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For the 13 city and regional planning students enrolled in the two-quarter long community planning laboratory, success in the classroom means saving the world.

The class (CRP 410, 411) works in conjunction with the city of San Luis Obispo to draft a climate plan. The plan ultimately hopes to serve as a guide for the city and voters for climate reduction. In exchange, the students gain experience and an edge for getting jobs.

Kim Murray, deputy director for community development for the city of San Luis Obispo, has worked with the class since September. Murray spoke to the merit of the city and regional planning class.

“These are a dedicated bunch of students,” she said. “Their professional, hard working and energetic.”

The students practice what they preach. They arrive to class using alternative transportation, drink water from canteens, interact nearly in the dark (the room is lit mostly by window light) and rarely take notes on paper.

Their instructor is city and regional planning assistant professor Adrienne Greve. This is the second year Greve has been conducting a climate action plan. The first year the class worked with the city of Benicia. Their policy was ultimately adopted by Benicia to identify ways in which the city can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Greve said.

“That doesn’t often happen to students,” she said. “It was an amazing first try, really.”

From the first day, Greve instructs her class to prepare a draft of a climate action plan.

“Our aim is to identify climate mitigation and adaptation strategies that make sense of a given city’s needs, current policy setting and emissions sources,” Greve said.

The class is broken up into two subtopics: a topic team and a task team. Topics are largely based on the student’s interests, which include broad areas of environmentalism such as alternative transportation, water and energy use.

Throughout the process, they have contact with the city and community members.

“It’s a great experience for students to get involved and see what public workshops are like, how you handle public input and how the political processes help shape the project,” Murray said.

To further involve the community, the class, led by the outreach team, has conducted three booths at Farmers’ Market to get strategies for climate change. They also held two public meetings for input and participated with sixth grade students from Los Ranchos Elementary School for an additional perspective.

The elementary school students came up with unique ideas said city and regional planning senior Jonelle Fournet-Collazos.

“One girl suggested turning parking lots into forests, one boy suggested making a fast food drive-thru for bikes and one girl suggested having a celebrity, like Fergie, on a bus so people would ride,” Fournet-Collazos said.

At the second public meeting, San Luis Obispo citizens voted on which ways they thought was best for the city to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Popular examples included expanding the availability and frequency of bus routes, creating more walkable neighborhoods, and creating a “cash for grass” program for replacing lawns with water efficient landscaping.

At the meeting, Monica Kittinger, a city and regional planning senior, spoke on ways to increase parks and open space.

“I know climate change is real, I’d rather be part of the solution than the problem,” she said. “It’s rewarding to be environmentally conscious and to work with the city.”

At the end of the quarter, the climate team will have a final draft of their action plan for review by the city.

“This augments all the technology, training and great background Cal Poly trains students for,” Murray said. “I would do it again in a heartbeat.”

During the past two weeks, the Empower Poly Coalition polled Cal Poly students via the MyCal Poly Portal to better understand the views of creating a student-led sustainability fund for projects on campus. On Friday, the poll closed with a total vote of 5,528 votes, which equals 30 percent of the student population. The breakdown was 43 percent in favor, and 56 percent opposed to the fund. As the author of this question, I must say that I was quite frustrated by the results, mainly in part of how sure I was that Cal Poly students wanted to develop a higher breadth of knowledge for sustainability throughout their studies as students of a polytechnic university.

All considered, the fight for sustainability at Cal Poly urges forward with more propulsion than ever before as sustainability grows in the topics in the classroom, senior projects that test real world strategies, and the change in lifestyle that students are making across campus towards living in a more responsible manner.

With such a strong movement underfoot, how then did the poll return such low numbers? One presumption several students have mentioned is that the question itself was phrased in such a way that automatically shunned voters from agreeing to the vote, due in large part to the first segment of the question. The poll read, “Would you be in favor of a five dollar increase in fees per quarter to support student-led sustainability projects on campus?” After speaking with a polling specialist, it was suggested that if the words “five dollar fee increase” and “student-led sustainability project” were changed, the results literally may have been flipped.

So the question that arose was whether or not the results that the MyCalPoly Poll revealed are an accurate assessment of Cal Poly students view on funding student-led sustainability projects. Another belief is that students who voted were in some regards uneducated as to the full implications of voting “yes” or voting “no” for a sustainability fund. Last year, the Empower Poly Coalition polled more than 500 students with a paper survey that had six questions that provided detailed information about what, where and how money would be spent in relation to the sustainability fund monies. The results were quite different, with more than 80 percent of students in favor of an increase in fees for a student-led sustainability fund.

With two fairly different results, the Empower Poly Coalition has determined that a third and final method for capturing votes is still needed in order to fully understand the desires of funding student projects on campus.

During the week of Feb. 8, the Empower Poly Coalition will be out on Dexter Lawn collecting our final method of data. We will have a large poster board with a question related to sustainability. Students are welcome to enter a tally mark either for or against the fee. These results will be collected and will then determine if Cal Poly students are willing to pay an increase, and at what amount.

Please come out to Dexter Lawn and make your pledge as we truly value the students opinions about sustainability at Cal Poly. The future of sustainability at Cal Poly is in your hands.

The future simply cannot wait.

The Cal Poly Environmental Council and non-profit organization One Cool Earth teamed with students to pot 550 trees Saturday. Photo by Katrina Borges- Mustang Daily

There’s a group of Cal Poly students who like to play in the dirt.

On Saturday, non-profit organization One Cool Earth and the Cal Poly Environmental Council teamed up to pot 50 Madrone trees and 500 Redwood trees that they plan to plant next weekend. The groups also picked acorns to plant Oak trees.

The Environmental Council is one of many programs developed by Cal Poly’s Student Community Services.

“The Environmental Council’s been around for a while, since the ’70s,” program director Barrie Valencia said. “We try to provide volunteers to other non-profits. We have lots of non-profits that we’re partners with.”

Both organizations work on a strictly volunteer basis, so no membership in either is necessary.

“This is just a volunteering organization,” Valencia said. “We provide events, and hopefully people come. Sometimes it’s not even volunteer stuff. Sometimes it’s like ‘Hey, there’s an Environmental Council film festival.’”

The group tries to do something every weekend

“We like to document our events on our Web site to serve as an inspiration to the community and show how easy it is to just go out and plant trees,” Ellis said.

One Cool Earth and the Environmental Council will be planting the acorns they collected at Whale Rock this Saturday. Ellis said they plan to plant about 500 acorns. Planters will be meeting in the administration parking lot at 9 a.m. and work until about 1 p.m., with a lunch break in between.

“Oaks are one of our specialties,” said Greg Ellis, leader of One Cool Earth. “They’re really easy to plant because the acorns drop and you just get them and plant the seeds in pots.”

More information about Environmental Council can be found at http://studentlife.calpoly.edu/scs/programs/environmental.asp. One Cool Earth also has a Web site: http://www.onecoolearth.org.

Many students wonder what they can do to help save the environment, without first ruining  it themselves. They may not have the power to influence politics or can afford to drive a hybrid, but there is a way to affect positive change by paying more attention to the way we  do everyday routines.

While sometimes students might feel helpless or too busy to help the planet, most forget to utilize our greatest power, the power of the consumer.

The power of the consumer gives us the power to vote with our dollar every time we spend money. Stimulating the emerging green economy is especially important now, as many companies will be seeing how consumers respond to their new green products. If a lot of people are buying them, then they are more likely to continue making eco-friendly products and will in turn become more sustainable in their practices. Michael Pollan encourages to “vote with your fork,” and be conscious of the choices you make in purchasing food, which can be done three or four times a day.

If consumers were more likely to buy products with the fair trade or USDA organic label, then more companies will want to become fair trade or organic certified. If consumers stop buying bottled water because they realize it is wasteful and bad for the environment, then those companies will go out of business. Companies simply cannot survive if people are not buying their product and vice versa.

Because there’s money behind this power, it is arguably more powerful than the right to vote.

Therefore the more students use this power, the more we can affect change. Businesses move faster than government and respond quicker to the wants of the people. If we put in as much time researching the companies that we support as the politicians we vote for, the world would be a much different place.

Politics and businesses theoretically ultimately answer to the needs and wants of the people. It is up to us to tell them what we want and to support those that we agree with using the power of our dollar.

I would like to recognize that yes, we are college students, and buying from businesses that use more sustainable practices are usually more expensive. But it is important to at least be conscious of the decisions you make and companies you buy from. Many cheap products are made though externalizing costs by exploiting labor or are subsidized within our current system. But when companies and governments start to see that this is no longer being tolerated and that there is more money in sustainable practices, they will start to make a change

It’s also important to ask questions and give feedback so that the needs of the consumer can properly met. Ask your local grocery store why they don’t carry organic food or encourage them to provide more fresh food from local farmers. Otherwise, they will continue to carry the same products, and will not realize that there is a market for other sustainable products.

Here are some things you can do to be a smarter more responsible consumer:

1. Buy local to support the local economy and reduce transportation impacts.

2. Buy goods with less/recycled packaging.

3. Buy in bulk to save money and embodied energy.

4. Buy used clothing, books and other products, or find someway to get them for free.

5. Buy fair-trade products, which pay workers a fair wage and support local economies.

6. Buy non-toxic cleaning materials and organic linens.

7. Buy from businesses that make a commitment to being green.

8. Buy eco-friendly products.

Many times these options are already available to us. Try checking out places like Natural Foods on Broad St. that offers healthy, local food and Evos, a healthy and sustainable fast food chain. Sustainability is not specific to any one industry; it applies to all.

Remember that you as the consumer have the power to make a change everyday, requires little extra effort, and maybe a little more money. It’s time to act responsibly and influence positive change with the power of our dollar.

Sean Basalyga is a earth sciences senior and Mustang Daily columnist.

If you are interested in writing for the Green Spot column please contact mustangdaily@gmail.com.

In a scene from “The Last Decent,” a white water kayaking group floats down the Marsyangdi River in Nepal, a river that is threatened by large-scale hydroelectric project. Photo courtesy of Diane Devine

A number of contemporary environmental issues from around the world will be addressed in film during the second annual Los Padres Forestwatch “Wild and Scenic” Film Festival. Global topics ranging from wildlife preservation to protecting endangered species will be covered in seven different short films, voted as favorites at the event’s main festival in Nevada City, California.

“These films touch on many of the current environmental issues that we can relate to here in our own community, like watersheds or ocean protection,” said Diane Devine, Forestwatch development coordinator. “They also reach out and address issues from around the world, which we hope will inspire our viewers.”

Forestwatch is a nonprofit organization located in Santa Barbara that works to protect the Los Padres National Forest and spread awareness about protecting public lands all along the Central Coast. The organization’s use of scientific evidence and legal tactics to accomplish its goals has made it a prominent environmental group in the area.

“Our hope is that we motivate people to take an interest in our work and in the natural world just outside their back door,” said Devine.

John Flaherty is co-owner of Central Coast Outdoors, a company that plans outdoor adventure tours and vacations, said he is pleased to see this type of event coming back to San Luis Obispo.

“We feel strongly about environmental groups like (Forestwatch) who share our environmental interests and values, ” he said. “We try to help groups like these and we’re happy to have this opportunity (to be a sponsor).”

For various enironmental interest groups on campus, this type of event is a way to bring complex issues to the student body.

“It’s great that the organization is reaching out in this way, ” Suzie Cuff, president of the Association of Environmental Professionals, a club on campus that advocates environmental awareness and organizes activities like creek cleanups, said. “The issues that the films are about are really important … I really hope the festival will get the lines of communication open among students about the issues.”

Ma’ayan Bennaim of the Empower Poly Coalition, a coalition of groups on campus that focus on promoting sustainability, said he is “really glad that the school is reaching out in this way. The films seem to cover a wide range of topics that will help activate the student community to make a difference while also entertaining.”
The festival will be held on Friday, Oct. 9 in the Spanos Theatre. Forestwatch will host a reception and have several raffles and informational booths for attendees at 6:30 p.m. before screening the films at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for children, and can be purchased on campus at the Spanos Theatre.

As we are rapidly approaching finals week, the light at the end of the tunnel is becoming increasingly brighter. Summer, and the freedoms that come with it, can entail both stress and relief — considering our current economic predicament. Whereas Cal Poly once boasted about the plentiful job offers that rained down on its graduates only a few years ago, now we envy anyone with a steady paycheck. But even with today’s limited options, there are still some prime summer internships up for grabs. And I’m not talking about the filing-and-copying variety.

Building more sustainable cities is going to take a lot of work. Living a one-planet lifestyle, in a one-planet city, implies that we’ve halted our outpouring of climate changing emissions and we are using our share of resources efficiently. This level of local planning and organization will require us to imagine new programs and projects that will create the sustainable infrastructure of the future. Young activists are already proving that they’re hungry for jobs in these fields. Case in point: The Summer of Solutions, a two-month program created and run by a group of students at Macalester College, in St. Paul, Minn. Instead of leaving the Twin Cities, the students used their summer break to envision the city they wanted to live and work in. By the end of the summer they had created local partnerships, networks and projects dealing with issues such as energy efficiency, local food production and renewable energy.

One of the most successful projects that the students got off the ground last summer was called Cooperative Energy Futures. This energy efficiency project connected local contractors with neighborhood groups to insulate a large number of houses under one contract. Together, the homeowners bought all the necessary items in bulk and then signed a group contract with an energy efficiency expert. Focusing on one neighborhood meant the contractor could serve more homes while reducing transportation costs, and it also ensured the contractor a consistent source of revenue. The volunteers at Cooperative Energy Futures conducted the research and development and assisted in helping the different groups find each other. The cooperative hopes to continue the project this summer, hopefully extending their services to low-income communities.

Many green economy jobs — such as the ones a business like the Cooperative Energy Futures could provide — don’t quite exist yet. But that’s not stopping these students from training for them now. “We need to create the opportunities from the ground level, where there isn’t necessarily capacity to do it,” Macalester student Timothy Den Herder-Thomas said. “To fix the problems, we need to figure out a way to build a society that works … Yet no one knows what that looks like.”

This summer, the program will continue and expand to include 13 more cities across the United States, including West Coast cities like San Francisco, Seattle, Portland and Eugene. Funded by local, regional and national grants, the students will begin working on projects that will help them develop their cities into places where local opportunities, climate and energy solutions and social justice abound.

Den Herder-Thomas said that he hopes that the program will produce self-sustaining initiatives that could eventually offer career opportunities for those involved. In addition, he hopes that the Summer of Solutions 2009 can help to build a model for citizens and community groups who wish to do this type of work in their own communities.

On the flipside, it’s increasingly common these days for folks who are interested in global issues, sustainability and building a better world to want to spend time volunteering for some good cause in another country. We, the idealistic, the globally concerned — we love to travel and are curious about other cultures. We find that spending an extended period of time in another country and giving of ourselves to help improve conditions for those who are less fortunate than ourselves teaches us fascinating things and enriches our lives.
The San Francisco based nonprofit Foundation for Sustainable Development (FSD) harnesses the enthusiasm of globally concerned young people in order to fulfill its mission: “To support the efforts of local development organizations working to improve the welfare of the people living in their communities.” Since 1995 FSD has partnered with grassroots organizations in the developing world, providing them with human resources, financial resources and technical assistance.

FSD works with local development organizations in Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, Uganda, Kenya and India. The local organizations work in a wide range of areas related to sustainable development: microfinance, environment, health, youth and education, women’s empowerment, community development and human rights.

The cornerstone of FSD’s work is the Internship Program, through which individuals participate in a volunteer internship with a local development organization for anywhere from 8 to 52 weeks. Along with the intern’s time and skills, the local host organizations receive a grant to support the intern’s work activities. FSD also runs shorter-term programs, including its enrichment trips: “Adventure Travel for the Service-minded,” summer service trips and study tours.

The volunteer programs are integrated with homestays with local families, designed to provide volunteers with a cultural immersion experience. Historically most of FSD’s volunteers have been college students and graduate students, but as a result of recent outreach efforts, an increasing number of professionals are participating in FSD programs. Although most of FSD’s volunteers are American, citizens of many other countries, such as Canada, the UK, Singapore, Japan, Spain, Switzerland, Australia and India have participated.

So while the current job market might seem bleak, know that there are still some options out there. And I encourage you to make the most of your summer — strive to affect the most positive change that you can with the time available. And have fun with it. You’re only young for so long. As Maya Angelou once succinctly put it: “Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass.”