Friday, November 18, 2011

Environmental Issues and Org's Around the Country

I’ve done some traveling for mock trial this semester, and because of that I’ve missed a lot of good class discussion. So I thought I’d try to make up for that by finding some environmental ethical issues in the places I’ve gone to and give some perspective on how these things are being dealt with around the country.

Los Angeles, CA
LA is pretty notorious for how smoggy the air is. I found this neat organization called TreePeople; they’ve planted a couple million trees around the LA area to try to reduce the effects of air pollution. Here are some links:
http://www.treepeople.org/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/18/tree-people-improving-los-angeles-environment_n_863850.html

Athens, GA
Athens is the most hippy town in Georgia, which may not be saying a lot, but it’s a pretty cool place. They expectedly have a lot of vegetarian and locavore options, but this one is notable because it’s a co-op: Daily Grocery Co-op. They have some great information about how grocery co-ops work and how to get more involved in finding out where your food comes from.
http://www.dailygroceries.org/

Murfreesboro, TN
Murfreesboro is home to Middle Tennessee State University, whose biology department houses the Center for Environmental Education. Beyond just coursework and projects, which can be expected from any school with an environmental studies curriculum, they put a lot of focus into educating as many people in the community as they can. They have programs as diverse as collecting donated microscopes and teaching schoolchildren that bats shouldn’t be scary. I think Rhodes could learn a thing or two from MTSU when it comes to promoting widespread environmental education.
http://www.mtsu.edu/mtsucee/about.shtml

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