Film & Sustainability Series: The Dark Knight Rises

Though this film has been out for quite a while now, I must still warn everyone that spoilers await them here.

The Dark Knight trilogy begins and closes with the question of human sustainability. During its 7-year run, Director Christopher Nolan has peppered the films with the issues of clean water, the poverty gap, urban corruption. Nolan makes his loudest comment on conservation, however, by ending the series with two of the biggest concerns to human existence: the economy and the environment. And Nolan symbolizes these with his focus on nuclear energy.

Between the Dark Night and its sequel the Dark Night Rises, billionaire Bruce Wayne seems to have tried to replace his heroic Batman activities with philanthropic zeal — for a while at least. He founded a magnanimous (and expensive!) project to develop "clean" energy for all of Gotham. The benefits of such an endeavor, though largely unspoken, resonate the trilogy's theme of clean, ethical living. Unfortunately, Wayne cancelled the project without producing anything to show his investors, losing the  money and confidence of the Gotham elite and himself. After this massive failure Wayne becomes a recluse and withdraws from business and society altogether, marking the decline of Wayne Industry's sustainable works.

The kicker: Wayne's project actually succeeded.  Partway into the film, Wayne reveals that he created a nuclear fission core, capable of powering clean, sustainable energy for the entire city. But fearing its power, he keeps it hidden from the world. The reactor, Wayne learns during the development process, can be transformed into a nuclear time-bomb large enough to take out the entire metropolis. And Wayne won't take the chance of the reactor landing into the wrong hands.

The film begins with Wayne's colleague Miranda Tate attempting to persuade others to restart the project, expounding how important clean, sustainable energy would be for Gotham. Of course Wayne refuses, stating the project is dead and useless. To this Tate replies, "a man who doesn't care about the world doesn't spend half his fortune on a plan to save it." This line, spoken right after the return of Batman, ingeniously connects conservation efforts with Wayne's more exciting acts of heroism. Saving the world obviously comes in many forms.

The movie continues in this vein by building a humming tension centering around Gotham's seemingly inevitable collapse. Nolan clearly juxtaposes the unsustainable nature of the city's power players devouring decadence from its average, downtrodden citizens. As Catwoman impresses upon Wayne and the audience, "you're all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us."

No wonder Batman cannot trust humanity with the decision of sustaining or destroying itself.

In the end, Batman's enemy Bane takes the decision away from him by stealing and weaponizing his core reactor to blackmail the city of Gotham into submission. Nolan beautifully parallels Batman's threats. A source of energy efficient enough to power his city of 12 million, locked underground just as Bane was locked away in a Middle Eastern prison. Both Bane and this reactor contain dangerous potential which are realized once they hit the surface in tangent to threaten every citizen of Gotham.

Of course Bane plans on letting the core detonate itself after it becomes too unstable. In this film about the lack of durability and the lack thereof, not even Batman's most dire threat can sustain itself for long.

The terrible state of Gotham under the nihilistic warlord Bane depicts one extreme: annihilation. Nolan shows his audience the great and terrible power we humans have in carving our own future with today's technology. And in doing so, he bring into question the ethics of progress, urban environmentalism, and the limits of human nature.

Overall, Nolan beautifully employs the Batman mythology to engage with a issue that will only become more pressing as time passes. The Dark Knight trilogy's end doesn't answer all of Gotham's problems or tie everything up in a pretty bow, but it poses at least one significant question: Does the world needs better management of our resources as urgently as Gotham needed Batman?

Up next: WALL-E and Waste

Film & Sustainability: WALL-E

Using tried and true techniques that the company has mastered in the past decade, Pixar creates cute, comic movie characters to access serious themes that relate to the real world. Marlin the clownfish displayed the trials of single parenthood, Woody and Buzz witnessed the painful process of growing up, and, most recently, Merida must navigate the volatile nature of mother-daughter relationships.

In Wall-E, Pixar raises environmentalist awareness with a particularly sympathetic main character, and – in my opinion –  the most adorable robot since R2-D2.

This robot captures audiences with his big sad eyes, yes, but also with his tender reverence for old times. His past, however, is our present. WALL-E, to paraphrase John Green, imagines the future with a kind of nostalgia by presenting a futuristic reality that keeps glancing longingly at its much greener past.

Set in the year 2805, earth has become one ginormous landfill, so cluttered and polluted that it cannot sustain organic life anymore. It is every environmentalist's worst nightmare. In an obvious critique on consumerism, humanity has literally used up all of its resources and leaves earth to fend for itself.

Only the main character, WALL-E, inhabits Earth. He also has the impossible task of cleaning it up all by himself. Throughout the film flashed the massage "WALL-E: works to dig you out." His job is to maintain what is left of earth by sifting through its piles of trash. Due to centuries of neglect, all of WALL-E’s fellow janitorial-robots have perished, leaving him with only a cockroach for company as he works to clear humanity's mess.

The most stunning aspect of this near-apocalyptic world is the blatant waste. Technically speaking, WALL-E focuses on land pollution, or the contamination of the earth’s surface level by dumping waste and misusing soil; the kind of pollution only people can cause. WALL-E’s incredibly detailed animation shows a brown, desolate Earth with a skyline of compressed trash and a mountain of loose litter.

Clearly, pollution is the real antagonist of the film.

Fortunately, the earth couldn't ask for a better steward. WALL-E has a knack for fixing the broken and nurturing the weak. So it is only appropriate the WALL-E is the one to find earth’s first sign of life in decades, a fragile new plant sprouting among the waste piles.

This one plant comes to represent humanity's last hope to connect to their natural roots.

The human race, having abandoned the dirty Earth to live in a space-cruise ship, has grown animalistic due to its separation from nature. Lazy, gluttonous, and entirely dependent on technology, this “advanced” society seems less human than the robotic force it depends on. WALL-E, in comparison, seems that much more sensitive to the needs of others, including the earth.

The beauty of this robot lies in his compassion and resourcefulness. WALL-E never disposes what he can save and reuse. He stays functioning by scavenging parts from other broken down robots, and his home is full of trinkets he has saved and repaired.

Despite his technological nature,WALL-E has often been compared to early human figures like Adam and Prometheus – great classical men striving to make the earth a good home for humanity. Though he is no Batman, WALL-E truly stands up to Pixar's most noble heroes.

Tell us your thoughts about WALL-E: is it a warning of what might come to pass, or mere science-fiction fun?

Up next: The Pursuit of Happyness & Sustainable Happiness Week

Film & Sustainability Series: The Hunger Games

Last spring The Hunger Games set off a new wave of fantasy movie buzz with it's tidal wave of popularity and financial success. The second film installment, Catching Fire, is sure to be even bigger when it premiers Nov. 22, 1013.

This post will look at the film The Hunger Games as well as the book trilogy which birthed the movie series. So, be warned, mild spoilers lie ahead.

To start, I love the series' social commentary on starvation, poverty, and oppression. Though other films and books have tried to discuss the same issues, not many have found that incredible balance of subtle-but-powerful that Suzanne Collins created. The Humer Games' fictional pseudo-kingdom of Panem, a dystopian North America that doesn't shy away from violence, mirrors problems of the real world in an accessible way only fantasy can project.

Due to the Panem government's strict regulations and oppressing nature, the protagonist Katniss Everdeen's world looks bleak from the outset. The people of her home, District 12, are desperately lacking the most basic resources. Katniss must break the law and risk torture - or worse - to enter a forest in search of food nearly every day. She must choose between constant danger and starvation. This lack of food is highlighted in one of the film's most poignant scenes; right before Katniss is ripped away from her home to join the Hunger Games, her parting line is an order to her friend: "Whatever you do, don't let them starve."

Right after she leaves District 12, Katniss' train to the Capitol contains many lingering shots of a rich buffet in the dining car. The film, as well as the book, juxtaposes District 12's pervasive hunger with abundant food imagery in wealthier locations. This theme fills the entire trilogy, from flashbacks of Katniss' family drinking mint tea to fill their empty stomachs to a Capitol party where the fashion is to publicly purge and go back for another stomach-full of food.

From these scenes, the Capitol strikingly resembles America's perchance for over-consumption while many areas of the world live in perpetual hunger. The site Mindfully gives some eye-opening statistics about our consumption in relation to other countries; the U.S. tosses 200,000 tons of edible food daily, and eats extra, unneeded food that would feed 80 million people.

The Hunger Games draws much of its content from such realities, including Katniss' reaction to the Capitol. Though Katniss is momentarily dazzled by the new world of food she has entered, she can't look at it without thinking of the thin, gaunt faces she knows back home. Never is there a big meal or a banquet celebration without her thinking back to District 12's lack of sustenance. This juxtaposition of starvation and decadence shows two economic extremes that our world also faces. In Katniss' world and our own, the poverty gap is a real concern.

Wealth vs. poverty is another social commentary theme Collins draws from. While this socioeconomic gap becomes prominently gross as the series progresses, the first installment suavely introduces it with the hunger game lottery rules. The citizens desperate for food enter their names extra times for essential staples. The poorer the family, the more times the child enters themself.  One review calls such children "economic conscripts. As one New York Times article puts it, for people like Katniss, this practice is essentially "a death sentence — no one from the underfinanced and under­nourished District 12 has won in decades." These conscripts must face against their wealthier counterparts, who are trained from birth for the hunger games and have significantly higher odds of winning.

The is certainly more connections to be made here. Katniss fits the bill for a sustainable heroine: she's happiest when she hunts and forages, preferring untouched forests to overcrowded cities. And Katniss never lets things go to waste if she can help it [much like another hero in a previous post].

Though I've only scratched the surface of all that lies bubbling beneath The Hunger Games' popular draw [note: war, reality television, Jennifer Lawrence's incredibly complex performance, the seemingly-inevitable-love-triangle], I am excited to see how this story will play out further on the big screen.

Careers in Sustainability for New Graduates

Green Jobs are filling the job market like never before.

In Response, SPU alumna Amity Lumper shared how her green efforts at SPU turned into a career in sustainability. And she is just one of many who has turned an environmental interest into a livelihood.

According to a report by the United Nations Environment Programme, "new jobs are beginning to emerge in favor of greener, cleaner and more sustainable occupations." 

The same report defines "Green Jobs" as "work in agriculture, manufacturing, research and development, administrative, and service activities that contribute substantially to preserving or restoring environmental quality." The report also carefully states that these jobs must support the livelihood of the employees with fair compensation and benefits. And green jobs are involved in various activities like advocacy, education, outreach, or technology. This means that nearly every major can prepare one for a sustainable vocation.

Want a green-collar job after graduation? Here are some potential careers:

• Organic Farming, privately or at organizations like
• Energy Analyst or Specialist
• Sustainability Coordinator or Adviser
• Nonprofit Director
• Public Health Specialist
• Environmental Technician
• Conservation Biologist
• Environmental Consultant
• Environmental Lawyer
• Ecology Educator
• Alternative Energy Engineer
• Green Accounting
• Construction
• Interface Designer
• Energy Efficiency Builder or Architect
• Urban or Land Use Planner
• Carpenters

Here are more resources for searching green jobs:

Woof Organic Farming

Cool Climate Jobs

Public Health

Environmental Scientist

Green Career Central

Sustainable Business

Portlandia & the Culture of Sustainability

Feminist book stores, indie street music, über-aggressive bicyclists. That’s right: Portlandia is coming.

Well, actually the sitcom has already arrived, having just finished its third season. But you get the point.

The offbeat but tangible skits in Portlandia depict fictional over-the-top citizens of Portland as they engage in controversial social and ecological topics. Underneath the humorous satire, however,  Portlandia engages with serious controversies and debates in today’s society. And many of these issues resonate within SPU’s own area.

Winner of the 2013 Writers’ Guild award for Outstanding Achievement in Writing Comedy/Variety Series, Portlandia has slowly but surely seeped into the consciousness of the Pacific Northwest, and the way everyone perceives the area – including its own inhabitants.

Though the mayor of Portlandia staunchly supports Portland’s independence from Seattle, many have noticed uncanny similarities between the two cities. Many Seattleites I've talked to said that they see aspects of their own behavior in Portlandia’s characters, whether it is "rescuing" items from dumpsters or going overboard with pet rights or owning multiple items with bird silhouettes. But many in Seattle – including yours truly – also recognize themselves in Portlandia's sustainability spoofs.

With Seattle following the trend of going “green,” our own city is taking steps similar to Portland to become more eco-friendly. In fact, Seattle has a strong history of following the sustainability policies of Portland over the past decade. Following Portland’s lead, Seattle has worked to encourage commuter bicycling, sidewalk cafés, and plastic bag bans. And while all of these actions are great for the environment, they have garnered a lot of controversy.

Portlandia capitalizes on the ongoing debates by playfully mocking many of these topics, such as the two-minute skit about reusable grocery bags below.

However, I can't help but feel that Portlandia misses some crucial issues.

While Portlandia's skit humorously demonstrates the social aspects of the bag issue, it ignores the environmental side. The rude clerk never explains to the customer why forgetting his bag is such a ghastly crime, or anything even remotely close to how reusable bags conserve resources. He just embarrasses the poor man as if he had broken a social taboo. And in another skit, the only reason they can give for banning plastic bags is the ridiculous claim that plastic causes “pelican cancer.”

However, perhaps this approach is intended to make audiences receptive and included.  Environmental and sustainable advocates often feel like they alienate others by evangelizing the gloomy urgency for sustainable practices. Portlandia shatters this concern by creating characters who ignore all social boundaries and rationality in their quest for a green city. And though their outlandish actions offend fictional customers and bystanders, they disarm real audiences.

And at its bones, Portlandia still highlights issues like remembering reusable shopping bags and eating locally (which, incidentally, the show also parodies here). Its laughable extremism also reminds us that sustainability should be inclusive, not snobbish or discriminatory.

Tell us your thoughts on the matter: is Portlandia socially-aware or merely comedic?

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d545PS_AkOw&w=560&h=315]

"There Is No Happiness Without Action"

To celebrate the first ever International Day of Happiness on March 20, declared by the United Nations in 2012, we encourage everyone to do five things that make you happy today, and stop to think about how happiness plays a role in your life.

Though happiness is a term that many throw about carelessly, its place in the sustainability vocabulary holds a potent meaning. We consider it a complex balance of satisfaction with life, physical health, a quality environment, psychological well-being, and community vitality.Happiness is a mix of internal and external factors, and our personal responses to them.

Sustainability focuses on human needs, and theories from Malsow and Max-Neef conclude that the purpose of fulfilling standard human needs is to lead then on the past towards happiness. Even governmental programs are linking happiness with sustainability efforts today. By looking at all needs, big and small, sustainable programs hope to bring a brighter, happier future for everyone.

Happiness is a goal for many, but in today’s hectic lifestyle it can often get shunted to the side. However, there is a growing focus about the individual’s level of happiness, especially on college campuses. Due to the inherently stressful college life, the 200 days a year of gray Seattle skies, and the terrible economy, happiness often seems out of reach.

But just taking the time to focus on your personal happiness has a heap of benefits. Even sitting outside for five minutes of solitary contemplation has been proven to raise satisfaction with life.

Seattle, a participant in the Happiness Initiative, which we discussed in a previous post, has been conducting a lot of research about the city’s local happiness levels, and the factors that are involved. Unfortunately, the results indicate that we live during a particularly stressful time for emerging adults.

An article in Solutions Journal states that the 2011 Happiness Report Card of Seattle indicated, “youth, ages 19-24, were the least satisfied age group. They scored low in affect, satisfaction with life, time balance, the environment, and marital well-being.” The articles cites economic stressors and lack of community ties as possible contributing factors to the low score.

Although there are no shortcuts to true happiness, there are some easy ways to foster the growth of happiness:

• Reduce time on electronics like cell phones, laptops, tablets, television, and video games.
• Exercise, exercise, exercise. Even 15 minutes of walking is enough to boost your mood.
• Get proper rest. This one can be especially tricky for college students, many of whom grow accustomed to late nights and early mornings, but aiming for 7 hours of shut eye each night can make all the difference.
• Do something you enjoy! Take some time to read, bike, connect with friends, work on a hobby -- whatever brightens your day.
• Give to others. Treat a friend, volunteer, give that man with the cardboard sign a dollar. Engage in random acts of kindness.
• Surround yourself with happy people.
• Spend time with a pet, either your own or a friend’s.

In recognition of the Day of International Happiness, we recommend taking some time to focus on your personal well-being, and those around you.

If you are worried about your current state of happiness or satisfaction with life, check out the Student Counseling Center, where a team of trained specialists can help to brainstorm and guide you through possible ways to strengthen these areas.

Click for more resources about International Day of Happiness, the psychology of happiness, and happiness in general.

And please, comment and share what makes you happy!