Life-Long Learning

My Exploration of Environmentalism

While my website portfolio, on one hand, is the tool my instructors expect of me to showcase my journey through the ISS program and a methodology to demonstrate my understanding of concepts we study along the way, on the other hand it is a means of expressing the evolution of who I am as learn more and more about the social implications of environmentalism. My journey, thus far, has been a challenging and emotionally filled realization of our doom, as ISS has provided insight into “how” and “why” we are tracking to self-immolation.

Following the WCM (Website Communication Model), my content will include my frustration of humanity’s failures to address climate change, but also organized and refined as I explore my main area of interest. My main area of interest is the perspective on my journey through the ISS program, to explore my keyword, environmentalism, and how it can be redefined. This journey is expected to uncover the layers of social constructs contributing to climate change and the exploration of new ways for humans to adapt.  

The audience for my portfolio are instructors, fellow students and anyone else I can give access to. I intend to explain to my audience the different social constructs we’ve covered through the program (the project), and how some may reference some positive aspects of social justice, but come with incredible costs to our environment; these are the “pillars'' of my website, with the “cross pillars” representing the interspersement of different consequence-concepts along the way. For example, with ICT’s and how we’ve explored the delivering of information and technology to all corners of the world (pillar), I want my portfolio to emphasize how accessing all this technology requires more electricity and infrastructure, which is usually provided by coal-fired power stations in the developing world, how all of this technology requires minerals, such as copper (Figure 1), that have been mined by their impoverished and water-scarce neighbors who are negatively affected by that mining (Figure 2), and how all this technology is a vector for additional access to online marketplace resources and goods, which in turn means more mass consumption to further pollute the environment and the further heating of our planet (cross-pillar and evaluation). Following the AWARE model, my stakeholders are anyone who reads my content, organized in a way that’s drawing inspiration from the WHO site on climate change (World Health Organization), which very specifically, and in recent scientific context, lays out humanity’s failings, our risk factors, and the steps needed to address climate related health challenges. As I progress through the ISS program, and reflect on the knowledge I’ve gained, I have to continually update my site to add more empirical data and analysis, much like the WHO site, to also refine requirements and my evolving communication strategy. My ultimate goal is to use my portfolio to show why I even try to be a part of a climate solution, despite my cynical attitude toward the climate problem.