{"id":133,"date":"2014-12-02T16:13:18","date_gmt":"2014-12-02T22:13:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/jackson\/?p=133"},"modified":"2015-04-17T10:08:09","modified_gmt":"2015-04-17T15:08:09","slug":"musings-on-green","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/jackson\/2014\/12\/02\/musings-on-green\/","title":{"rendered":"Musings on Green…"},"content":{"rendered":"

From EnvSci Australia – 17 Mar 2012<\/p>\n

During the last two weeks we have enjoyed the Melbourne area during a break, journeyed to Canberra to see Parliament, discussed how environment plays into the political process and we now find ourselves in Sydney.\u00a0 The break allowed us to muse on various “Green” ideas, topics or just free form thoughts.<\/p>\n

As we reflect back on our first six weeks in country we ask, “Did we need to journey half-way around the world to appreciate how we are inextricably part of nature and to fully appreciate its wonder, diversity and beauty?”<\/p>\n

Yes<\/em>.\u00a0 How can we not see a place where over 50% of the plants and animals are endemic – found no where else on the globe?\u00a0 Along the southern coast of Victoria, the endemism of marine life is estimated at over 90%.\u00a0 You can’t find that characteristic of life near home.\u00a0 The country is dry – usually.\u00a0 The second La Nina year in a row is bringing<\/p>\n

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Cafes, including Affogato, along Hardware Lane, Melbourne<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

mild temperature and lots of rainfall to the SE region, which translated means moving from drought into flash flooding.\u00a0 Australia is perched in a unique climatic zone, so it is highly sensitive to small changes in global climatic cycles.<\/p>\n

No<\/em>.\u00a0 Our travel makes an impact.\u00a0 Certainly the 9500+ miles traveled from Minneapolis to Melbourne left a big carbon footprint, as does our coach travel around the country.\u00a0 Taking lunches, with all their packaging, also leaves behind a substantive energy and materials footprint.\u00a0 What can we do to change some of this and minimize our impacts?\u00a0 Last spring one of my EnvSt seniors did an audit of the program for her senior project.\u00a0 Certainly, one can apply offsets to our air travel or even do work in and around campus to mitigate this.\u00a0 We have pushed for more reusable containers and seek out eating establishments that have strong relationships to small, local farms.\u00a0 One of our favorites in Melbourne was the Affogato Cafe<\/a>, located on Hardware Lane.\u00a0 The husband-wife team that operates this place were friendly, welcoming and big fans of the United States, especially New York, San Francisco and Memphis.\u00a0 Yes, they loved the music scene in Tennessee and the eclectic mix playing in the cafe was a delight to experience each day.\u00a0 The food was simple and delicious.<\/p>\n

Another prompt to being green was not too far from our QUEST accommodation on Flinders Lane.\u00a0 Here you could walk about 30 meters to a few alleys filled with what I will call social, public art.\u00a0 Graffiti artist alter the visual landscape daily – putting layers of spray paint on top of previous work.\u00a0 This ever changing scene provides social commentary, highlights cultural differences, and expresses profound personal perspectives.\u00a0 The spray paint is not very green, but the response of other artists, citizens and tourist make it worth the look.<\/p>\n

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Graffiti art along alley near Flinders Lane, Melbourne, VIC.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Graffiti art celebrates cultural influences and people.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The alley squid with painters crates in Melbourne, VIC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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It would be difficult not to end a few green musings with policy.\u00a0 In Australia the federal government does not have environment or environmental issues written specifically into its constitution.\u00a0 These responsibilities primarily rest with each state government.\u00a0 What the Commonwealth does have are constitutional provisions for addressing foreign affairs, trade and international financing as specified by the external affairs section of the constitution (Section 51)<\/a>.\u00a0 Throughout the last 50 years the Commonwealth has been advancing environmental protection largely through being part of international treaties and multi-national environmental declarations.\u00a0 This was reviewed on a number of occasions by the High Court and subsequent common law gave the federal government more authority in this area.\u00a0 Our visit to the Commonwealth’s Parliament House<\/a> was excellent.\u00a0 We were fortunate to see “question time<\/a>” in the Parliamentary system (click link for a comparison with the USA<\/a>).\u00a0 The images below show the provisional parliament house (white buildings in foreground) and the current parliament house (background with large flag spire and grassed roof).\u00a0 Inside the colors and materials reflect the Australian palette.\u00a0 In particular, the color of the House of Representatives is a grayish blue-green; the leaf color many acaias and eucalypts in Australia.\u00a0 For example, check out the leaf color of Eucalypts globulus<\/em><\/a> (Blue gum<\/a>) when it is young.<\/p>\n

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Looking at both the old and current Parliament House from the War Memorial in Canberra, ACT.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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A view from the public gallery into the House of Representatives. Note the “front bench” areas for the government and for the opposition.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During the last two weeks we have enjoyed the Melbourne area during a break, journeyed to Canberra to see Parliament, discussed how environment plays into the political process and we now find ourselves in Sydney. The break allowed us to muse on various \u201cGreen\u201d ideas, topics or just free form thoughts. As we reflect back on our first six weeks in country we ask, \u201cDid we need to journey half-way around the world to appreciate how we are inextricably part of nature and to fully appreciate its wonder, diversity and beauty?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":136,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,12,13,4,10],"tags":[20,14],"class_list":["post-133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australia","category-greening","category-higher-education","category-off-campus-study","category-sustainability","tag-australia","tag-green"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/jackson\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/345\/2014\/12\/2012_mossgarden.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/jackson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/jackson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/jackson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/jackson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/138"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/jackson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/jackson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":172,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/jackson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions\/172"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/jackson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/jackson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/jackson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/jackson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}