Post 5 and Research Topic

The environment is and will continue to be a major issue throughout our lifetimes. Will we see continued destruction and exploitation of natural resources, or will there be a sustained effort to preserve the beauty of nature? Whatever the answer may be, I have little doubt that the nonprofit sector will play a large role in determining what the future may hold. The article, “A Good Cause Gone Bad”, puts somewhat of a dim light on the prospective future of the environment. Nonprofit environmental agencies are transforming into profit driven corporations who hide behind misleading names. As the article states, many of the ceo’s of these so called nonprofit environmental groups are billionaires and most of the donations that fund organizations such as these are spent on these massive salaries instead helping the cause of which they are supposed to be advocating. One statistic that was really shocking to me was that BP’s Beyond Petroleum campaign only used 4 percent of the funds it received from donations towards energy solutions like wind and solar power, while using the rest on corporate salaries. Hopefully awareness of these type of practices will continue to be spread as this could become a major deterrent towards solving future environmental and energy problems. The environment is not something that can be commodified.

The “Story of Stuff”,which I have watch several times, brings a lot of these environmental issues to the forefront. This video is always entertaining and informative, yet clearly has an agenda. Many of problems being outlined by Annie Leonard seem to be a little overblown. While she is definitely making valid points and generally seems to have good intentions by raising awareness about many of these issues. But at the same time it kind of feels like she is trying to freak everyone out more than anything. For example, she mentions the amount of toxins going into our products and the health problems that result. I just don’t see a huge correlation. Are there really that many health issues being caused by being around products that were injected with chemicals in the production process? I am willing to accept that there can be and it may be an issue that we should start addressing, but I really don’t feel at very much risk because my pillow may have some chemical on it. If there are so many health hazards today then why is the human life span not compromised? People are living far longer today than they were when these problems did not exist.

The most interesting aspect of the video in my eyes was the subject of planned and perceived obsolescence. It is amazing to think how much pollution and energy waste could be cut down if we could simply use our products longer. It is somewhat angering to think that companies design products to eventually fall apart. Obviously the flipside of this is the question of what the impact would be on our economy, that is so dependent on continued consumption, without these type of practices. It would definitely have a major impact on our lifestyles, but with the continued exploitation of resources and destruction of our environment it may be something that we will need to adapt to. She mentions at the end that a large effort is being made to find solutions to these many problems and this is where the nonprofit sector comes in, as many of these groups are nonprofit organizations.


I decided to research the impact that for-profit colleges will have on higher education. I have always been curious about these online based colleges (which most for profit colleges are) and what kind of educational experience they provide. I feel like it will really change the landscape of higher education if these type of institutions become more prominent. Here are a few links I found on the topic...
http://chronicle.com/article/For-Profit-Colleges-Change-/64012/
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-04/obama-plans-new-rules-as-for-profit-colleges-mobilize-update2-.html
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/the-rise-of-for-profit-colleges/