green the ghetto

... on a recent driving tour back from another field site I began to feel overwhelmed by the scale of the environmental degradation here in China. The land and water are caught between industries scrambling increase production and everyday people just trying to make it to next year...and just SO MANY people. Poor people don't have the luxury of planning for the long term and industries just don't care. It is just not sustainable and it is depressing.

Whenever I am beginning to feel a little overwhelmed by how to scale up my work to the big picture, or just generally like I am suffering from academic myopia, I go back and watch this video of Majora Carter at TED. I had the great opportunity to work with her organization Sustainable South Bronx for a few years when I was at the NYC Parks Dept. and served on a committee or two with her. She is fantastic and dynamic and makes me want to be a better, more active, broader thinking person. The beginning of this is touching, the middle is a little pitch-y, but the end, when she calls out Al Gore for selling her short, is priceless. What would our world be like if we had more Majoras? How can we best take her message and apply it to the developing world?