Global Scholar's Blog 2022-2023
Two men cool themselves with water from a public sprinkler on a hot and sunny day in Barcelona, Spain, Saturday, July 16, 2022. AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti Gavin Schmidt, the director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told reporters on Thursday that "July will likely be Earth’s hottest month in hundreds if not thousands of years". With unprecedented changes like deadly floods in New England, Canadian wildfires, and frequent heat advisories. In our generation, climate change has always been in the back of our minds; however, the record-breaking temperatures spanning nationally and internationally have made this issue so crucial to talk about. During a meeting at Nasa’s Washington headquarters, experts talked about the dangers of climate change. However, The Guardian pointed out that while scientists "raised the alarm about the changes Earth is experiencing and said they are directly linked to greenhouse gas emissions, they stopped short of naming the source of the majority of those emissions: fossil fuels." By recognizing the power that big oil and gas companies have on our politics, it's easier to understand the phonema of climate denialism. In a published study by the American Sociological Association (ASA), Jeremiah Bohr, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin said, "Considering the economic incentives of continued fossil fuel development, I expect that climate change deniers will adapt to shifting political winds for years to come and will continue to employ political tactics."
Despite the political turmoil, a heat bubble has trapped Europe in temperatures over 110 degrees for the past few weeks. The hot air, which is pushed in from Africa, is now staying put with settled high-pressure conditions meaning that heat in warm sea, land and air continues to build. Greece, Italy and Spain are among the countries most impacted by the heatwave; however, parts of France, Germany and Poland also faced major heat waves. Additionally, climate experts warn that temperatures will only rise, and are expected to break higher records in 2024. Sources:
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Every so often, Poly prefaces an event or announcement with a land acknowledgment—an acknowledgment that we operate as a community on land stolen from the indigenous people who used to steward it. The point of a land acknowledgment is to express gratitude for the land we reside on as a means of honoring the indigenous people who have been living and working on the land. However, as many indigenous groups point out, colonialism is an ongoing process, and we need to build the mindfulness of our present participation. On October 9, 2023, Indigenous Peoples’ Day celebrated the recognition of Native communities and the land they lived on and continue to preserve and advocate for. Ironically, just two days later, Poly announced in an email a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” for the community. Curious, I opened it.
Poly announced that they had agreed with Nuccio’s Nursery, a longstanding sanctuary home to rare azaleas and camellias, to construct, transform, and modernize the site into an extended satellite campus. The 78-acre property in the northern foothills of Altadena is set to expand Poly’s athletic facilities, environmental studies, and outdoor opportunities. For Poly’s sports programs, the project sparked both excitement and caution among the school’s athletes. Many important considerations, such as the act of encroaching on indigenous land, the impact of noise and light pollution on the environment and wildlife, the increased risk of wildfires, and the unnecessary carbon emissions of transportation to the campus, give rise to a burden of proof that Poly must meet if they decide to go through with the process. If Poly cannot demonstrate how its proposed land usage plan outweighs the negative factors the project creates, Poly should abandon its plans to acquire the property. In other words, if Poly cannot meet the burden of proof, Poly has an ethical obligation to abandon the property acquisition process. As a person familiar with both Poly’s athletic program and Altadena’s ecological landscape, I wondered, “What driving reasons does Poly have for building this facility?” In an interview with Mr. Bracker, I learned that Poly’s central motivation behind this purchase is its desire to address long-standing wishes in the athletic department. Although Poly has a soccer/football field, the school cannot use these facilities at night due to an agreement made with neighbors because of the bright lights and noise. In the interview, when asked why Poly planned to build new facilities instead of solely renovating our current ones, Mr. Bracker said, “We realized it was very expensive, and it wasn’t solving our biggest problem, which was too many of our teams don’t have field space and are traveling off campus to practice or to play home games, and so that became a bigger deal.” Poly has been looking for a solution to this problem for a very long time, so perhaps this begins to explain why they so quickly “jumped” when an opportunity came about. Poly has laid out a roadmap of how they plan to mitigate its impact on the land; however, much of its plan struggles to reconcile with the burden of proof. For example, Poly maintains that they plan to build the facility within the physical footprint of the nursery, leaving the rest of the property the way it is. This sounds ideal in theory, but this project would inevitably have harmful consequences on the surroundings. Introducing artificial light to nocturnal species significantly disadvantages prey that use the cover of darkness to hide from predators. Also, noise pollution damages species by interrupting breeding cycles, rearing, and potentially hastening the extinction of species, according to the Nation Park Service. And despite Poly’s insistence that the impact of noise and light pollution won’t be significant, Poly has still not given reason beyond convenience for some sports teams to outweigh the harms of the project. Due to the foothills of Altadena being a fire hazard zone, the residents comply with meticulous regulations that aim to reduce the risk of wildfires. The guidelines include, alongside using fire-safe materials, maintaining a defensible space around structures by removing dead vegetation, clearing combustible materials, and trimming trees and shrubs. This would mean that Poly would have to maintain the entirety of the 78-acre plot to this standard. This would require a massive and costly effort from Poly each year. While this consideration is not necessarily a reason not to purchase the property by itself, it builds on the burden of proof and further requires reason from Poly as to why we NEED to pursue this project. Another important part of this discourse has been communication with Altadena residents and neighbors. Firstly, I want to establish a distinction between the sincerity with which many residents engage in these conversations and the ways in which NIMBYism or Not In My BackYard may have affected how we talk about this development. A NIMBY is a resident who opposes a new development because it deviates from the ways in which they envision its surrounding community spaces. It’s important to recognize that criticism for Poly’s plans, and the burden of proof for which this speech is based on, are supported by evidence-based reasoning around environmental protections as opposed to superficial NIMBY critiques. That said, NIMBYism is still a factor we should be aware of as we weigh the pros and cons of this plan. Some of the cons, according to many Altadena residents, include traffic and general disruption. It’s important to evaluate these criticisms while considering a range of factors, and yet the weight of these concerns are met with little pushback from Poly’s side. The burden of proof still stands. Our campus lies on Tongva land, our city lies on Tongva land, and the Nuccio Nursery lies on Tongva land. What I found most striking in my interview with Mr. Bracker was his admission that Poly, as of the time of my interview, had yet to involve indigenous voices in this process so late in the discussion. This should give us pause and invite us to consider the discontinuity between the positing of things like the Poly-produced indigenous land acknowledgment and Poly’s real-life practice of ignoring the messages it teaches in our classrooms. Embedded in the subtext of every land acknowledgment is the dim reminder that we can’t just revert the land back to the indigenous peoples who once lived here. We can’t just tear down Poly and revitalize the wildlife of the area. However, in the case of the Nuccio Nursery, Poly has the rare opportunity to engage with indigenous peoples in order to preserve the land to the best extent—and yet, at the time of my interview with Mr. Bracker, this was not a consideration made. Considering these observations, it becomes increasingly clear that Poly's plan falls short of meeting the burden of proof required to justify the proposed sports complex. The school's offered justifications centered mainly around the convenience of our sports teams but fail to outweigh the potentially detrimental consequences that such a project may entail. As a result, I strongly urge Poly to abandon its current plans and redirect its resources toward enhancing existing infrastructure and community spaces. Let this be a transformative moment for our school, one where we prioritize collaboration, inclusivity, and a genuine commitment to honoring the land we occupy. It is simply not enough to acknowledge the Tongva people's historical presence; we must take tangible steps to immortalize the foothills and ensure that their legacy is respected and perpetuated. Sources:
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Natalie VArchives
May 2024
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