2010 Global Sustainability Summer School-Op-Ed

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This page is intended for op-ed topics and discussion.

Jackman's Idea: Every year big box stores are built on acres of formerly fertile farm land to both the detriment and benefit of small communities. Every year many of those box stores fail or relocate, primarily for expansion. With the failure or departure of these store, we are left with rural "big box-store blight" - huge, unusable buildings and acres of paved, impermeable surfaces that mar the landscape. Upon abandoning retail locations, I think that box store retailers such as Walmart, Whole Foods, Kmart, Krogers, and many others have an obligation to restore the landscape to its original condition or renovate the buildings and parking lots to accommodate other (non-box store) uses. In an op-ed I would like to motivate the necessity for this policy as well as provide suggestions as to how this might be achieved. I expect that these methods will provide disincentives for some box-stores to locate in areas with this requirement, but this is not the objective. Rather, the objectives are to 1) motivate box-stores to locate carefully, 2) discourage them from moving for the purposes of expansion, and 3) maintain the environmental, social, and community value of the landscape.
Perhaps not exactly to the point, but an interesting Ted video about reclaiming and retrofitting suburbia.

Way to go Duke... some helpful tips for writing and getting your op-ed published

Strumsky's Idea: Education and Irrationality: The solution offered for many major social problems is that we can educate our way out of them. This strikes me about as viable as being able to invent our way out of problems. There are too many examples of people having a clear, well informed understanding of a problem and they do not dispute the facts or data, yet choosing the irrational option (or to use game theory, selecting non-dominant strategies). The examples are everywhere; obesity is well understood, the facts and consequences for people’s health is not in dispute, yet obesity and its health consequences are on the rise - not just in the US, but globally. We can go on and on, alcoholism, drinking and driving, smoking, positions against healthcare reform by the individuals who are ill and uninsured. If we can not educate our way out of problems what do we do? We need another option.

M. K. Dorsey's Op-Ed Ideas, Some Old Ones & Pithy Strategic Banter

Dana's kernel of an idea

From Yao: Sometime in the late 1960s, New Mexico, a group of creative and smart people got together and started their journey of bringing ideas to life. They purchased Synergia Ranch and transformed it in multiple ways. They established Global Ecotechnics Corporation composed of 3 divisions: ecofrontiers, biospheric design, and education and information. They invented and designed Biosphere 2 project, which is a closed ecological system mimicking the Biosphere 1-our earth. They built a research vessel “Heractilus” and sailed over 250,000 nautical miles. If I had not met the group in person, it would have been very difficult for me to believe that they had done all this by themselves! William Fred Dempster, a member of the group, told me he was a mathematician and physicist by training. “But how did you guys get to know how to build biosphere 2, Heratilus and the white dome at the ranch then?” I asked. He said they learned through correspondence course, which is a form of distant learning (like our e-campus from internet today I guess). Back in the 70s, however, correspondence course was done through mail system, where students and teachers interact via mail correspondence. Regardless of however you learn, whatever majors you are, or however crazy your projects sound to the world, where there is a will, there is a way. Live, learn and thrive!