Peace Corps News

Sierra Leone RPCV Eric R. Green writes: Will the coming oil crisis be the end of suburbia?

Sierra Leone RPCV Eric R. Green writes: Will the coming oil crisis be the end of suburbia?
Every semester I’ve shown “End of Suburbia” to my classes to mixed reviews to the message. I’ve warned them that it will be too expensive for most Americans to own big trucks or SUVs, especially at the current way they are made to consume gas. This means our lives are going to change dramatically. Predicting social change can be difficult, especially for long-term future.

The worst-case scenario is the total decline in our economy with a depression, social disorder and wars between states and communities for the remaining sources, much like the CBS TV action series “Jericho” in which residents of a small Kansas town are cut off from the rest of the world after major terrorist attacks.

The best-case scenario is that we have minor inconveniences and we find ways to use energy more efficiently and wisely. Alternative energy sources will need to be developed to their full potential, out of necessity, like wind and solar. Whatever happens there is one truth that many Americans will have to face. We must change our lifestyles. We cannot continue to use natural resources the same way we have in the past and present.

Is there a political solution? With the national election coming up in 2008, some of the presidential candidates in both parties are talking about energy policy and this crisis, but few are telling us that we have to give up our lifestyles and big SUVs.

Even if it’s the truth, who is going to vote for a candidate who tells us we have to live with less in the future? What we will need is a “World War II kind of effort” to deal with this issue just like the “greatest generation” that had to deal with in personal sacrifice and rationing of goods and services. Our current greedy culture stresses individuality above all so the psychological aspects of this type of change will be one of our biggest challenges.  Read more.

Returned Peace Corps Volunteers and Global Warming

Congo Kinshasa RPCV Beth Duff Brown writes: Global Warming Effects Hunting for Inuit
Nattaq and other Inuit, the Arctic people of the United States, Canada, Russia, and Greenland - in Alaska where they're known as Eskimos - have been warning the world for more than a decade about the shifting winds and thinning ice. Hunting patterns thousands of years old are in jeopardy. 'Our way of life is at stake,' says Sheila Watt-Cloutier, just nominated with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore for a Nobel Peace Prize for their work on climate change. Watt-Cloutier will argue before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington on Thursday that the United States, as the world's largest emitter of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, is violating her people's rights.

While for many global warming is a distant threat, for the Inuit its impact is a reality now. 'It's about real people who live on top of the world,' she said this week before leaving for the hearing. The commission, part of the Organization of American States, has no authority over the U.S. government. But Watt-Cloutier says she's looking for a moral and political victory, to help make climate change a bigger issue in future elections. Nattaq is one of 63 Inuit from Canada and Alaska on the OAS petition she is representing, filed on behalf of the world's 155,000 Inuit. Read more.

RPCV Mike Tidwell's house, once an ordinary 1915 bungalow, has become perhaps the closest thing to a "zero-carbon" home in the area
Across the Washington area, homeowners alarmed about utility rates and greenhouse gases are seeking to slash their power use or produce their own energy from renewable sources. Among them, Tidwell and a handful of others have succeeded in creating homes that require only minimal energy from power plants and fossil fuels. Tidwell, an environmental activist concerned with climate change, has outfitted his home with energy-efficient appliances, a corn-burning stove and solar panels. Now, the two-story house sometimes produces more electricity than it needs and sends the surplus to Pepco's distribution system.

Tidwell and his then-wife started with a $7,500 home-equity loan. They replaced incandescent light bulbs with more costly compact fluorescent bulbs, which work in the same fixtures and provide the same light but use a third as much energy. They bought an EPA-designated "Energy Star" refrigerator, which cost $150 more but used less than a third as much power. For heat, they replaced a natural-gas furnace with a $2,400 stove that burns corn kernels. Because corn consumes carbon dioxide as it grows, burning it doesn't release new greenhouse gases, he said. The corn, of a type used for animal feed, is grown in Mount Airy and brought to Takoma Park in a truck that burns soy-based biodiesel fuel. In town, the corn is stored in a 25-foot-tall silo owned by a community cooperative. In especially cold months, Tidwell has to get a load once a week. Author Mike Tidwell, founder of the Chesapeake Climate Action  Committee, served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Congo Kinshasa. Read more.

Congressman Thomas Petri working on bill to ease global warming
Thomas Petri has co-authored legislation with Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M., called the Keep America Competitive Global Warming Policy Act, a bill that gradually imposes restrictions on the carbon-based pollution that many scientists believe is causing global warming. A little over a week ago Petri and Udall met with leaders of major businesses and environmental groups in Washington, D.C., to discuss global warming issues and the framework advanced at that meeting calls for a mandatory cap-and-trade program with specific limits on greenhouse emissions. Petri said businesses that succeed in reducing emissions would be allowed to sell unused emission allowances to other businesses that are having greater difficulty complying with limits.

Petri said the legislation that is being proposed is very similar to what European countries are doing to help the environment but admitted that it would be impossible for every industry to reduce all of their emissions. “The whole idea of making limestone is to heat it, and it emits carbon,” Petri said. “But we need it for cement and a variety of other things. So if you had a one size fits all and you said you can't emit, they would be out of business and it would disrupt our economy.  “This is more of a balance approach that will enable people to emit if it is really necessary, but will kind of discourage them from doing it and encourage people to use technology to reduce emissions as much as possible,” he added. “It's a place to start. It doesn't make everyone real happy but it looks like it is going to get pretty broad support.”

Petri admitted there is a large amount of controversy surrounding global warming and that most people think carbon-based emissions have some sort of an effect on the issue. “It is true the Earth warmed and cooled a number of times before people got involved, but it's also true that there has been a big increase in carbon-based emissions into the atmosphere,” Petri said. “Mostly everybody thinks that has some contributing factor to global warming.”  Congressman Tom Petri of Wisconsin served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Somalia in the 1960's. Read more.

Read more about what Returned Peace Corps Volunteers are doing about Global Warming.

Spotlight on Peace Corps Mexico

Peace Corps Volunteers have teamed up with Mexican scientists in an effort to improve water quality in central Mexico
In Matehuala, a mining and industrial center north of San Luis Potosi, a team of Mexican and U.S. specialists is completing an engineering study to help find less expensive ways of treating sewage, now being discharged into surface water, than at conventional waste treatment plants. A second Mexican-U.S. team is working with the state of Guanajuato to develop more efficient processes that can lower operating costs at 12 treatment plants. The inability of municipalities to adequately fund wastewater treatment plants throughout the country has limited their effectiveness, said team member Terry Gould. In Queretaro, another cross-border team is working on solutions to help the city sharply reduce the loss of water, now estimated at around 75 percent, in the crumbling pipes running under the city’s historic center. In León, Mexican and U.S. colleagues are assisting small companies in the shoe industry both in reducing pollution and in improving their ability to compete with cheaper products from other countries, including China and Brazil. The teams include staff members from a network of Mexican research and technical centers that specialize in transferring the latest technology to small and medium-sized businesses, government agencies and non-profit organizations. Their U.S. counterparts are the first Peace Corps volunteers to ever serve in Mexico.

“The Mexico program is the first for which the Peace Corps has recruited highly specialized, technically trained and experienced volunteers to work side by side with highly-skilled and specialized counterparts from the host country,” said Byron Battle, the country director for Mexico. “The objective is to contribute to job creation for Mexican citizens as well as to improve the country’s physical environment.”

Paul Ruesch, on leave from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regional office in Chicago, isn’t sure he’ll return to his job. In his 13 years as an environmental engineer, Ruesch said he has studied problems on all seven continents. Assigned to the CIATEC center in León, he is leading a work team that is dealing with oil spills and the contamination of irrigation water around the town of Tula, Hidalgo. “My eyes have really been opened now to what I feel are much more significant pollution problems than we face in the United States. In some regards I feel we are ‘splitting hairs’ in the United States in many facets of environmental issues. We are arguing over parts per trillion, billion and million when in many countries there are baseball size chunks of contaminants floating in rivers and visible particles of soot falling from the sky.” His experiences, Ruesch said, “have motivated me to apply my talent and experience in an international venue. I really appreciate the opportunity and platform that the Peace Corps has provided for me as a volunteer.” When asked what he thought would happen should CONACYT ask for more volunteers, Battle replied, “We believe there are tons of people in the United States who want to contribute and to use their skills working on real problems.” Read more.

Elio Henríquez writes: Five members of the Peace Corps, a U.S. government-sponsored organization accused of performing counterinsurgency activities in several countries in the past, have been incorporated as "volunteers" in strategic departments of ECOSUR
The presence of the "volunteers" has caused discontent and preoccupation among several of the 40 investigators of the scientific research center, fearing possible repercussions for the institution. Some of the investigators, who wish to remain anonymous, complained about the fact that the decision to incorporate members of the U.S. Peace Corps was taken by the ECOSUR management without previous consultation. According to their information, the five U.S.-Americans have been assigned since January 8, in the departments for informatics, networking and institutional development, which are considered "strategic".

The Peace Corps coordinator in Mexico, Byron Battle, confirmed that since January 8, five "co-operators" are working in the ECOSUR. He recognized that the association, which was originally created in 1961 and has currently 8000 "volunteers" distributed in 75 countries, has been accused of performing counterinsurgency activities in the past, but assured this to be "not true". In an interview in this city he commented that "suspicions" in this respect had been raised in some of the countries where the Peace Corps had maintained a presence, but "this isn’t true, if it was, we would have already cancelled the program". As he assured, the association had no relation to the State Department, although it is financed with government ressources approved by the Congress. Read more.

Caption: Byron Battle (above), Peace Corps' country director in Mexico says "We are not about promoting U.S. foreign policy, but to offer our people a chance to get to know other countries."

Aurora Illinois Mayor Tom Weisner (RPCV Solomon Islands) and his wife, Marilyn, plan to fly to Iguala de la Independencia along with 2nd Ward Alderman Juany Garza and Greg Salgado, a Hispanic civic leader to investigate a possible sister city arrangement
The mayor and Garza will poke around the city, eyeing its potential as a sister city. "We're very much in an early stage," Weisner said Monday. "This has kind of started out very informally. We thought it would be fun to go with Juany and her husband." Aurora residents from Iguala de la Independencia, and leaders from that city, have voiced interest in being a sister city, he added. But no decisions have been made, he stressed, and he wants to investigate a possible sister city arrangement with a community in India, too. "Understanding other countries and cultures is a good thing," said Weisner, who lived in the Solomon Islands with Marilyn in the Peace Corps.  Read more.

Caption: Tom Weisner (above), Mayor of Aurora, Illinois served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Solomon Islands in the 1980's.

Read more about Peace Corps Mexico.

Forestry and the Peace Corps

Nepal RPCV Joe Krueger has been to Liberia four times in the past two years as part of a program that is drawing on skills from the U.S. Forest Service to restore Liberia's timber industry
The Liberian Forestry Initiative came about as a means of re-establishing a viable and responsible industry, as the country operated under a shaky interim government. While the initiative is driven by a U.S. Forest Service team, it is funded by the State Department with the cooperation of the United Nations. The program is aimed at establishing laws and regulations and a general framework for managing Liberia's forests. Krueger said he was tapped for the program because he had worked on a community forestry project in Senegal in 2004, and had served in the Peace Corps in Nepal in the early 1990s. He first went to Liberia in April 2005 and has been back three times since, most recently in December. Krueger said there has been progress in rebuilding the country's timber industry, and a big part of it is due to the relative stability that's developed since last year, when a competent, Harvard-educated president was elected, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.

"Right now, the industry is completely unregulated," he said. But many of the pieces are falling in place for an organized, regulated timber industry to start up soon. And there is pressure for Krueger and his fellow advisers to make it happen. "There is a lot of pressure on the Forest Service to get this sector back up and running," Krueger said. "People want to know, where are the logs, where is the revenue?" The old contracts have all been nullified and new ones will be issued under a system that will more closely monitor the movement of products. A "chain of custody" system is being developed to track logs from the stump all the way to their export destination. Read more.

Niger RPCV Clark Fleege helps rebuild Afghanistan's forests
Fleege, who directs the Lucky Peak Nursery for the Boise National Forest, will make his second trip to Afghanistan to continue working on a United States Department of Agriculture project to plant native tree species for reforestation, soil improvement and beautification. The country has lost a lot of its forests to a drought that has plagued the area for the past several years.

"By us going in there and helping improve their natural resources, we can help these people improve their lives and have a more stable country," Fleege said. The U.S. compound where Fleege will stay includes dorm-style housing in metal shipping crates. He will be confined to working in and around Kabul because of safety concerns, and will need an armed escort everywhere he goes. "What we do is management of natural resources, and sound natural resource management is just fundamental for anything, for life: having good water, good soil, clean air," he said.  Read more.

Ed " Redwood" Ring writes: The best thing that ever happened to me was going to Central America to help treeplanters. I was fortunate to have a first-hand look at some of their finest work, when I went there with Stuart Conway, an EcoWorld Hero and co-founder of the reforesting group, Trees Water and People.

Stuart Conway has been living half in the U.S., half in Central America for about 25 years now. He and his wife Jennie Bramhall joined the Peace Corps, went to Guatemala for their honeymoon, and didn't come home for three years. They lived and worked in a small town just south of the beautiful highland colonial city of Antigua. Since then, they return to Central America several times a year, specializing in helping small communities grow trees and protect their watersheds.

Stuart co-founded Trees Water and People (the name grows on you) in 1998 with Richard Fox, a veteran forest arborist, who specializes in North American forest preservation and watershed protection. Both of them moved with their families to Ft. Collins, Colorado, rolled up their sleeves and got their organization up and running. They work along with a small staff in a lofty 2nd floor suite in an old brick and timber building on College Avenue between downtown and the University. Towering Plains Cottonwoods hang huge limbs overhead (Cottonwoods decorate the whole city, and why they aren't planting new ones is beyond me), and just one block north the main train line intersects the street. If you call them and hear a roar in the background, it's just a freight train about two hours on the tracks from Denver.

When the folks at Trees Water and People aren't providing funds and expert assistance growing trees and protecting watersheds in Central America, they are working closer to home, protecting watersheds in the Rocky Mountains of the U.S. This is Richard Fox's area, and he brings to his work a lifetime of experience in forests throughout America, but mostly in the Rockies. In his time, Richard has had crews of planters where, using a special planting tool, each person could plant up to 1,000 trees per day. I didn't believe him, but we timed the motions, and I did the math. I guess it's true. We could have fun with this! One thousand people could plant a million trees a day. A billion trees in less than three years!

Planting trees is only part of the solution, though, and managing a forest and a watershed is complex work that is never done. Richard's trees and watershed protection has so far enlisted the support of communities throughout Colorado and Wyoming, mostly along the "Front Range," the eastern slopes of the Rockies.  Read more.

Read more about the Peace Corps and forestry.

India RPCV Carl Pope writes: Renewable energy offers new jobs

RPCV Carl Pope writes: Renewable energy offers new jobs
"The fact that we buy wind turbines from Denmark and not from Cleveland may be absurd, but it is no accident because until now America as a whole hasn't really been serious about creating a new energy economy. Meanwhile, actions by individual states give some clue about how forward-thinking energy policies can create good jobs. " Sierra Club President Carl Pope served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in India in the 1960's. Read more.

Sierra Club, Steelworkers to Announce Historic Strategic Alliance
The Alliance will promote a new vision for American public policy -- creating jobs by promoting smart energy solutions to global warming; reducing the risks from toxic chemicals in the workplace and the community; and building a responsible trade policy for America. This unprecedented alliance will chart a new direction for the nation's labor and environmental movements, bringing together almost 2 million members around a shared vision of the future. Read more.

Carl Pope writes: The Trickle-up response to global warming offers hope
"We don't have the luxury of waiting for an administration in Washington that can read a thermometer. We can flex our muscle at the state and local levels, challenging our elected leaders to greater creativity and resourcefulness in cooling the planet. Global warming is a big challenge, but it's one each of us can do something about starting today." Read more.