To add to the list of similarities, the three nations are part of the EU. However, Luxembourg differs from the other two in some ways. Unlike Germany and Denmark, Luxembourg has three national languages. Also it was never a colonial power has even been taken over multiple times by its neighbors France and Germany. Its main source of revenue is through banking and does not have many raw materials like that of the other nations. Finally the geographic footprint and population are both really small.

Luxembourg's Characteristics of Development

Luxembourg is a small nation sandwiched between France, Germany, and Belgium. First established in the 900s, Luxembourg had been independent up until the end of the 1400s when it experienced rule or occupation by the French, Austrians, Spanish, and Germans. After both World Wars, the nation was once again fully independent. Over these years Luxembourg has also lost the vast majority of its historical territory. Luxembourg never had colonies and was not a colonial power when all its neighbors were.  As for industrialization Luxembourg was a leader due to its close proximity to England and the Netherlands (first continental European power to industrialize). There is one fortune 500 corporations in Luxembourg ArcelorMittal, a metal company ranked as the 123rd in the world for Fortune 500s.  The main sources of production are finance, steel and tourism. Steel is the historical main source of economic growth in Luxembourg, yet the finance/banking sector is now the largest. A small agricultural sector is present as well. Additionally, the nation has close economic ties to the majority Europe through the EU, most importantly the two other Benelux nations of Belgium and the Netherlands. Finally the government of Luxembourg is representative democracy with a constitutional monarch. It is the only grand duchy left in the world. The head of state is the grand duke Henri Grand Duke of Luxembourg. All of these facts means that sustainability should be achievable in Luxembourg. However, one drawback may be that despite its small size and considerable wealth Luxembourg has the fifth highest debt in the world and the highest debt per capita at over $3.5 million and also the highest debt per GDP.  This large debt for such small nation could cause some barriers to the sustainable economic growth that could occur in the future.

Demographics and Economic

For the third chapter of The Age of Sustainable Development by Sachs, Sachs discusses how and why some regions and nations of the world have become developed over others. There are some factors that just fell into place which allowed Great Britain to be the first nation to experience the Industrial Revolution. Through the ripple effect other nations across the globe began to become advanced enough to have economic advantages in a higher degree. The country I am researching is Luxembourg, which is located in the "lowlands" of western Europe. That means that Luxembourg had felt the ripple effect much earlier than other nations in the world. This is why Luxembourg is a highly advanced nation in comparison to the global standard. However, when looking at the GDP of the nation it is not as high as one would think for a developed nation. That is because the nation is extremely small, smaller than the State of Rhode Island. That means the raw materials needed to produce a large economy are also not in great supply within the boundaries of the state.The true testament to the the development of Luxembourg is its GDP per capita which is one of the highest in the world. It seems to go against some of Sachs points of how the richest nation reached their position. First off Luxembourg is landlocked, which limits its ability to interact with international trade through the sea. Second it is small and never had a colonial empire to fuel its resource needs. However, Luxembourg has always been in favor of economic unions to help mitigate their lack of resources and landlocked position, and being close to other well developed nations can allow Luxembourg easier access to advanced technologies. Below are some of Luxembourg states in the fields of economics and demographics.  Also this link will bring you to gap minder chart that shows Agriculture as the % of GDP vs the GDP per capita. It seems as percent of agriculture in GDP drops the GDP per capita rises. Since the percent of agriculture in Luxembourg has always been low, the nation has had a relatively high GDP per capita over the years.

Table 1.  Common Demographic and Economic Development Indicators: Recent Data for Luxembourg
Indicator:	Value:	Year:	Source:
GDP	57.794 billion ($US)	2015	World Bank
GDP per capita	101,449.968 ($US)	2015	World Bank
HDI	.892	2014	UNDP
Life Expectancy	82.207 years	2014	World Bank
Unemployment	6.1%	2009	World Bank
Infant Mortality (infant deaths per 1,000)	1.5	2015	World Bank
Crude Death Rate (deaths per 1,000)	6.9	2014	World Bank
Fertility Rate (total fertility rate)	1.55	2014	World Bank
Urban Population (% of total population)	90.16%	2015	World Bank
Urban Growth (urban population growth)	2.693	2015	World Bank
Total Population	569,676	2015	World Bank
CO2 emission (metric tons per capita)	20.898   (high)	2011	World Bank

Sustainability Definitions

The definition of sustainability took a far more advanced approach than I originally have thought. It needs to have the culmination of many different parts for it to be successful and even achievable.  While we can give a definition sustainable development as the "interactions of three complex systems" there is still a feeling of obscurity (Sachs 2015, 3).  I feel this obscurity comes from the fact that Sachs defines the term in three very separate ways. However, this may become more clear as I read more into the idea and function of sustainability as the center of the three systems. I do think that sustainability is an important concept needed to be taken in to more consideration. The reason being is that sustainability is is need to help keep things available to the future generations. Sustainable development is the key to allow growth for now and thought the future. I don't know why the thought of our future is not taken into more consideration tan the present, because the present will only last for a second, but the future will always exist.


Countries for project:
Canada
Germany
Luxembourg

Paul Sabin's The Bet review

I have no strong feelings for or against the book, The Bet by Paul Sabin.  I guess my stance is very neutral. I felt that it presents a lot of new information to me. The reason being that I do not know much about the history of environment science, the bet included. However I also never fully felt engaged in the reading and had a sense of disconnection.  The lesson I gained from the book is that there will always be two sides to the story, and sometimes even though you believe you are right, someone will always try to disprove you. This seemed to be the case for Ehrlich who very much thought he was right warning humanity against our own self-destruction. Yet he did not understand that people could have opinions that are the complete opposite of him, and those opposite opinions may also prove true.  A reflection I take on myself after reading this book is that I do not fully believe in either Simon’s or Ehrlich’s way of thinking.  I believe that I am somewhere in the middle. My stance is similar to Ehrlich’s because I do believe we need to change our habits to preserve nature to keep our species alive. However, unlike Ehrlich I do not believe in a all out doomsday scenario. Rather I agree with Simon in that population is a necessary component to our society and the growth of the human species both in numbers and advancement. I have noticed that in the entity of the book Sabin does not fully address how radical some of the thoughts during this time had become.  In a way it is beneficial because it allows us to form our own opinion on each reference. Yet, I feel that it also leads to a disconnection from the author.

Marshall Islands - The world's next Atlantis

Everyone dreams of having waterfront property on the ocean. However the people of the Marshall Islands are probably the exception. With the constant rise of sea level due to climate change, low lying areas such as the Marshall Islands along with other Pacific islands and atolls are in jeopardy of being submerged. This constant threat of being washed out has led to most Marshallese to flee to America due to a compact of free association which allows those from the Marshall Islands to freely move to the US. This mass migration off of the islands has led to about 1/3 of all Marshallese to be found outside of their own nation and instead inside the USA. Most of this population can be found in Springdale, Arkansas.  With the mass migration comes the concern that the culture of the Marshall Islands will disappear as well. The integration of the Marshallese into America has led to the slow disappearance of the culture in favor of American. There are efforts to help preserve the culture, but the culture is very much tied to the land rather than the people, so no islands means no culture. This is all stemmed from climate change, which is advanced by our habits. If we do not change our activities soon we could witness the extinction of not just the species on the islands but of the culture, customs, and way of life o the Marshallese. We are not above this new threat of extinction, but rather very much involved both in the formation and the effects.  We must change our actions now if we wish to preserve the Marshall Islands and prevent the civilization for disappearing beneath the waves.

Click here for the full article

Arctic Ocean Highway?

Its not hard to understand that with Earth's increasing temperatures we see less and less ice each year. It has been in the news for years that slowly the world's glaciers and north pole sea ice are disappearing. But with the disappearance of the ice, the Arctic Ocean is becoming more accessible. Predictions are being made as to how accessible the ocean will be, with some reports stating that even ships without ice protection can be a regular sight on the arctic shipping lanes. As of now traveling through the arctic involves navigating close to either Canada or Siberia. However, with more ice disappearing each year the ocean is becoming more traversable to ships. These new routes directly across the Pole can be open as soon as the middle of the century or at the latest by the end. This would allow for a faster connection between Europe and the Far East, but not have a significant effect of Northwest Ports such as New York. The author of this BBC article seems to lean in favor of this occurrence. One reason being that the author fails to mention the disastrous effects that loss of sea ice can cause. I think that the traversing of the arctic will bring more economic opportunity to places that have been barren and economically stricken in comparison to what I am used to, but I have to also look at the other affects. I would much prefer to have the ice remain frozen than to have ships sail through what once was impenetrable.  My reasoning behind this is that with ever decreasing ice, species that depend on the ice and ice flows, such as Polar bears and Walruses, are beginning to vanish.  To me the continual existence of such unique and captivating creatures is much more valuable than shaving a few days off of shipping. Is the existence of Polar bears, the highly charismatic white bears, worth the difference of a few days in shipping time? In my eyes stricter actions must be taken to save what little ice in hopes of preserving a very beautiful, surreal, and delicate ecosystem.

Link to the BBC Article

Malthusian perspectives: has Earth reached her capacity?

Thomas Malthus was a politcal economist at the turn of the 18th century. He had declared in 1798 that the "power of population exceeded the power in the earth to produce substance for man." (Sabin p6). In more basic terms Malthus was stating that the human population will grow so fast that eventually humans will run out of available resources to sustain our civilization, which would lead to terrible suffering. His declaration obviously has not yet come true, but how far off is he? A more modern phase of Malthus' way of thinking has stirred up and is now called neo-Malthusian. One champion of this way of thinking is Paul Erlich, who eleven that "Humans needed to accept their proper role in a larger balance of nature on earth." (Sabin p8). While some such as Julian Simon may disagree completely with this belief, I do think there is some rational behind it. I partially agree with Simon in that technology will keep advancing to a level where resources will forever stay infinite. However, I also know that the Earth is a finite place and it only makes sense that eventually we, meaning humans, will reach the extent of the what Earth can provide us. Just like any other creature on Earth, I believe humans have a carrying capacity and will one day crash. Yet, with ever advancing technology we can keep pushing this capacity higher. So the question for me is not if but when.

Passaic River Clean Up

After years of being an industrial dumping ground, the Passaic River may finally see some better days. The river, which meanders though much of Northeast New Jersey, is now  a SuperFund site. Over $1 billion will be given to help clean up the lower 8 miles of the river that border and transverse the city of Newark. Debates have already begun on the practicality of the plan with some saying it is not enough and others thankful that some form of action is finally being taken.  A full article can be found here. For additional pictures you can click here.