Author Archives: Rain Jiang

Reforming Climate Change Policies

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During the pandemic, besides the growing public concern over the rapid spread of the disease, news about the sharply falling greenhouse gas emissions and energy demand in China because of the mandatory stay-at-home order drew my attention and raised my interest to join the Citizens’ Climate Lobby action group.

The fundamental purpose of the CCL is to work toward the adoption of fair, effective, and sustainable climate change policies, and the piece we have been working on is the Energy, Innovation & Carbon Dividend Act, which aims to put a fee on fossil fuels and use that money as a dividend and allocate to every American. My group’s objective is to participate in lobbying for the passage of the Energy Innovation Act. I have never known something about lobbying, let alone have the chance to participate in a real Lobby Day Event at a conference. Surprisingly, we will have a precious opportunity to join a lobby team preparing for and attending the conference. This experience also taught me how to interact with members of congress and government representatives.

As the project proceeded, I found that it is closely related to our course material and what we are doing now really matters in real life. The Act is trying to take political action to influence legislators and major oil companies to reduce carbon footprint through a top-down approach. At the same time, it uses individualized actions as a supplement to the policy change. Thinking systematically, citizens are core elements of the Act, and we will make a difference through a bottom-up approach in a way that individuals unite as teams to lobby for a real systematic change in climate policy. Meanwhile, the taxes collected will be allocated back to individuals, helping them live a more sustainable life. It works as a reinforcing feedback loop that accelerates our progress in fighting climate change.

Also, I learned to cooperate with group members. Teamwork is an essential element of the success of a project. Instead of doing all the weekly training on our own, we decided to each take one training and summarize for the group. Therefore, we were able to grasp the main ideas in the most efficient way. I’m really impressed by my members, they are confident, knowledgeable, and brave. Rachel is a really good leader; she takes notes and organizes every meeting for us. Dakota integrates course materials with the project very well, Tebow and Alan always give us thoughtful ideas. Thanks to Karen, Ryan, my group members, and other classmates for a great and meaningful quarter.

In Response to “We Are Told Not to Cry Over Spilled Milk” by Carbam

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By focusing on dumped milk, you showed concern in your blog about the food waste before and amid the COVID-19 pandemic. I agree with you that as the coronavirus spread rapidly across the world, it is disrupting our supply chains and making farmers grappling with low prices and an abrupt drop in demand. Because of the lockdown, restaurants and grocery stores are shutting down and farmers are forced to destroy their crops, throw out perishable items, and dump excess milk. According to estimates from the largest dairy cooperative in the US, dairy farmers are dumping out approximately 3.7 million gallons of milk per day due to the pandemic.

Florida dairy farmers dump excess milk amid coronavirus

With restaurants and schools closed because of the stay-at-home order, it is inevitable that we will experience a hard time managing soaring food waste. One way to alleviate this problem, from my perspective, is to donate the excess food to food aid programs such as SNAP. Also, the government should allocate compensation fairly to farmers to help them go through this hard time. As we’ve discussed in class, inequalities in the food system over time are magnified and are especially obvious during this pandemic. While coronavirus is devastating agriculture, the most vulnerable and impacted groups are low-income families and undocumented workers. As they rely more heavily on SNAP and other food aid during the pandemic, donating excess food can not only ensure enough food supply for SNAP but also abate food waste pressures.

Insight Into Yourself

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I took Pol S 384 with Karen last fall and took the in-class contemplative practices with her, but I didn’t feel the power of it until our first in-class practice this quarter. The whole practice was about a simple question: How are you? But I felt energized and refreshed after that.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the uncertainty of a new learning style, and the stress of being alone in a country away from home made me feel depressed and stressed out. I could not stop worrying about the exacerbating problems of COVID-19 and focus on my study. However, through the practice, I calmed down and started to feel the innermost emotions and energy.

Follow Karen’s guiding questions and her soft, gentle voice, I began to ask myself: who am I? Do I feel good now? How can I live and study normally if the world is normal? Can I keep being healthy and optimistic under such huge anxiety? What if I take a break and accept all the unusual things as the new normal?

After the ten minutes of asking myself and seeking for answers, I was clearer about what I should do and realized that I was trapped in negative thoughts and it’s OK to be not OK. I felt full of power and energy after doing that contemplative practice. I became efficient and positive about life again. In my opinion, contemplative practices give us an opportunity to focus on our thoughts and have some insight into the problem. That’s why I like to do the practice right before our class. It helps me settle down to be prepared for the class. And I especially like the in-class ones, since they make me feel the class is united and we are all together in this extremely hard time.

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Food Waste amid Covid-19 Pandemic

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The new coronavirus has posted a variety of problems on our food system and ecology. One thing I concern the most is the increasing food waste these days.

Due to the newly carried-out policy that requires people to stay at home except for necessary activities, they are moving from eating out to cook more at home. Also, restaurants and shops are shutting down in response to the spread of the coronavirus. These shifts lead to less market demand for food resources. It’s reported that farm growers leave almost half of the crops in the field and are facing exacerbating supply bulge because the demand for their products decreases abruptly.

Thinking about the deep interdependence in our systems and its nonlinearity, we can see the non-predictable effects of the change of one factor on another. The shift in eating patterns drastically decreases the demand for farm products which increases farm waste as well as household food waste. As people turn to take-out and delivery, we also witness an increase in waste through packaging.  But despite these adverse impacts of the Covid-19 and the “stay-at-home” policy, it also significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution. Because of the travel ban and disallowed unnecessary going-out, the use of private cars, public transportation, and even planes has been greatly limited, resulting in a temporary environmentally friendly lifestyle.

From my perspective, to minimize the negative impacts of coronavirus, firstly government and relevant agencies should find a way to manage the food surplus and food waste. It can be donations to poor and food-insecure regions. Also, individuals should not buy an excessive amount of food and ask for paper bags instead of plastic bags for take-out and delivery.