Good Food and Mercury

Remember the hair tests for mercury from last year?  Even if not, the Sierra Club's following up their mercury work with a food drive to highlight the connection between mercury pollution in coal power plant emissions and our health.

Mercury emissions from coal power plants are a major reason for why we're advised not to eat certain fish caught in the Great Lakes region (mercury fish advisory in Michigan: http://1.usa.gov/uprvhR, the U.S. http://1.usa.gov/t2XC1Z, giant document on sources for mercury exposure http://1.usa.gov/rRYX8D), and viable cost competitive renewable alternatives to coal exist (http://bit.ly/w5bzoA, also one of our fellow students who since graduated gave a very thorough capstone project presentation on wind energy concluding the same last year).

The food drive is also timely--the early/mid months of December aren't always covered by charities as thoroughly as the end-of-month holiday season is.  Food goes to Cabrini Clinic of Holy Trinity, a free health clinic, which helps subsidize families in need--many of whom are homeless.

Cheers to giving, thanks!

#+#+#

Sierra Club presents

Good Food Food Drive for 

St. Frances Cabrini Clinic of the Most Holy Trinity Church

December 05-09, 2011

Drop off non-perishable goods: dry grains, cereals, canned goods

 Right now, President Obama is considering safeguards for mercury from coal-fired power plants.  Mercury is a dangerous neurotoxin that causes developmental disorders, and learning disabilities. With 100% of Michigan lakes and rivers under mercury advisory– we’re saying enough is enough.

We’d like to show our support for strong mercury standards, healthy kids, our Great Lakes, and Michigan fisheries with the

Good Food Food Drive.

DONATE NOW!

Drop off locations and times:

Cabrini Clinic, 1234 Porter, Detroit

Monday and Friday, 11-4pm

or

Wayne State University, Student Center Building, Prayer Room

Monday through Thursday, 9am-9pm

Look for the Good Food Food Box

or

Bring canned goods to Detroit Sierra Club’s

Season’s Greetings Open House

Thursday, December 8, 5-8pm

2727 2nd Ave, Suite 320 Detroit MI

On climate change: A handful of resources and reflections

I've been relatively quiet about climate change activism for the past two years because there are so many moving parts involved with the issue, and it took time for me to get my head around what was going on.  Most everyone involved has good intentions, there are many perspectives, and understanding many of the solutions--not to mention knowing which ones are being considered or included can be a daunting task.  Furthermore, there are many groups working toward a similar goal, but I couldn't understand why they didn't work together.  I've finally seen, heard, and learned enough to offer some organizations seeking to coordinate efforts that you can take action with, and handful of quality resources for you to investigate as a supplement to the previous letter.

There are four sections below:

1. Courses+some comments on political efficacy
2. Cap and Trade in climate legislation and how it could improve
3. My take on Repower America
4. Climate change as an issue of sustainability

These draw from my experiences as a student, an attendee at many a conference, and various other ventures in the arena of climate change.  Clearly, it's my perspective, but I hope it serves to be a useful starting guide to you if you're about to dive in.

Climate Change: Our democracy, everyone's planet, a call to action

Green wolverines, wolves, and friends of the SEA:

Harry Reid recently announced that the climate bill will not be addressed this year.  The ethical implications and research beckons us to promptly take prudent action on climate change.

Embracing the issue as civil individuals and acting as a society is among humanity's greatest of challenges.  Respected peers at the Sierra Club and Repower America are looking for volunteers, and you can help unite the voices of Michigan's communities to bring and keep a good bill back onto the national agenda until it has become law.

As informed citizens, we can charge our representatives to hold the national legislation accountable to its people and the well being of our global community--biotic and abiotic.

Furthermore, we can also demand that the legislation includes appropriate solutions to meet the challenges of climate change.  We are the people, this is our democracy.  We are all members of the UM community, we are the leaders and the best.

Sincerely,
Ian D. Tran
-
President, The Student Environmental Association at The University of Michigan-Dearborn
p.s.
I'd feel irresponsible if I urged you to action without providing some credible resources and thoughtful analysis, here's a link to a sustainability project called "The Story of Stuff" by a thoughtful and articulate activist named Annie Leonard.  She nicely communicates the cap and trade system and things we can do to strengthen the bill in a video, and the transcript has citations for her sources: http://storyofstuff.com/capandtrade/

You can view some of my thoughts and supplements here on the blog concerning some of the organizations listed above, metrics for political efficacy, and recommendations for useful classes offered at UM-Dearborn.

The Volunteer Schedule

Logo Progress!

These are preliminary sketches for SEA's new logo and t-shirt.  It's a collaborative adventure between Alanna Punch and I.

Alanna's sketches are excellent, the ginkgo leaf one is a little reminiscent of a sand dollar too (which might be appropriate for an organization whose acronym spells out SEA)!  The bottom one is where we started agreeing.

 

 

Mine are sketchy at best, drawn on 100% recycled paper, with a bic pen I found in the computer lab.  It includes supplemental text to suggest that the viewer see what I meant rather than what I did...

At the bottom is our banner logo, unabashedly Michigan wetland and bird biased.  I've yet to decide the first bird, it'll probably be a heron of sorts because of the neck, but I haven't ruled out old "Galunk! Galunk!"--better known as the American Bittern (which is often seen with beak skyward).  Anyhow, I hope I can get a mix of these designs on a t-shirt soon in combination with the other logos from SEA's history.

Each leaf is to be shaded/filled a little differently (for monocolor printing purposes), with a dark leaf on the bottom left, a veined leaf on the bottom right, and a light leaf on top.  We've settled on (but haven't yet drawn) using three leaves with a Celtic knot (as roots like in Mary Fastiggi's [edit: Sharianne Ziola's] Celtic Knot Tree) inside of a ring to include Roots and Shoots.  Alanna describes it poetically:

"Ordinary roots would be needlessly complex and distracting, but what about symbolically representing the inter-connectivity of the triple bottom line with interwoven loops, like those of Celtic calligraphy? I'll draw up a sketch, but we could scrap the ring and split the leaf-stems, in a way having the stems themselves form the ring and loops for the symbols you speak."

She also assured me that "Describing it makes it sound complicated, but the design itself is quite simple."  I believe it.  Later on, we'll add letters on top of the leaves to spell out SEA.


What are your thoughts?

The SEA presents: A Global Citizenship Initiative in birief

The Global Citizenship Campus Initiative

This is a half baked description (definition is ongoing) of the Initiative:

In a nutshell, it's like most compelling educational events on campus. Participants are really encouraged to participate in engaging real-world issues (like by watching, critiquing/roasting a movie in the company of some professors). But just when we've seen what the issue at hand is and why it's important, the SEA plans to follow up with answers to what we can do.

In other words, it's all about informing, educating, and empowering people to take sustainable action. I should mention that fun will likely be involved too as soon as cleverness graces our scheme.