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'Clean Energy' At What Cost?, Rachel E. Conrad Apr 2013

'Clean Energy' At What Cost?, Rachel E. Conrad

Pitzer Senior Theses

Ecuador was ‘refounded’ at the turn of the 21st century, with the articulation of progressive and inclusive ideals in a new Constitution. Social movements and leftist intellectuals in Ecuador have expressed that president Rafael Correa has failed to uphold the 2008 Constitution’s goals and values. President Correa and his Alianza PAIS government have utilized the rhetoric of the revolutionary ideals articulated in the Constitution, but in practice, they have continued to implement the status quo Western development model, and a large part of their development strategy involves ‘neo-extractive’ activities. Hydroelectric energy production is contributing to the ‘neo-extractive’ development model …


The Political Landscape Of Hydraulic Fracturing: Methods Of Community Response In Central Arkansas, Alyssa M. Solis Apr 2013

The Political Landscape Of Hydraulic Fracturing: Methods Of Community Response In Central Arkansas, Alyssa M. Solis

Pitzer Senior Theses

This thesis looks at the current fracking debate on a national scale, before focusing specifically on how this debate is playing out in the landscape of Central Arkansas. Focusing on the lack of national regulation, the unique array of state regulations that have popped up are assessed in their effectiveness on the ground through speaking with residents of the area. The demographics of these residents are analyzed within an assessment of environmental injustice vulnerability. This ethnographic approach also compares the de jure v. de facto outcomes of these regulations through the narratives of residents working with organizations across the political …


Altering The Urban Frontier: Gentrification And Public Parks In New York City, Sarah E. Evers Jan 2013

Altering The Urban Frontier: Gentrification And Public Parks In New York City, Sarah E. Evers

Pitzer Senior Theses

After decades of cuts to federal funding, cities were left with few resources for public services, particularly parks and open spaces. Current trends of massive gentrification in New York City are changing the housing market and other components of the private sector. In addition to altering socio-spatial dynamics in the housing and consumer markets, gentrification can alter public spaces as well. By comparing three New York City neighborhoods at different stages of gentrification, I analyzed socio-spatial dynamics, public and private funding, event programming, and ethnographically observed changes in the physical and social landscape of the park, and neighborhood, over time.


Environmental Critiques Of Nuclear Energy, William Hummel May 2012

Environmental Critiques Of Nuclear Energy, William Hummel

Pomona Senior Theses

This essay identifies and evaluates the most common environmental critiques made against nuclear energy development. Environmentalists articulate four major concerns: the destructive effects and health risks of uranium mining; the dangers posed by radiation releases and meltdowns; the difficult of nuclear waste disposal; and national security concerns, including nuclear weapons proliferation and the possibility of attack or sabotage. By characterizing and describing these concerns, we are better able to decide which problems are most compelling, and suggest possible policy-driven solutions.


Engaging With Motherhood: Gender And Sexuality In Environmental Justice, Hannah M G Snyder May 2012

Engaging With Motherhood: Gender And Sexuality In Environmental Justice, Hannah M G Snyder

Pomona Senior Theses

Despite the fact that women make up a large proportion of participants in the environmental justice movement, the movement is still framed in terms of race and class. This thesis investigates the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, class, and environmental justice. I explore the prominent rolls that women play in grassroots environmental justice movements and the look at the discourses that surround gender and environmental justice through a queer studies and ecofeminist lens. I argue that motherhood narratives—while powerful motivators for activists and effective tools for creating resistance—can create a rhetoric that is exclusionary to people with non-normative sexualities and …


Take Me To The River: Revitalizing La's Lost Monument, Erin Childs May 2012

Take Me To The River: Revitalizing La's Lost Monument, Erin Childs

Pomona Senior Theses

The tale of South Korea's Cheonggyecheon River is one to warm an urban environmentalist's heart. Cheonggyecheon runs through the center of Seoul, a bustling metropolis of ten million that has been the capital of Korea since the 14th century. The Japanese were the first to sacrice Cheonggyecheon on the altar of urbanization, turning the River into a sewage system during their 35 year occupation between 1910 and 1945. Already thusvdegraded, it was easy for later administrations to eventually completely cover the river with the Cheonggye Road and Cheonggye Elevated Highway between 1958 and 1976. Cheonggyecheon became an exemplar of the …


Day To Day Change Making: The Transformative Potential Of Dumpster Diving, Elizabeth Emery Donovan May 2012

Day To Day Change Making: The Transformative Potential Of Dumpster Diving, Elizabeth Emery Donovan

Pomona Senior Theses

This paper investigates the potential of dumpster diving as a tactic of the freegan movement. The goal of the freegan movement is the realization of a postcapitalist world. I first investigate the scope, legality and demographic of dumpster diving in the U.S. I then contextualize dumpster diving within the history of waste, consumerism and excess in the U.S. since the beginning of the 20th century. I conclude by assessing the viabaility of freegan dumpster diving as a transformative tactic in light of its inaccessibility to various individuals as a result of their race and class. I ultimately argue that freeganism …


Public Housing In The United States: Using Sustainable Urbanism To Combat Social Exclusion, Jasmine L. Edo May 2012

Public Housing In The United States: Using Sustainable Urbanism To Combat Social Exclusion, Jasmine L. Edo

Scripps Senior Theses

The United States government has taken steps to assure underprivileged citizens housing in the form of public housing through the Department of Housing and Urban Development, as well as various humanitarian programs in the form of homeless shelters. Yet, all housing is not equal. Our freedom to choose where we live and what type of house we live in is one revered aspect of life as a United States citizen. We can express our individuality, creativity, and personality through the architectural style of our homes. In this sense it is hard to ask for equal housing. I am suggesting that …


A New Paradigm: Brazilian Catholic Eco-Justice Activism In The Neoliberal Age, Lena R. Connor May 2011

A New Paradigm: Brazilian Catholic Eco-Justice Activism In The Neoliberal Age, Lena R. Connor

Environmental Analysis Program Mellon Student Summer Research Reports

This paper analyzes how traditional liberation theology in Brazil has been adapted in the neoliberal age to encompass ecological goals and rhetoric. In this research report, I first examine the work of prominent Brazilian ecotheologians, Ivone Gebara and Leonardo Boff. I then look into the applications of such ecological liberation theology in Catholic activism in Brazil, focusing on the role of religious advocacy in dam controversies, land reform, and mining.


Do Environmental Audits Improve Long-Term Compliance: Evidence From Manufacturing Facilities In Michigan, Mary F. Evans, Lirong Liu, Sarah L. Stafford Jan 2011

Do Environmental Audits Improve Long-Term Compliance: Evidence From Manufacturing Facilities In Michigan, Mary F. Evans, Lirong Liu, Sarah L. Stafford

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

Using a unique facility-level dataset from Michigan, we examine the effect of environmental auditing on manufacturing facilities’ long-term compliance with U.S. hazardous waste regulations. We also investigate the factors that affect facilities’ decisions to conduct environmental audits and whether auditing in turn affects the probability of regulatory inspections. We account for the potential endogeneity of our audit measure and the censoring of our compliance measure using a censored trivariate probit, which we estimate using simulated maximum likelihood. We find that larger facilities and those subject to more stringent regulations are more likely to audit; facilities with poor compliance records are …


Cultivating Youth Earth Connections Summer Internship Program (Yec): A Hands-On Environmental Justice Focused Farming Program At The High School Level, Samuel Lewis Jan 2011

Cultivating Youth Earth Connections Summer Internship Program (Yec): A Hands-On Environmental Justice Focused Farming Program At The High School Level, Samuel Lewis

Pomona Senior Theses

YEC’s main goal was to open dialogue with high school students from under resourced communities about environmental injustices and to create and explore positive alternatives. The summer program, which was funded by the 2010 Davis Projects for Peace and the Pomona College Summer Undergraduate Research Project Award, included a group of 11 high school students from Pomona, Montclair, La Puente, and Chino Hills, CA. The students were paid to participate in the program for 6 weeks in the summer of 2010, five days a week, for 30 hours each week. The program was designed to consistently connect movements for food …


Whole Foods: Renewable Energy Credits, Green Business, And Capitalist Approaches To Climate Change, Samantha Kanofsky May 2009

Whole Foods: Renewable Energy Credits, Green Business, And Capitalist Approaches To Climate Change, Samantha Kanofsky

Pomona Senior Theses

Dedication. Acknowledgements. Preface. Chapter 1: Introduction. Chapter 2: Green Business and Carbon Offsetting. Chapter 3A: Case Study. Chapter 3B: Interview. Chapter 4: Case Study. Chapter 5: Conclusion. Bibliography.


A Place Like This: An Environmental Justice History Of The Owens Valley - Water In Indigenous, Colonial, And Manzanar Stories, Monica Embrey May 2009

A Place Like This: An Environmental Justice History Of The Owens Valley - Water In Indigenous, Colonial, And Manzanar Stories, Monica Embrey

Pomona Senior Theses

This text provides an environmental justice analysis of the stories of the people who lived in the Owens Valley, who watered its land and cultivated its crops—pine trees, apple trees, and kabocha alike. Telling the personal stories of challenge and resistance that manifested alongside the oppressive forces of military and state domination provides the opportunity to align forcibly relocated, exploited and incarcerated people’s struggles throughout time. This text starts with The Nü’ma Peoples who were the first humans to live in the Owens Valley and continues with the struggle for empire between rival colonial empires of agriculture and distant urban …


Justice Above Profit, Sustainability Above Growth, Humanity Above Economy: Vandana Shiva And The Alternative Development Movement, Julia Magon Braker Apr 2009

Justice Above Profit, Sustainability Above Growth, Humanity Above Economy: Vandana Shiva And The Alternative Development Movement, Julia Magon Braker

Pomona Senior Theses

Multiple activists challenge the established development paradigm, prioritizing issues such as human rights, economic justice and environmental sustainability, as opposed to neoliberal development’s focus on macroeconomics and corporations. These activists include Dr. Vandana Shiva. Well-renowned activists, academics and politicians criticize the stances that Shiva takes on globalization and development issues, claiming that they are uninformed, too radical or misguided. These thoughts provoke the core question of this thesis—do Vandana Shiva’s theories and practices promote just, sustainable development?


Growing A Better Food System: An Analysis Of The Impact Of California School Gardens On The Sustainable Food And Food Security Movements, Michael Press Jan 2006

Growing A Better Food System: An Analysis Of The Impact Of California School Gardens On The Sustainable Food And Food Security Movements, Michael Press

Pomona Senior Theses

In recent decades, environmental problems associated with conventional agriculture, children’s nutrition, and concern over the adequacy of the current food supply have led to the emergence of the sustainable food and food security movements. These issues have also inspired the state of California to pass legislation to place a garden in every school in the state. This thesis analyzes the accuracy of this policy’s implementation and its effects on the sustainable food and food security movements. Research found that the loss of state funding for this policy and the administrative, logistical, and informational barriers to establishing garden education programs has …


Back To The Garden: The Redemptive Promise Of Sustainable Forestry, 1893-2000, Char Miller Jan 2000

Back To The Garden: The Redemptive Promise Of Sustainable Forestry, 1893-2000, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

As we struggle at the turn of the century to define and implement “sustainable forestry”— the next stage in the evolution of forest management in North America and the world—it is important to realize that its components have strong roots in the forestry profession. This article examines the relationship of forests and forestry with social equity issues during the last century. In the end, the author leaves us with a question: can sustainable forestry as we understand it today lead to conflict resolution? If not, what lies beyond sustainable forestry?


Land Development And Biotechnology At The Claremont Colleges, Paul Faulstich Feb 1999

Land Development And Biotechnology At The Claremont Colleges, Paul Faulstich

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Founded on the Oxford model of a cluster of institutions, the Claremont Colleges has periodically established a new school. In the Spring of 1997, the Board of Fellows of the Claremont University Center charged with policy-making for the consortium-voted to establish a seventh college; the Keck Graduate Institute of applied life sciences. or bioengineering. Despite other landholdings, including a golf course and a non-operational gravel quarry, the Board of Fellows voted to site the New Venture on a portion-approximately eleven acres--of the Bernard Biological Field Station. (Pitzer's vote was cast against building on the Field Station.)