Art Exhibition
3/05/2010 – 3/19/2010
Central Florida Home & Garden Show
3/19/2010 – 3/21/2010
Volunteer Friday
3/19/2010
Leu Gardens Plant Sale
3/20/2010 – 3/21/2010
Audobon Park Community Market
3/24/2010
Events Calendar »
I’d be willing to stake a bet that the majority of UCF students (and just society in general for that matter) have never heard of The Garbage Patch before. And I bet when you do, you’ll think twice about your garbage, and your recycling habits. Check out this article at CNN.com and visit the following link to learn more about The Garbage Patch.
The Unifying Theme is currently accepting applications for the 2010 Scholarship Competitions. We are sponsoring student competitions for art, music, and writing. We are also accepting submissions for the first Faculty and Staff Art Exhibition. Links to registration forms can be found below as well as submission deadlines for each contest. We look forward to everyone’s submissions this year!
Student Juried Student Art Exhibition, Submissions due March 1 at 5pm, REGISTER
Student Writing Competition, Submissions due February 22 at 5pm, REGISTER
Music Composition Competition, Submissions due March 1 at 5pm, REGISTER
Student Juried Faculty and Staff Art Exhibition, Submissions due March 1 at 5pm, REGISTER
Chris Castro is a senior undergraduate Environmental Science Major, Energy and Sustainability minor here at UCF and has been extremely active in the community strengthening the Unifying Theme and promoting sustainability. Chris’s pride and joy is the nonprofit student organization called I.D.E.A.S. (Intellectual Decisions on Environmental Awareness Solutions) co-founded with his good friend Hank Harding. Established in summer 2008, I.D.E.A.S. is a national organization which promotes sustainable practices through research, community action, volunteerism and environmental awareness. Two interesting projects that I.D.E.A.S. has recently been promoting are the “Bike Save Consequences” and the “Tee Totes” program. The “Bike Save Consequences” program deals with raising awareness of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change policies through the use of alternative forms of transportation followed by an actual group bike event around campus. The “Tee Totes” drive is to show students the need to reduce plastic bag consumption and how to convert your old tee shirts into viable grocery/everyday use bags.
During the Spring 2009, Chris started working with the Sustainability & Energy Management department to promote renewable energy implementation. He also helped with a variety of campus research reports and programs including Student Housing Energy Competition called “Kill-a-Watt” and the 2008 UCF Greenhouse Gas Energy report. To further establish his connection with the students at UCF and promote the need for sustainable action, Chris became a member of the Student Sustainability Alliance (SSA) and aided in projects including the Paper Reduction campaign, UCF community Garden and different Green Building projects.
After finding that his passion lies in promoting sustainability, Chris acquired an internship opportunity during the summer of 2009 with the Department of Energy (DOE): Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy in Washington D.C. During his summer internship, he researched algae carbon capturing technology and implementation of these new innovations as a sustainable energy source. He will be continuing his studies with the DOE summer of 2010 and is a current DOE ambassador promoting their efforts in Central Florida. In Chris’s next summer internship, he is planning on establishing a student ambassador program with the DOE to promote collegiate involvement with the green, sustainable movement.
Throughout his undergraduate studies here at UCF, Chris has used all these connections to continue promoting sustainable actions on campus and the outlying community as well as throughout the country through various chapters of I.D.E.A.S. He has dedicated his efforts to support the green movement and hopes in the future to further strengthen sustainability nationwide through possible employment at the Department of Energy.
|
PLAN B 4.0 BY THE NUMBERS - www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?/press_room/C68/2010_datarelease7
|
Earth Policy Release |
||
| World agriculture today faces pressure from many sources. On the production side, the amount of unused arable land worldwide has dwindled. Overworked soils are becoming eroded and degraded, and overpumped aquifers are being depleted. Meanwhile, as the global population grows and increasing biofuel production converts grain into fuel for cars, demand for food continues to climb. In Chapters 2 and 9 of Plan B 4.0, Lester Brown discusses these challenges. Here are some highlights from the supporting data:
In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, human populations increased threefold from 1961 to 2007, while livestock populations grew 12-fold. Increasing foraging needs and human food needs have placed excessive demands on soils. The country is losing 867,000 acres of cropland and rangeland to desertification each year.
On the water front, Saudi Arabia stands out as a dramatic example. Following the 1970s Arab oil export embargo, the Saudis, fearing a retaliatory embargo on grain, decided to become self-sufficient in wheat. They heavily subsidized irrigation, pumping water at great depths from a non-replenishable fossil aquifer, in order to farm the desert. Yet in early 2008, after being self-sufficient in wheat for over 20 years, the Saudis announced that with their aquifer largely depleted, they would reduce their wheat planting each year until 2016, when wheat production will end. Although Saudi Arabia is the first country to acknowledge publicly how falling water tables are affecting harvests, over half the world’s population lives in countries where aquifers are being depleted faster than they can be replenished.
World food production continues to increase, yet the rate at which it is increasing has slowed. From 1970 to 1990, world grain production grew by 64 percent. From 1990 to 2009, it increased by only 24 percent. Past growth in agricultural production was fueled in part by expanding irrigation: world irrigated area tripled from 1950 to 2000. However, expansion of irrigated area has since slowed significantly as land and water availability has declined, showing almost no growth in the past decade. When growing global population is taken into account, this trend becomes even more concerning. The world irrigated area per thousand people has declined from a high of over 47 hectares (116 acres) in the late 1970s to only 43 hectares (106 acres) per thousand people in 2007.
Growing populations and pressures on agricultural production have meant increasing food insecurity around the globe. The number of hungry people in the world declined from 878 million in 1970 to 825 million in the mid-1990s, but it has been rising ever since. In 2009, for the first time, the world’s hungry numbered more than 1 billion. The global agricultural situation may be dire, but Plan B 4.0 offers solutions. With improvements to land and water management and measures to address population growth, we have the ability to restore our agricultural systems and secure food supplies. You can download our datasets or read the book to learn more about the challenges facing world agriculture and the Plan B solutions. Feel free to pass this information along to friends, family members, and colleagues! |
|||
