Sophie Lubin: OnEarth Author

Sophie Lubin is a graduating senior at Columbia University in New York City. She is majoring in English Literature and working towards a Concentration in Sustainable Development. Sophie is originally from Boston, MA where she worked for National Grid's energy efficiency team and on organic farms at The Food Project. In New York, she has contributed to the World Policy Institute blog, and Columbia's online publication, Consilience: The Journal of Sustainable Development. Sophie loves traveling and has recently lived in Kenya and India for part of her time at Columbia. She is always looking to improve the use of our planet's resources, and quite frankly, cannot wait to change the world.

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Disappearing Acts: Where Have All Our Neighborhoods Gone?

A commentary on the disappearance of America’s neighborhoods and a look into the “Local First” movement in Chicago as one way to combat it.
Walking out of the Galleria Mall outside St. Louis, MO, just leaving Anne Taylor and on my way to Best Buy, I had the uncanny feeling that I had just left the Galleria Mall in Cambridge, MA. When I look to one town center I increasingly I see the exact same stores there, as I would see 50 miles away. It appears that chain companies and corporations are overrunning America’s streets, pushing locally owned, independent stores out of business everywhere. But, what does the trend towards homogeneity mean for our country? What does it mean for our energy use and the sustainability of our way of life? And what can we do, if anything, to stop it?
On a drive from St. Louis to Chicago this winter (a part of a larger trip to various cities in the mid-west and northeast), I took note of the number of times we passed, not ...read full post

Comments (3) | February 10, 2009
A million reasons to see "Slumdog Millionaire"

I lived in India for five months last spring—a semester abroad from Columbia University. As an English major with a concentration in Sustainable Development, I believe I was fated to keep a blog while there—and that it was equally my fate to spend much of my time writing about the environmental and economic development catastrophes that went unnoticed all around me—the trash burning in piles everywhere, the complete lack of any kind of garbage collection system, the overwhelming absence of environmental knowledge. It was helpful to have my blog as a journal of sorts to write about what I saw and experienced every day. I have entries detailing the trash and dirt and filth that is everywhere; the masses of people, the likes of which only experience allows you realize what “over population” and “one in every sixth person in the world is Indian” actually mean. ...read full post

Comments (3) | November 25, 2008