Contact Your US Representative About Climate Change

In the spirit of the change that Focus the Nation is ultimately trying to bring about, please click here to tell your Congressional Representative that climate change should be a legislative priority.

A new geologic age is upon us

Just imagine another little section on top in which we're wearing clothes and depleting every natural resource we can get our hands on. Yippee!

From Dot Earth:

Some earth scientists are pushing to enshrine officially a decades-old idea — that Earth is now in a biogeochemical era of our own making that should be distinguished from the Holocene, the epoch that began with the end of the last ice age.

It'll be called the Anthropocene (you know, "anthro" meaning "human" and "pocene" meaning...um, yeah).

Andrew Revkin (author of Dot Earth) on the subject (also yoinked from his blog post):

"...The challenge now is to find a way to act that will make geologists of the future look upon this age as a remarkable time, a time in which a species began to take into account the long-term impact of its actions. The alternative will be to leave a legacy of irresponsibility and neglect that will manifest itself in the fossil record as just one more mass extinction — like the record of bones and empty footprints left behind by the dinosaurs.”

I really love the description of our actions being manifested in the fossil record...I mean, I don't love that it'll be a manifestation of something kindof awful, but it's sortof a neat image/description that I definitely hadn't thought about before.

Connecticut and Global Warming

In the spirit of this week's monumental EON event happening on Thursday (see below), check out this amazing film/video called "The Connecticut Plan to Fight Global Warming" below (or here). It's made by the CT Fund for the Environment. They visited EON last semester and are awesome. It's 21 minutes long-ish and certainly worth your time.

FOCUS THE NATION + party!

FOCUS THE NATION is finally happening!

Brought to you by EON, the Environmental Studies Program, Long Lane Farm, the Sustainability Advisory Committee, and the Feet to the Fire Project, Focus the Nation is a teach-in day about climate change solutions. The day includes many amazing things like discussions in classes, a keynote speaker, a bunch of panels on the different facets of climate change (such as policy responses, corporate and institutional responses, and social justice) as well as a circus. Yes, a circus.

What: Focus the Nation
When: Thursday, January 31st,
Where: see the nifty schedule for all the day's events

Okay, the other thing I wanted to say is that we're having a PARTY PARTY PARTY (called Hot Spot) at Psi U on Friday (which would be February 1st). Here comes my cheesy line that I'm really proud of: climate change is real...and while not all locations on earth will experience warming, I guarantee that temperatures in Psi U are going to be on the rise this Friday (it actually does get hot in there sometimes, right?). Tickets go on sale TOMORROW in Usdan and will be available for cheaper outside of Focus the Nation events.

The lineup:
10:00 DJ HARRISON SCHAAF
11:30 THE EBB AND THE FLOW
12:30 THE KINKY SPIGOTS

Tickets are:
$ 2 for FTN event attendees
$3 in advance
$4 at the door

Proceeds go to Oxfam America and Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice! Fun fact (kindof): Chris McCandless donated all his savings to Oxfam before he went on his adventure...into the wild. Alllllrighty.

What: Hot Spot Partay
Where: Psi U
When: 10 pm on Friday, Feb. 1st
Entry Fee: $2-$4

Double-sided printing!

Good news for being green at Wes!

Lab computers are now FINALLY (due to a loving collaboration between EON and ITS) set to print double sided by default for ALL lab printers. (Color printers will still be single sided printing only.)

THIS SAVES YOU MONEY! It costs you 7¢ to print one sheet with two sides, but 5¢ for each single sided page. Therefore, you save 3¢ for every two pages you print. For every 200 pages, you save $3. AND sooo many trees. Ohhh the savings!

There are directions next to EACH computer explaining how to turn the function off, in case you need to (which you don't).

Please print double sided whenever you can!

Art+Environment

Check it ouuuuuut:

From the CFA website:
Festival 2008
Saturday, May 10, 12-5pm
Veteran’s Park: Located just off Newfield Street (Route 3)
Middletown, CT
Free admission

Copresented by Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts and Environmental Studies Program, the Jonah Center for Earth and Art and the City of Middletown

Feet to the Fire will assemble a diverse array of artists (you), scientists and other thinkers to address the environmental challenges that face us today on a global scale and in our own communities. Enjoy performances, art and music by campus and regional artists, while learning about the impact of climate change on our world. Award-winning choreographer Ann Carlson will premiere a new site-specific work commissioned by the Festival. The Festival also features interactive displays and exhibits on energy conservation and sustainability by environmental scientists and a farmer’s market with local organic food vendors.

If you're interested, download the artist submission form. You can also go to the CFA website and get it from there (you have to scroll down about halfway to find the blurb).

Student Forum
There's also a student forum related to the festival. It's called Environmental Art: Artistic Responses to Global and Local Environmental Issues. It'll basically be a study of visual and movement-based artworks relating to the environment (including earthworks and more socially conscious projects), along with whatever the people in the class want to study. The end project is a piece for the festival that you get credit for...! Email me (aprovo@wes) for more info.

More about the Election

I'm slowly discovering that Save Our Environment is sortof an impossible website to navigate. They DO have a campaign going on now (it's just hard to find-I found out about it in an email they sent to me). They're running a petition to urge news reporters to ask more questions about global warming when they interview the presidential candidates (out of 2275 questions, 3 were about global warming). The informational video is above and the petition is here.