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(04/11/19 9:54am)
I’m vegan and I went abroad for my febmester. Sometimes I struggle figuring out which of these to tell someone first when I meet them. At this point, I’ve decided to just go with both and berate people with my amazing cultural experiences and moral superiority.
I’ve been vegan for a year and a half. When I jumped in cold tofurkey last year, the only thing I thought I knew about veganism was that vegans are loud, annoying and can’t stop talking about veganism. I decided it would be fun to play up that character and jokingly be the annoying vegan around my friends. But as most things go in my life, what started as ironic is now entirely unironic. This is because over the past year I’ve learned that veganism is way more important than I thought. It blew my mind how little I or the average person knows about the impact of dietary choices. I want to share a few of the mind-blowing facts I’ve learned about the three tenants of veganism (environment, health, and ethics) and describe why I’m not afraid to be an annoying vegan.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Veganism is way more important than I thought.[/pullquote]
A vegan diet is by far the diet with the smallest impact on the environment. If we all consume animal products at the rate we are now, we will never see our world overcome the climate change crisis. Scientific studies have shown for years that the most effective way to benefit the environment (besides not having kids) is to cut back on animal products in your diet. This is because production of all types of animal products is incredibly less efficient than plant products. If we took all of the land that is being used to raise animals or grow crops for those animals and instead used it to grow crops for human consumption, we could meet the food requirements of the entire world multiple times over. The animal agriculture industry is responsible for 18% (some say upwards of 51%) of all greenhouse gas emissions, more than all cars, trains, planes and every other vehicle in the transportation industry combined.
However, environmental impact goes well beyond just carbon footprint. It’s commonly stated that our oceans are dying, but it’s a little known fact that the majority of the trash in the ocean is fishing nets and equipment. Overfishing is destroying coral reefs and vital ocean ecosystems. Animal agriculture is responsible for up to 91% of Amazon deforestation. The animal waste runoff from factory farms pollutes rivers and is destroying ecosystems. It takes 56 gallons of water to produce a single egg and 1,000 gallons of water to produce a gallon of milk. It’s time for Middlebury to stop blindly thinking that our animal product consumption is in line with our environmental ideals.
There are huge health benefits from switching to a healthy vegan diet even from a healthier standard American diet. A vegan diet helps prevent thirteen of the fifteen leading causes of death in the United States, including cancer, diabetes, stroke and especially heart disease. That’s not vegan propaganda; there are a multitude of studies to support this claim. The American Dietetic Association states that a plant-based diet is appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy and childhood. In other words, according to nutritional experts, you will not get any deficiencies with a well-planned vegan diet. Additionally, you can easily get your protein needs on a vegan diet. Fifteen members of the Tennessee Titans NFL team are vegan. There are many vegan super athletes and many super athletes going vegan.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]It’s time for Middlebury to stop blindly thinking that our animal product consumption is in line with our environmental ideals.[/pullquote]
Animals in the agriculture industry are subject to the most brutal pain and suffering you can imagine being inflicted on a living being. The phrase “humane slaughter” is an obvious oxymoron, and the entire concept is a myth. Due to the demands for efficiency in the butchering process, slaughtering methods are almost always performed sloppily, leading to excruciating pain and immense fear in the animal. The footage of factory farming that you’ve hopefully seen (if not, watch the film Dominion), is not the extreme footage. It’s the industry standard. Over 90% of farm animals in the United States live on factory farms with these brutal practices. Local farms are also far from being cruelty-free. The production of dairy requires the non consensual impregnation of cows and for calves to be taken from mothers immediately at birth. Hens have been bred to lay eggs twenty times more than what is biologically normal for them, leading to painful health complications. In the vast majority of cases, male chicks that are born in the egg industry are immediately (like moments after birth) tossed into a meat grinder. If you’re against animal abuse, you’re against the animal agriculture industry.
These facts are only the tip of the iceberg. Most people say that they’re fine with people being vegan as long as they’re not annoying about it, because diet is a personal choice. But diet is not a personal choice. You’re literally choosing the fate of other living beings and the fate of the environment. So I’m not going to be shy about telling you to be vegan. Every day we are destroying the environment a little more. Every day people are being killed or crippled by preventable diseases. Every day millions of sentient, feeling animals are being born into a life of pain and misery. There’s no time to be shy.
Please contact me if you have comments or questions. I’m always willing to talk about these issues.
Editor’s Note: This op-ed was previously published with the headline: “Why I’m an Annoying Vegan."
(10/04/17 11:46pm)
This past summer was the first time since 1893 that eight or more major hurricanes formed in a row in the Atlantic. This hurricane season was also the only season on record with three hurricanes with an Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) — a scientific measure of the strength of the hurricane — over 40.
Only 26 of 424 Atlantic hurricanes since 1950 have had an ACE value above 40, making this summer anomalously active for a hurricane season. This level of activity and the devastating effects of these hurricanes have elicited many questions, many of which were addressed at the “Harvey, Irma, Maria: A Community Teach-in” event at the Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest on Sept. 29. The event gathered students and faculty alike to discuss these questions and the implications of this summer’s flurry of hurricanes.
The moderator of the discussion, economics professor John Isham, began by asking participants to posit the questions they had in order to create a list of questions before the discussion started. Questions ranged from specifics about the correlation between climate change and hurricanes to the media’s reaction to the hurricanes. The breadth of subjects touched by these questions emphasized how interdisciplinary a conversation about hurricanes should be, a need which was only reinforced throughout the conversation.
The first question discussed was the relationship between climate change and hurricanes. Environmental studies professor Molly Constanza-Robinson said the general conclusion of scientists was that “we aren’t causing them, but we’re intensifying them.” Dan Brayton, an English and American studies professor, backed Costanza-Robinson up by making clear that behind the complicated science of hurricanes lies the simple fact that “hurricanes are all about warm water.” Not only do hurricanes form over warm water, but they are also intensified by warm water. Together, the professors’ responses make clear that climate change is causing a rise in sea temperatures, which allows hurricanes to intensify easier.
From there, the conversation branched into the tragic situation in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico was hit by category four Hurricane Maria on Sept. 19, causing the entire island to lose power, cell coverage and running water. This, coupled with the destruction of buildings and roads, has caused a dire and dangerous situation for all Puerto Ricans.
One student brought up how it took the United States a full week to lift the Jones Act to allow Puerto Rico to receive aid from other countries. The Jones Act prevents Puerto Rico from trading with any country but the United States, and delineates that if a ship from any other country wants to go to Puerto Rico, it must get explicit permission from the U.S. government.
This brought up questions about the role the United States should play in aiding Puerto Rico. Professor Isham described how Puerto Ricans are subject to U.S. Federal Taxes and economic limitations like the Jones Act without the privileges of U.S. citizenship. He viewed these as important aspects of this “post-colonialist” period in history.
Professor Rebecca Gould mentioned how the U.S. government said it was difficult to access and aid Puerto Rico due to its poor infrastructure, and said the government should instead be asking itself what is actually causing that poor infrastructure. Costanza-Robinson brought up how rich Americans in hedge funds profit off loans to Puerto Rico, the process of which is throwing Puerto Rico into increasing debt. She noted how this exemplifies the power of a small group of rich Americans to control the fate of millions of people.
Later in the conversation, Alec Fleischer ’20.5 of the Divest Middlebury movement brought up this point. He described how Middlebury is still invested in companies like these hedge funds and asked the question, “How are we different from these hedge funds if we’re still invested in them?”
Joseph Holler, a geography professor, then passed around a paper that showed a map that was part of the Flood Insurance Study done in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The map was blanked out by a white square with writing on it that said “Flood hazard information for this portion of the transect has be superseded by the revised interior drainage analysis performed in 2014.”
Holler described how political processes redacted the actual flooding hazard information. Now companies are building and rebuilding in New Orleans as though it is safer than it was before Katrina, regardless of the fact that, in reality, it is not.
Isham concluded the discussion by asking the group, “What should we do?” One student’s response was to simply elect the right people. Participants generally agreed with this as a solution, though there was some debate about how to elect the right people. Another student lamented how he felt that those who are currently in the position to be elected are not people he would want to elect. Another student brought up the need to inform voters on the issues brought up in this conversation, from climate change to the U.S. international affairs in Puerto Rico.
This conversation brought up a lot of important problems surrounding this past hurricane season, too many to address in this article alone. While not all the mentioned issues were about the hurricanes themselves, they were all directly tied to the causes and devastating effects of hurricanes. This reporter left the conversation not feeling very optimistic about the issues that were brought up, but was impressed by the intelligent and open discussion. Conversations like these and the actions that result from them are vital if we are to address these challenges we face as a college, as a nation and as humans.
(05/11/17 3:10am)
One of the largest and highest quality telescopes in Vermont and its surrounding areas is on the roof of McCardell Bicentennial Hall. Luckily for Middlebury students, the telescope is made publicly available to students multiple times a semester. Observatory Night is a time for students and community members alike to come view the night sky through the large 24-inch telescope, through one of three smaller telescopes (one 8-inch, two 11-inch) or with the naked eye. During the event, telescope specialist Jonathan Kemp and the students who work with him are there to guide viewers around the sky and answer questions.
The Campus spoke with Mr. Kemp to talk about what Observatory Night is and its place in the college community.
“We have a really nice site here in the Champlain Valley,” Kemp said. “It’s quite dark … There are light pollution issues to consider in almost any site, but here in the Champlain Valley we’re at a pretty good dark site, we get some lovely clear nights.”
The telescope is one-of-a-kind in its architectural incorporation into the greater BiHall, Kemp said.
“One of the great things about the observatory here at McCardell Bicentennial Hall is that, when it was built, the observatory was designed as part of the building. In many science buildings, you’ll often find that the observatory is on the roof of the building but it’s often been an afterthought long after initial construction.”
The telescope is cared for in many unexpected ways; for example, the temperature in the dome is prudently regulated.
“What we like to do with an observatory dome is keep the temperature of the air in the dome itself as close as possible to the exterior temperature,” Kemp said. “A lot was done at construction and perhaps more importantly just after construction to minimize those thermal issues so that when we look through the telescope up there we get excellent image quality compared to some of our peer institutions that have similar large telescopes.”
The telescope and its controls were completely renovated and modernized in the summer of 2015. “It is now performing as well as it ever has,” Kemp said.
The combination of excellent technology and location allows students at Observatory Night to view celestial objects with remarkable clarity. When asked what his favorite thing is to look at in the night sky, Kemp could not pick just one. He highlighted the Orion Nebula in the winter sky and the Great Globular Cluster of Hercules (M13) in the summer sky as two of his favorites. He mentioned that Saturn and Jupiter are popular with students; the rings of Saturn are clearly visible through any of the telescopes. Additionally, it is possible to see the disk on the surface of Jupiter and its orbiting moons. Kemp even mentioned seeing the shadow of a moon on Jupiter’s surface.
These incredible sights tied into Kemp’s answer to my next question, in which he was asked what about Observatory Night would draw in a non-science major.
“I think the observatory can reach people on a variety of levels,” he said. “We find that people respond kind of viscerally to the night sky. When they look at [the night sky], especially when [they] look through a telescope for the first time at an object that [they have] never seen, that can be a very compelling thing. I think most importantly it kind of gives people an idea of their place within the universe. It makes them intellectually curious about the night sky, and, by extension, the universe, and the place of Man and the place of Earth within the universe.”
Kemp also mentioned that the team of students he works with includes history, economics and geology majors as well as physics majors.
“While [the Observatory] has physics at its core, it has threads that go through so many different disciplines. For someone who might be non-science major, it might satisfy their interest in the night sky or their interest in science if they don’t want to pursue a more formal curricular way.”
There are also opportunities for students who might be interested in working with him.
“I am always interested in students who have an interest in the observatory. I would always encourage students that have an interest to come talk to me.”
In all, Observatory Night offers a unique experience that should be on every student’s graduation bucket list. Towards the end of the conversation, Kemp spoke to the accessibility of the observatory.
“Since I arrived a little more than three years ago, we’ve been able to make the facility more available in a variety of ways on a variety of levels,” he said. “It’s been fantastic to see the interest in the observatory here. Learning about the night sky is something that I think we can stimulate here at the observatory, but by no means does that process of being engaged with the universe end here. Enjoying the night sky does not require a telescope. That process can continue once you leave the observatory”
For more information on and photographs taken by the telescope, visit go/observatory.