October 1, 2009 - Posted by Lisa Curtis - 0 Comments
At Whitman we enjoy talking about “breaking out the of the bubble.” As the semester wears on, many of us sign up for OP trips or go on road trips to Seattle, attempting to satisfy this nagging feeling that there is more to life than lies between Maxey Hall and Reid.
As a senior, it has suddenly dawned on me that soon I won’t just be taking a break from the duck-filled sidewalks of Whitman College, but this bubble we keep talking about will collapse around me. As its imminent demise becomes apparent, I’ve started to wonder if there isn’t something uniquely important about living in a bubble community.
There is something unique about being able to walk down the street and see three of your best friends in a span of three minutes. It is something beneficial, not only to your personal happiness, but, I would argue, also good for the world.
If you think about it, bubble life has a lot in common with an eco-friendly lifestyle. Living in a bubble implies life in a close-knit community, with an emphasis on theclose, in terms of both distance and friendliness.
Walking, biking, carpooling, eating local food, wearing local crafts: these are all characteristics of a bubble community, as well as activities that you’re likely to find on a flyer from Campus Climate Challenge.
Crazy to equate happiness and sustainability in one bubbly box? Maybe, but I’m surely not alone in my delusions.
Many people consider college to be “the best four years of their life.” While this may not be true for everyone, environmental economist Bill McKibben has often written about college communities as a model for a sustainable and happy lifestyle.
In his essay “Global Warming Can’t Buy Happiness,” McKibben cites studies showing the steady decline in happiness during times of sterling economic growth as a sign that big houses in the suburbs, larger televisions and more technological gadgets have made us less happy. As McKibben puts it, “Would you rather have a new television or a new friend?” Evidently, valuing people over things could go a long way in cutting carbon emissions and making everyone a lot happier.
In the 1970s, the idea that neighborhoods should be connected and walkable spawned a whole new type of urban planning called smart growth. The focus on climate change over the past couple of years has given a lot of momentum to smart growth type development.
In 2005, Seattle mayor Greg Nickels launched the U.S. Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement to have cities commit to reducing carbon emissions. One of the ways that 973 mayors have pledged to do this is by adopting Smart growth principals.
These principals include many traits inherent to college lifestyles, especially small colleges in the middle of Walla Walla, Wash. Whitman is very walkable and bike-able, has a large amount of natural beauty and is a “distinctive, attractive community.”
That last trait immediately brings to mind the vast number of Whitties who can go multiple days without showering and still look damn sexy in their flannel.
I’ve come to the realization that not only will I miss watching those naturally beautiful bohemians roam Ankeny, but that I’m really going to miss this bubble!
October 1, 2009 - Posted by Lisa Curtis - 0 Comments
The forced resignation of Green Jobs czar Van Jones over Labor Day weekend was orchestrated by an angry talk show host who twisted half-truths to turn one of the environmental movement’s greatest heroes into a radical communist.
The smear campaign began on July 23 when Glenn Beck, conservative talk radio host and founder of one of the most successful programs on Fox News, called Jones a “self-avowed communist.”
Beck based his attack on a 2005 profile of Jones in the East Bay Express where Jones spoke of his feelings after being arrested while protesting the acquittal of police officers accused of beating Rodney King. Jones said his experience in jail turned him into a communist.
What Beck neglects to mention is that later on in the article, it is explained that Jones decided to abandon his anti-capitalist ways in favor of a “fundamental shift in tactics.” In fact, Jones’s entire book, The Green Collar Economy, stresses the importance of jobs, jobs that work within the system of our capitalistic society.
As Jones writes on page 86, “the reality is that we are entering an era during which our very survival will demand invention and innovation on a scale never before seen in the history of human civilization. Only the business community has the requisite skills, experience, and capital to meet that need.”
Beck also ignores the address Jones gave before the Center for American Progress on Nov. 19 when he said, “Everything that is good for the environment, everything that’s needed to beat global warming, is a job. And the challenge is, how do we get the government to be a smart, and limited, catalyst in getting the private sector to take on this challenge?”
Perhaps Beck fails to understand the meaning of the label communist, someone who espouses an egalitarian, stateless society based on common ownership. If “communist” means someone who envisions an inclusive green economy where jobs in the environmental sector serve as pathways out of poverty to Americans who need it the most, then well, Van Jones is a communist.
The type of environmentalism Jones espouses is far from radical. As a special adviser to the White House Council on Environmental Quality, Jones spent his time writing grants, appealing to city councils and working with legislators on green-jobs bills.
So why then did Beck pick on Jones, a mid-level adviser, when there are plenty of higher-level White House staffers he could target?
Perhaps the answer might lie in a comment Beck made on July 28 during a Fox and Friends program when he called President Obama a “racist” with a “deep-seated hatred for white people.”
Immediately after that comment, ColorOfChange.org, a group Jones helped launch in 2005, led a successful advertising boycott that led to Wal-Mart, Mercedes-Benz and HSBC leaving Beck’s show.
This led the group DefendGlenn.com to circulate a speech in which Jones calls Senate Republicans assholes for the way they had used their majority to push legislation. Rather than using “asshole” as a negative terminology, Jones said it in admiration, making the point that Democrats need to be tougher to get legislation passed.
Beck continued his revenge against Jones, mentioning him frequently as an anarchist, communist and “radical who wants to fundamentally change America.”
The final blow came on Sept. 3 when the conservative blog Gateway Pundit reported that Jones signed a 2004 petition that called for investigation into whether the Bush administration had purposefully allowed the 9/11 attacks to occur. Jones responded that he had not read the petition carefully before signing it and that it does not in any way reflect his views.
However, mainstream media began picking up the story and Republicans began calling for hearings to probe Jones. This prompted Jones to resign in order not to “distract from the administration’s agenda.”
The success of the attack prompted Beck to tweet his viewers to find dirt on other special advisers. It is clear that truth no longer plays a role in the vicious attacks employed by the conservative movement to derail this administration’s work towards change.
September 14, 2009 - Posted by Lisa Curtis - 1 Comment
Sitting in a conference room in South Korea with eight hundred youth from 110 different countries drafting a statement to our leaders on climate change was both exhilarating and perhaps, entirely futile.
Exhilarating in the sense that we were a small part of something bigger, shaping a declaration that would be delivered to ministers and presidents before the upcoming conference on climate change in Copenhagen. We were part of a growing movement of youth people tired of our leaders playing fast and loose with our planet and our future.
And yet, my excitement was dampened by the nagging recollection that the United Nations Environment Programme’s Tunza International Youth Conference was not the first international environmental gathering and it is unlikely to be the last.
The Rio Summit of 1992 was the first prominent international environmental conference and is where many of the current annual high-level meetings, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, Commission on Sustainable Development and the Climate Change Convention, got their start.
Recently, a lot of these conferences have been encouraging youth participation, recognizing our generation as the “voice of the future.” I’ve personally attended a few of these meetings and although I’ve enjoyed all of them I often wonder if they are worth it. The cost—whether you measure it in terms of carbon, time or money—is always high and the results often intangible.
At the most recent UN Commission on Sustainable Development over a hundred youth attended to push our governments to put the sustainability back into “sustainable” development. The entire youth caucus spent long hours drafting statements and meeting with our respective country’s delegation leaders. The result: a non-binding treaty that looked eerily similar to previous treaties with the usual agriculture subsidies, tariffs and empty promises to help Africa.
But what of the low-carbon alternative? I could have spent my summer in Walla Walla living in a tent entirely off the grid, planting trees and praying that those darn politicians get something done in Copenhagen.
Yet a recent study by a Swedish economist showed that even if everyone in Sweden adopted the most extreme behavioral changes in favor of green consumption this would only bring a maximum of a 30 percent reduction in carbon emissions. If you apply this study to the Western world in its entirety, it highlights the need for policy change.
At the same time, these conferences will only be effective if there is grassroots momentum for them. As easy as it is to complain of the money, special interests and corruption that play a role in our political system, that is no excuse not to get involved.
During the recent vote in the House on the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), many Congressional members reported receiving hundreds of calls urging them to vote against the bill and only a handful of calls supporting ACES. For the first comprehensive piece of legislation on climate change to receive so little support in the age of eco-everything is absurd.
I’ve often heard people my age, especially at Whitman, complain that our leaders—especially Congress—need to “wake-up.” I don’t believe that they ever will. In a very real sense, the representative nature of much of the world’s governments means that most world leaders are reactionary, not revolutionary. Even President Obama, who I believe is one of the most activist politicians to have ever lived, ran a campaign that was very much a reaction against eight years of the Bush administration.
If we want our leaders to legislate a world where sustainability is put ahead of systematic extraction, we need to show them that it’s possible. It’s not so much that we need the world to “wake up”, it’s that we need to show them a new dream.
That dream starts with our own lives but doesn’t end there. We need to live green while making sure that we make our voices heard. This year is one of the most exciting times in history to be an environmentalist. The climate bill will soon be put to a vote in the Senate and then the entire world will gather in Copenhagen to come up with a post-Kyoto treaty. This is our moment—let’s seize it.
I wrote this column for the Whitman Pioneer so it can be seen there as well
August 25, 2009 - Posted by Lisa Curtis - 2 Comments
Halfway up the mountain on the path to Inwangsan, Seoul’s most famous shamanist shrine, I realized I was definitely not in America anymore. Ahead of me was one of the most intricately painted roofs I had ever seen, sheltering a candle and incense-filled space of devotion to a higher power I fail to comprehend. Below me was Seoul, an overwhelming expanse of buildings and apartments interspersed with palaces and the occasional temple weaving through the traffic jam.
We hiked past a Buddhist shrine and rocks eroded into eerily human-like formations. At the top of the mountain was a fortress wall—testament to a long history of conquest. On the way down we found ourselves in the midst of an outdoor exercise station, complete with three tiny Korean woman listening to loud music while they hula-hooped and used the machines. None of them spoke any English but they gestured for us to join them. After trying this crazy spinning machine and almost falling off, I decided to stick to hula hooping. I made Richard do it too, it made for some great pictures!
Next we headed to the Gyeongbokgung Palace of the Joseon Dynasty. We wandered around the buildings for a while, taking pictures and trying to imagine what all of the carefully designed buildings were used for. Perhaps the funniest part of our venture was when we were taking pictures inside one of the prayer rooms, sitting cross-legged, pretending to pray and a Korean girl came up to us with a camera. At first I thought she wanted us to take a picture of her until she gestured to me and Richard to sit next to her and handed the camera to her friend. After we took a picture with her, two of her friends came up and gestured for us to take a picture with them. Richard and I felt like celebrities!
After our morning of hiking and posing, we headed to a restaurant in Insadong, an area famous for its traditional crafts and restaurants. The food we got ended up being a little more traditional than we expected…After spending a tedious few minutes attempting to explain to the non-English-speaking waiter that I preferred vegetarian food, I gave up and just pointed to a few dishes that looked vegetarian. I soon found out that I had pointed to hanjeongsik, a traditional banquet that includes twelve side dishes and used to only be available to the King. Few of the dishes were recognizable so I just decided to toss my vegetarian tendencies to the wind and try everything. As we later found out, everything included dog…All I could think of for the rest of the day was my own golden fluff-ball Bozzie…Sorry Bozzie, you taste kind of like ham.
August 25, 2009 - Posted by Lisa Curtis - 0 Comments
You know that feeling where you look around you and wonder how you got there? My entire summer has been that moment, crystallized and then scattered in a glittering series of new experiences. A few days ago I was inside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, saying goodbye to amazing people I never would have thought I’d have the chance to meet.
Now I’m on a bus in South Korea headed to a conference of environmental activists from all over the world (literally—the guy to my right is Chinese, the girl in front of me Estonian and the guy behind me is Ghanaian).
I arrived in Seoul, the capital of South Korea the day after I finished my internship at the White House. I was invited to attend the United Nation Environment Programme’s (UNEP) International Youth Tunza Conference after working with UNEP this past year to help start a youth network, Kick the Carbon Habit. The youth network didn’t go quite as well as I wanted it too but UNEP offered to fly me to South Korea to try to start it up again this year. The other youth representative from North America, Richard, and I decided to arrive a couple days early and explore. We had no idea where we were going to stay or what we were going to do. I’d bought a Lonely Planet book on South Korea earlier that summer but the 9am-9pm hours at my internship meant that I had yet to even open the cover.
Fourteen hours later I’d read that book cover to cover and had tried to sleep in possibly every uncomfortable position possible. We walked dazedly off the plane, trying to figure out what day it was as we went through customs. We had planned on taking the subway to one of the “budget” hotels that the book recommended but one look at the crisscrossing different colored lines and long Korean signs had us walking over to the taxi line.
I tried to practice my newly learned Korean on the cab driver who gave me a blank stare and then smiled forgivingly. Apparently “Ireumeul yeojjwobwado doelkkayo” is pronounced a little differently than I thought…
We arrived at our hotel around dinner time. After attempting to wash away the jet lag we walked outside of our hotel and into what can be only described as New York on crack. I’d read in the book that 10 million people live in Seoul. I’m pretty sure that night we saw at least half of them, milling in between vendors of peanut-flavored squid and scantily clad women standing on stools with megaphones shouting at passerbys to try a FREE face mask. We’d chosen to stay in Myeongdong, an area that is one of the largest shopping districts in a city that only be described as hypercapitalist. Even after leaving Myeongdong we still found ourselves surrounded by an absurd amount of things to eat, drink or wear. As my guidebook somewhat haughtily explained “Seoul is the world’s largest company town in the sense that it has 10 million employees dedicated to the pursuit of capital accumulation and conspicuous consumption.”
Dazed perhaps even more from glittering sea of stuff that surrounded us than we were from sleep deprivation, we headed back to the hotel.
June 30, 2009 - Posted by Lisa Curtis - 0 Comments
Just wanted to put out a quick blog post to say that I’m actually not allowed to keep a blog this summer, a couple of people have been asking me to update, I really wish I could! If you want to know what’s going on in my life, send me an email at LisaCurtis777@gmail.com and I’ll tell you all about D.C. 
May 13, 2009 - Posted by Lisa Curtis - 1 Comment
Obama is not the only political figure who can use “Yes We Can.” I’m currently sitting in the UN General Assembly at the Children and Youth Chair, listening to the Chair of the Commission on Sustainable Development Gerda Verburg from the Netherlands, speak about how the international community CAN overcome the combined crises of food insecurity, climate change, water scarcity and the financial recession. Despite the overwhelming nature of these challenges, Verburg seems confident that agriculture is the solution.
She points out that almost all of the billion people that live on less than $1 a day depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. Increasing investments in agriculture, improving market access, more equitable trade policies and micro-credit could create a new sustainable Green Revolution that would ensure that this food crisis is the last one.
In terms of climate change, she points out that soils can store carbon and sustainable biofuels such as palm and soil can help with mitigation while new crop varieties can help with adaptation. After attending numerous roundtables on biofuels, I have to agree that corn-based ethanol in the U.S. and palm oil plantations in Indonesia-which have led to the destruction of the peat bogs and made Indonesia the world’s 3rd largest ghg emitter- have really given biofuels a bad name. I think that the Standard on Sustainable Biofuels that Germany is pushing could really help with this.
Since agriculture consumes roughly 90% of the world’s water, water scarcity cannot be addressed without more efficient water management in agriculture. An especially controversial issue at CSD-17 has been GMOs. At our meeting yesterday with John Matuszak, the head of the U.S. State Department Delegation, he was asked about the U.S. support for GMOs. He replied that the U.S. views GMOs as a tool and one that is especially useful for combating water scarcity and desertification. Although I know there are numerous problems with GMOs, I’m inclined to agree that we shouldn’t entirely write them off.
Solving all of these crises will require a lot of money from industrialized countries. As the Minister of the Environment from Argentina just said ”Climate change is an environmental debt that industrialized countries must pay for.” The Chair made very clear that the current financial crisis is not an excuse for industrialized countries to pull back from the promises they have made. As I see it, solving the food/climate/water crisis is the only way that the world is ever going to get out the financial crisis. Let’s just hope some of the high-level ministers here feel the same way and that, unlike last year, CSD-17 is able to produce a final document on sustainable development that the world can agree on.
May 12, 2009 - Posted by Lisa Curtis - 0 Comments
This was written by Imran Battla and I during the UN Commission on Sustainable Development in New York for the SustainUS Blog
We just finished meeting with the head of the CSD-17 State Department Delegation John Matuszak as part of the U.S. Government Listening Session. One of the questions we asked him pertained to the role of U.S. youth in the State Department Delegation. We know that there had previously been a youth on the delegation but due to controversy that position had been eliminated. John told us they would “review that recommendation.”
While the response was slightly disappointing, it provoked a sense of reflection on what we feel our role to be. We’ve been thinking about the difference between a participant and an observer during these negotiations. To some extent we are participants; as one of the major groups and part of the Youth Caucus, we’ve been working with youth around the world to draft our principles and suggestions to the negotiating text. And yet, sometimes it seems as though we are participating in a process that is not directly translatable to the issues that we care about.
Sit in the room of one of the major group sessions and you’ll understand what we mean. The time and labor that goes into such nuances as the difference between “recognizing that this calls for” and “calling for” seem to have little to do with the roughly 2 billion people that still live on less than a dollar a day. Can the well fed members of the Roundtable on the Food Crisis truly comprehend the mass starvation occurring as they sit in the nicely sunlight UN café?
Diplomats are limited by the interests of their countries and their own bureaucratese. Youth are limited by our understanding of the process and ability to influence it. Many of the youth in CSD-17 are action-oriented but we are not policy wonks. These factors create a myopic vision that fails to see the interconnectedness of issues.
What happens in the world affects all of us on many different levels. Perhaps when we combine these different perspectives of bureaucratic expertise and passion for action we are able to get things done. In our meeting with the Chair of CSD-17, she told us to never underestimate our collective youth power.
Diplomats, civil society and lobbying groups (such as youth) spend so much time engaging in a process that does little to address the needs and concerns of those who are most vulnerable in our society. CSD-17 produces what is referred to as “soft law” meaning that governments don’t have to implement any of the things they write unless people like us hold them accountable for it. Let’s make sure this process is not in vain.
These policies aren’t useful unless we find a way to implement them. Read the text of CSD-17. If there is something you care about, write a letter. Remind your representatives what they agreed to do.
May 8, 2009 - Posted by Lisa Curtis - 0 Comments
May 7th
Seattle Airport
This morning I woke up at 5:30 am to get on a plane to New York. I sat next to one of those inquisitive elderly types that love to ask young people questions about their life. Somehow I found myself relating my entire life story. At the end of the flight the man told me “I’d tell you good luck but it sounds like you don’t need it, you already have it all figured out.”
Last summer, before I left for Kenya, I remember trying to come up with a catchy tagline for my newly started blog. Andrew suggested “making the world and greener and hyphier place.” I kind of liked that one but spent so much time attempting to explain to my mom what “hyphy” meant that I decided to change it. So I decided on “trying to figure it all out.”
Initially, I think I was trying to figure out if all the myths about Africa were true. I’d just taken a Politics in Africa class and heard so much about the negative stereotypes of absolute poverty, violence and corruption that simply failed to capture the joy and vast differences between the 54 countries of the African continent. I also wanted to know if there was anything I could do to help or if more Western intrusion was simply making things worse. Three months and a successful biodigester project later, I found that I could be helpful. At the same time, I began to question the success of the international system in carbon credits under the Clean Development Mechanism in helping to fund renewable energy projects in developing countries when the amount of bureaucracy to even get our project considered was prohibitive.
After leaving Kenya I went to Washington D.C. There I studied International Environment & Development, interned at the United Nations Environment Programme and worked at a restaurant called Nando’s. I’ve never had a class I loved so much, I felt like everything we were learning about was exactly the type of information I wanted to know. My internship at the UN introduced me to the most amazing people, both in D.C. and in Chicago where the youth network I helped launch held our first conference. As one of the only white girls at Nando’s and definitely one of the only ones that wasn’t struggling to pay the bills, I saw a whole new side of our capitol I never would have experienced. I started to question the values of a country where the people distributing government money (politicians) are able to ignore the astonishing high poverty rates in their own backyard.
When I first arrived back at Whitman, my first reaction was “whoa, I have so much free time.” That’s when I realized that my study “abroad” experience where I often had myself booked from 9am until 11pm when I got of work at Nando’s was a little insane. Despite recognizing that insanity, I quickly went about making sure my life at Whitman was just as busy. I’d already signed myself up for five-hour commitments to Northwest SEED, UNEP’s Kick the Carbon Habit Education Campaign and the World Bank’s Youth, Peace and Development network. These positions also meant that I went to a fair number of conferences, attending the Clinton Global Initiative in Austin, Texas and Powershift in Washington D.C. While this was fun, it sort of made me question if all of those conference calls and conferences were actually helping anything besides my own resume.
I got back involved in club life at Whitman. I helped plan a curriculum on climate change called “Cool the Schools” that sent 30 Whitman students into classrooms for three weeks. On Earth Day, I led 20 students from all three colleges in Walla Walla on a project to distribute energy efficient light bulbs in lower income neighborhoods. Although I loved both of those projects, I wanted to find a way to make them into something sustainable.
I’d worked in those neighborhoods previously doing community-based research for the State of the State for Washington Latinos class. I’m currently in the continuation of that class which is public communication about my research. This class has sent me all over Eastern Washington and to Olympia to speak with people about the importance of neighborhood organizing for engaging Latinos. Last night was our final presentation in Yakima. For the first time, I presented without my notes. It was thrilling to be in front of people without any safety net. And yet sometimes I wonder if my research is really going to change anything.
I spent an inordinate amount of time this semester filling out applications. I applied for the Truman Scholarship, made it to the final interview round in San Francisco and didn’t get it but made some new friends. I got the Udall Scholarship for environmental leaders and am excited to attend the Scholarship Orientation later this summer. I also got accepted to be part of the SustainUS youth delegation to the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, hence the reason I am on my way to New York. I can’t wait to see what an international meeting actually looks like. On most of the applications I’ve written that I want to be a diplomat when I “grow up.” I have no idea what that actually means, perhaps this conference will help me figure that out.
Perhaps most exciting was when I got a call from the White House saying that I’d been accepted into their summer internship program. I’m guessing that interning at the Office of Political Affairs is going to give me an entirely new perspective on the way politics actually works.
After sitting the airport for a couple of hours thinking about everything I’ve done since I first started this blog, I realized that I really haven’t figured anything out and probably never will. Everything I’ve done has just given me more questions that I can’t answer. If I ever see that gentleman again I’ll correct him, telling him “No, I haven’t figured it all out, but actually, I sort of like it that way.”
April 15, 2009 - Posted by Lisa Curtis - 0 Comments
Last Tuesday, Whitman’s Campus Climate Challenge met with Walla Walla’s very Republican Congresswoman Cathy McMorris to discuss climate change. We had met with her before in Washington D.C. where she had made it clear that she knows very little about the issue. She subtly avoided admitting that climate change is happening and when I asked her if she had read any of the reports by the IPCC (the top 2,500 scientists from around the world who all agree that climate change exists), she asked me who the IPCC is. In our meeting last week she asked us what the Markey-Waxman bill (the main piece of legislation on climate change) was. Fortunately, this time we had come prepared and we presented her with both the full text of the bill and the IPCC executive summaries.
It astounded me how little an elected representative knew about one of the greatest issues facing our world and one of the top priorities of this administration. Her concerns about climate change seemed to be three-fold.
1. It doesn’t matter what the U.S. does because India and China are going to keep emitting C02
I tried to explain to her that industrialized countries are responsible for 3/4 of human-caused emissions and 2/3 of current emissions. Although India and China are catching up, they are not the real problem. Both India and China have said that they want to have more renewable energy but their first priority has to be on helping moving people out of poverty. America needs to take a lead on this issue before we can expect other countries to follow.
2. Cap and Trade will allow the government to declare winners and losers
While cap and trade will put a price on carbon that may hurt some heavily polluting industries, many businesses will benefit. In fact, many have already been calling for a cap and trade system. A voluntary system has gotten us slight improvements in energy efficiency but has yet to get us any major reduction.
I am hoping to refine the above points and write Congresswoman McMorris a letter answering some of the questions she raised during our meetings.
But what worries even me more that Walla Walla’s Congresswoman lack of knowledge on this issue is that her views seem to be widespread in Congress. Obama’s Science Chief John Holdren just announced that the administration might agree to auction only a portion of the emissions allowances granted at first under a cap-and-trade system to limit greenhouse gas pollution. This is essentially giving away permits and setting a bad precedent for the future of the cap and trade system.
