On October 28th I witnessed Dr. Keegan signing PC's climate commitment, joining with other colleges and universities from every state in the US. Now PC is committed to implementing a carbon neutral plan within two years. I'm working with Alma Chong on assessing the college's carbon footprint. A data gathering email went out to all college employees/departments, asking for commuter info. We are looking at operations budget, utility bills, etc.
I looked over the college's tree survey data compiled by James Causton in June of 2007. I happen to know James and affectionately call him 'British James' . 308 trees,over 6" in diameter are included in his survey. The species are identified, whether they have health issues, structural issues, and how urgently or non-urgently attention is required.
I reviewed two software programs we could potentially use for the tree study, STRATUM and UFORE. STRATUM seems to be the best choice. We can input the data we already have and the program automatically calculates energy savings from less air conditioning needed because of cooling shade provided by trees, the sum of decreased CO2 in the air, how many other pollutants they pull out of the air, and the amount of reduced storm water runoff. This data will be useful in the college's carbon footprint evaluation I'm working on.
I went to Curtis Beuis's lecture, Putting the 'culture' back in Agriculture. It made me feel sick and angry to hear more about the big corporate seed mongers such as Monsanto, who are buying up rights to seeds and forcing farmer's into growing GMO hybrid crops and how we are loosing genetic diversity which could cause massive crop losses and shortages.
I'm writing a research paper in biology on Human Blood because I'm interested in knowing more about the Rh- factor. I was a 'blue baby' way back before they knew what they know today and needed a complete blood transfusion at birth.
I'm working on an English assignment that requires I interview someone. I'm interviewing Nash Huber. I want to ask him how environmental policies effect the work he is doing. What about land use laws, immigration labour laws, what is he doing genetically with crops, what does he have to say about farm to school lunch programs, compostable produce waste reduction, farmer's market, etc.
