Author Archives: makaylee

Winona LaDuke

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This afternoon in Rita 101 I was able to attend the talk given by Winona LaDuke. I just want to first state my gratitude to the faculty who made it possible to bring her to the College of Charleston and getting the privilege to listen to her talk. I personally enjoyed my time and she is a true inspiration. She presented “The Sitting Bull Plan” which in summary is to become more efficient in our economy. Help fix the infrastructure that needs to be repaired now (Flint Michigan), instead of causing new problems with increasing more unwanted pipelines. She brought up how these corporations are putting these pipelines in low-income communities and not in white ones. This relates to the environmental injustice that has been discussing in our class with the Warren County PCB landfill. Another cool thing I learned is about the plant, hemp! No not THC but the plant itself can be used to make more sustainable clothing articles. Limiting the chemicals that we put into our waters. Not only with clothing articles, but hemp and be made into biodegradable plastic. We have these obtainable solutions they just are not being put to use. Lastly, I want to leave off with this one last thing Winona LaDuke said throughout her presentation and that is “no time is like the present”.

This is a picture shown durning the talk f the biodegradable hemp water bottle

and this is a photo of her I took durning her talk.

Help Stop Folly Beach Land Swap and Risky Beachfront Development!

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Citations:

Primary article used:

SCELP Cases: Folly Super Beach Front Lots – Avulsion. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://scelp.org/projects/view/130

Johnson, C. (2019, March 28). Folly Beach land swap raises concerns about city’s environmental lawsuit. Retrieved from https://www.postandcourier.com/news/folly-beach-land-swap-raises-concerns-about-city-s-environmental/article_26bb6234-50a1-11e9-a5da-db117ac95188.html

Additional article used:

https://www.change.org/p/stop-folly-beach-land-swap-and-risky-beachfront-development

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The questions: who/what/when/where/why/how

The South Carolina Environmental Law Project filed a lawsuit on February 12th against private landowners. They want to challenge the landowners who took artificial renourished  land and claimed it as there own. It is a big debate between whether are not this should be allowed, because the “South Carolina’s Public Trust Doctrine, the state owns all land below the average high-water mark and keeps this land in trust for the benefit of all the citizens of the state. When private property borders a shoreline, the boundary between public trust property and private property is not fixed.” (https://scelp.org/projects/view/130). Recent news reported that the City of Folly Beach wants to do a land swap with the private landowners.  This raised concerns to other residents on Folly Beach because they do not want another unsustainable home on Folly Beach.

 

Impact/Relevance to our class

If the land swap does not occur there is a likely hood that there could be another “super beach front” lot on Folly. These houses are built because people want to make a quick and easy profit with this land. Meaning that the houses that are being built are made quickly and without thinking of the long term effects. Folly Beach is already eroding quickly and with sea level rising it is only going to get worse. Folly Beach citizens began a petition to the land swap because it goes against what Folly Beach stands for and that is saving the sand-starved beach. This is relevant to our class in many different ways. it deals with sea level rising from the cause of climate change and pollution from the houses that can cause greater contamination to our oceans.

 

Why I chose this article

This article I chose, because I personally wanted to know what is going on in Charleston. I do not live on folly, but I does frequently visit it as do many residents and tourist. Folly Beach is a home that is eroding quickly and the community is trying everything to help slow it down.  In class we have talked about sea level rise due to climate change is already affecting coastal cities. Many people find it hard to believe that is already happening here locally. I wanted to raise awareness of how building these “super beach front” lots will only damage us in the long run. Putting more pollutions into our waterways and the possibility of the septic tank overflow that will contaminate the area locally. Although many people are not from Charleston, you, students still go to school here making this your second home. Signing the petition I showed in class will help stop this from happening in the future as well. I will also link it here below if you did not get a chance in class.

The petition website:

http://chng.it/NQHPSrk9Fn

 

“Is the World Overpopulated and How do We Know?” by Steven Landsburg

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The event I attended was “Is the World Overpopulated and How Would We Know?” by Steven Landsburg for Adam Smith week. Mr. Landsburg is a well known and respective economist that was a pleasure in getting to listen in on one of his talk, because my economics class is currently reading one of his many book “The Armchair Economist”. The talk began with him saying we know when there is something that is too much or too little is when the cost of your actions spill over and effect other people you this is when you have too much. With pollution there are too few volunteers picking up trash in parks, because it does not benefit them as much as it does the other people who do not volunteer. We have to look at the incentive of the decision makers. People make these incentives based on the cost and benefits that there actions have. Mr. Landsburg continued on to answer his question, is the world overpopulated by making a chart. He states in the end that making this chart is the only productive way to think about the problem. The decision makers who control the population is parents. Parents before having a child look at the cost and benefits (while looking at this Landsburg ignored the benefit of the gift of life, only the children already alive).

Landsburg did mention how the Industrial Revolution began this major population change. I thought this was interesting because those are one of the three assumptions that we have discussed in our class. Steven Landsburg answered his question that there is no overpopulation in the world. He argues that we need more people because this creates new ideas that allow could better (or worse) the economy and we need diversity around the world (engineers, doctors, and farmers). As long as that are decisions being made are not spilling over onto other people then there is no problem. After his talk, I took some time to reflect on what he said. Instead of completely denying his information, I put myself in his shoe and wondered where he was coming from. As an environmentalist, I could not fully agree on how he believed that overpopulation does not exist. He only contributes to the fact how much the United States has improved but does not recognize the cases for other nations that do not have the same well-being as we do. There are many social problems that are not being talked about only because they don’t involve the U.S but that is not how I think it should be. Waters are contaminated because our companies are extracting the resources from these Non-OECD nations. To me, this is a very anthropocentric view when dealing with the population because it does not take into consideration the planet as a whole. It focuses more on the human benefits and cost but does to me the cost is not seen as to the extreme as they should be. Although I have some disagreements about this talk I did enjoy hearing Steven Landsburg’s perspective and did learn a lot about economics from his talk.

 

 

Sea Turtle Seminar: What have we learned and achieved?

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I attended the Sea Turtle Seminar on February 4th at the Rita Hollings building. The talk was held by Joe Pfaller who is apart of the Caretta Research Project also known as the CRP. The CRP is held in Wassaw Island in Georgia. Their primary focus is to conserve, research, and educate people about the loggerhead sea turtles that come ashore on Wassaw Island. They are a non-profit organization that has been the longest running project of 47 years! During the beginning of the talk, they discussed the tasks that they do at the CRP. Not only do they protect loggerheads, but they also sometimes help green sea turtles, leatherback sea turtles, and Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles. Then going onto what life is like to be a sea turtle and the patterns they have learned to help them better understand conservation both regionally and internationally. The CRP achievements began in the ’70s when they began protecting the nests and creating the T.E.D also know as the Turtle Excluder Device. This device helps sea turtles from drowning in shrimp traps. The CRP is also volunteer friendly, this helps bridge the gap to help sea turtles. Although achievements are good, there are more problems that seem to be according. Such as climate change is the main focal point. Climate change is affecting sea turtles in many ways. This brings us to what we have been talking about in our class, and how certain environmental problems are viewed. The two views are anthropocentric and ecocentric. Anthropocentric is the view that tends to focus on one main area and the ecocentric view is more holistic and looks at the bigger picture zoomed out. For the sea turtles, an anthropocentric view will not fix the problems that climate change is causing, but to increase more. Looking at an ecocentric view it will let us look at all areas being affected by climate change, for example, like; sea-level rising, change in currents, pollution, and beach armoring. All these needs to be taken into consideration to completely be able to conserve sea turtles, because it is more than just protecting their nest, is it to create a more sustainable outcome for these sea turtles. That is why the CRP is a very good organization because it allows volunteers from all over to educated and participates in sea turtle conservation. I think that is the first step in any conservation is to bring everyone together to make a better solution.