Looking Back on 4P18

As the ship of 4P18 slowly sails away, I will look back with a grin on my face. I have learned a lot about how all these separate examples of the communication of the natural environmental affect the world. I learned a lot of new terms such as Green-washing, bearing witness to environmental issues, advocacy vs. activism, scientific communication, the concept of hypo-cognition...the list could go on and on.

The readings by McKibbem, Rachel Carson, Starosielski and (honestly) Good have all been ones that have not only stood out to me, but ones that I will always keep in the back of my mind. This concept of environmental communication has encouraged me to think critically between my relationship between this communication with the natural environment. I have religiously come to lectures every Friday (even though most weekends I head home and sit in the traffic because of it) but it was worth it to me.

I would sincerely like to thank my professor, in hopes that they keep striving to be the best educational teacher that I know they are and to keep engaging with students in such a earnestly manner.

On a light note, I will end of this blogging session on a somewhat 'lighter' note. Live, love and don't forget to laugh my friends :)

Food for Thought?

This week is the first group of presentations ( I happen to also be in that group). One of the presentations this week took a sort of 'you are what you eat' type of approach. It showed the un-fair environment of animals and how un-justly some farmers treat their animals, may it be for food or fashion. Although some of the pictures were quite explicit, some sort of message was still able to come across to me. I began to think more about a better world and thus I started to research.

I came across this paper by a gentleman named Steve Boyan, whom is very adamant about getting people to switch to a no animal or by-product of any animal diet. Heres the link below...

http://www.earthsave.org/environment/foodchoices.htm


After reading this I soon came to the conclusion that there is just no possible way anyone is going to make every single person in world, or even a majority to stop eating animal by-products or meat. So I began to look at other options and came across this great store, within Toronto called The Healthy Butcher. I was then able to find a short video on why we should switch over to a organic-meat diet.... I have to admit, over the holidays I will definitely be taking my family in hand to go check this place out!!

The end is Near

An aid to my presentation. Coke alongside their partnership with the WWF is donating $2 Million Dollars to help their beloved Polar Bears! 

This week I was up to present. My topic was how a massive company such as The Coca-Cola Company communicates the environment to their consumers. Before the presentation I was as cool as a cat. I had practiced my presentation over and over to my roommates, family and my significant other. I felt prepared. As my name was called and I headed up to the judge like stand with my huge Coca-Cola display of their efforts towards the WWF and Polar Bears...I began to get nervous, much like this girl here...

That was me today...nervous Nelly

I was a little frantic at the beginning but then seemed to get my cool back near the end. I had practiced this, I knew this presentation off by heart. I looked for the best examples I could find and ensured I kept it within the time-constraints. I needed to remember that it was probably just my dear old friend of mine....

Yes Anxiety girl is what I call the inner nervous nelly in me. I practice so hard and prepare myself to the moon and back, just to let her get the best of me sometimes. But don't fret followers, I think I pulled it off just great, thanks to a lot of preparation and well-thought out ideas!

Environmental Motivational Quotes

Hello my faithful followers here are some great environmental quotes that I enjoyed reading and of course I thought I would pass them along with you, enjoy!!

21st Century Environmental Communication

This week in lecture I was delighted to be able to learn about my professors research paper in relation to a movie I had already loved, Avatar. She explained her notions of the 'concept of hypo-cognition' and how this deep sense that we had been green-washed into thinking this movie was all about the natural environment. Her outlook on this was that it was fundamentally 'un-environmental' and much more about a message of violence instead of the environment. Once she had begun to explain her outlook, I instantly scanned my memory on the movie and begun now to recall it in a completely seperate light. I could see this macho-war driven world where the final scene ends 'mono-e-mono'... it all made sense now. This whole sense was what she meant by the term hypo-cognition and now I came to a clear realization of not only what she meant, but also a new light on the movie!

Shortly After this lecture I went home to do some more, research myself and came across a great read on FORBES online website. Here is the link so you can take a look...http://www.forbes.com/2009/12/20/avatar-media-james-cameron-opinions-columnists-reihan-salam.html

An example I found of 21st Century Environmental Communication is from a UK online newspaper website. The video demonstrates a flash mob full of participants which are campaigners against climate change. This is what I believe the 21st century type of environmental communication will become to be like. Our ideas must be more creative and current with the fast-paced lifestyles of our consumers and flash mobs are a great way to 'rally the troops' towards communicating the environment in a positive way!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2009/oct/13/climate-change-flash-dance-london


Here is another example of a Flash mob against plastic bottles. The beginning of this video is a little lagging...but just wait until the end, it will give you a grin from ear to ear! Might even make you think twice about leaving a bottle behind next time . If you would like to skip ahead a little, goto the 0:57 mark!

Further Environmental Communication Research

An area I would be interested in researching more on, is what actions big corporations such as The Coca-Cola Company take in being active in environmental awareness. Specifically I would like to know how they justify depleting the water resources in poor communities for their products and giving no compensation back to this communities, leaving them even worse off. As the largest beverage company in the world they should be held accountable for actions like these. They also need to be aware of how their day in and day out business affects other people in their daily lives, in a negative way.

This picture depicts a comedic relief at Coca-Cola and how there company get's slandered by many..

Kassing et al believes the effects of the environment on day to day lives is an area that needs to be examined more thoroughly. I believe this school of thought can be applied to The Coca-Cola Companies relationship with the environment and whom it affects.

Interactive Children's Environmental Game

Talk about a step up from the old-school {pac-men} game I grew up playing have it practically anywhere and everywhere...I have come across a cute, educational interactive game for children to play. This game not only helps them to understand that it is a good thing to recycle, BUT it also helps them to understand which bins and what products and be recycled where necessary!

http://resources.kaboose.com/games/michael-recycle.html


Check it out and let me know what you think...wish I would have been able to play a game like this as a child!

Eco-friendly Halloween

Happy Halloween Everyone!

This week I came across a great website in which gives eco-consciously halloween costumes. My favourite which includes a Green-Washed idea where you totally dye yourself green, and wear a T-shit that you write on it saying "all natural", "safe for the environment", "eco-friendly" and then you carry a paint bucket and paint brush...and alas you are Green-washed!!

Take a look and enjoy your Halloween, I hope to see some dressed up like this next year :)

http://greenlifestylemagazine.net/issue-2/eco-conscious-halloween-costumes.php

Communicating Environmental Advocacy

The communication of environmental advocacy is something that I think varies from every age and demographic. This first picture is one that I can remember from my first stages of environmental communication...

As I have grown up, I now understand ads like the one below. At a young age I definitely would not have realized that this was communicating environmental advocacy. I would have noticed the pretty turtle and connected it with a sense of the 'zoo' or a stuffed animal...never a personal attack to a major corporation. Just food for thought...

Consumerism/Materialism and Environmental Communication

This week we are talking about consumerism/materialism and environmental communication. At first glance I had to admit that this topic peaked my interest. I enjoy fashion and to some extent am a fairly 'material girl' but after sifting through some of the articles this week by wonderful authors such as Good, Huang, Lasser & Salvador my thoughts slightly have been altered.

Tim Kasser's article, The High Price of Materialism speaks to how consumerism and materialism affects our everyday happiness and psychological health. This article, (when I was reading it through) all I could think of was certain situations where I could do nothing more than relate.

I came across this picture and all I could do was grin, knowing how terribly related I felt towards this topic.

Green Marketing & Greenwashing

Green Marketing is something that, before taking this class, I completely believed was an 'all good' idea. Although most green marketing can be a great, productive theme to marketing, it is green-washing that ruins it for everyone else. Greenwashing is a way the marketing companies can in a sense 'cover up' a product or service by throwing the Go Green in your face and hiding all the negative attributes. I found a great Link from Greenpeace that entails their introduction to STOP Green-washing! Click here and you can see what I'm referring to...http://stopgreenwash.org/

An Example that I brought to class in concerns to Green Marketing was,

Coca-Cola's Highway Ad that ACTUALLY absorbs air pollutants!

And a example of Green-washing is also as follows,

Nestle's idea of a GREEN product...well it is 15% Green, does that still count?

The articles this week speak to these ideas of green washing and green marketing. Benz (2000) speaks about greenwashing in concern to the lexicon. This is when two German environmental groups formed two separate political parties looking into eco-consciousness.

Nature-Tourism & Ecotourism

'Anthropomorphizing' - Interpretation of things not human. This week we are talking about the communication of nature-tourism and Ecotourism.

This link is to a website that specifically speaks about environmental communication of many areas. It is a great space to find research or just keep up to date. It was brought to my attention by one of my Professors...whom I will have to keep their name private for confidentiality purposes.
IECA Website http://environmentalcomm.org/

Media Representations of Climate Change

This week I can't seem to get this song out of my head... its inevitable and I thought I would share it. The articles this week are talking about how climate change is 'spun'... haha you get it now? Bad joke, but nonetheless the articles this week bring to our attention how the media illustrates a sense of the communicate of climate change to us.

Corbet & Durfee (2004) underwent research to further understand the medias portrayal of its (un)certainty, in relation to the discourse of global warming. There main exploratory research defined that of the certainty of scientific findings and their dependence of news stories. This is a very interesting point. The Media's portrayal of the environment plays a huge roll on many if not all of our lives. Within news casts, radio, newspapers and all other outlets of our daily news the prevalence of the media is hard to ignore, especially when it comes to climate change.

The Communication of Weather - Climate Change

Hello World!

This week in 4P18 we are talking about how the weather is communicated. We were asked to bring in an artifact that illustrates this. To me the first thing that comes to mind is how the weather was communicated to me growing up and ultimately this is how I thought about it... (See picture Below)

In Highschool, public school and younger this is how we were communicated to about climate change. In science classes it was explained as more of a 'greenhouse effect' rather than a global issue that needed to be addressed.

In relation to this course, this week we looked at an article by Gavin who explained climate change and its relation to flooding and many dangers of rainfall. The conclusions of this article speak to the idea that the media contribution of climate change is much up to debate. This meaning that between the 'repportage' from news casters and our actual knowledge of climate change is quite different.

Things that make you go 'hmm' I would have to agree...how about the Educational School Boards decisions to keep children uninformed about any issues, other than the Greenhouse Effect? I will have to take a beat to think about that one...until next week :)

Grade 8 Science Class

Weather & Silent Spring

This week after we handed in our Environmental Autobiographies...we looked at 'weather.' How this weather is communicated to us and what weather is currently happening within our society. One main  point that came to mind after doing the readings was that of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Her book expressed a warning against the environmental dangers posed by DDT. For you followers out there that might not know...DDT is a pesticide one in which this book expressed was quite a bad one. Carson wrote, "a spring without chirping birds would remain spring in name only" (Carson, 1962). Carson's book was meant as a reminder, somewhat gentle to not only the demise of the bird populations but for our environment. Carson had great knowledge of the future generation of the environment and she was trying to communicate this to us, even with many negative reviews.

Rachel Carson (1962) Silent Spring

Environmental Autobiography

This week we were asked to speak about our relationship with the natural environment. The more I reflected on this topic, the more I came to realize how closely knit my relationship really was. I never realized how my life incorporated the environment year round. I grew up travelling around on our boat the entire summer with my family, and during the winter I became apart of the Girl Guides of Canada.

This then lead into the artifact that we had to bring in...and although I couldn't find my actual 'sash' from Girl Guides, I was able to make one. All of the badges on the sash were ones that you had to earn and most all of them had to do with the natural environment.

Anyways...heres a picture of the sash I was able to make and bring into class. I made it out of a sleeve of a sweater..pretty nifty huh!

Joining COMM 4P18

I Decided to join COMM 4P18 in this past summer, thinking it would be an ideal class. I love the correlation between Media and how it constantly relates into each of our own perceptions of the Natural Environment.

I had quite the interesting start to lecture...with a direct impact from the 'natural environment' ...i was bit by one of these little guys...

Who knew something this small could make you hurt so bad..... at least it was an eventful start to the class :)