2015: Future of GEM

Exciting, healthy times ahead!

As you know, since the dawn of the 21^st century the Global Environmental Management Education Center (GEM) has worked tirelessly at the grassroots towards a sustainable future. Over these past fifteen years, we have been recognized as a pioneering “can-do” solutions-oriented, NGO-like organization for applied research and outreach education services in natural resources and environmental management. Entirely self-supported in attracting over $10 million in external contracts, grants, and donations, we have focused on small, simple, local actions to empower impoverished communities primarily overseas.

2014: Down But Not Out: GEM Hiatus

Carat Juice readers will have noted a hiatus recently. This GEM website blog entry represents the totality of my GEM Director’s Commentary for the year 2014. Let me explain.

4th Quarter 2013: Flipping the Classroom

As the financial hardship of rapidly accelerating student loan debt grows, the value of higher education has increasingly come into question.  Research indicates that college graduates will earn significantly more income during their lifetimes than others without a college degree.  But with the current and near future economy limping along in political chaos, will tuition-paying graduates land jobs, good long-lasting jobs with benefits?  Are tuition-paying graduates prepared to make a world of difference?  In short, is there an acceptable return on their heavy investment?

3rd Quarter 2013: Colony Collapse of Honeybees and Humans

Honeybee colony collapse has accelerated dramatically in the USA over the past six decades. Bee colony numbers declined by over 40%, from 5.9 million to 2.4 million, and at the current rate managed honey bees will disappear by 2035 [Source: Committee on the Status of Pollinators presentation to the U.S. House of Representatives, March 29, 2007, as cited by Amadeo, K. (2013). “Bee Colony Collapse Disorder”, U.S. Economy section on About.com, accessed 30 May 2013 at http://useconomy.about.com/od/glossary/g/Bee-Colony-Collapse-Syndrome.htm  Since 2006, when colony collapse disorder (CCD) was recognized as a serious threat, the news buzz has become even grimmer.  A USDA/USEPA report released in May 2013 explained that CCD is caused by a complex of stresses, including imported parasitic mite pests, viral and bacterial diseases, synthetic pesticides and fungicides, poor nutrition, genetics, and other factors (see http://www.usda.gov/documents/ReportHoneyBeeHealth.pdf

2nd Quarter 2013: Solving Wicked Problems of Our Times

Renowned American author of the 1920’s Jazz Age, F. Scott Fitzgerald keenly reflected the dissipation, excess and waste, greed and recklessness of “the lost generation” in his novels This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby, Tender is the Night, and the unfinished The Last Tycoon.  Similarly in 1949, celebrated playwright and author Arthur Miller questioned the hollow, destructive morality of business-as-usual pursuit of wealth as the ultimate goal of humanity in Death of a Salesman.

1st Quarter 2013: On the Business-As-Usual Bulwark: Changing Values at the Brink

During the 2012 year-end holiday season, deadly gunfire in an Oregon
mall and a Connecticut elementary school left all Americans with broken
hearts.  Wondering how to stop the carnage, most responses call for greater gun control, school security, and mental illness prevention and treatment. This incomprehensible violence followed Hurricane Sandy that caused at least 125 deaths and over $60 billion in direct losses(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/29/superstorm-hurricane-sandy-deaths-2012_n_2209217.html), whose impact demanded immediate help for recovery to those devastated and displaced, which has been forthcoming.

4th Quarter 2012: Occupy Earth: Happy B’earthday Party

Almost a century ago, John Steinbeck’s classic Grapes of Wrath describes the pitiful plight of American environmental refugees displaced from Oklahoma by the 1930s’ Dust Bowl to California, where if lucky they might get jobs paying a couple of dollars a day as migrant farm workers.  As economic refugees the crux is exploitation by big industrialized agriculture:  “In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”  To insure profitable prices for agricultural products per supply and demand market manipulation, vast amounts of food produced was plowed under or left to rot in mountains of surplus…and not provided to feed the starving poor during the Great Depression.

3rd Quarter 2012: Dust Bowl to Fire Bowl?

Feeling warm and dry?  Concerned about wildfires out West or vanishing ice in Alaska?

According to NOAA, spring 2012 was the warmest spring on record in the U.S., with temperatures 5.2 ^oF above the 20th century average.  In the Arctic, NOAA reported another climate milestone this spring—“concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) at Barrow, Alaska, reached 400 parts per million (ppm), the first time a monthly average for this greenhouse gas passed that level at a remote location.  The level of 450 ppm CO₂ is regarded by many scientists and environmental activists as the upper limit the planet can afford if global temperature rise is to be kept to within 3.6 ^oF (2 ^oC) this century.  Some advocates suggest 350 ppm is a more appropriate target.   

2nd Quarter 2012: Increasing Happiness

        When I was a kid in Kindergarten, our teacher gathered us daily into a singing circle on the floor where we would belt out songs with unabashed delight and conviction; not always on tune.  Songs come to mind like “Do Your Ears Hang Low?”, “Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes,” “Bingo,” “I’m a Little Teapot,” “Pop Goes the Weasel,” “Wheels on the Bus,” “Down by the Station,” “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” “Mickey Mouse Club Anthem,” “Old MacDonald Had A Farm,” “The Farmer in the Dell,” “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” “Yankee Doodle,” “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” “Six Little Ducks,” “Hokey Pokey,” “Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush,” “Frosty the Snowman,” “Jingle Bells,” “This Little Light of Mine,” “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” “This Old Man,” “Skip To My Lou,” and everyone’s favorite, “Birthday Song” because cupcakes followed.  We really piped up and had lots of fun singing “If You’re Happy and You Know It,” with which our teacher usually ended the songfest as we ran outside humming gleefully to recess.  

1st Quarter 2012: Some Reflections of Water in My Life

We all have memories involving water in our lives.  Fun ones like fishing with grandpa. Troubling ones like storm- or flood-related loss of property and lives. To share some personal reflections of water in my life—stories and experiences contributing to my own perspective on water—this brief collection of anecdotes provides the lens through which my worldview on water has been shaped.