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(02/20/14 4:15am)
According to a press release from the Peace Corps, the College ranked 14 on a list of top volunteer-producing small colleges. There are currently 12 former students volunteering worldwide, serving in Botswana, China, Jordan, Kenya, Malawi, Paraguay, Rwanda, Senegal, Togo and Uganda. Since the Peace Corps was founded in 1961, 481 alumni have traveled abroad to aid in the humanitarian effort.
Zoe Armstrong, the Peace Corps volunteer recruitment and selection representative for the College, credits Middlebury’s success with the Peace Corps to the global citizenship of students and their commitment to finding sustainable solutions.
“Of [the College’s] 150 student organizations, almost all of them are dedicated to either service or cross-cultural exchange,” Armstrong said. “Middlebury students are already global citizens and that makes them great candidates for Peace Corps service.”
“[The College] shares the Peace Corps’ commitment to finding sustainable solutions to community challenges. Middlebury students always impress me with their commitment to helping marginalized populations and also their passion for finding environmentally sound innovations to combat climate change. They humbly talk about amazing work they are doing in environmental conservation, sustainable farming, LGBTQ rights, empowering youth, refugee outreach, and immigrant advocacy,” she added.
The College’s intensive language programs also makes students more attractive candidates for the Peace Corps, according to Armstrong.
“Students consistently come to interview sessions with files that reflect years of language study. They highlight their commitment to linguistic study because they want to use these skills to serve cross-cultural goals,” she said.
Assistant Director in Career Services and Careers in the Common Good Tracy Himmel-Isham emphasized this commitment to language as a driving factor for students.
“Two huge driving factors for students who are interested in the Peace Corps are an interest in using language skills and an interest in living internationally,” Himmel-Isham said, adding that the International Politics and Economics and Environmental Studies majors are two particularly attractive majors in the eyes of Peace Corps recruiters.
A commitment to international development, language study, and sustainability is evident among College alumni who are currently working as Peace Corps volunteers.
“I am working as a sustainable agriculture extension agent and speak the local language,” said Rosalind Vara ’10 of her experience working in Senegal in a press release. “I work with farmers to increase their crop yields, improve soil fertility, and reduce chemical inputs.”
Margaret Bale ’10 drew a parallel between her education at the College and her experience in the Peace Corps.
“I came to Botswana as a health volunteer, but my work has predominantly been in a primary school assisting with improving education for almost 200 children. Remembering what I had learned from my interdisciplinary experiences at Middlebury, I have been able to turn this into one of the best learning experiences I’ve had in my life,” she said in a press release.
Armstrong emphasized that the accessibility to small villages around the world is a unique draw for the Peace Corps program.
“Peace Corps uses a last kilometer approach; volunteers serve in many small villages and thus make resources available to an expansive number of people,” she said.
“Volunteers may learn a language that very few people in the world speak, volunteers gain new and unique perspectives to community challenges; when they come back to the United States, they bring leadership skills home with them and innovative ideas about how to become community leaders here,” she added.
(01/22/14 4:29pm)
It just so happens that every once in a while, the Middlebury community misses out on the opportunity to hear fantastic visiting speakers due to the distraction of spectacular glorious skiing conditions. This past weekend was one such opportunity.
The Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs sponsored the 1st Annual Student-Led Global Conference titled “Immigration in the Neoliberal Age.” This year’s leaders featured Molly Stuart ’15.5 and Fernando Sandoval Jimenez ’15.
Last year, a competition, open to all students who wish to lead the events, invited applicants to share their visions of the future conference. Jimenez, who studies Environmental Studies and Geography, shares how it all began: “Molly was the one to have the idea. At the time, I was in Lebanon, taking a semester off, and Molly was abroad, studying neoliberalism in Mexico from the perspective of the Southern Mexican Zapatistas.”
A professor emailed Stuart, asking her to submit a proposal into the contest. Inspired by her surroundings, she formed an idea based on neoliberalism’s effect on migrants and immediately reached out to Jimenez, a friend and previous project collaborator.
One year later, Jimenez and Stuart found themselves facing their original ideas in the flesh — that is to say, they found themselves leading discussions and introducing speakers, among other organizational responsibilities.
The conference kicked off Jan. 16 with a panel discussion of the Mexican-US border, continued into Friday with a workshop presenting “Neoliberal Globalization” and a film screening of the documentary Last Train Home, and finished off on Saturday with four lectures by visiting speakers.
“I think that the lectures themselves were all fantastic and they brought a perspective to Middlebury that we usually do hear about or we read about and we study and dissect and analyze and we write papers about, but we don’t care much about [it when] down to actually connecting to the people that this is happening to,” Jimenez said. “The people that came to talk about that reality spoke in a very close up way, so you could actually feel it.”
Neoliberalism, as Jimenez admits, is a concept both simple and complex. He explains it simply.
“It’s a vision of capitalism in which the entire world needs to be connected for everything, but in general it doesn’t really work, at least not for everyone,” he said. “It facilitates a lot the accumulation of capital by some people, and it allows such people to have capital and markets everywhere. But that doesn’t mean that commonplace people have access to the global economy. They are part of it, but they are not necessarily the players. They’re not playing, they’re being played.”
By way of this capitalist endeavor, neoliberalism exploits the masses in favor of the few, often overtaking local industry and creating a huge economic gap, all of which displaces people from their homes in various ways. Thus, immigration, as Colin Rajah, International Coordinator of the Global Coalition on Migration and one of Saturday’s speakers, puts it, is one “symptom” of these global problems — as, he argues, is climate change.
“I thought that [Rajah] was going to say that the environment affects people, etc., and that we need to fight the environmental degradation, etcetera,” Jimenez said. “But he actually came to the idea that what we need to fight is the imbalance of power and that that’s what’s causing both climate change and the displacement of people. That is, people are being displaced not just because of climate change but also because of the balance of power. And I cannot do justice to the way he explained it; he put it very powerfully.”
The call to fight neoliberalism and free trades agreements was Rajah’s response when Jimenez asked what we could do to help the problem. The answer, Jimenez said, took him aback in its immensity.
When realizing the full extent of these huge issues, Jimenez confesses to feeling overwhelmed.
“Partly because, when I was away in Lebanon, I saw very closely that difference between having a lot of power and not having any power at all. I’ve always been sensitive to that topic; Lebanon made me even more so.”
“And I do feel powerless, I guess, but I also feel really angry because then we’re all here like “Oh, but what can we do about this?” And it’s like, well, could we start to live a bit of a more simple life? Like do we really need to have the library be extremely hot in winter and extremely cold in winter, you know, is that necessary? Do we really need to have lights on all night?” Jimenez said. “Coming from Mexico and having been also to places where the vast majority of people live in more modest situations, being in Middlebury does make me feel uncomfortable about all the things that we have that we don’t have to have.”
To the few who attended the events, the conference was doubtless as enriching and provocative as Jimenez describes it. The Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs is currently in the process of preparing for next year’s continuation of this lecture series, which will become an annual event committed to engaging our community on global issues and, if it is anything like this year’s discussion, humble us in the process.
(11/21/13 5:00am)
On Saturday, Nov. 16, students took part in “Tour de Fracked,” a bike ride organized to peacefully protest the Vermont fracked gas pipeline that is proposed to run through Middlebury.
The College has expressed its support for the pipeline, maintaining that it will provide an inexpensive, local form of energy for the school and residents of the town. Many students, however, are fighting the College’s stance because they believe the environmental and social side effects of fracking are too high of a price to pay.
Hydraulic fracturing is a process of obtaining natural gas by pressurizing liquids, including harmful chemical substances, to fracture rock below the earth. These chemicals have the potential to leak into groundwater near wells and thus contaminate drinking water.
Rosalie Wright-Lapin ’15, one of the organizers of the bike ride, is fearful of the social issues associated with fracking.
“[The] pipeline poses a major ethical paradox,” Wright-Lapin said. “Many argue that fracked gas will provide affordable “clean” heat for Vermonters. The importance of making heat affordable for Vermonters is undoubtedly a social justice issue — all humans (especially living in a climate like Vermont’s) should have access to affordable heat. However, the mere process of fracking disrupts towns and threatens the health and environment of those communities.”
People in the residential communities near a fracking site are often put in compromising situations in which they do not usually have the power to change. This brings into question the ethics of using fracked gas.
Zane Anthony ’16.5 is another passionate orchestrator of the Tour de Frack who wants to make the possible implementation of the pipeline, and the controversy over fracking in general, more of a focus on campus. At Powershift, an environmental convention for students across the country that occurred over Fall Break, Anthony and others became motivated to do more related to the climate crisis and environmental justice movements.
Anthony has been working with an organization called the Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG), which aims to bring the voice of Vermont citizens to public policy debates. Anthony’s work with VPIRG helped him gain momentum for spearheading the Tour de Fracked.
The bike ride was meant to be a symbolic showing of “Middlebury activists riding together in solidarity in opposition to the Vermont pipeline.” The Tour de Fracked group had advertised for their cause. Other advertisements were more creative, such as a caution-tape patch that served as a statement of solidarity, because caution tape symbolizes the precautionary principle; a huge element in the sustainability movement. Advertisements have included flyers, notification of the local media, a planned conference and over 75 photo petitions of students holding up their statements of disapproval of the pipeline.
Despite their efforts, Anthony feels that environmental activist groups are somewhat lacking on campus. He noted the major focus on the issues of divestment and local food, and the absence of strong activism for any other area.
“[It’s] a fallacy [that] Middlebury prides itself on its progressive nature — divestment and [local] food are longer term [issues] but the pipeline could be built in February,” said Anthony. “Now is the time, before it is built, for people to see that they are opposed to it.”
According to Wright-Lapin, there are many reasons to be opposed to the construction of the pipeline.
“Any organic farms through which the pipeline passes can no longer be organic, thus ruining the living that many hardworking Vermonters have built for themselves and their families,” said Wright-Lapin.
“Providing affordable heat for some is only a step towards social justice if it is not ruining the homes of others. Bettering people’s lives is only meaningful when it is not harming people on the other end,” she said.
These students held Tour de Frack to bring the broad spectrum of environmental issues, and the effects that could result from the pipleine for both the College and the Middlebury community to the attention of the college community at large.
(11/21/13 1:56am)
Akrasia is the ancient Greek word for “weakness of will,” or, in other words, acting against one’s better judgment. This past week makes me think that the U.S. might have itself a bad case of the stuff when it comes to climate questions.
As Greenwire and The New York Times report, the EPA lowered federal renewable fuel targets for the first time since 2007. Up until last Friday, the agency had hoped to have roughly 18.15 billion gallons of renewable fuels blended into the rest of the petroleum-based gasoline and diesel fuels on the market — 3.75 billion gallons of which was to include advanced biofuels not derived from corn inputs. On the revision, the nation’s fuel mix must contain 15.21 billion gallons of renewable fuels, 13.01 billion being conventional ethanol and 2.2 billion gallons of advanced biofuels. The question concerning the viability of ethanol as an alternative fuel notwithstanding, the EPA’s move appears to me to be little more than a concession to industry pressures.
That the rollback was called “a step in the right direction” by Jack Gerard, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, disturbs me almost as much as his follow-up comment that “more must be done.” The EPA justifies its decision by appeal to the lack of market support for alternative fuels both at the pump and on the assembly line. However, the agency fails in any real way to provide an offsetting measure for the corresponding boom in domestic petroleum production in recent years. With less support for renewables and increased production of conventional fuels, reductions in emissions from nationwide automobile traffic take a huge hit.
In another equally depressing news bit, the U.S. seems to be preparing itself for a repeat performance of its 1997 Kyoto Protocol blunder. As world players gather in Warsaw, Poland for UN climate talks, the tone coming from Congress is less than enthusiastic. While some elected officials like Senators Ed Markey (D-Mass) and Ben Cardin (D-Md.) favor U.S. involvement in an international climate agreement, the two acknowledge that the present makeup of the Senate will make it extraordinarily difficult to win U.S. support for any such measure.
The President’s administration and others worldwide have pledged to develop an international arrangement to address the climate crisis by 2015, which would likely go into effect by 2020. However, sentiments from Senator John Barraso (R-Wyo.) that effectively damned EPA regulations for power plants for their economic effects as well as those of Senator Warren Hatch (R-Utah) who appealed to the “legitimate question of science” regarding the legitimacy of claims about climate change indicate that conservatives dogmatic denials of the facts might undermine yet another opportunity for the U.S. to take a leadership role in the global climate battle.
When the best evidence repeatedly points us towards taking action, we have seemed to develop a nasty habit of turning the other cheek and neglecting where our best deliberations might take us.
There is no denying that economic concerns should be an important consideration, but as my fellow columnist and editor, Zach Drennan, pointed out last week, fossil fuels — especially new, riskier extraction methods — are hardly a safe long-term investment. Investing in more resilient pathways makes more sense than leaving our future up to chance.
Policymakers, unfortunately, still see some reason to gamble on carbon — whether they are reasons to which we average citizens are blind or they are being hidden behind congressional backdoors, I cannot say. To open up fuel markets for more petroleum consumption while simultaneously resisting active contribution to mitigating problems caused by that consumption sets us up for nothing but failure. A few billion gallons of alternative fuels might only be a small portion of our total energy mix, but when we actively undermine progress, we drill holes in the water buckets that are supposed to help us put out a climate fire that is only growing.
(11/21/13 1:52am)
8,446 miles. That is how far it is from Middlebury to Tacloban City, Philippines.
When the Earth suffers, we suffer with it, but not everyone suffers equally. Today, the Philippines is bearing much of the burden. Since our community often tends to feel apathetic towards the people and communities that are distant from us, we are fasting today not only to stand in solidarity with the Filipino people, but also because we believe that shared suffering is a path to empathy. Although fasting will not have an actual impact on the lives of the people who are suffering, it brings our attention closer to their suffering. It gives us a feeling which we cannot simply forget about: every time we feel a pang of hunger we are reminded of people living with this condition but are without much hope of relief. Fasting is a way to at least incorporate a very small part of their struggle into our lives, helping to bridge the geographic gap between us.
Our idea of fasting for climate justice came from the Filipino delegate to the UN climate talk, Mr. Yeb Saño. He is fasting for the whole length of the current conference “until meaningful outcome is in sight”. This is the second time in a row where he has addressed the international community at the annual climate talk after a disastrous storm had struck his country. At present, youth groups attending the conference in Warsaw, as well as many people around the world and other Middlebury students, are also fasting.
If this storm had happened in a wealthier area, the damages done to human lives may not have been so great. An IPCC report from 2011 shows that 95 percent of the deaths resulting from “extreme climate disasters” are in developing countries. The reason why this figure is so skewed towards people in developing countries is because they are less adequately prepared for coping with climate disasters than developed countries. Rapid population growth and urbanization produce clusters of poorly constructed houses in cities in developing countries that are extremely vulnerable to even smaller-scale climate events, let alone “extreme climate disasters.”
At the end of the day, we still know that we will have food available for us to eat. But as climate change becomes an increasingly significant problem, and stronger and more frequent storms become the new climate norm, more and more people will not have that food security. What should we do in order to be able to relate to them on a deeper, more personal level? Fasting is a good first step, because it draws our attention to what they are going through and keeps them in our thoughts. It helps to bring us closer to the reality of the words and images that we hear and see on news reports. But it will not relieve the suffering in the Philippines. Fighting for environmental and social justice cannot be tackled in one day, we must incorporate these ideals into our everyday thoughts and actions.
ASH BABCOCK '17 is from Deerfield, Ill., ADRIAN LEONG '16 is from Hong Kong and VIRGINIA WILTSHIRE-GORDON '16 is from Wilmette, Ill.
(11/20/13 10:34pm)
Students gathered outside Mead Chapel for a candlelight vigil on Thursday, Nov. 14 to mourn the devastation and damage caused by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines and Southeast Asia and to call attention to climate change. Mourning at the vigil, which was hosted by Divest Midd, was furthered by a number of students electing to fast in solidarity with Filipino climate delegate to the U.N., Naderev “Yeb” Sano.
At the start of the U.N.’s two-week-long climate talks, Sano announced his fast.
“In solidarity with my countrymen who are struggling to find food back home … I will now commence a voluntary fasting for the climate. This means I will voluntarily refrain from eating food during this [conference] until a meaningful outcome is in sight,” he said.
Gabbie Santos ’17 is from Cavite, an hour north of Manila in the Philippines and spoke at the vigil with sadness in regard to the current situation and cautious optimism for the future.
“In the face of adversity, one after another, let it be known to the world that, as we Filipinos like to say … ‘the Filipino spirit is waterproof,’ the Filipino people are a resilient people. But this does not mean that we are willing to place more and more lives on the line in the face of future, potentially more devastating disasters and calamities,” she said.
Santos also spoke at the vigil on behalf of Oliver Wijayapala ’17, who is from the affected area of Leyte in the Philippines. Leyte was among the areas hit hardest by Typhoon Haiyan, which left nearly 3,000 dead and approximately 920,000 displaced.
Reading Wijayapala’s words, Santos said, “My family’s hometown in southern Leyte was in the direct path of the typhoon. It’s difficult to get in contact with my family members there, but I believe and hope they are all okay. There is a lot of damage and debris, though … Please keep in your thoughts and prayers my family and all those affected by this disaster.”
Members of Divest Midd recited Sano’s speech from the Climate Summit at Thursday’s vigil as both a call to action and a means of mourning the destruction. In further solidarity, Adrian Leong ’16, Ellie Ng ’14, Greta Neubauer ’14.5, Ashley Babcock ’17 and Virginia Wiltshire-Gordon ’16 fasted on Thursday. A number of other students participated in fasts over the weekend and into this week.
“I am choosing to refrain from eating on Thursday because I treat his [Sano’s] countrymen as my countrymen, his brother as my brother and I want to reflect deeply on the dire state of our climate, as well as [the] social justice system and bring them to more people’s attention,” Leong wrote in a post on Facebook.
Leong created a Facebook event for his fast, encouraging others to join him. Over 40 friends listed themselves as “going,” thereby implying participation. Leong said that word of his fast spread rapidly to friends at other schools.
“Many who fasted alongside with me told me that my action inspired them to reflect on their responsibilities to the world in this time of great change,” Leong wrote in an email, calling the response to his actions “overwhelmingly positive.”
The purpose of Sano’s and students’ fast is twofold — to mourn the loss of life and destruction and to recognize the gravity of the ongoing climate crisis.
“Whether we accept it or not, Climate Change does not lie in the distant future,” Leong wrote in his Facebook event. “It is now, and it is right here. I have a few friends from the Philippines who also have family members there, as I know that many [others] do, too. Even if this is not the case, you may well know other friends that do. Thus, it is utterly impossible to deny how closely our lives are linked to the lost lives and survivors of the strongest typhoon to have ever hit land.”
(11/20/13 10:22pm)
Recent incidents of homophobia on campus have prodded College administrators to unveil a number of planned initiatives earlier than originally intended. The ongoing goals and initiatives, spearheaded by the Office of the Dean of the College, are aimed at enhancing the existing programing in order to strengthen support for the LBGTQA community on campus this year.
While plans for bolstered official College support for the LBGTQA community have been in the works since the summer, recent incidents of homophobia on campus — including an incident in which a member of the LBGTQA community received an anonymous threatening letter taped to the student’s door in addition to the recent controversy regarding Chance the Rapper’s lyrics — have prompted the administration to announce their goals and plans prior to the official implementation of such programs.
Assistant Director of Student Activities and Special Assistant to the Dean of the College Jennifer Herrera is leading the initiatives in conjunction with Dean of the College Shirley Collado, Associate Dean of Students for Student Activities and Orientation JJ Boggs, Director of Health and Wellness Barbara McCall and the board of the Queers and Allies (Q&A) student organization.
“We’ve had these two major incidents occur on campus that have gained more visibility than us being able to share this news about our LGBTQA resources and support initiatives,” Herrera said. “So what needs to be understood is that our effort to strengthen existing support and implement additional programs is not in reaction to those instances … As we made more progress in our work, it was our intention to introduce some of these initiatives later this academic year.”
Herrera made sure to note that due to the recent nature of the implementation of these support programs, she has not yet been able to gather feedback from as many students as previously intended. Q&A, however, has been involved in preliminary discussions.
“I’m glad that the administration is moving forward with tangible goals,” said Q&A co-chair David Yedid ’15. “I think the College is very behind in the way that they support minority student groups and there needs to be a big change.”
An increased focus on addressing the needs of the LGBTQA community at the College began this summer, after the College completed its first assessment through the online organization Campus Pride.
Campus Pride is a national nonprofit run for and by students with the goal of helping campuses “develop, support and give ‘voice and action’ in building future LGBT and ally student leaders,” according the company’s website.
According to Herrera, the assessment provides an LGBT Friendly Campus Climate Index, touching upon eight factors to rate a campus on their LGBT-inclusive policy, programs and practices. These factors include LGBT policy inclusion, support, institutional commitment, academic life, student life, housing, campus safety, counseling and health, and recruitment and retention efforts. Rated on a scale of zero to five, the College scored three and a half points.
Herrera, Boggs and Collado used the results and suggestions of the Campus Pride assessment, along with recommendations from students involved with Q&A and earlier LGBTQ groups on campus to create a list of four goals.
“Obviously [the goals are] not totally comprehensive, there’s still a lot to do,” Herrera said. “We can’t just check off these goals. We’re working on developing sustainable programs and strengthening the current support and resources we have on campus now for students.”
According to Herrera, the first of these goals is the implementation of a sustainable training program on LGBTQA/diversity issues for Residential Life staff and campus constituencies, including Safe Zone training. Secondly, the Campus Pride assessment has led to the development of an accessible, simple process for students to identify a preferred name and preferred pronoun on College records and documents via an electronic Bannerweb request form. Increased programming will also focus on developing LGBTQ-friendly resource materials and the Gender and Sexuality Resources website as part of a broader Diversity and Community website in addition to the establishment of a peer-mentoring program to welcome and assist LGBTQ students in transitioning to academic and campus life.
Yedid expressed concern that although these goals are “sold and fair”, there is currently no staff or faculty position whose job is to specifically act as a contact for the College’s LGBTQA community.
“These goals are positive, but I think there needs to be a larger changing of culture and that needs to happen with the knowledge that that’s someone’s job,” he said.
Along with the efforts to achieve these four goals, the College is looking at initiatives in other areas as well: both the Athletics Department and Parton Center for Health and Wellness are working on their own LGBTQA projects.
This fall, the Athletics Department joined the You Can Play (YCP) project. Through You Can Play, colleges and universities create videos, posted to the YCP website, stating their commitment to “ensuring equality, respect and safety for all athletes, without regard to sexual orientation,” according to youcanplayproject.org.
“I certainly liked the message a lot, but I also liked the idea that there is a sustainable element to a video which is more permanent than a speaker or another one-time event,” wrote Director of Athletics Erin Quinn in an email, explaining why he and his staff chose to work on the project.
Parton faculty and staff have started to work with the RU12? Community Center, a Burlington-based organization that celebrates, educates, and advocates for the LGBTQA population in Vermont.
This September, Parton staff participated in a workshop run by RU12? and plan to hold another later in the year.
“Our hope is that through a variety of trainings and discussions over the next few years, Parton staff in health and counseling will continue to gain greater insight and understanding of the particular experiences of any students who may have felt stigmatized, misunderstood or dismissed by health care providers (at home or elsewhere) in the past, and through these trainings to increase our ability to provide excellent care,” wrote Executive Director of Health and Counseling Services Gus Jordan in an email.
The implementation of such programs and the achievement of the College’s LGBTQA community goals is expected to be a slow and fluid process, seeking feedback from students, faculty and staff, alike, along the way.
“We know that there are some holes and there is a lot that we can strengthen and improve but in order to not become overwhelmed by all of the potential work, we’ve narrowed it down to some concrete things to get off the ground and to develop in a real sustainable way this academic year so they can continue to move forward and be successful,” Herrera said. “We realize that new initiatives will surface and develop and we will be thinking about what the next things to tackle are.”
(11/14/13 5:08am)
Dear friends,
Today, on Nov. 14, I am going to voluntarily fast for a whole day in solidarity with the Filipino delegate to the UN COP19 climate talk, Mr. Yeb Sano.
I chose this day because on the same day, Divest Middlebury is holding a candlelight vigil to commemorate the lives that have been lost, and are still being lost, due to Typhoon Haiyan. Just as Mr. Yeb Sano is fasting because his “countrymen... are struggling to find food back home and… [his] brother... has not had food for the last three days,” I am choosing to refrain from eating on Thursday because I treat his countrymen as my countrymen, his brother as my brother, and I want to bring this issue to more people’s attention on campus.
Far too many people do not have the luxury that I do to choose to fast: Typhoon Haiyan alone has caused 2.5 million people in the Philippines to rely on food assistance. Many more storms like this one will come, and 95% of the death resulted from such “extreme climate disasters” is going to be people from developing countries.
The reason why this figure is so skewed towards people in “developing” countries is because they are less adequately prepared for coping with climate disasters than “developed” countries. Rapid population growth and urbanization produce clusters of poorly constructed houses in cities in developing countries which are extremely vulnerable to even smaller-scale climate events, let alone “extreme climate disasters.” Natural disasters, as it turns out, are only part of the story: poverty, a booming population, geography, meteorology, and shoddy construction, are equally, if not more, important factors.
Whether we accept it or not, climate change does not lie in the distant future. It is now, and it is right here. I have a few friends from the Philippines who have family members there, as I know that many of you do, too. Even if this is not the case, you may well know other friends that do. Thus, it is utterly impossible to deny how closely our lives are linked to the lost lives and survivors of the strongest typhoon to have ever hit land.
This record-setting storm has made it clear to the world that we are now living in an era of “Climate Changed.” Yet, governments around the globe are not doing enough to curb carbon emissions. Not only has CO2 concentration in the atmosphere risen to an all-time high last year, but the gap between the estimated level of CO2 in 2020, as calculated from the latest pledges made by countries around the world, and the targets required to keep temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius, has reached an all-time width as well. In other words, the chasm between ambition and reality is only widening year after year.
This is going to be an important day for us to remember the time we are in. I hope that many of you will join me, or at least support me, in this fasting, so that collectively, we can make a powerful statement that we recognize that climate change is not an abstraction, nor is it merely a scientific fact, but an indispensable part of our daily, lived reality.
With gratitude,
Adrian
ADRIAN LEONG ’16 is from Hong Kong.
(11/13/13 7:09pm)
Last week in Oslo, Marius Holm of the ZERO Foundation presented a report that I co-wrote this summer along with a number of environmental and financial professionals making the case for fossil fuel divestment in Norway’s government pension fund, a portfolio so large that it dwarfs the size of all American university endowments combined. Many of the arguments were specific to Norway, which, as one of the largest producers of oil and gas in the world, is ill-advised to double down on its exposure to shifts within the fossil energy industry. As a fund that already has in place the type of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) criteria for investment missing from Middlebury’s endowment, the debate in Norway is not over whether divestment is an appropriate tool for creating change, but rather how far that tool should be extended. While Middlebury would be well advised to lead the way by creating similar investment screens, even in the absence of concerns about endowment ethics the arguments for divestment in Norway can inform the ongoing debate on this campus.
Over the past six months, many market analysts have revised their predictions for future oil prices from around $110 per barrel to down into the $80 to $90 range. A number of factors are driving this downward trend — increased efficiency of automobiles, uncertainty over future regulations and a Chinese economy far more overleveraged than that of the United States prior to the financial crisis. All of these factors contribute to falling oil demand, which in a world of abundant oil supply means that prices must soon begin to fall.
At lower prices, many of the types of tar sands, ultra-deepwater and shale oil projects currently under development would fail to earn back their investment capital. Any regulatory action that limits carbon dioxide emissions will inevitably require some of these reserves — which have already been factored into the share value of oil companies — to remain in the ground. Expectations about reserves have a significant effect on the share price of fossil fuel companies. When Shell reduced its estimated reserves by 20 percent in January 2004, its share price plunged by 10 percent in a single week. These concerns recently led a large group of investors representing over $100 billion in assets managed by companies that include Boston Common Asset Management and Storebrand Asset Management to issue a call that Norwegian Oil Company Statoil withdraw from tar sands extraction.
World Financial Markets – and, by proxy, the Middlebury College Endowment – are being inflated by a looming Carbon bubble. If you accept that there is a scant one-in-four chance that the world will meet the IEA’s targets to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius, the expected value of the endowment’s position in fossil energy equities is already ten percent inflated. The loss of value if climate change is defeated would be forty percent, which would affect the College’s ability to pay employees, undergo capital projects and award financial aid to deserving students.
The College Administration and Trustees no doubt have faith that, as professional investment managers, Investure will be able to anticipate the shift in fossil energy share prices before they actually arrive. But that poses a significant risk to the endowment – a risk that we would do well to avoid. When financial markets adjust to reflect the changing reality of fossil fuel use, the adjustment will not be smooth or gradual. It will come suddenly and leave those too slow to act with heavy losses. For some of the market, it already has. After an energy speech by President Obama that pledged increased regulation of power plants and an end to international development aid for non-Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) coal plants, the shares of coal companies including Peabody Energy and Walter Energy took dives of 3.4 and 10.4 percent respectively, adding to a year in which Peabody Energy has lost half its value and Walter Energy has lost three quarters. The Stowe Global Coal index, which lists coal-producing companies, fell the same day to its lowest level since the 2009 financial crisis. Utilities across Europe have similarly plunged unexpectedly in response to competition from renewable energy.
To be bullish on the future of the fossil fuel industry is the rough equivalent of a bullish outlook on the nuclear industry sometime after the alarm bells went off at Three Mile Island or after the wave headed for Fukushima. It is comparable to a bet on CFC-producing companies sometime between the discovery of the massive hole in the Ozone layer and the ratification of the Montreal protocol, or a bet on fax machines after the invention of the Internet. Coal and oil powered the 19th and 20th centuries. Their glory days are past. To bet on their future is to bet either against the future of humanity or against the overwhelming judgment of science.
(11/13/13 6:35pm)
We’ve become largely desensitized to words like ‘10,000 likely dead.’ It’s not our family, our friends. But can we stop for a minute and recognize that people have died and will continue to die, as Typhoon Haiyan razes Southeast Asia because of a storm greatly exacerbated by climate change. Though Haiyan has received significant mainstream media coverage, it’s framed to evoke pity, sadness, a sense of helplessness.
But this framing distracts from the true tragedy: our complicity. We are responsible, as people living in a country that pours the most greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and works the hardest to prevent substantive international action on climate change. Our actions are intensifying storms while those who have done the least to bring about climate change experience the deaths of their family members and the destruction of their homes.
Yeb Sano, Filipino delegate to the U.N. Climate Summit that kicked off this week said Monday morning that “disasters are never natural. They are the intersection of factors other than physical. They are the accumulation of the constant breach of economic, social, and environmental thresholds. Most of the time disasters are a result of inequity and the poorest people of the world are at greatest risk because of their vulnerability and decades of maldevelopment, which I must assert is connected to the kind of pursuit of economic growth that dominates the world; the same kind of pursuit of so-called economic growth and unsustainable consumption that has altered the climate system.”
When discussing climate change on our campus, we focus on a distant future, thinking about how we will smoothly, rationally transition off of fossil fuels. We “integrate sustainability” into our practices only when it requires no sacrifices of our quality of life. What the situation in the Philippines remind us is that while we wait for serious action to be comfortable, there are sacrifices. People are sacrificed.
People refer to divestment and the environmental movement as “radical,” but radical is watching 10,000 people die as a result of the largest storm in our history and refusing to take action. Radical is accepting such a storm as the new normal.
Moreover, it is inhumane. As residents of an exceedingly wealthy and powerful nation and as people with access to a political system that moves if we demand it, we have a responsibility to organize, to bring about a future that values a human life in the Philippines as much as a life at Middlebury College.
Climate change is truly, fundamentally terrifying. It is almost impossible to think about the reality we face and to refrain from despair, to continue getting out of bed in the morning. But we must, we must engage, because if we don’t we are going to spend our lives watching the world’s most marginalized suffer as a consequence. This we cannot do.
As Yeb Sano says, “it’s time to stop this madness.” Enough is enough.
Please join members of Divest Middlebury and Sunday Night Group Thursday, Nov. 14 at 5 p.m. outside of Mead Chapel for a candlelight vigil to remember those lost and suffering from Typhoon Haiyan.
GRETA NEUBAUER '14.5 is from Racine, W.I. and HANNAH BRISTOL '14.5 is from Falls Church, V.A.
(11/06/13 9:30pm)
We know that preservation of the South American rain forests is a necessary step in ensuring our future a stable climate. Why, then, is illegal logging in the Amazon still so prevalent?
Two weeks ago, the New York Times published a story explaining a recent chapter of Peru’s struggle to combat the black market timber industry ravaging its forests. The global demand for mahogany and other valuable hardwood types – more abundant in the Amazonian rain forests than anywhere else on Earth — has helped fuel illegal timber harvesting in some of the world’s most important forests. Like a similar story in National Geographic from April of this year, the Times articulates that many of the last big mahogany stands exist only within the boundaries of Indian lands. These areas prove difficult to patrol, and the indigenous communities that inhabit them are often as sympathetic to loggers’ cash as they are towards law enforcement.
What efforts are made to try and curtail illicit harvesting in protected areas and carry out conservation plans in managed lands are undermined by political corruption and a lack of other sources of income for the areas’ inhabitants. Military personnel, stationed to patrol locales and check that loggers have the appropriate documentation necessary to harvest trees, can only be so effective, and judges who are supposed to prosecute those caught in violation of policies, more often than not, take a bribe over the rule of law. Such conditions, together with the reluctance of distributors and businesses in the developed world to take precautions necessary for keeping “poached” timber out of their supply chains, might seem to draw a picture of a relatively bleak future for forests the Earth needs to breathe.
How might we go about trying to ensure that these forests — the importance of which links not only to climate change, but also biodiversity and human ecology — do not go damaged beyond repair? The problem will not be solved unless we tackle the conditions on the ground that perpetuates cutting as well as remedy the upstream demand that facilitates it.
Governance does not work in a given area unless it has the resources necessary for it to run. While I am not about to propose a solution for the lack of effective civil society in the Amazon, I do not think real progress can be made towards conservation goals without an effective means of enforcement. Military personnel can be paid off – the kind of social pressure capable of dissuading a judge from taking a bribe can only be instantiated through genuine community building. Getting people to take ownership over their political lives does not, and cannot happen overnight. However, if means are taken to lessen the influence that extra-governmental forces have on law enforcement and the justice system, then interests other than those of the governed might have a harder time interfering with regulation. Get the people involved in the way their government works — if we can set the scene for civic development, where livelihoods interact positively with an active role in the political process, conflicts like these will be easier to avoid and to mitigate.
At the same time, we in the North have our own part to play. If it is our demand for fine wood products that drives the illegal cutting taking place down south, then we should presumably do our best to make sure the wood we’re getting is ethically sourced. Sustainable forestry protocols can help, but as the examples at hand show, we have relatively little control what happens on the other end of the supply chain. I think we would do better to simply reevaluate what might be able to meet our material needs as conscious consumers. While we might not be able to control what emerging markets for rare hardwoods (read: China and India) demand, we might have a chance at trying to talk international markets into opting for more sustainable alternatives.
The story of the persistence of Amazonian logging only serves to bring our attention towards a central tension in our contemporary age — while economic development can appear to provide solutions for environmental problems, it invariably comes at a cost. Bringing commerce and nation-building to the global south might provide opportunities for development beyond natural resource exploitation, but questions regarding to the compatibility of capitalism and indigenous ways of life still fail to provide clear answers. Political liberalism, the panacea in vogue, may strengthen civil society to a certain extent. Problems arise, however, when liberal economics beat political liberalism out of the blocks.
(11/06/13 9:28pm)
A friend of mine once described “fun” as looking forward to an event and reminiscing about that event. Anticipation and nostalgia, he thought, were more important to explaining our experience of fun that the actual experience. Daniel Kahnman’s research, including his most recent book Thinking Fast and Slow, gives some credibility to this claim.
Through this lens, nostalgia is pleasure, derived from looking back at a memory that once inspired a positive feeling. The danger, however, is intellectual inertia. In a sense, nostalgia leads us to hold rigid ideas of how things should be, leaving us biased by the conventionality of how they could be.
Being aware of, and correcting for, irrational tendencies like nostalgia makes us smarter.
For example, there is nothing better than the feeling of taking off cold, wet socks and plopping yourself down next to a crackling, glowing fire. It is viscerally refreshing, plus it connects our experience, however indirectly, with pre-historic humans. Wood fires feel innate to humanity.
Problem is, some studies suggest that being around such fires is likely worse for you than cigarettes. Because household wood fires release tiny particles that we cannot smell, we are ignorant to the damage it does to our pulmonary and cardiovascular systems. It releases carbon sequestered in the wood, which exacerbates climate change when scaled to a national level (although electric and gas “fireplaces” may be worse still).
Worst of all, it is not just hurting the person enjoying the fire: recreational fires in modern fireplaces create an substantial “second hand smoke” effect in suburbs and medium population density zones. One study estimated that 70 percent of smoke released from household fires re-enters other nearby chimneys, with deleterious health impacts. While there is uncertainty about the true health impacts, the possibility of such disastrous side effects should make us critically investigate the status quo.
Our irrational love of wood fires illustrates the flaw of emotionally driven, non-rational decision-making that characterizes most human choices. All of our decisions are determined in large part by emotion, familiarity, and aesthetics. This is often a great way to simplify decision making to save intellectual bandwidth for other activities; however, it also means that when one argues that fireplaces should be illegal except in timber-rich, population sparse zones, people immediately and instinctually defend fireplaces. In fact, you — the reader — likely feel nostalgic about an experience you had near a fireplace and are therefore resistant to embrace my point.
Yes, there are valid arguments against banning fireplaces, like asking, “If there are greater evils out there, why fire places?” Fair, perhaps it should not be the top priority in D.C., but I do not believe that is the primary reason people instinctually defend fireplaces. There is a legitimate health benefit to the policy which, weighed against the mild infringement of liberty, seems comparable to the polarizing soda ban in New York City. In both cases, the small infringement of liberty is a means to correct a market imperfection — the negative externality of fireplaces or of sugar-fueled obesity and diabetes — that could lead to saving vast amounts of lives and health expenditures. The EPA agrees, and has quietly improved fireplace standards across the U.S. this year.
So why are we resistant to banning fireplaces all together? Because we have pre-established positions on fireplaces rooted in nostalgia. The real reason fireplaces still exist in semi-urban zones is that being against fireplaces is like being against hot chocolate and Christmas. Fireplaces symbolize family, togetherness, and relief from the cold. Thus, the archaic technology persists long past its usefulness.
We irrationally associate a secondary element of our memories - in this case, fireplaces - with the relief and togetherness that really made us happy. What makes fireplace memories special is how we got wet and cold and whom you were with when you warmed up, not the fireplaces themselves. Banning fireplaces would just allow for more moments about which to be nostalgic, by lengthening people’s lives. Even if the benefits are imperceivable on the individual scale, society as a whole will benefit.
My argument is not really about fireplaces, but around our willingness to embrace new ideas that challenge conventions and address problems. It is entirely possible that future evidence declares fireplaces safe, and that the new EPA policies are erroneous. But that is not the point: if we are to achieve a world that is connected, cohesive, and provides the fundamentals of human happiness - shelter, food, health, education and hope – it may require embracing non-conventional solutions. It is our responsibility to be open to arguments rooted in evidence, rather than emotion.
(10/30/13 9:01pm)
Past a locked glass door and a chair that belonged to Robert Frost is Special Collections within the Davis Family Library, the space in the Library’s basement that primarily comprises the books you will not find shelved in the stacks.
“It’s both a collection of materials that are either very rare, unique, expensive or fragile, so there are a few different varieties,” Director of Collections, Archives, and Digital Scholarship Rebekah Irwin said. “Generally, the oldest books in the collection are here, and some special collections are set aside.” Within Special Collections are the collections of books such as the Abernathy Collection – a trove of manuscripts and rare books from great American authors of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Priceless books such as Henry David Thoreau’s personal copy of “Walden” are kept in Special Collections.
“So that’s a very valuable and, of course, irreplaceable item which is kept in a safe,” said Assistant Curator of Special Collections and Archives Danielle Rougeau. Even if they are not books, items of significance to the literary world are also housed in the collections.
“Thoreau’s father and Thoreau for part of his young adulthood were pencil-makers. So we have Thoreau pencils and a box that the pencils came in,” Irwin said. “I don’t know how many students know that the chair that sits in the front is Robert Frost’s chair and his moth-eaten sweater that sits on top of it, and his radio from the Frost cabin in Ripton.”
Other collections are more unconventional, such as the Helen Flanders archive, made up of recordings collected by the eponymous researcher and folklorist who traveled across Vermont during the mid-1900s to record folk songs.
“We have 250 or so of her Edison wax cylinders that she used to record as well as thousands of records and early reel-to-reel tapes that she made,” Irwin said. “It is a collection wthat is very popular among folklorists, musicians and researchers who are interested in how folk music traveled from Europe to America.”
Rare Books and Manuscripts holds the books that, for the sake of preservation, have to be kept in certain conditions and not tossed in a backpack and walked around campus. These books are instead used in the Special Collections reading room.
“The Manuscripts part of [Rare Books and Manuscripts] is unique manuscripts, usually from authors,” Watson said. These manuscripts include drafts of books before they are published, as well as letters and research papers.
Oftentimes, these manuscripts reveal information about an author.
“We have those collections, so if someone is interested in the process an artist or writer goes through, we have those raw materials,” Irwin said. “And that is something you can study to learn about the person or the process of writing.” Rare books also includes a growing collection of Civil War letters.
A recent gift came from the spouse of an alumnus who was a niece of Ernest Hemingway and gave many of personal diaries and letters from the family.
“So if you’re really into Hemingway, you’d be thrilled the collection here,” Watson said. “It’s the kind of thing that we would have researchers coming nationally or internationally to do research on.”
The College Archives, a collection of any items and publications produced by people associated with the College, is an important part of Special Collections’ mission.
“By the nature of being as old a school as we are, we have an amazing range of materials in the collection dating back to 1800 and before,” Irwin said. “It reflects what is happening in society by the activities happening here and we have the benefit of over 200 years of collecting.”
While the priceless items in the collection are of use to researchers, the Special Collections staff primarily serves students as well as administrators.
“When the College does new things, they also like to look backwards,” Irwin said. Especially when considering changes to departments, such as the split of History of Art and Architecture and the Fine Arts department in 1997, according to Irwin, administrators like to examine the precedent that can be viewed in the Archives.
“We’re supplying them usually with research information that they need to produce flyers and brochures but they’re also asking us for images often,” Rougeau said.
According to her colleagues, Rougeau’s ability to recognize and name the faces in the photographs of the Archives is unrivaled.
“She’ll look at a photo of a dinner in 1905 or 1911 of the alumni group in New York City, and she names 10 people in the photograph,” Watson said. Rougeau speculates that working with the materials since 1994 is why her memory of the people in Middlebury’s past is so keen.
“I feel like I have a responsibility to try to document this so that the names are there and it’s available,” Rougeau said.
At the end of the day, however, Special Collections can only delay the inevitable.
“All things made of paper are made of organic materials, and all organic materials slowly degrade whether it’s our bodies or a tree or a piece of paper and the point of preservation is to slow that down as much as you possibly can if you want to keep it in the future,” Watson said. This reality has led to a digitization effort, with photographs, manuscripts, and materials from the Archives are being scanned in order to preserve them. Nevertheless, the ability to digitize has its downsides.
“We have photos and scrapbooks and letters and diaries of students of Middlebury College through the 1900s and into the 20th century but the last time one of you or your classmates wrote a letter to a friend, kept a journal on paper or took a photo and made a print of it, it’s been a long time,” Irwin said.
The Internet and digital media are hampering the Archives’ ability to tell the story of events that happened on campus.
“A student can come to our archives and can study how women at Middlebury organized themselves around women’s suffrage or abolition or any big political movement because we have documents that tell that story,” Irwin said. “But if a student 10 years from now wants to understand what was happening around climate change on campus or divestment, so much of that was happening not on paper but on social media and digital cameras and cell phones and on blogs. We need to make sure that we can tell that story and that a student doing a history thesis a decade from now is able to see those materials.”
(10/17/13 4:05am)
1. Eating Beef is horrific for the environment.
Eating beef results in an enormous amount of carbon emissions, to the tune of around 2.7 kilograms of carbon dioxide per 100 gram serving (or around 214 calories of 90 percent lean beef). In fact, a drive from Middlebury to New York City actually releases less CO2 than getting a burger along the way.
2. Lamb is actually worse, in-terms of CO2 emissions, than beef.
Producing lamb is estimated to release 34.2 percent more CO2 than beef for the same serving size. One of the main reasons is that the portion of edible flesh on lambs (42 percent by weight) is far lower than in cows (55 percent by weight), although the relative economic value of the meat from a single lamb is higher than beef, meaning there is an incentive for farmers to keep raising lamb. For any amount of protein harvested from lamb, the carbon emissions released will be more than eight times larger than the same amount of chicken would produce.
3. Pork is, relatively, more environmentally friendly than you might think.
In part because so much of each pig is edible (65 percent), CO2 emissions of pork production per weight of meat output are roughly four times less the same amount of beef, and only about two times more than chicken.
4. Locally raised meat, especially beef, does not drastically change environmental impact compared to non-local meat.
According to the Environmental Working Groups, 90 percent of carbon emissions related to beef comefrom the production and disposal — or waste — of beef, which does not include its transportation, storage, or preservation. Locally raised beef may be good for Vermonters, but it is only slightly better for the climate.
5. Cheese is drastically worse for the environment than you thought, but yogurt and milk are fine.
For every kilogram of cheese produced about 9.82 kilograms of CO2 are released, which is only 36 percent less than beef’s emissions by weight. That is more than twice as bad for the environment as bacon (although that is if you are eating 100 grams of cheese, which is unlikely). Yogurt and milk, in contrast, have emissions comparable to broccoli, tomatoes and other crops. The primary reason behind this discrepancy is that it takes 10 pounds of milk to make 1 pound of cheese.
6. Only looking at the weight of wasted food in the dining halls tells us very little.
The difference in the climate implications of an entirely wasted salad is less than the last bite of a hamburger. It is, however, useful to know the total weight if we can estimate the proportion of each type of ingredient that it is made up of (how much of the waste is London broil versus “bean greens”). A better way of doing this is simply measuring how much of what kind of ingredients are used by our dining halls. That said, it is an extremely noble cause: 15 percent of total beef emissions are a result of “avoidable waste”, compared to only around 1 percent for domestic transport and refrigeration.
7. Our binary conception of “vegetarianism” is irrational.
Vegetarianism and Veganism are generally conceived as absolute categories: you are or you are not. This is misguided and not just because vegetarian burritos at Chipotle come with free guacamole. It is very hard to give up meat, but replacing half the meat on your plate with a plant-based protein every day is far more impactful than adopting “meatless Mondays.” If you cannot be a vegetarian because you cannot give up bacon, then just give up everything else. Or just give up beef and lamb and order instead, when possible, vegetarian, chicken or seafood options.
8. There are decreasing returns for replacing proteins.
Although there is about a 20-kilogram difference in CO2 between beef emissions and chicken emissions per kilogram of meat produced, the difference between chicken emissions and tofu (which is similar to other plant based-foods) is only about 4.9 kilograms of CO2 emissions. This means that, although there are strong moral arguments for why eating tofu is preferable to killing chickens, environmentally speaking, you are getting around 80 percent of the benefit by switching from beef to chicken as compared to beef to tofu.
Feel free to reach out with questions regarding methodology, sources, or logic. Almost all of the CO2 emissions estimates for this piece come from the Environmental Working Group’s “Meat Eaters Guide (2011),” which is publicly available for free.
(10/17/13 4:03am)
Dear President Liebowitz, the College administration, and the Board of Trustees,
Thank you for your transparency in your statement regarding divestment and the Board’s internal processes and preliminary proposals. We appreciate the time you have dedicated and your willingness to collaborate with us as we work to divest our endowment of fossil fuels. While an increased commitment to socially responsible investment principles is a step in the right direction, it is not the end of this debate.
Liebowitz claimed that a number of critical questions regarding the College’s decision on divestment remain unanswered and asked whether divestment would have a practical impact. Past divestment campaigns targeting the apartheid regime in South Africa and the tobacco industry helped to stigmatize powerful forces wielding undue influence against the public good. In the 21st century, divestment provides an opportunity to remove the social and political license that allows the fossil energy industry to profit by passing on the costs of its pollution to future generations.
Liebowitz also asks if divestment is the most effective way to address reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This should not impact our decision. The fight against global climate change will require massive shifts in the economy, personal habits and public policy. Divestment is one tactic among many that will hasten this shift.
What impact would divestment have on our returns? Growing evidence suggests that the impact, if any, will be positive. Impax Asset management determined that a portfolio that excluded fossil energy stocks would have outperformed the MSCI world index by an annual rate of 50 basis points over the last five to seven years. Even compared with an “active” investment strategy, a portfolio that excluded fossil fuel stocks in favor of renewable energy and energy efficiency equity would perform 41 basis points greater each year. The five largest oil companies delivered returns of 1.8 percent over the past year compared with the S&P 500’s 16 percent. Although Investure outperformed this index, it seems improbable that a significant part of that performance comes from the small portion of the endowment invested in the 200 largest fossil energy companies. The Financial Times reported last month that for the industry, “costs were up and returns were down – even with oil prices at more than $100 a barrel.” Goldman Sachs released a statement warning that the “window for profitable investment in coal mining is closing” while according to Deutsche Bank, “for big oil companies, the writing is on the wall. Shrink and liquidate over the coming five years, before it is too late.” If fossil energy stocks underperform the market at the peak of their profitability, how can we expect them to perform as the world transitions to renewable energy sources?
We recognize the complications posed by the co-mingling of our funds through Investure. But divestment is possible without severing this relationship. Active divestment campaigns exist at four of the six educational institutions managed by Investure, and five of its other clients have missions that contain explicit environmental or social justice commitments. If Investure is unwilling to serve its clients by allowing them to divest, we must ask ourselves whether we can consider an endowment over which we have so little say to be responsibly managed.
In response to Liebowitz’s final question regarding the potential for future calls for divestment from other industries, we challenge the administration to find an industry that operates in such direct contradiction to the mission and work of the College. Environmental stewardship is one of the college’s most explicitly stated and practiced tenants. The College’s mission statement includes a clear commitment to integrate “environmental stewardship into both our curriculum and our practices on campus.” The management of our endowment is integral to everything we do on campus, and its impact reaches far beyond the Green Mountains.
Middlebury has long been at the forefront of institutional sustainability, even before programs like recycling and composting were fashionable. The College has made bold commitments like carbon neutrality because it knows these kinds of steps are the only way to truly mitigate the worst effects of climate change. This innovation has attracted many students to Middlebury. We are proud to be members of a community that has been a leader in environmentalism, from the first environmental studies program in 1965 to the founding of 350.org in 2007. We cannot turn our backs on this legacy.
We ask the President, administration and Board of Trustees to continue exploring pathways to divest. We hope to keep working with the administration towards a community whose finances no longer contradict our mission of “integrating environmental stewardship into our curriculum and our practices on campus.” Martin Luther King Jr. wrote that “in this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late.” As people continue to suffer from environmental injustice and the climate crisis grows more dire, we cannot afford to ignore reality. We cannot afford to be late. We must be early. We must push ourselves and our peers to take further action, even when the path presented is not the most convenient.
In short, we must lead. Middlebury has embraced this challenge in the past, and we must continue to work for a sustainable planet.
Submitted by DIVEST MIDDLEBURY
(10/17/13 3:48am)
We owe much of what we enjoy here to the decisions and guidance of the Board of Trustees. But considering how much this group impacts us every day, how well do we really understand the board?
While some student groups engage directly with the trustees through positions like the Student Liaison to the Middlebury College Board of Trustees Investment Committee, to most students, the Trustees are nameless figures seen floating in and out of Old Chapel from afar three times a year, making crucial decisions on how the College runs and how our budget is spent. Few students truly understand the people who comprise the board and the process through which they operate, and often our existing conceptions are not accurate.
This disconnect exists on both sides of the aisle. Students often do not understand the board’s long-term responsibilities, and Trustees struggle to take the pulse of the student body. Nevertheless, the Trustees’ goals fundamentally align with the goal of many students on campus. We all desire to make Middlebury the best school possible.
The creation of an avenue to foster dialogue between Trustees and students would therefore benefit both parties. Students could view their own work on campus in the context of a larger picture, and Trustees could ground their long-term decisions in the current student experience. By aligning goals and cutting down on miscommunication, we can maximize our efforts to create positive change on campus.
Though some streams of communication between the students and the Trustees already exist through President of the College Ron Liebowitz and Special Assistant to the Board of Directors Stephanie Neil, the nuances of opinions and issues that concern students on campus cannot adequately be conveyed through a second-hand summary. Personalized discussions between students and Trustees would help both sides see eye-to-eye. While many Trustees are either alumni or parents of past or current students, the student body is dynamic and salient issues change with time. The board’s understanding of student issues should adapt with these changes, while still keeping track of the broader goals of the College and their fiduciary responsibilities. As Carolyn Ramos, a Trustee who sits on the Student Affairs Committee, said in an interview with The Campus last week, “Our core group — our client, if you will — is the students.” While her committee is especially responsible for keeping tabs on the student body, we encourage other committees to check the temperature at the ground level as well.
Because such discourse is outside of the established roles of Trustees and their physical time on campus is short, students must take the initiative to forge relationships with board members, be it for their expertise in a certain field or for their focus in a certain field of College functions. We, therefore, propose a streamlined liaison program in which student organizations or a group of students could reach out to a specific Trustee based on his or her personal background and role within the board. Trustees could then select one or two groups which whom they would meet if they so choose. The student groups that meet with Trustees during any given board meeting would vary depending on which groups feel moved to solicit the Trustees depending on the climate on campus. This process should be formalized so that Trustees are not overwhelmed by student emails, but should also not be intimidating for students who may be more hesitant to voice their opinions.
Take The Campus for example. Several Trustees have backgrounds in media, both purely in journalism and on the legal side. These Trustees would have a better understanding of the issues that concern us as an organization. Through this process, we would be able to research these Trustees and put together a proposal through Stephanie Neil in the hopes of sitting down and learning from each other.
To be sure, the liaison program is not for every Trustee, nor should it be a requirement. But for interested Trustees, the program would give them the chance to develop a meaningful relationship with groups of students that share their interests.
While we appreciate that the Trustees already time and money to the College, we also hope the love for Middlebury that compelled them to join the board in the first place will compel them to engage with the student body and get a taste of what the student experience is like today. Addressing the disconnect between students and Trustees would provide a productive outlet for concerns on both ends where opinions can be constructively communicated rather than indirectly conveyed through protest.
So, Trustees, as you meet and discuss big decisions on this campus, consider sitting down to lunch with us. We’d love to get to know you.
(10/17/13 1:18am)
Patrick McConathy is an entrepreneur of diverse interests and accomplishments. From Colorado, he joined the Middlebury College Board of Trustees in 2005. McConathy brings to the table a Western-U.S. perspective, enthusiasm for the institution, decades of experience and networks in the energy industry and a commitment to sustainability.
“I’m a kind of redneck affirmative action … I love this school … It doesn’t matter whether they’re twenty-five or seventy-five, alumni have done so many things with their lives, with the education they’ve gotten at Middlebury,” McConathy said.
McConathy bridges the distance between Denver and Middlebury and keeps up with developments regarding the College by reading The Middlebury Campus. He takes advantage of board meetings and graduation ceremonies to improve his touch with the Middlebury community.
“I come early to get out and about … and enjoy being around students – all students within reach … The student has to feel comfortable to talk to you around,” McConathy said.
By connecting with students, McConathy has come to believe that social life is their most pressing concern on campus.
“When I was on campus the first thing they bring up is social life. It’s been a significant issue since 2000,” McConathy said.
He recognizes the complexity created by different students’ conflicting views about the prevalence and restriction of alcohol consumption at Middlebury.
“[Some] think [there is] too much drinking,” McConathy said. “Some think there’s not enough access to alcohol … the issues revolve around social seams. I’ve heard so much conversation about it and I don’t have a solution. Ron and his staff has [have] worked a lot [on it but] it’s an issue that won’t go away.
McConathy notes that the greatest problem confronting the College administration is providing quality education at a reasonable cost. He suggests that Middlebury should follow the example of other institutions that make higher education more accessible by making tuition more affordable.
When asked to identify the most exciting strides the College is making into the future, McConathy expresses his hope that the College will increase social and economic diversity on campus.
“The college is doing a good job of that, but we can always do more. Ron’s been very committed to that,” McConathy said.
An environmentalist at heart, however, McConathy singled out Middlebury’s progress toward sustainability.
“I know it’s not as good as others want it to be,” he said, “but we are cutting edge on the front.”
After graduating from Louisiana State University in 1975 with a degree in political science, instead of going to law school, McConathy entered the oil industry through the recommendation of a relative. He explains that he was motivated by an appreciation for the business and the opportunity to make a profit.
“It’s a fascinating business,” McConathy said. “If you guess right about where energy is, you can make some money. But you can also lose. It’s a rollercoaster ride.”
McConathy made both a profit and a reputation for himself in the thirty-one years he worked in oil. He started off drilling wells in Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Wyoming. In 1989, McConathy established Phoenix Oil and Gas and purchased productive oil and gas holdings in these regions. By 2005, the company and its partners had acquired and operated on a significant portion on and offshore properties in California.
In 2006, however, McConathy relinquished his investments in the oil sector and shifted his attention to natural gas, sustainable energy, and environmentally-friendly ranching. Last year, he founded Yarmony Energy, which operates natural gas, alternative energy, and mineral properties in Colorado, Louisiana and Texas. Specific projects he has supported include a year-long solar venture, a wind-powered cattle ranch, and geothermal energy for a big multinational corporation.
“My perspective on the earth has changed since the late 80s,” McConathy said.
The transformation in his entrepreneurial focus embodies personal environmental sympathies that began to develop over two decades ago, when he served on a Louisiana commission that made him aware of the environmental consequences of the energy business in the state.
McConathy cites multiple reasons for his switch to cleaner investments.
“My older son, who came out of Middlebury as a fire-breathing dragon, wanted me to divest, and I wanted to move toward natural gas,” McConathy said. “I had a lot of access to climate research; that had some impact as well. I also thought it was a good thing to do economically. I’d been thinking about it for a while and thought it was the right thing to do.”
According to McConathy, divestment at Middlebury is a far trickier objective that can only be attained over a period of time.
“The human race is destroying the planet,” McConathy said. “It’s not all about money. But it’s very complicated by the fact that the board has a lot of responsibilities in other areas. It won’t take place overnight, but the board is aware of it and it’s a possibility.”
Despite the inertia regarding divestment, McConathy points out we are head and shoulders above other people in the way we address climate change and energy.
“We should be proud of that,” he said.
McConathy has suffered some losses in his new area of investment. He notes that alternative energy will not become viable on a large scale until it produces economic returns higher than conventional sources.
“Alternative energy needs to be able to compete economically for it to get good traction,” McConathy said.
McConathy has not put as much money behind green energy as he did behind oil, but hopes to do so in the future.
“I don’t have the funds I used to five years ago,” he said. “I would if I had the money. I’m no fan of the major oil companies. I can see it happening in the next fifteen years.”
The Yarmony enterprise also includes Yarmony Creek Sport Horses, which runs local cattle ranching, horse breeding, and hay operations in Colorado. McConathy mitigates the environmental impact of his ranches by following the advice of credible ranching consultants and implementing sustainable practices such as cell grazing.
“Every rancher should be an environmentalist,” McConathy said. “It’s in his best interest to take care of the land because that’s all he’s got … it’s in the best interest of livestock, land, and everyone around you.”
McConathy even addressed the human dimensions of environmental problems as the producer of Climate Refugees, which was the only film screened at the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference, and was shown on campus in 2010.
“You can’t see what’s happening to people and not be concerned,” he said.
(10/17/13 12:49am)
As the College works to bring the Biomass Plant back up and running after it ran for 16 straight weeks — the longest, consecutive period to date — increased questions have been raised over the viability of carbon neutrality as the College races towards its 2016 goal.
In 2007, the College Board of Trustees approved a plan to become a carbon neutral institution by 2016. The College has since cut about 40 percent of its carbon emissions in six categories: heating and cooling, vehicles, electricity, travel, waste transportation and carbon offsets. This significant reduction in carbon emissions, which is expected to reach 50 percent by the end of the 2013 fiscal year, is largely attributed to the biomass plant, which burns woodchips to create a renewable energy source, an alternative to oil.
The initial plan for carbon neutrality was a student-led movement. Former Professor of Chemistry at the College Lori Del Negro and Professor of Economics John Isham led a winter term class in 2003 focusing on the scientific and institutional challenges of becoming carbon neutral. The class culminated in the production of a blueprint detailing how the College could reach this goal.
In January 2006, another group of students participated in the same course to make a more specific plan. They presented the plan to the Board of Trustees in February of that year. The board then made a commitment in May 2006 to use the student plan and pledged carbon neutrality by 2016.
“It was all [students] work,” President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz said. “They sold the trustees. It was not the administration. It came from students, and I think future innovations will come from students.”
The idea may have hatched by students, but it has quickly graduated to a booming administrative catch phrase primarily driven by the board and Old Chapel.
However, despite the College’s positive reduction of carbon emissions, neutrality seems to have become an increasingly complex goal, primarily because there are so many ways to define what exactly is included in carbon neutrality and whether true neutrality is even possible.
“I don’t think we can become truly carbon neutral according to the way that I would quantify it,” Professor of Geology Pete Ryan said. “There is the institutional way of quantifying carbon neutrality. And then there is the way I would quantify it. I think until we become basically a fossil free economy, true carbon neutrality is almost impossible.”
During fall 2009, Stafford Professor of Public Policy, Political Science and Environmental Studies Christopher Klyza taught an Environmental Studies class that looked at how the College was getting its biomass supply and if biomass was actually carbon neutral.
“The students were interested in this question, because it didn’t make sense that there is smoke coming out of the biomass plant,” he said. “It’s not obviously carbon neutral. So there must be more to it.”
“I think we’ve rethought biomass and how carbon neutral it is,” Isham said. “There were some critiques from faculty colleagues that proved to be true about overselling biomass as a carbon neutral process.”
According to Director of Sustainability Integration Jack Byrne, the reduction of carbon emission is defined within two boundaries: geographic and operational. The administration accounts for carbon emissions originating from the main campus, the Snow Bowl and the Bread Loaf School of English. Any place or product of which the College owns 50 percent or more counts toward its carbon footprint. For example, the College owns more than 50 percent of the recycling trucks that carry waste to and from campus, and therefore the emissions from those trucks are counted in the carbon emissions.
The accounting, nevertheless, can be tricky because many of the College’s daily activities emit carbon, which raises questions about what is included and excluded from the final tab. For example, the definition of travel is fluid as it only includes specific College-funded travel, while excluding travel funded through student activities or grants, according to the Climate Action Implementation Plan adopted in 2008. Even technology that moves us closer to neutrality is not carbon-free.
“Think about wind-turbines on campus and how they are made,” Ryan said. “They are made with tractors using dynamite to blow up rock to get metal out and the metal is finally refined into wind turbines that are driven here on trucks.”
The definition of carbon neutrality, however, is out of Old Chapel’s hands. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) officially defines what constitutes carbon neutrality and the official criteria for meeting this goal. Nevertheless, there still much variation in this definition.
Colby College recently declared carbon neutrality, but was only able to meet the IPCC’s criteria by buying a large number of carbon offsets. While some are willing to accept that carbon offsets are a reality in reaching neutrality, others argue that offsets are an imperfect solution.
“How do we feel about paying for other people to deal with our emissions? Because that’s what offsets are,” Ryan said.
Though Byrne could not say for sure, he predicted that the College would end up buying some offsets to reach its goal.
Regardless of the definition, the College has made tangible progress in carbon reduction. In the biomass plant, the College decreased its use of No. 6 Heating Oil — a cheap but dirty fuel oil — from 2.1 million gallons annually to 634,000 gallons last year alone.
Likewise, it has engaged in a bio-methane contract — a low-carbon renewable alternative to fuel — which, if successful, would contribute significantly to carbon reduction.
Bio-methane, which is produced by burning methane emitted from cow manure, would be used as an alternative to burning oil and would reduce the amount of methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas.
“The biomass plant has been instrumental in carbon reduction and the use of bio-methane would bring us 10 to 15 percent of our goal and would create jobs in the local community,” Byrne said.
When a local agricultural entrepreneur said he had the capital to create bio-methane, the College was eager to participate. However, the logistical issue of transporting the bio-methane to the College remains unresolved.
“The challenge is how do we get the bio-methane here,” Klyza said. “Which is where I think we’ve been drawn into this larger pipeline. The producer would have a facility about 3 miles from campus and a spur to the pipeline, which would replace our oil. We would then use no oil for heating the campus.”
Longtime divestment student-leader Greta Neubauer ’14.5 called the use of bio-methane “a step in a positive direction,” but remained skeptical about the big picture.
“My criticisms are based around what is not included in carbon neutrality,” Neubauer said. “I think it is pretty hypocritical of Middlebury to be building the biomass plant and other green buildings off of money from the fossil fuel industry.”
“I’m not as hung up on whether we are carbon neutral,” Klyza said. “We’ve made some great progress in reducing our carbon footprint. When I am thinking of the globe, we are not going to reach carbon neutrality, but what we want to do is reduce the amount of carbon we are putting in the atmosphere.”
“We are caught up in this accounting gig because we want to say we are carbon neutral. But in the end if we get to 95 percent, it’s still phenomenal.”
(10/10/13 12:26am)
Climate change scares Fran Putnam, but it hasn’t paralyzed her. Instead, she leads the Weybridge Energy Coalition and has spearheaded the town’s latest energy related success – becoming the first town in Vermont to complete the Vermont Home Energy Challenge.
The Challenge, which was prompted by a partnership between Efficiency Vermont and the Vermont Energy and Climate Action Network (VECAN), began in January and is a competition between many towns in Vermont. The goal for participating towns is to have three percent of their homes weatherized by the end of the year.
Weatherizing a home - a process which requires steps such as changing windows and sealing cracks - increases its efficiency, thus saving money and reducing green house gas emissions. At the end of the competition, the winning town will be awarded $10,000 that will go towards funding an energy initiative.
Last Sunday, Weybridge celebrated not only the completion of the challenge but also being the first town in Vermont to do so, on their statewide Button Up Day of Action, a day in which towns encourage their residents to make their homes more efficient.
The town of Weybridge hasn’t officially won the competition, but many community members believe that they have a good shot at winning the statewide competition.
“There are only 300 houses in Weybridge and only 800 people, so we only needed ten houses,” said Putnam. “We’ve actually got eleven houses [weatherized] and we’re beyond our goal.”
Weybridge’s small size helped them achieve the three percent they needed. For a comparison, Middlebury, a larger town, needs to weatherize 91 houses to complete the same goal.
When asked what propelled Weybridge to the forefront of this challenge, Gwen Nagy-Benson, whose house was the first to be weatherized, said that the volunteers in the town and Putnam’s energy were key factors.
“Weybridge is a … close-knit community – people care about and trust each other, which makes this kind of community effort easier,” Nagy-Benson said. “And, we have Fran Putnam! She has been an expert leader of this initiative – she has inexhaustible energy for the Home Energy Challenge.”
One of the hurdles to getting a house weatherized is the cost, the pressure of which is put on individual home-owners.
When asked how big of an investment it is to weatherize one’s home, Putnam said, “It depends on how much needs to be done. The average is $6,000 to do a complete weatherization.”
Although there are financial incentives of up to $2,500 if a home reaches at least a 10 percent efficiency improvement, and even though weatherization saves the homeowner money in the long run, cost is, understandably, still an issue for many people.
“We had [a home energy] audit done about two years earlier, but we were never able to go forward with the work because the financing options were complicated or not readily available,” said Nagy-Benson. “By the time the Home Energy Challenge kicked off, we were able to secure a loan from our credit union and begin work.”
Although much of what motivates Putnam is driven by a need to mitigate carbon emissions contributing to climate change, many people are motivated to weatherize their homes because, in addition to being better for the environment, it is simply a practical measure to take.
“We never had any hesitations about weatherizing our home – we endured three winters in a drafty house that guzzled heating oil, and three summers baking in the heat,” said Nagy-Benson. “We knew that insulation and air sealing would help maintain a more even and comfortable temperature.”
Eric Lamy, owner of the tenth house in Webridge to be weatherized, had similar motivations as Nagy-Benson.
“We only moved to Weybridge last winter and the heating bills were pretty substantial,” said Lamy. “We decided to go forward with the renovations so that we could rely more heavily on the fireplace [to heat the house].”
Lamy also has long term financial incentives in mind and thinks that a more efficient home will help the resale value if he and his wife ever decide to sell their home.
When Putnam works to convince people to weatherize their homes, she highlights these financial incentives.
“It is the only home improvement that pays for itself, guaranteed,” said Putnam. “Every year you see more savings.”
Putnam believes that weatherizing one’s home also opens the door for people to consistently make more environmentally friendly changes in their lives in general.
“When people do this work [to their house], they become more sensitive to how they do things,” she said. She thinks that after renovating their houses many people might consider biking rather than driving, or installing low-flow showerheads to conserve water.
Overall, the town of Weybridge seems to have embraced the efforts of the Weybridge Energy Committee, as was evident on Button Up Day. Putnam said that over 100 residents attended Button Up Day and that they served 65 pieces of pie, countless doughnuts, cider and coffee in addition to handing out 35 vouchers for free energy savings kits.
This supports Lamy’s claim that the community is accepting of the program.
“I haven’t heard too much pushback towards the initiatives and that speaks well for the community,” he said. “We’re starting to make a name for ourselves.”
(10/09/13 9:14pm)
“Are Our Political Beliefs Encoded in Our DNA?”
Surrounded by news of the government shutdown, Iranian negotiations and Obamacare, this was the headline that caught my eye as I scanned the New York Times headlines. I think it was the jarring association of the two phrases, “political beliefs” and “DNA” – which I typically think of as unassociated, at least in the mainstream media — that grabbed my attention.
Written by Thomas B. Edsall, the article documents developments in a new methodology in political science called genopolitical analysis which examines correlations between genetics, physiology and political belief – and critiques of the new analytical method.
Political scientists are researching the extent to which genetics determines an individual’s political beliefs. An abstract from a Science paper from September 2008 entitled “Political Attitudes Vary with Physiological Traits” explains that, “although political views have been thought to arise largely from individuals’ experiences, recent research suggests that they may have a biological basis.”
That biological basis to which the paper refers is a battery of physiological traits that are associated with certain political leanings. The authors found that “the degree to which individuals are physiologically responsive to threat appears to indicate the degree to which they advocate policies that protect the existing social structure from both external (outgroup) and internal (norm-violator) threats.”
However, critics argue that no such correlation exists, or that if it does, it is embedded in such a complex web of factors that extracting any meaningful connections is nigh impossible.
But another paper from the American Political Science Association (APSA), defends the budding field of genopolitical analysis by arguing that, “it is not biological determinism to posit the existence of complex collections of genes that increase the probability that certain people will display heightened or deadened response patterns to given environmental cues. And it is not antibehavioralism to suggest that true explanations of the source of political attitudes and behaviors will be found when we combine our currently detailed understanding of environmental forces with a recognition that genetic variables subtly but importantly condition human responses to environmental stimuli.”
I’m inclined to agree with Alford et al., the authors of the APSA paper. Organs and tissues make up the human body (brain included), and all our interaction with the outside world – experience – is mediated through the physical body by the five senses. New research has found that physiology is tied to political ideology. Intuitively, it seems highly unlikely that a connection between genetic composition and political beliefs does not exist. But if a connection exists, and if current research is elucidating those connections, another issue arises. What do we do with that knowledge?
Edsall suggests using the knowledge to solve the political challenges of the day. He argues that “with so much riding on political outcomes — from default on the national debt to an attack on Syria to attitudes toward climate change — understanding key factors contributing to the thinking of elected officials and voters becomes crucial. Every avenue for understanding human behavior should be on the table.”
Delving into the genetic basis of political ideologies is a bit like cracking the lid of Pandora’s box. Using knowledge of genetic influences on behavior to educate citizens within a democracy about how and why they make choices would certainly be a good use of the information. But it’s not a far stretch to imagine an Orwellian society where that that knowledge is used as a tool to engineer repression and control.
Though I agree with Edsall that the knowledge can be used to elucidate our current political problems, I do not think any one person or group should try and use that knowledge to manipulate political outcomes. I think it’s a fine line that must be walked. The exploration of the human animal and all that it does will continue. Should continue. But as new knowledge is gained, we must, as a society, ask the question: How should this knowledge be applied?
