Focus The Nation -Business Seminar

Dr. Kate Lancaster - Associate Professor, Accounting Department

-Product Stewardship
- Need to close the loop of a product life cycle and reuse the waste
- Cradle to Cradle philosophy
- Interface, Ray Anderson and Bio-mimicry
- Triple Bottom Line (People, Planet, Profit)
- Urges all to vote their values

Dr. Norm Borin - Professor Marketing Department

- Need for sustainable consumers
- Ski resorts try to deal with warming by making artificial snow, but this severely drains water resources for local towns
- The questions is how do we get the consumers to switch to green products
- 3 types of consumers
-- periphery consumers = only doing it because it benefits them in some way
-- mid level consumers = does because it will affect household and community
-- core consumers = willing to pay premium price for goods that are green

Dr. Eric Fisher - Professor, Economics Department

- Weightless Economy
- Service Economy
- We are polluting less, but we consume more so the emission levels are about the same.
- CO2 emissions last long periods of time and there is no immediate stop or fix to it
- Green is a 12 trillion dollar economy

Christopher Perello J.D. - Lecturer, accounting Department

- Doom and Gloom thoughts
- The market will react to stimuli
- Need to make green more profitable in the short run so business will adapt it into their business plans
- Business will not consider issues unless they have to
- Good thing is they are going to ban plastic shopping bags in California
- Believes forced government actions must occur
- Good business practices like Patagonia

Focus The Nation -Agricultural Seminar

Dr. David Headrick - Professor, Horticulture and Crop Science

Impact of Insects
- Speaks on how climate change will affect us
- Insects will expand and contract area range due to the changes in temperature
- Incests also change how much they grow based on temperature and climate
- We could potentially face an incest invasion, not like biblical plagues
- Insect pest cause severe damage to crops 2nd highest rankings of crop loss only to weeds
- USDA is monitoring where pests go so that they can track and prevent them
- There is a giant need to have an abatement district set up to protect when insects arrive

Dr. Stu Styles - Director, Cal Poly Irrigation Training and Research Center

Impact on Water Resources
- Reduced snow pack
- Earlier snow melt means harder to control water
- The water temperature will rise and impact the ecosystem
- Sea levels will rise and the delta will rise and affect the levee's and flooding impact
- 2/3 of all drinking water in California comes from the delta system
- Increased drought will occur
- The current snow pack which is 15 million Acre feet, and will be reduced by 25%
- Growers will need to change their cropping plans to accommodate for water levels
- We need to understand our carbon footprint
- Need for farmers to switch from Diesel engines to Electric engines
- Need to improve water delivery system
- Need to switch over to drip irrigation
- Drip irrigation will increase food output for input of water

Ryan Rich - Four Elements Farm

- It is essential to have groundwater
- There is a great deal of focus that needs to be paid attention to water conservation
- Planted many of his crops in areas that were already wet areas on his land
- 2005 the cucumber beetles destroyed his crops
- very important to know what is occurring during the seasons so that farmers know when the best time to plant their crops
- Uses dry farming techniques
- When there was a freeze he only lost 1 tree out of 400 (large applause)

The Ridge Line

As I gaze from my apartment balcony the day after a heavy rain, I can see Madonna Mountain clearly. The rains have come and purified the air and brought a brisk chill to the air. The wind moves in with a gently push, just strong enough to notice it upon your skin. Clouds are white and light on the edges with slight darkness to their cores. They float across the sky slow enough to set and define the ridge line of the hills. they bring contract to the ridge and magnify what is up on the hill. I am able to see trees, shrubs, and even two hikers. With all the rain we have been getting, the slopes of the hills look brown from the churning of the dirt as water runs down its side. The muddy landscape is speckled with patches of grass that seem to emerging along the hills. As I sit, I begin to feel the sun that was once hidden by the clouds warm my skin. As a reaction, I look to the sun. I know that it will blind me eyes, but it still holds such a power that makes me look. I refocus my attention on the hills, yet my eyes still hurt, and I close them. I listen. I hear the gentle wind, I hear birds chirping, I hear leaves rustling, I hear my heart beating, and then a car drives by and pollutes the moment. As I look again at the ridge, my eyes move down to the swaying of the tree tops in the foreground. Then my hands go cold and my page goes dark. A cloud has passed once more and blocks me off the suns warmth and light. I accept that there will most likely be more rain and dark overcast days, however my heart longs for the sunny days of spring to come once more.

Shaver Lake Snow

Enough of staying inside, I don't want to be warm anymore. The snow looks like its a lot of fun. I want to go outside and explore. I wasn't expecting there to be a lot of snow on the ground when I made this trip, and I know it will soak right into my feet. Oh well.
I walk out the door and with every step I take, I feel the my feet grow colder. I cross the road and hop a gate into a snowy patch. I know I shouldn't be here, but I want to explore. I come across a tree that has been cut down. The only remains of such a mighty redwood is its stump and a few cut pieces that are waiting to be hauled off. I sit here wondering what was this open pasture. I perch my self up onto the stump and gaze about. This land does not seem right there are too many trees around for this void to exist. I begin to walk through the snow and feel the topography of the ground below. There are certain points where the snow has been packed and my foot rest atop the icy snow, and then there are the other points where my foot sinks through the powder. The snow began to get too deep for my comfort levels so I decided to stop and excavate a little. I was not prepared for the snow and I did not have gloves, but I was on a mission to see what was once in this opening. I began to kick the ground with the heel of my shoe to break up the icy top layer of snow. Then my hands starting lifting the snow up and aside. I shook of the cold and dealt with the fact that my fingers were now numb. I kept pushing and moving and scraping snow about. As I was reaching under the icy layer I felt a very hard material. It was a concrete cinder block. I then moved away more snow saw even more. Then I stopped. I retreated. I knew all too well that this site was going to be a home some day. That discovery just sunk me into a state of sadness. The fun of exploring nature had come to a screeching halt. The adrenaline that had kept my fingers and feet from feeling the cold ended. I began to shiver. I went back into the cabin and sat by my fire to warm up.

Pirates Cove Sunset

I stand before an opening. All color has been shrunken into a tunnel and darkness surrounds. The sun is setting ever so slowly and the reflection of light off the waters edge and extends the horizon into the sky. The color are beautiful and contrast the cave that I am about to enter into. As I walk through the cave a sound seems to permeate from the ground and the I feel that air rush about me as I pass through this "wind tunnel." I am curious. I continue to walk forward and notice that at the end of the cave there is a cliff. The sound of crashing water on rocks still draws my curiosity. I creep to the edge of the cliff and look down. As the waves come in and out the water fizzes and foams about the rocks that protrude from are below. I decide to sit and just lay back. The ground is cool and I can almost taste the saltwater of the updraft from the ocean crashing below. I hear birds chirping from behind and birds cawing from above the sea. I decide to move up the cliff and climb now on top of the cave that I just passed through. It places me into a whole new perspective being up another 15 feet. I hear new noises that were not present before. They are the sounds of others who have come to enjoy this magnificent sunset at Pirates Cove. I hear them approach with excitement in the air. The couple approaches the entrance and then silence falls as they take in this stunning view.

A Torched Landscape

"California Indian tribes practiced grassland burning to improve the ability of the land to support game species...and favored fire-adapted plants such as the California native grasses, which are well adapted to periodic fires."- Cal Poly Land: A Field Guide

After reading this passage about the Cal Poly grasslands, I remembered an incident in early July. I was moving into my new apartment, and was woken up by the sounds of helicopters buzzing above. I looked out my bedroom window to see the hill which held the iconic "P" ablaze.

Almost six months later, I decided to hike the "P" once again. Before I began my hike I looked up the hill to see a distinct squiggly line from where the fire had once been. So then I began to hike, but it did not seem so much different from what I last remembered. The grasses were yellow in color, and we have not had that much rain to turn them green yet. I continued on and once I got higher up the hill it became even more apparent that a fire had torched the hillside. I became distracted looking to where the fire lines were and journeyed to the edge. I wanted to stand one foot where fire was and one foot where it remained intact. I continued on my hike now up in the burnt region and completely lost the trail. I thought that if I kept hiking up the hill, that I would eventually hit a part of the trail. After a few minutes of looking I spotted the trial, however I would have to hop and skip over some plants that were burnt by the fire. The one plant that had a lasting impression on me was an aloe/cactus/yucca plant. The sharp blade like leaves jutted out from the pineapple shaped core. The leaves were brown and the tips were charred black like wooden barbecue skures that had been cooked to long. The body of the plant was brown and not in its natural color, although, its root structure must have still been in tack for when I nudged my foot on it still had a tight grip to the rocky ground below. I encountered many of the plants along my hike to the top. Most of them looked dead, but I did find a few that showed some signs of encouragement. Below all the charred leaves, new sprouts were beginning to make their way out into the landscape. This certainly was a welcoming site. I knew that it would just be a matter of time until the landscape was restore to what it used to remember it as. Once I got to the peak of the hill, I was able to have an unobstructed view in 360 degrees. I shook my head thinking how close our campus and my home was to being burnt down. I am relieved to know that the resiliency of nature will bring it right back.

Field Trip to Poly Canyon

Today was our second class meeting and we hiked up into Poly Canyon, however, it was not the ordinary walk that one might have done before. after a few minutes of walking we took a left and walked onto a trail that I had not even seen before. We crossed over a creek by stepping on stones, we walked over tree branches that had gown into the hillside as if the tree had fallen, but it was still alive. This was not just the ordinary hike, because it had rained the day before and the ground was slippery. I had to pay careful attention to the ground as to make sure I would not fall. It was a totally different experience for me and hiking. I normally would look up and around me when hiking on a trial, but today I looked down and watched every step.
Once we got into Poly Canyon we rested inside a recreation of a Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome and began to listen to nature. As the class grew silent I begun to head a stream babbling, and a few birds chirping. Then all of a sudden the noise was interrupted by thunderous pounding that grew ever so close. I looked over my left shoulder, and saw nothing, I snapped my head around to the right and the noises grew louder as if they were right upon me. I still saw nothing. Again my head turned to the left and twisted my torso to see if i could find where this rumbling was coming from, and out of the corner of my left eye I saw three horses galloping away along the hilly ridge. The experience only lasted a few moments, but it seemed as if the initial fear had placed me into a slow motion state making this seem longer than it really was. I was puzzled as to why this noise was so loud and seemed so close, and then I realized we were seated in a natural amphitheater. This brought my senses to the next level, and I could not only hear nature with a crisp clarity, but now I could feel it. I am now feeling as if I am one with nature, and not a bystander of it.