Book by shirwille gutierrez

Living the Life Shirwille Gabriel Gutierrez

Living the Life Shirwille Gabriel Gutierrez

Dedication I dedicate this book to Dr. P and my mom.

Dr. P’s Desk

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Acknowledgements Firstly, I’d like to thank Dr. P for taking time out of her own schedule to allow me to profile her for the documentary. I’d also like to thank Mr.Greco for checking my last minute edits and really helping me finalize the text needed for this book.

Lucy (Dr.P’s Dog)

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Preface

pg.9

ReGreening

pg.16

What is Carbon Neutrality?

pg.11

Life

pg.13

Global to Local

About the Author

pg.20

Work Cited

pg.23

pg.25

Preface

Through this experience, I learned that I need to manage my time better. Throughout the project I did not work on it nearly as much as I should have and this resulted in a very stressful cramming session on the last day of the assignment.

Interior of bus

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What is Carbon Neutrality?

To live a carbon neutral lifestyle means to calculate your complete resource use and to keep this value as low as

possible. Calculating this can be dependent on a multitude of different factors that all compile into your total carbon emissions; whether it’s how much electricity you use, the food you eat, or even the types of shoes that you buy, most things in your everyday life can be counted into your total usage. But deciding to live a carbon neutral lifestyle does not only mean you’re helping the environment, but it also means that you are helping those around you and those who you may not even know. This decision means that you are willing to be aware of your actions and how they affect the lives of others and our environment as a whole.

For Dr. Jeanine Pfeiffer, this means investigating the carbon impact of the new types of shoes she’s looking to

buy and meticulously researching whether or not the company she’s buying them from practice “cradle to cradle” production (a no impact production process).

“It’s still an exact science and the best thing I can do is overcompensate on the tree planting or the bamboo planting or the native grass planting because then I know that I’m covered.”

-Dr.P

Dr. P’s Books

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“So part of my job is to try and forge that path and show people ‘You know, it’s not that hard.’ It’s really not that hard to live a Carbon Neutral lifestyle.”

-Dr.P

Life Growing up in a small town on the Gulf of Florida, Dr. Jeanine Pfeiffer had an adventure filled childhood searching for tadpoles and climbing trees. As a teenager, she moved to Lancaster, Pennsylvania to attend a private Mennonite School where she lived on a farm and learned valuable skills. Here Pfeiffer learned to live off of the land and how to process and can food, skills she would later be grateful she learned. In her efforts of living a carbon neutral lifestyle these skills proved to be very useful.

For her undergraduate degree, she attended Boston University, studying Latin American Development. for a portion of the degree, Pfeiffer studied abroad in Bogotá, Columbia. After graduating, she purchased an old Honda Civic for $100 and traveled to California where she enrolled at UC Davis, studying for her Masters in International Agricultural Development. After graduating, Pfeiffer went to live in Indonesia for over 20 years, working as a consultant for the United Nations, the US Agency for International Development, the Asian Development Bank, and the World Bank.

When she returned to the United States, Pfeiffer went back to UC

Dr. P’s Desk

Davis to get her doctorate in Ecology. While getting her doctorate, Pfeiffer minored in Human Ecology and came to the realization that humans are commonly kept out of the ecology equation and not portrayed as being very bad or destructive; despite the reality that our actions are very destructive to the environment. These classes did not explain how humans can be helpful or anything about indigenous communities, so she set out to learn more herself. Through self-taught research, Pfeiffer became an ethnoecologist, using prominent ethnoecologist Dr. Kat Anderson’s book and the work from Luisa Mophy as the foundation of her knowledge in the field. Anderson’s book, Tending the Wild, taught Pfeiffer of Native Americans’ positive influence on plants and plant-based habitats; Anderson was also at UC Davis and was one of Pfeiffer’s mentors. With this self-taught research, Pfeiffer concluded that this would be what she wanted to do for the rest of her life.

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ReGreening As part of her Carbon Neutral lifestyle, Pfeiffer works to create an offset to her carbon emissions. After calculating an approximation to the amount of her Carbon tonnage, Pfeiffer then converts this into a rough number of trees that need to be planted in order to offset this value. Rather than send money to an organization that will create an offset for her, Pfeiffer sends her funds directly to her adoptive family (the Tado tribe) in the Flores island of Indonesia to replant trees. The Tado tribe consists of 13 different tribes of about 3,200 people in a 30 kilometer area. However in the past, some of their ancestral territory had been deforested due to lack of conservation.

Pfeiffer’s adoptive brother, Yeremias (Jeremy) Uril, is currently heading the community based ecotourism program (started about 20 years ago as part of the community based research program Pfeiffer was part of). Jeremy and other past associates who were part of research program are tasked with picking the types of trees that are culturally significant to be planted. For example, Mango and Jackfruit trees are native to this region of the world. Jeremy and those involved with the p rogram raise seedlings from existing trees in the area, picking trees that have multiple uses, beyond just for fruit; the bark can be used for medicine, immature fruit for vegetables. These trees provide the community with non-timber products and protection from local watershed. Due to climate change, their dry season has become longer and more intense, leading communal water pumps and local streams to dry out. The need to conserve the watershed and to augment the ecosystem’s ability to absorb and to store water is absolutely essential for all 3200 people in that community. The planting of trees with the ecotourism program not only reduces the carbon emissions of Pfeiffer, but also helps benefit the Tado community in Indonesia.

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*Left*Yeremias walking up hill *Top* Tado Replanting Program *Bottom*Hill In Tado

Group photo of Tado Villagers

“It’s still an exact science and the best thing I can do is overcompensate on the tree planting or the bamboo planting or the native grass planting because then I know that I’m covered.”

-Dr. P

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Global to Local

Part of being an ethnoecologist means to conserve and revitalize biocultural diversity. To do this you must take biologi-

cal diversity, native biota, cultural diversity, indigenous native local cultures, and bring them together. Today, Pfeiffer is currently working with a tribe in Indonesia, helping them document, conserve, and revitalize their cultural traditions based on native plants, native animals, and native insects. With the help of her University students, Pfeiffer works with over 30 tribes and tribal communities throughout California, pulling traditional stories from archives and recording them to revitalize the linguistic or language traditions.

Now, Pfeiffer has her Champion bus on the land of a native Pomo tribe basket weaver, Corinne Pierce. Pierce is one of

five remaining cradle basket weavers in Napa, Sonoma and Lake Counties ( approximately 30, 35 different tribes). Today, there is a severe lack of knowledge on cradle basketry despite the birth of many children every year. Once they receive the cradle basket, the parents do not know how to place the baby into the basket, how to care for the basket or about the materials needed to make them. Pfeiffer and Pierce are co-authoring a book on cradle basketry to revitalize the tradition.

Ornaments in Bus

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Works Cited “Can People Really Have Carbon-Neutral Lives?” Scientific American, www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-we-becarbon-neutral/.

“What Is ‘Carbon Neutrality’ – and How Can We Achieve It by 2050?” The Elders, theelders.org/article/what-carbonneutrality-and-how-can-we-achieve-it-2050.

Nexus, Climate. “Increased Extreme Heat and Heat Waves.” Climate Signals, 3 May 2018, www.climatesignals.org/ climate-signals/increased-extreme-heat-and-heat-waves.

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About the Author

Shirwille Gabriel Guteirrez is a Junior taking Digital Media at Freestyle Academy. He likes to play basketball and to listen to music.

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Living the Life Shirwille Gabriel Gutierrez