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(10/14/10 4:07am)
Here at Middlebury, we pride ourselves on our quest for carbon neutrality, our compost piles, our organic garden and overall awareness and attentiveness to the importance of environmental sustainability. We petition for change, we protest abuse and we try to set a good example in the way we live and interact with our limited resources. But what in the name of electric cars and solar energy does any of this have to do with fashion?! EVERTHING. Okay… I exaggerate, but still.
The way I look at it, “Stylistic Sustainability” can be broken up into two categories — Material and Historical. On one end you have the material — clothes made out of recycled textiles, hemp and natural fibers — clothes whose production doesn’t exhaust resources or pollute the local environment. This extends beyond the basic makeup of the textiles and into the structure and practices of the companies themselves. Now I’m not saying you have to research the environmental responsibility of every company you purchase a piece of clothing from, but if you are a consistent patron of specific stores, look into it. For all you know your clothing is being made by seven-year-old orphans with TB who get a dollar every six months, or perhaps your favorite designer is the leading killer of rabbits in Eastern Europe.
So clearly I’m hyperbolizing here, but you get my drift. If we’ve learned anything from this wonderful liberal arts education, it’s that we need to be aware of our consumption.
Now here comes the fun part: historical sustainability, or clothes that were made before (or shortly after) you were born. It’s my belief that any item of clothing that has been in circulation for over fifteen years is fair game on the green front; thrift stores, vintage boutiques and the “take it or leave it” at the dump are treasure troves of forgotten beauty. Often times thrift store chains also contribute a portion, or all, of their proceeds to charities: Second Time Around in Burlington donates to breast cancer research and Planet Aid in Boston helps provide medical supplies for those with HIV/AIDS in Africa. So not only can you be green by buying old, but you can also make a small social difference as well.
Now clearly this isn’t the case in those pricey high-end vintage stores on Melrose or in SoHo, who sell sequined Vivienne Westwood dresses and 1960’s Chanel blazers for hundreds upon hundreds of dollars — but you can still be a conscientious consumer, especially when it comes to our little furry woodland critter friends. Now I may get some backlash for this but my motto with fur is that if it died before I was born, and is being sold by an independent shop owner, and not a corporate affiliate — it’s recycling. Product testing on animals, the destruction of wildlife habitats for logging and urbanization, the pollution of our air and water, climate change, over-hunting and -fishing; these are all problems that threaten our environmental stability and morality far more than a single leather jacket — and while I don’t like supporting the contemporary killing of animals for clothing, I also don’t agree with the way our farm animals are pumped growth hormones and kept in cages all their lives. There are bigger issues at hand, so let’s try and keep that red paint at bay. Your grandmother’s fur coat will appreciate it.
Moral of the story? Almost everything comes back in fashion eventually, so buy old or consume current styles with critical awareness.
Mary-Caitlin Hentz ’10.5 from Dover, MA.
(10/14/10 4:05am)
In 188 different countries, people joined together at 7,347 Global Work Parties across the globe. Groups gathered to celebrate the environment, and to inspire political leaders across the world to take action and to curb the effects of global warming. The College’s Sunday Night Group and local community members coordinated and planned the events of 10/10/10 with help from 350.org, an international environmental organization.
“Today is only a humble part of a lifetimes work,” said Jon Isham, associate professor of economics, who is also involved with 350.org. “Today is a great start and a day to get recommitted to politics.”
Isham believes the most important step in achieving 350.org’s goal of “350” is forcing politicians to listen and to take action, so climate changes can be controlled. This number represents the amount of carbon dioxide in parts per million that is safe for our environment. Everyone must get to work so the world can get to 350.
“We all understand numbers, and this is the most famous number in the world,” said Isham.
After weeks of preparation, community members gathered on the Town Green last Sunday afternoon. To begin the festivities, a drum circle played several West African pieces. The drummers, who have been taking classes together every Thursday for the last 12 years, played djembes or tall drums.
“Our drumming is a community builder,” said Louise Brynn, one of the drummers and a resident of Bristol, Vt.
Fellow drummer from Salisbury, Vt., Netaka White, echoes Brynn, as he believes that the music is not a performance, but rather a loose gathering of community drummers. Laura Asermily, the Middlebury Energy Coordinator, asked the group to open the 10/10/10 celebration. Following the drumming, Isham and Asmerily both spoke to the crowds. Their speeches, along with a photo, were sent to the 350.org leaders in Washington, D.C.
Numerous pamphlets were available for the community, including a booklet called the Low Carbon Diet. This 30-day program teaches people how to save money and energy by, for example, eating less red meat and being more fuel-efficient.
Asermily also organized a Carbon Buster Fashion Show and had volunteers dress up like “Carbon Cuttin’ Cats.” She talked about reducing waste, using energy efficient light bulbs, air sealing and insulating houses, reducing the amount of hot water being used and “thinking before you go,” which is an effort to off-set air travel and encourage biking.
“Forty-six percent is the number on my mind,” said Asermily. “This is the amount of carbon emission related to transportation in Middlebury.”
She advocates modifying transportation and instructs locals about proper space heating methods by “buttoning-up” their houses, as she believes these are two significant ways to reduce the levels of atmospheric carbon. Asermily met with an energy auditor and in the last three years, she has been weatherizing her home. The changes cut her fuel bill by one-third; she has saved 900 dollars per year and now uses 300 gallons less of oil.
“It is about efficiency and conservation,” said Asermily, who weatherized her home by insulating her attic and basement, and sealing her windows. She has also cut an additional 200 gallons of oil by installing a wood stove in her fireplace and placing solar panels on her roof.
Asermily feels efficiency is “environmentally benign.” Her current projects, “Way to Go,” which inspires locals to bike ride and walk instead of driving, and “Efficiency Vermont,” which offers businesses free energy visits, aim to provide people with the necessary information and resources to change their actions. By teaching small businesses about the benefits of saving energy and weatherizing offices, they will save thousands of dollars and help control climate changes. This is why Asermily offers free home and business energy visits; she wants people to make alterations to the space heating and cooling in their homes.
On Sunday, she spoke to a group at the Isley Library about “buttoning up Middlebury.” She discussed the importance of home efficiency because 56 percent of Middlebury’s carbon emissions are due to space heating and cooling.
“People are too dependent on their cars in rural Vermont,” she said. “We need to take local action.”
Middlebury residents also participated in the festivities by taking a solar tour of the town. The walk aimed to spread knowledge to the community about the importance of solar energy. Asermily highlighted the option of group net metering, a process in which neighbors invest in solar energy together.
The day’s events would also not have been possible without the contributions from Sunday Night Group. In addition to singing a catchy tune to engage community members, the club was also involved in canvassing and hoped to register green voters. One member, Audrey Tolbert ’13, talked about the College’s involvement in “Race to Replace” and “Dorm Storm” events. These campaigns seek to register voters who believe in electing green candidates in the upcoming Vermont elections. The college teamed up with fellow schools, including Bennington, Johnson State College and the University of Vermont, to raise awareness about 10/10/10 and to get students excited about voting for clean energy.
“There is only so much we can do on the campus,” said Olivia Noble ’13, another member of the Sunday Night Group. “We need to expand our work into the town and into Addison County, and to integrate all areas.”
Some left the Town Green and went to an elementary school in Cornwall, Vt. to plant a vegetable garden, while others took a hike or participated in gleaning activities.
Asermily realizes it is hard to change habits, but asserts that all must get involved to reach the goal of 350. It starts on a local level.
“We need another political revolution,” said Isham. “We did it with slavery and the Progressive Era.”
The environment is next.
(10/14/10 3:59am)
Climate change is a contentious issue framed by questions across social, economic, cultural, political, scientific and ethical realms. Was the early ripening of apples in Vermont this year a product of global warming? Maybe, maybe not. Will it happen again next year? How much will sea level rise in the 21st century? How long until no glaciers remain in Glacier National Park? When they are gone, will it still be known as “Glacier National Park?” Can we correlate events like Hurricane Katrina or the recent floods in Pakistan to warming oceans? It makes sense intuitively that the warmer Indian Ocean produced more evaporation than usual, and this caused a stronger-than-normal monsoon, which led to tragic events in Pakistan, but can we be certain of the cause? We can also question potential sources of error in climate proxies used to provide temperature records from the recent geological past, or the role that policy should play in responding to carbon emissions, or how the average citizen should respond.
The myriad questions and uncertainties surrounding climate change and its impacts on humans and ecosystems are pretty well known, and the uncertainties embedded in these questions form much of the fodder for debate and global warming skepticism; however, in the complicated world of climate change and global warming, there is one certainty and that is the effect of carbon dioxide on the temperature of the atmosphere.
The molecular structure of CO2 causes heat to be “absorbed” and “trapped” in the atmosphere, and there can be no doubt that higher concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere will trap more heat. The question, “Will increasing CO2 in the atmosphere cause the Earth’s atmosphere to warm?” is not a difficult one. The answer is based on fundamental laws of chemistry and physics, and trying to argue against the role of CO2 in Earth’s atmospheric heat balance would be comparable to trying to disprove the Law of Gravity.
The great 19th century chemist Arrhenius knew that increasing CO2 in air would cause warming, and here is why. The sun sends energy to the Earth in the form of radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum, much of which occurs as ultraviolet (UV) radiation, visible light and infrared (IR) radiation. We can feel the effect of UV rays when they burn our skin, and we can see the visible part of the spectrum.
When UV rays strike the surface of the Earth, their energy is transformed to IR radiation, which carries heat away from the surface, upward into the air, in the direction of outer space. IR radiation is something we can all feel when we sense the heat emitted from hot pavement or bedrock surfaces. As IR rays travel away from Earth’s surface towards outer space, they encounter gases in the atmosphere.
Nothing really happens when this radiation encounters nitrogen or oxygen molecules, but when IR radiation encounters CO2, it causes bonds in the symmetrical CO2 molecules to stretch and bend. (Other molecules also behave in this way, including water, ozone and methane.) Heat is re-radiated outward in all directions, some back towards the surface of the Earth.
This re-radiated energy represents heat that would have otherwise left the atmosphere for outer space. The name for this phenomenon is the Greenhouse Effect — without it, Earth’s average surface temperature would be about -17 oC, and life as we know it would not exist.
However, too much of a good thing means Earth’s average temperature is rising to levels not seen for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years. If we seek to maintain the climate and ecosystems in which humans and other species have evolved and prospered, we must do something to control the CO2 content of the atmosphere.
Pete Ryan is a Professor of Geology
(10/14/10 3:59am)
It has indeed occurred to me that the position I’ll soon take towards this question will be attacked. Critics and sympathizers alike will accuse me of writing what is both a topical critique, and an assessment lacking requisite emphasis on potentially potent solutions. I do not deny either. My attempting to outline a whole host of complex issues in the space of a limited word-count op-ed should not neglect my offer to engage anyone interested in pursuant rhetorical debate. Nonetheless this written polemic, having been expressly penned for The Campus’s “Green Issue,” seems to be a necessary disruption for Middlebury’s environmental discourse.
The first point, one that I believe cannot be avoided by any critically-thinking environmentalist, is that capitalism itself is unsustainable. This assertion pertains to both the operation of Middlebury College (a corporation “working towards sustainability”) by means of an exploitative endowment portfolio, as well as the entire workings of the system itself. Capitalism is an economic system based on perpetual growth and expansion, with new markets to be created and goods to be sold. Last time I checked, we were living on a planet with an overwhelming list of biophysical limits.
The pursuit of GDP and growth as a universal tool of political economy are being proven wrong by an overwhelming list of accelerating ecological catastrophes of which climate change is only one of many (biodiversity, clear-cutting, desertification, global fisheries etc.) If greenhouse gas abatement is solved at the expense of carbon markets and emissions trading, it will only fuel the concentration in power behind complex, globally-traded financial instruments. Remember that the global financial crisis of 2007-(?) was the not the first — nor will it be the last- crisis of capital to rock our increasingly globalizing world. And while I have no doubt in humanity’s ability to solve problems with profound ingenuity, standard techno-fixes rarely come without unintentionally creating problems elsewhere. As noted academic David Harvey likes to put it, “Capitalism never solves it’s own problems, it simply moves them around geographically.”
Yet the ideological arch of contemporary American politics refuses to acknowledge such contradictions. Sustainability is a politicized buzzword irresponsibly thrown about on both “the left” and “the right.” Furthermore, Democrats and Republicans are both captive prisoners of a corporatist state, failing not only in enacting progressive policy changes, but even in the more basic act of protecting our cherished civil liberties. We are living in a country where corporations have the same rights as an individual. A country where imperialist wars are fought to protect “our American way of life” — not our civil rights — but a front, to be sure, for economic exploitation and market capitalization.
By their very global nature, climate change negotiations are subject to the cooperation and whim of international civil society, negotiations which the U.S has overtly and publicly sought to undermine. Safe with the knowledge that a changing climate will disproportionately affect the global south, our government can sit back and watch as all the cherished tenets of universalism collapse into greedy bickering. With food security becoming the dominant immediate concern of people the world over, the fact that U.S cereal grain production is set to increase in a warming world should give even the most hardened optimist a moment of pause.
The biggest problem here on campus is that most people play into this short-circuit, where their activism empowers the very people who stand in the way of making real systemic changes. Incrementalism and democratic activism only result in “feel-good” moral politics where nothing is actually accomplished save for the individual’s moral absolvency. Lifestyle politics abound on this campus, but serve as nothing more than a dangerous façade for change. Dangerous, because by believing in the legitimate agency of their actions as individuals, they actually play into the hands of those very forces they claim to oppose. Dangerous more so because Middlebury students are exactly the engaged and empathic people the world needs most in this fight.
Our economic system, moving at the direction of transnational organizations and multinational corporations, will need a strong dose of direct democracy in this coming decade. Nobody in this world wants to see their environment degraded, but without the agency or power to stop these forces, their worlds literally crumple around them. We will need to confront these growing problems by recognizing the only realistic option for survival. Already citizens of the world are calling for system change, not climate change.
(10/14/10 3:59am)
At last weekend’s TEDx talks, my friend Sierra Murdoch ’09.5 gave an unexpected piece of advice. “Stay away from screens,” she cautioned, “Be wary of social media. It’s an important tool, but if relied on to much if can trick us into believing change can happen quickly.” I looked up from my laptop on which I had been live-Tweeting the day’s events, appropriately embarrassed. I’ve spent years staying up to date on the latest “Web 2.0” tactics for political organizing, amassing a new vocabulary of “hashtags” and “bit.lys.” I pride myself on my ability to blog in bed. Was all my work for naught?
After all, web-based democracy is supposedly the tactic that helped enable some of the most stunning progressive political changes in my lifetime. Wasn’t it the power of the internet and the “meet-up” that drove Howard Dean’s presidential candidacy (with some help from Midd alum and TEDx speaker Michael Silberman ’01)? Wasn’t it the massive online fundraising that helped Barack Obama compile the largest campaign war chest ever? Didn’t Twitter and Flickr help spread word of the “Green Revolution” in Iran?
But, perhaps uncharacteristically, I decided to keep listening to Sierra rather than start to check out a new album on Facebook or hop on Gchat. The problem, she said, was that climate campaigners (and all other do-gooder types working on the web) aren’t putting our time and energy in the right places. Everyone’s so busy working to get “likes” on their Facebook page or to accumulate views on their Vimeo accounts that we’re forgetting the crucial core of grassroots organizing: human interaction. It is only through a long arduous process of actually talking to people that we’ll be able to build the movement we need to tackle this problem. We need to find out what the average American actually thinks about the state of politics, the wind turbines going up in her neighbor’s farm, and what worries or excites them most about the future. And we need to actually listen when they tell us they don’t give a damn about polar bears, the amorphous promise of “green jobs,” or the unfairness of the filibuster. It’s by meeting folks where they’re at and helping them get engaged on the political level where they feel most comfortable that we’ll achieve the sorts of radical transformation the world so desperately needs. Not by having them sign a web petition.
Where then does the “series of tubes” fit in? Is there no room for the interwebs? Midd alum and 350.org organizer Jamie Henn ’07 tackled this question in a post on the Huffington Post just this month. “All around the world, there's a new set of Young (twittering) Turks that are shaking up the status quo and offering a new way forward,” wrote Jamie, “You'll find them in places like China and India, where students there are building youth climate networks linking hungreds of colleges and universities. Or at campaigns like Avaaz.org, which has built a global activist network of over 5.5 million members in just three years. Or across Africa, where mobile phones are allowing young organizers to coordinate across the continent for the first time.”
All that YouTubing and Facebook poking are helping facilitate that real world interaction. We can’t afford to organize in some bizarre “SecondLife” reality, but we can use the new media and social networking tools to help facilitate in-person conversation and political movement building. That’s what 350.org did this past week as hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world organized “work parties” in their communities and synced their actions with others worldwide through the internet. A click of a mouse can’t put solar panels on your roof, but it can help you find other folks who will help you do it. And at the end of the day, isn’t that all that matters?
(10/14/10 3:59am)
The current environmental movement is driven mostly by concerns about sustainability coupled with energy independence and the threat of global climate change. While we have made progress through more efficient cars, eating locally and switching to compact florescent light bulbs, the vast majority of our electricity comes from technology that dumps carbon dioxide and other dangerous chemicals into the atmosphere. The number of wind farms has grown precipitously in the past few years, but these farms lack the potential to make up for our reliance on coal, oil and natural gas plants.
Every method for generating electricity has tradeoffs (some more obvious than others). We often read of coal miners trapped in cave-ins far below ground while at the same time the emissions generated by these plants heat the planet and pollute our air. Natural gas and oil both have different problems with extraction and with transportation but the same issue with pollution. Despite these significant shortcomings, these three options currently rule the energy market. Hydroelectric plants once seemed like a great way to provide sustainable power but it turns out that blocking rivers causes serious damage to the surrounding ecosystems and the communities downstream.
Even among those who believe that wind power has a role to play in our energy grid, few people want one 300 feet from their house or decorating the top of the nearest mountain. The places people want them generally tend to have less wind. Solar energy cultivation shows promise but, as with most renewable, it requires a lot of space and an expensive investment in technology.
The time has come to renew the construction of nuclear power plants. Despite high-profile failures — Three Mile Island and the recent issues with Vermont Yankee come to mind — nuclear power is safer, cleaner and more efficient than our current options. Nuclear fuel does not come from the Middle East and the reactions in one of these plants do not launch carbon or other chemicals into the atmosphere. A single nuclear plant produces more electricity than 1,500 large wind turbines — far more than even the largest wind “farms.” Nuclear presents the solution for moving forward.
40 years ago, the United States was constructing fission plants at a dramatic rate. In part due to protests and safety concerns, new development ceased abruptly. Yet much of Europe still relies on it as a source of power — France currently produces nearly 80 percent of its electricity through nuclear power while the EU as a whole uses it for 30 percent. We can achieve this with the market incentives as well.
Incredibly high start-up costs prevent new nuclear development. Only government action can prevent fossil fuel-based power sources from continuing their stranglehold on the American electricity market. We have seen this in the government’s approach to renewable energy, where producers are given a rate of 1.9 cents per kilowatt hour to allow them to compete in the marketplace.
President Barack Obama recently pledged to extend this tax credit to the next four nuclear power plants constructed in this country. In addition, the government will guarantee the loans for these plants in order to offset the risk of the investment in an unsure market. Congress and the President should extend this guarantee once plans get underway for more plants and should consider directly loaning money to companies interested in constructing new facilities in order to build momentum and attract investors. If Congress ever allows the creation of a “cap and trade” system to reduce carbon emissions, nuclear energy would become a much more competitive option. But even without legislation that raises the cost of competing energy sources, these loans will be repaid as plants pay off their start-up capital.
No source of energy is perfect. Nuclear power is cleaner, more efficient and is our only technology that can provide the electricity to replace fossil fuels. For the 21st century and beyond, as we improve our ability to capitalize on the massive supplies of power contained in a single atom, nuclear power is the ultimate source of “green” energy.
(10/14/10 3:59am)
Almost every day at Middlebury College, I receive an influx of emails announcing the latest environmental initiatives and encouraging students to make their voices heard. Last weekend, climate change activism took the global stage by storm with the 10/10/10 Global Work Party organized by 350.org. The group inspired a groundbreaking 7,347 events across 188 countries. With such broad-based support, the case for change seems fairly clear: people are demanding a global transition towards a clean energy economy.
What remains less certain is the question of why so little has been accomplished in the political sphere here in the U.S., especially considering that change was a fundamental platform of President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. When even the military is taking strides towards reducing its dependence on fossil fuels — the Navy and the Marines plan to generate 50 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2020, according to a recent article in the New York Times –– the impetus for government action is incredibly high.
While the world’s impending energy crisis has a technical solution, the fundamental driver of change has to come from an altered mindset within the global community and, more importantly, from the world’s leaders.
The Senate’s failure to pass an energy bill this past spring and Obama’s surprising lack of support for the bill’s sponsors reveal a startling disconnect between public opinion and the actions of our elected leaders. If the Maldives’ President Nasheed has installed solar panels on his roof in a token of the commitment to eliminate his country’s reliance on foreign fossil fuels, one would hope President Obama could demonstrate the political audacity to assume leadership of the necessary energy policy overhaul.
(10/14/10 3:59am)
Thanks to dogged efforts this month by leaders of “Race to Replace” — yet another inspired project of Middlebury’s Sunday Night Group — several hundred college students at University of Vermont and Middlebury are newly registered to vote. Whether from Vermont or out-of-state, these newly enfranchised young folks must now ask: how should I vote?
If they care about climate change (and a host of recent polls puts this concern at the very top among young voters), the answer couldn’t be easier: vote against the Republican Party. For in Vermont and around the country this fall, we are witnessing a historic moment in the American political tradition — a major party that is taking pride in being anti-science. In doing so, the party is risking its political future.
To illustrate, let’s start with Paul Beaudry, the Vermont Republican Party’s candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives. Beaudry isn’t just casually anti-science, he’s a leading spokesperson. For years, he used his perch as the host of WDEV’s True North to pound home the idea that global warming is a hoax. On Aug. 13, during a pre-primary interview with Vermont Public Radio, he stated, “Global warming, manmade global warming in my opinion is nothing but a lie.” A lone voice for Vermont’s Republican leaders? Hardly. On the same show, John Mitchell, another GOP primary candidate for the House seat, declared that climate change science “is not a viable scientific process.”
This would be amusing if it were nothing more than Vermont’s quirky politics at work. In fact, Beaudry is part of a large chorus of House Republican candidates who dismiss the science of global warming. As recently documented at GetEnergySmartNow.com: Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) has called global warming a “fraud” and a “modern rain dance.” Candidate Ed Martin (R-Mo.) devotes part of his website to bashing “global warming hucksters.” Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) considers global warming a “farce.”
In the Senate races, it looks no better. Check out these recent whoppers from GOP candidates (thanks to Brad Johnson at The Daily Grist): Ron Johnson (Wis.) believes that global warming is “just sunspot activity.” Sharron Angle (Nev.) does not “buy into the whole ... man-caused global warming, man-caused climate change mantra of the left.” Pat Toomey (Pa.) believes that there is “much debate in the scientific community as to the precise sources of global warming.”
Might science have a better chance in the high-tech state of California? Think again. Even former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, contending for Barbara Boxer’s senate seat, has gone anti-science. Despite having once run a company that, according to Climate Counts, was an advocate for public policy that addresses climate change, Fiorina is now “not sure” that climate change is real, and she supports Proposition 23, the oil-company effort to overturn California’s climate policy. There’s more of the same from California’s GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, who recently declared that she would “probably” veto a global-warming law if she were California governor today.
I find this all to be terribly sad. At its best, the Grand Old Party has been truly grand. For 150 years, great American leaders carved the modern foundations of our republic while wearing the GOP mantle. What distinguished Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt and others was the courage to stand up for what was right, to embrace and lead the moral crusades of their day.
The current Republican leadership, faced with the great moral fight of our age, has extinguished courage. It’s true that the elections next month may bring them temporary gains; they may even succeed in convincing some voters that global warming is a hoax. But when they study the election data, I am sure that they will note an unmistakable trend: the hundreds-of-thousands of new young voters, from Vermont and around the country, will have none of it.
As these voters grow to dominate the political landscape, this could mean the end of the Republican Party as we have come to know it. Indeed the GOP leadership should ponder a menacing historical comparison — how the Whig Party disintegrated as the anti-slavery movement crested in the 1850s. Unless they reject Beaudry and his ilk for a new generation of pro-science candidates, the same fate might well await the current GOP.
What then? Maybe the Sunday Night Group is already working to start a new political party! It’s not hard to make the case that this is exactly what our nation needs.
Jon Isham is an Associate Professor of Economics.
(10/14/10 3:59am)
It’s not easy being green.
If I have learned anything about living a sustainable lifestyle (and I have learned a lot while at Middlebury), it’s that going truly green requires a significant level of self-awareness and effort. Making small changes is a great idea, and the more of us who make those changes, the bigger the impact they will have. But as I have become increasingly aware over the last four years, what really needs to happen is a paradigm shift, a change in our fundamental values and habits as a society. I won’t comment on the nature of that change because the Opinions section is already full of people better qualified than I am to do so, and besides, this is a sex column, and you came here to read about sex. So how do we apply environmental sustainability to our sex lives?
In last year’s green issue, I told you about proper condom disposal (please don’t flush them!), petroleum-free lubes and choosing the most environmentally friendly sex toys. This year, I want to look at sex through the lens of sustainability and move past the small changes toward some personal paradigm shifts. But the shifts I want to talk about don’t really have anything to do with the environment — short of refusing to have sex in anything except an adobe yurt that you built yourself, or at the very least practicing good birth control to keep our population from skyrocketing further, I’m not so sure there are sex-specific values to be altered, at least not when trying to be eco-friendly. I think the process of seeking big changes for the better, though they might not be easy, is still useful even if it’s not saving the environment, however. So let’s talk about positive climate change in the climate of the climax — change in the environment of sex, as opposed to change in sex for the environment.
You have read through all of my contrived setting up of this grand extended metaphor, and really all I want to tell you is to talk. Talk about sex. Talk during sex. Talk after sex. Get naked and then get vocal. My biggest bad habit in the bedroom — bad in that it wasn’t serving me, my partners or the friends who then had to deal with my anxiety — was not communicating well regarding sex for the first, oh, two years of having an active sex life. That’s a long time not to voice what you want, how you want it, if you want it. Just like the first step to saving the planet is starting an open dialogue on what needs to be saved in the first place, the first step to saving yourself from silent suffering and bad to mediocre sex is to say something.
The most important thing to speak up about is obviously whether or not you want to have sex. Developing self-awareness is just as important in protecting yourself as it is in reducing your carbon footprint. If you don’t feel good about getting down, DON’T DO IT. If we can learn to call out people for driving to the gym when they could walk, we can learn to call out others for pressuring us into sex when we don’t want it. It is our responsibility to take care of the environment, and I think it is equally our responsibility to take care of each other, to be gentle with each other in such a vulnerable state as practicing procreation.
If you get it out there that you do want to get sexual, and so does your partner, don’t clam up now! Your bodies shouldn’t be the only things speaking to each other in the dark of your dorm room. Making the first peep can be a challenge — it can feel less nerve-wracking to let your partner gnaw your nipples off than to risk turning him or her off by speaking up (unless biting is your thing). But isn’t it so validating to know you’re giving your partner what he or she wants (and not giving what he or she doesn’t want)? You can both have the kind of sex you enjoy the most. I really think the biggest problem facing Middlebury’s sexual environment today is the lack of communication — if we don’t change, neither will the climate.
(10/14/10 3:56am)
Sunday, Oct. 10 — the serendipitously timed 10/10/10 — saw a profusion of environmental activism under the auspices of 350.org, the campaign to reverse climate change spearheaded by Scholar-in-Residence in Environmental Studies Bill McKibben.
In an effort to catalyze the global reduction of green house gases, McKibben created a “global workday,” in which volunteers from around the world agreed to physically do something that promoted environmentalism. Projects included installing solar panels, riding bikes, planting organic gardens or picking up trash, and 350.org-organized events took place in locations all around the world.
In Middlebury, the events were lively and varied. The Student Government Association Environmental Affairs Committee aimed to promote the often unseen and unnoticed recycling center. The group, headed by Rachel Callender ’12, gathered numerous bags full of clothes, pillows, shoes and other items and set up a three-hour-long thrift shop on the Proctor Terrace. The items comprised handmade scarves, Tommy Hilfiger polos and even Columbia jackets. Each item, regardless of intact price tags reading upwards of $95, was priced at $1.
“The purpose of the project was to expose students to the reality of wasting that takes place on even one of the most environmentally friendly campuses in the region,” said Callender.
The group successfully sold over 100 items and donated all proceeds to the Recycling Center. The initiative’s participants expressed great enthusiasm for their project and for the 350.org events in general.
“Being that 350.org is such a relatively new organization, I see a lot of hope and potential for the environment through it in the future,” Callender said.
The Sunday Night Group participated in 10/10/10 as well, traveling door-to-door in the town of Middlebury to create a list of signatures of people who agreed to vote for Patrick Leahy, the incumbent Democratic U.S. senator from Vermont who supports many environmental issues.
McKibben, who is off campus currently, expressed great enthusiasm for the work being done on Oct. 10.
“It meant, ‘game on,’” he wrote in an e-mail. “Far from being discouraged about the failure of the Copenhagen talks and congressional inaction, people were energized — ready to show their leaders how to do what needed doing.”
The 10/10/10 events comprised “the most widespread day of civic engagement in the planet’s history,” McKibben continued. 7,347 events were held in 188 countries, everywhere but North Korea, Equatorial Guinea and San Marino.
“I think that by itself [10/10/10] accomplished a lot of good in a lot of places,” said McKibben. “But more than that, it is a key step in helping build a movement — the kind of movement we’re going to need to take on the financial power of the fossil fuel industry. This will not be an easy fight, not in any way.”
(10/14/10 3:52am)
On Oct. 9, hundreds of Vermont college students were registered to vote as part of an effort through the Race to Replace campaign. Teams of environmental advocates across the state organized in this “dorm storm” to help promote clean energy resources.
The Race to Replace campaign was created by a group of Middlebury students in spring of 2010 after the Vermont Senate voted 26-4 against relicensing Vermont Yankee, a controversial nuclear power plant in Southern Vermont which produces about a third of the energy used in the state. Vermont Yankee faced widespread discontent among residents after lawmakers found out about radioactive tritium leaks as well as inconsistencies in testimonies by officials running the plant, and the College-based movement encourages the Vermont legislature and residents to replace Vermont Yankee with cleaner and more sustainable sources of energy.
“The way that we choose to replace these plants that are coming up for relicensing or shutdown, especially coal plants, will determine an enormous amount of the energy and climate future in the United States for the next 40 years, so the time is now to get engaged,” said Pier LaFarge ’10.5, a founding member of the movement.
Other initiators of the movement explained the recent activity led by the Race to Replace, as they celebrated 10/10/10, Global Work Day, with 350.org, the environmental organization led by Scholar-in-Residence in Environmental Studies Bill McKibben.
“We decided the best way for us to ‘get to work’ would be to register young voters at Middlebury and across the state,” said Ben Wessel ’11.5, another key leader of the Race to Replace effort. “Since the governor’s election this year is so close, and since it has such huge ramifications for clean energy development in the state, we thought registering new voters who pledge to vote for clean energy candidates was the best way for us to make a concrete difference in tackling climate change.”
The team pointed out that all students at Middlebury or at any school in Vermont are considered Vermont residents by state law, and are therefore able to participate in all Vermont elections. Wessel and Olivia Noble ’13, another key member of the Race to Replace team, emphasized how Vermont’s small size makes it possible for motivated students to make a substantial difference in Vermont’s energy future.
“We’ve actually switched a lot of students’ voter [registrations] to Vermont from states that don’t have significant races this year,” Noble wrote in an e-mail.
The Race to Replace campaign is also working alongside the College Democrats and the College Republicans in order to encourage students to register to vote.
“Middlebury students have incredible resources at our advantage that we can use to help advance the clean energy cause among the Vermont populace,” said Wessel. “Not only do we have some financial resources available at the College, but the respect that the Middlebury brand carries can help get press and get people to pay attention. Political organizing in such a small state is particularly rewarding because each individual voice is taken seriously.”
Noble agreed, pointing to how Middlebury students have already had an impact on the community through interaction over the last summer.
“We’ve really made it a priority this summer and throughout the campaign to tie our efforts in with those of the people already here,” she said. “Race to Replace had a lot of conversations with Vermont residents this summer, making sure that the policies we were pushing were initiative[s] that Vermonters cared about. From that, we’ve been able to find common ground and work together with Vermont residents to achieve our goals.”
LaFarge also spoke in depth about potential energy replacements should Vermont Yankee be permanently decommissioned, emphasizing “wind, biomass, microhydro and solar energy” technologies. According to LaFarge, there are also massive economic benefits to reap for the state should these emerging industries be established in place of the current nuclear plant.
Race to Replace will continue to be visibly active on campus over the next few weeks and will be registering more students at the College to vote, as the Vermont gubernatorial elections approach. It has been working with the Vermont League of Conservation Voters, which endorses the gubernatorial candidate Peter Shumlin as the best choice for voters concerned about green issues and climate change.
“There are a lot of important state representative and state senate seats in Vermont that are coming up that could determine the balance of how future votes on something like relicensing Vermont Yankee could go,” said LaFarge. “So there a lot of smaller ballot races that are important, but the governor’s race is definitely the key — it’s also the closest of all the races.”
(10/14/10 3:48am)
Few Americans seem to know about the Canadian government, people or history. While Americans may not know the name of our current prime minister, they are however becoming increasingly aware of the impact that Canada’s climate policies are having on the global community. In recent months pressure has mounted on the Canadian government to clean up one of the largest sources of oil production in the country, the tar sands in Alberta.
The tar sands, or oil sands as they are often referred to, are a naturally occurring source of crude oil located under the ground. There are three major deposits spanning an area of 140,200 square kilometers in Alberta. Canada has one of the largest proven crude oil reserves in the world, second only to Saudi Arabia. It is estimated that the tar sands contain enough oil to meet Canada’s current oil demand for the next 400 years. The oil however, is not just being extracted to meet the demands of domestic citizens. Canada is the United State’s main supplier of crude oil, and provides the nation with 20 percent of its supply.
Though the Canadian government touts the project as a necessary part of the nation’s energy plan, many remain skeptical of the adverse environmental side effects. In order to extract the usable crude oil from the tar sands, an energy-intensive process must occur, wherein the oil in the tar sands must be converted from a form called bitumen (in which the oil is combined with sand and water) to a usable form. It is estimated that the this process produces 40 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, which is more than all of the cars in Canada combined. According to Greenpeace, two tons of tar sand is needed to produce a single barrel of oil, and three to five times more water and energy are required to produce a barrel than any other known oil source.
Greenpeace has also noted the detrimental impact the project has had on the rivers surrounding the tar sands, as well as the adverse side effects on the air quality and forests in Alberta. Studies have also noted higher than usual rates of cancer in First Nations communities near the tar sands, raising questions about the social and health costs associated with the project.
According to Greenpeace, “Because of the tar sands, Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions have grown more since 1990 than those of any other G8 nation.”
The government of Alberta has produced a comprehensive series of provincially funded studies into the impacts of the tar sands, but these studies seem to produce results conflicting with those of independent studies.
The Canadian federal government has been largely unresponsive to criticism from the international community. Political support in Alberta in recent years has been mainly devoted to politicians who pursue policies that increase the economic growth of the province. Such support is detrimental to the global community. The remedy seems twofold. First, Canadian citizens must put pressure on the national government to increase the surveillance of the impacts of the tar sands. Second, the global community must apply pressure to the federal and provincial governments and shame them into action. If the initiative to be green will not come from the inside, that it must be forced out by other countries willing to take a stronger stance on climate change. No country is blameless on this issue.
(10/07/10 4:02am)
Founded by local author and environmental advocate, Bill McKibben, as well as several other Middlebury alumni, 350.org is an international organization whose mission is “to inspire the world to rise to the challenge of the climate crisis.” It focuses on reducing carbon emissions and reaching the number 350, as this marks the point between where our Earth needs to be and the direction in which it is currently headed. For the past several years, 350.org has organized rallies and demonstrations all over the world, many of which have occurred at the same time in different places. Last year, it organized a global Day of Action to spread awareness about carbon emissions and the town of Middlebury celebrated with a community potluck on the town green. This year, however, 350.org has decided that a potluck is simply not enough and it is throwing a full-blown party. The invitation has three pieces of information, the date — 10/10/10, the place — wherever you live and the theme — CHANGE. It is a Global Work Party.
This Sunday, people will gather together all over the world to fight global warming. In Auckland, New Zealand, people are having a bike fix-up day to help encourage citizens to bike ride. In Costa Rica, people will be planting thousands of trees, and in South Africa, people will learn how to cook organically. The goal of 10/10/10 is to send a message to the world’s political leaders. Now more than ever, our planet needs energy policies and legislation that can make a dent in this “350” goal. If the leaders see how invested the population is in climate change, the hope is that it will inspire them to take environmental action. Though each individual effort in this Global Work Party will count towards the final goal, what matters most is the collective unity with which we approach this task.
In Middlebury alone, there will be eight different Global Work Parties on Oct. 10. The day has been organized primarily by the Sunday Night Group, the College’s environmental activist organization, with two themes in mind: living more sustainably on campus and achieving sustainability in the community. In the morning, a variety of campus activities will take place. Festivities begin with a “hanging out” of clothes on Proctor Rd., followed by a harvest festival in the organic garden and tentatively a yoga session led by Andrea Olsen. The afternoon’s focus is on the community, and activities include gleaning, canvassing for green candidates and home weatherization/solar power lessons. The day will culminate in a Carbon Buster Fashion Show on the town green. The options are endless. Participate in as little or as much as you wish; the point is simply to do something. For more information about these or any other Global Work Party events around the world, visit 350.org’s website.
(09/30/10 4:05am)
When it becomes too cold for chlorophyll, tourists flock to Vermont. According to the Vermont Department of Tourism and Marketing, tourists spend over $370 million in the fall.
“We’re on track for another spectacular fall season,” said Ginger Anderson, Chief of Forest Management for the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation. “Most parts of the state had good summer moisture, and early color can already be seen in some places.”
Behind all that breathtaking beauty, however, lies an interesting science. With the onset of autumn come longer nights. Leaves are able to sense this change, and as a result, a layer of cells called an abcission layer forms near the stem of the leaf, blocking transport of vital nutrients like carbohydrates. The production of chorophyll, the pigment responsible for giving leaves their green color, stops relatively quickly. Other pigments such as xanthophylls and carotenoids (which provide the leaves with yellow and orange color, respectively) now show, giving leaves beautiful bursts of color. When these pigments eventually freeze, tannins are left. These pigments are responsible for the brown color of leaves after the great foliage season has ended.
If this phenomenon occurs in deciduous trees all over the world, why is Vermont such a destination location?
“If you look at the map of the United States and figure out where the places are that have a foliage tourist industry, it’s very closely related to where there are maples,” said Andrea Lloyd, Professor of Biology. “It makes a very big difference to have a landscape that’s got red in it… As the leaves turn those conifers really pop out, and you get this amazing moment when the reds and oranges are at their peak and those conifers just look so dark green in contrast.”
The Green Mountains in particular showcase this well because trees in higher elevations change earlier than lower elevations, making the turning of colors gradual. From many places on campus you can look at a mountainside and see most of Vermont’s trees in a single collage. It can look as if someone is sprinkling color directly on the summit, and it gradually trickles down until it is replaced by snow.
Tree diversity is key to the beauty of Vermont’s foliage, and New England’s climate gives the state a broad mix of trees. As described by Lloyd, brown-turning oaks are more prevalent as you go south, and red-turning maples disappear as you go north into Canada. Vermont has the best of both worlds.
Middlebury College students take note, says Kristen DeGraff ’13.5 who has been living in Middlebury for her entire life.
“I love the smell of fall, and I love the colors of fall, but I kind of take it for granted,” said DeGraff. “I really have to stop and remember that this is beautiful, and when I do, it blows me away.”
Thanks to Tim Parsons, the Middlebury College Horticulturalist, trees from outside Vermont also enhance the tree diversity on campus.
“In Middlebury, there’s a broader pallet of colors that you don’t see up in the hills,” said Parsons. “[Here on campus] there’s a greater variety of oaks. There are certainly ornamental trees that you don’t see out in the woods, and there are a handful of trees that aren’t even supposed to live this far north. There’s even a pecan tree.” It’s on the left as you walk up the sidewalk from McCullough to Hepburn.
When Mother Nature strokes her brush across the tops of the Green Mountains, the campus peaks with beauty, with temperatures perfect for outdoor trips and activities. Autumn traditions such as apple picking, cider donuts and corn mazes are popular. Outdoor enthusiasts also enjoy hiking and boating especially.
“As soon as the leaves change, they’re not taking up water anymore,” said Christian Woodard ’10.5, resident extreme kayaker. “All the water that falls can go straight into the rivers. It’s higher water. It’s better boating.”
Other students enjoy the changing of seasons regardless of their preferred activities.
“Everyone appreciates the landscape around here,” said Anoushka Sinha ’13. “It’s not so cold that everyone wants to huddle up and hibernate. I feel much more active and lively in the fall.” Gabriela Juncosa ’13 compared the fall in Middlebury to where she grew up in Ecuador.
“Some of the trees lose their leaves, but it’s not an event,” said Juncosa.
The event, however, doesn’t simply end when the leaves drop. What happens to the foliage when it gives this season its name?
Usually, Parsons and his team pick up fallen leaves and combine them with food waste from the dining hall to produce compost. This year, they will try a new program. Instead of raking and removing the leaves, Parsons and his team plan to mow them and leave them on the ground.
“It chops them up real fine, and we just leave them right where they are and over the winter they will either break down, or the earth worms will come and drag them down,” said Parsons.
The fruits of this program will be healthier trees next spring and even more beautiful foliage in fall 2011.
(09/23/10 4:07am)
It’s no news to a Middlebury student that something needs to be done to protect the environment. As the first college in the US to establish an Environmental Science major (in 1965), and one of only six schools to receive an A- on its Sustainability Report Card in 2008, it is clear that Middlebury is committed to being as green as it can. We have the biomass plant next to McCullough, the school’s commitment to being carbon neutral by 2016, and any number of other green initiatives. But Middlebury wants to make an even larger impact through giving students with a vision a larger audience, and the College is achieving this mission with Middlebury’s Environmental Journalism Fellowship program.
Now in its fourth year, the program allots 10 $10,000 grants to up and coming graduate journalists for use towards an intensive year-long reporting project about an environmental issue. In addition to their individual research, the recipients meet bi-annually to participate in workshops about the journalistic process and edit their articles with a visiting reporter (once in the fall at Bread Loaf and once in the spring at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California).
Past stories written during the fellowship have appeared in Mother Jones and on NPR, while writers have gone on to be featured in major publications ranging from National Geographic to The Economist. This year two graduate fellows, Aylie Baker ’09 and Kathryn Flagg ’08, were both from Middlebury, as was the undergraduate fellow, Sarah Harris ’11.
This past week, the writer’s first conference allowedthe journalists not only to exchange stories, but to begin to learn about what environmental journalism truly is and what it aims to accomplish. Sometimes categorized as a niche discipline, the impact of environmental reporting is often questioned due to the fact that its audience is often those already involved in environmental protection. But these issues are not just issues that affect only a small, specific area; they involve everyone. This session’s visiting reporter, Middlebury graduate and editor of Orion magazine Jennifer Sahn ’92, highlighted the importance of the fellowship in her talk on Sept. 15. She said that environmental writing does not just address an issue in nature, but an issue of humanity.
“Change will not happen if only environmentalists are the ones willing to make that change, or even have the conversation about it,” Sahn told the audience. “Everybody has to get invested in that change,“
For Harris, who is investigating the impact of cement production in Midlothian, Texas (a city 30 miles outside of her hometown of Dallas) the importance of the fellowship is obvious.
“Environmental journalism is something that must be written, and must be talked about, because the stakes are very high.,” said Harris. “To tell these stories is to tell a tale with certain urgency.”
The stakes? Well, the world. To encompass this, the guidelines for the fellowship state that it will support any project as long as it “[centers] in some way on the human relationship with the physical world.” Or as Harris put it, “the irreparable change we are forcing on our planet.”
Because of this, journalists have quite a task ahead of them: to get people to realize it’s not “humans against the world,” but “humans with the world.” Too often, even major disasters, like as the recent BP oil spill, become only fleeting issues in the public eye because it’s hard for people to see how it will affect them. This transitory attention to the environment is something the fellowship seeks to change.
“People always refer to the environmental crisis as something happening out there and we need to stop it. [But] it’s our problem. We need to be the ones to address it,” said Sahn.
The attendees of the talk were mostly conviced or already a believer in Sahn’s logic.
“It has been proven throughout history that writing can change the world,” said Renee Igo ’11, an attendee of Sahn’s talk.
Moreover, “good journalism can be a force for positive change,” Harris said.
With this in mind, it could very well be this new wave of writers that starts us equating change with people, and not just the climate.
(09/09/10 4:58am)
Administrators have enacted a major strategic realignment of responsibilities in recent months as part of an ongoing effort to integrate academics and student life on campus. Though most of the changes became effective July 1, many remain in transition as areas of administrative oversight shift.
President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz outlined the changes in a campus-wide e-mail sent July 6. Among the most striking is the return of Shirley Collado, who left her position as Vice President of the Office for Institutional Planning and Diversity in December 2009 and returns this year as the new Dean of the College and Chief Diversity Officer (CDO). In this role, Collado acts as both the College’s chief student affairs official as well as its head of diversity-related initiatives.
“What we’re doing is folding all of the diversity goals of the CDO and fusing them essentially into the function of the Dean of the College,” said Collado. “That allows me … to really infuse diversity initiatives and goals that are in line with the mission of the College. And actually I think it’s exactly what we need to be doing.”
Collado cited a seminal 2006 report, submitted by the Human Relations Committee under the guidance of chair and Dean of Students Gus Jordan, which was tasked with evaluating “the current climate of diversity on campus across all sectors of the College,” as the report states. The number one recommendation presented to Liebowitz was the appointment of a CDO on the presidential cabinet.
Collado’s “hybrid” role, as she phrased it, as the College’s chief authority on both student affairs and diversity initiatives, marks a turning point in Old Chapel’s approach to examining issues of diversity and multiculturalism on campus.
“There’s no better place to use the diversity goals and the mission of the College than alongside student life, with what the Dean of the College does,” said Collado. “What I’m most excited about is ‘operationalizing’ that mission — how can we fuse these goals about diversity into every facet of student life?”
Liebowitz seconded Collado’s emphasis on integration — the fusing of what might seem like disparate priorities into a more comprehensive and holistic approach to student education, institutional development, and streamlining the sometimes overwhelmingly bureaucratic structure of College administration.
“If you let the issue of diversity sit off in the corner, nothing happens,” Liebowitz said. “[Collado] can sit off in the corner and preach all she wants about, ‘We’re going to do this and we’re going to do that,’ but it means nothing to the institution unless it’s infused across the whole institution, and that’s how she sees her role.”
As Dean of the College, Old Chapel’s chief student affairs officer, Collado will assume many of the responsibilities formerly associated with previous Dean of the College Tim Spears: she will have direct oversight of the Commons, Community Council, the judicial boards, health and counseling, Public Safety, and the new Center for Education in Action: Careers, Fellowships and Civic Engagement, located in Adirondack House. Her hybrid position as CDO will allow her to, as Liebowitz wrote in his all-campus e-mail in July, “advance diversity initiatives in [the student affairs division], while also supporting diversity initiatives across the institution related to staff, faculty and the academic program.”
A particular focus of Collado’s is the Commons system and residential life as a second key administrative change enacted this summer takes effect. Commons deans will now report directly to their faculty Commons heads instead of reporting separately to the Dean of the College, as was the case previously. This move gives the Commons heads, faculty members who have crossed over from the academic sector of the College to its residential sector, unprecedented authority in the realm of student life.
Both Liebowitz and Collado underscored, however, the administration’s shifting vision of these two areas — academics and student affairs: instead of being kept largely separate administratively and conceptually, Old Chapel, with the wholehearted support of the Board of Trustees, intends to increasingly integrate these two institutional sectors.
It is an approach more closely in line with the College’s Strategic Plan, Liebowitz explained. Just as Collado’s new role will fuse Old Chapel’s academic mission of diversity with its oversight of and involvement in student affairs, giving Commons heads more authority, influence and involvement in their Commons will — the administration hopes — strengthen the connection between academics and “non-academics.”
“Students experience this place as whole people,” said Collado. “They don’t compartmentalize what happens in the classroom and what happens in the residence halls. And we’re trying to mirror that experience structurally. That’s my wish for student life. We’re not off in a corner doing one piece of student life. It’s all of it. And that means integrating the faculty with our work.”
Liebowitz and Collado emphasized how such a strategic approach will set the College apart from peer institutions.
“Middlebury’s doing this very differently than other liberal arts colleges,” said Collado.
Collado will continue former Dean of the College Spears’s “One Dean’s View” blog on student affairs, and says she will encourage students to blog alongside her on issues pertaining to student life. While she adjusts to her new role, both Spears and Dean of Students Gus Jordan are assisting her with her new responsibilities — “to sort of make sure Shirley understands the wackiness that goes on in student life while she gets up and running,” as Liebowitz quipped.
It is a transitional phase; Jordan is enjoying his last semester as Dean of Students. In December, he will replace retiring colleague Gary Margolis and become the new Executive Director of Health and Counseling — a new position, as this year the departments of health and counseling have been combined.
Spears, meanwhile, has assumed the role of Vice President for Administration, taking that title and many of the areas of oversight associated with it from the former Vice President for Administration, Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Patrick Norton.
“[Norton]’s plate is very full,” Liebowitz explained. “If you look at his role now, compared to almost any CFO at almost any comparable school, he is up to his ears.”
Spears assumed oversight of Dining and Facilities Services, from Norton, a huge load that marked a dramatic shift for the two administrators. As Liebowitz noted, it makes more sense. Spears was already a “good candidate” for assuming these kinds of responsibilities, given his prior administrative experience, and “just the amount of work that our CFO has to do made it really impossible to have one person do it all.”
As Vice President for Administration, Spears will continue his oversight of Library and Administration Services, athletics, communications, scheduling and other administrative areas less directly related to student affairs — Collado’s jurisdiction — or academics — the jurisdiction of Provost and Executive Vice President Alison Byerly, whose responsibilities remain more or less unchanged this year.
The motivation behind the whole set of changes is twofold. Streamlining cuts costs, and budgetary issues — including staffing cuts — were certainly behind the juggling of oversight that administrators have undertaken this year. But Liebowitz repeatedly stressed the thematic significance of these moves. According to him, they break down the barrier between academics and student life, they utilize administrators’ skills and resources in a more effective way and they will lead to increased transparency between Old Chapel and students — a hugely important issue, and one that is often the source of much controversy and frustration for students.
“The things that matter most are — are the people that students need to see as accessible there, are they responsive to student needs?” Liebowitz said. “And is our administration becoming better — I don’t think we’ll ever be perfect — at reducing the bureaucratic walls that get in the way of a student’s education and the smooth functioning of the institution? All of the changes that we make are done toward improving the overall education and running of the institution.”
(09/09/10 4:45am)
On Sept. 7 at 7:30 p.m., only two days after the new first-years filed into Mead Chapel for Convocation, the pews filled once again with students, faculty, staff and community members to welcome a special guest: critically acclaimed fiction writer Ian McEwan. The English author gave a reading of his latest work at the behest of his friend and D. E. Axinn Professor of English & Creative Writing Jay Parini.
McEwan’s reading was part of what Parini called a “long tradition” of famous writers coming to the College, a tradition that has included the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Updike, John Irving and Joyce Carol Oates. McEwan, who lives in London, is a prolific novelist whose work has garnered him numerous awards including the 1998 Man Booker Prize for Fiction for his book, Amsterdam. Many of his books have also been adapted for film, with the 2007 film version of Atonement receiving seven Golden Globe Award nominations.
Parini, who has known McEwan since the 70s, said he has been trying to get McEwan to pay the College a visit for years, and in a flurry of good fortune, the author was able to come up for a reading while on the East Coast for a personal trip.
Though the event was planned very quickly, McEwan addressed a full audience, reading a selection from his latest book, Solar. Students and staff alike chuckled at the antics of the novel’s main character, Michael Beard — a somewhat hapless Nobel prize winner who lives in the shadow of his own former greatness — and those who stayed for the Q&A after the reading were treated to McEwan’s candid reflections on everything from e-books to climate change.
“I think what’s great is when the College comes together around a figure like this, it stimulates conversation and it becomes a shared experience,” said Parini. “I think these kinds of occasions are a very important part of a student’s memory bank.”
Leaving a lasting impression on the students in the audience is, Parini says, a primary goal with any speaker invited to campus.
“To get a writer of this quality here is terrific for us,” said Parini. “Whenever you can put a first-rate artist before students, you hope to inspire them, and that’s enough. That’s all we’re trying to do. I think putting an example of good writing before students is important to the writing program.”
Evan Masseau ’11 was one of many students for whom McEwan’s reading served Parini’s purpose.
“It’s no surprise I enjoyed the passage so much,” said Masseau. “His speaking, like his writing, was full of quick, dry wit. It certainly got me more interested in his writing and motivated me to improve my own for the sake of those who have to read it.”
Brittany Gendron ’12 was another student who left the reading more than impressed.
“[McEwan] has written so many incredibly beautiful books and the prose just seems to flow out of him like a river from a mountain, and I can only hope to aspire to write something that lovely someday, even when he’s talking about difficult things,” said Gendron.
McEwan’s writing moved Gendron to more than improving her own — she was one of several audience members who lined up to ask McEwan a question during the Q&A. She wanted to know if he could think of any must-read books for aspiring writers, and in a rare moment of unity, the award-winning author thought back to his days as a hopeful student much like those filling the room and listed four authors — Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce and Vladimir Nabokov — without whom his writing would not be the same.
Identifying with his audience made McEwan’s reading, especially for Gendron, all the more meaningful.
“He was much more down-to-earth than I expected,” said Gendron. “It’s very refreshing to see someone coming down from an ivory tower where a lot of other prominent writers seem to stay.”
(09/09/10 4:07am)
For most of the world’s people, climate change is inextricably linked to starvation, migration and extinction; the phenomena cannot be mentioned independently of declining crop yields, rising seas and vector-borne disease. For the overwhelming minority of us living in the developed world, however, this is far from the case. Here, the social sciences insist that speaking about the costs of global warming is commensurate to fear-mongering; that the dialogue must be framed instead in the context of green jobs, trade competitiveness with emerging economies and the need to reduce dependence on dangerous foreign oil. But for children in the Maldives and high school students in Montana, fear of coming of age in a sunken nation and outsourced manufacturing and service jobs is a matter of lived experience; in the Global North entire societies have been built an arm’s length away from the Earth’s natural systems, while poorer populations live and die by subsistence economies.
This fundamental disconnect is all too tangible when nations gather to discuss and debate solutions to the climate problem. Copenhagen was fraught with mistrust and misunderstanding between the developed and the developing, riddled with economic excuses for inaction from the former and impassioned pleas for survival from the latter. Parties were practically speaking different languages; some employed the metrics of GDP and GNP while the others had nothing to leverage but potential body counts. It is no wonder negotiations culminated in an agreement leagues away from the fair, ambitious and legally binding international climate agreement that is still needed.
We desperately need shared experience. We need metrics around which we can build solidarity and understanding and trust. And we need them from every nation on earth; scientists maintain that stabilization of the climate system will require both sweeping emissions reductions from the world’s richest nations (on the scale of 80-95 percent below 1990 levels by 2050), and ‘substantial deviation from business as usual’ from the poorest. Economists have called for the collective mobilization of hundreds of billions of dollars for low-carbon growth and adaptation crucial to delivering billions from poverty in an already warmer world.
A common thread does exist in the form of a threat to our collective humanity. Nowhere is this more apparent than where I spent the summer: West Kalimantan, Indonesia. There, indigenous Dayak populations are starving. Their centuries-old agricultural practices are incompatible with a climate that no longer experiences a dry season, and their rice supplies are devastatingly insufficient as a result. National and multi-national palm oil companies have responded by buying up significant swaths of land made cheap by desperate families, and the vibrant culture of the Dayaks is diminishing in parallel with their sovereignty.
Worldwide, roughly 300 million people still retain strong indigenous identity, wedded to a particular geographic place through myth and memory and with a distinct history and language. These cultures account for 60 percent of the world’s spoken languages and collectively represent more than half of humanity’s intellectual legacy.
They face, however, assimilation and acculturation similar to that confronting the Dayaks of West Kalimantan. The likelihood of violence, conquest, famine or natural disaster compromising their unique ways of life increases every day climate change continues unabated.
The demise of cultural diversity is not among those climate impacts frequently listed, but it is among those affronts against which we can unite. The ‘ethnosphere’ — the full complexity and complement of human potential that lives and breathes in languages, medicinal practices, agricultural systems and oral traditions the world over — is sacrosanct. It is that which separates us from other species, that which could, above all else, justify the preservation of our entire race, as opposed to simply a wealthy portion of it.
This piece is, of course, the act of a desperate person: a frantic searching for a motivation that will deliver all nations to the negotiating table immediately. Idealistic it most certainly is. But in all our picketing and protesting and lobbying, I do believe that we have failed to approach those responsible as fellow people. We have failed to reach out to them on a spiritual level and discuss climate change as something that transcends national interest. It is time we celebrated the beautiful complexity that lines our shared humanity; time we saw that in a universe that remains largely a mystery, we cannot afford to silence the sacred pluralism of the human race. At the very least, it’s time we tried.
(09/09/10 4:02am)
The College’s colors may be navy and white, but most know that Middlebury, the town and the College, tries hard to stay green. At the forefront of the town’s efforts to reduce environmental impact is Laura Asermily, the Middlebury Energy Coordinator. Appointed by the Middlebury Select Board, Asermily has held this volunteer position since the fall of 2007. Her job is to implement the Middlebury Climate Action Plan, the goal of which is to reduce the town’s carbon footprint by 10 percent by 2012.
To do so, Asermily works to educate community members about climate change and to develop programs to decrease the town’s energy consumption. Two of these programs, “Way to Go” and “Efficiency First,” were a result from the town’s 2002 measurement of its carbon footprint.
“Way to Go” is a campaign that encourages people to travel in ways that use less fuel. Though Asermily admits it is sometimes difficult to work within the tight streets of Middlebury, she has seen positive changes. There are now pedestrian and bicycle markings and there is increased ridership for the ACTR buses (Addison Country Transit Resources).
“Efficiency First” helps community members find effective ways to weatherize their homes. Locals are encouraged to use proper insulation and to heat their houses in an energy efficient way.
She has aligned her efforts with local groups, including the Addison County Relocalization Network (ACORN), with the hopes of adding to, and not duplicating, their work. Whereas Asermily’s efforts are concentrated on climate change, ACORN focuses on eliminating the effects of peak oil. Asermily also works closely with the College’s environmental groups. She regularly attends meetings for the student club, Sunday Night Group and she recruits at the Midd Action Fair.
Asermily has also joined forces with state programs such as, Efficiency Vermont, Renewable Energy Vermont and Connecting Commuters. In addition, she has implemented Button Up Vermont, a training program for weatherizing homes. With the help of College students, Asermily completed 120 home energy visits last spring and installed energy saving devices. She hopes to repeat the program next year.
“There must be a local voice for exposing these programs to the community,” said Asermily. “They wouldn’t have this much exposure without our participation.”
Asermily first became involved in Middlebury’s energy plans after participating in an adult discussion group led by the Vermont Earth Institute. The group encourages local environmental action.
“Out of that we became aware of global warming,” said Asermily. “We have to do something to help prepare people for the consequences of this. The people hardest hit were going to be least able to respond to it.”
Driven to help plan the first annual Earth Day Fair in 2001, Asermily helped spread awareness of climate change. The fair had activities, exhibits and speeches, including a presentation by Richard Wolfson, Benjamin F. Wissler Physics Professor at the College. The talk aimed to educate the public about global warming and what locals could do to help. Soon after the fair, the select board passed a resolution to both reduce and measure greenhouse gases. It completed a carbon measurement in 2002, and created the Middlebury Climate Action Plan. Asermily, who had remained involved throughout the process, was invited to join the board as the energy coordinator, as she was essentially already functioning in that capacity.
Yet Asermily did not always plan to do this. Irked by the lack of information about Watergate, she went to St. Bonaventure University with the intention of becoming an investigative journalist. After graduating with degrees in Political Science and Economics, she wound up teaching social studies.
“I entered teaching without real adequate preparation,” said Asermily. “I had the right idea but I burned myself out pretty fast.”
She then spent ten years working at Prentice Hall, an educational publishing company, before returning to the teaching world. She taught at Fairhaven High School, Middlebury Union High School and Otter Valley High School.
Though her career has taken her in different directions, Asermily asserts that there has always been a consistent line in her work.
“The common thread is making sure people have information that they need,” said Asermily. “I’m really very passionate about making sure people are aware of [climate change] and can mitigate it.”
Asermily is optimistic about the future, but she is still frustrated by the pace of change. She is not sure that the town will meet its goal for 2012, suggesting that it is possible they will not have achieved an actual reduction, but will have kept carbon levels the same.
Despite these possibilities, Asermily remains motivated. Raised as a Franciscan Catholic, Asermily says there is a strong spiritual underpinning that drives her.
“Reverence for nature inspires it all,” said Asermily. “There is a deep commitment for wanting to protect creation that motivates me to stay in action.”
(05/06/10 9:30pm)
It was James S. Davis ’66 and his wife, Anne, who in 2007 kicked off Middlebury’s $500 million capital campaign with an anonymous donation of $50 million. It was the Davis family that — for the past five years running — anonymously matched every alumni pledge to the College, dollar for dollar. And it was the Davis family that supported the Main Library’s construction when the dot-com bust put the project in jeopardy.
Now, the library that Jim Davis helped build will bear his family’s name.
At an unveiling ceremony today, President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz introduced Davis as the anonymous donor behind some of the most sweeping changes to have affected the College in recent history. Speaking at the newly named Davis Family Library, Liebowitz recognized Jim and Anne Davis, as well as their son, Chris Davis ’08, and their daughter Kassia for their longtime dedication to service and generosity to the College.
"In their own lives,” said Liebowitz, “they have consistently demonstrated the creativity, innovation, pursuit of knowledge and commitment to excellence that are at the core of a liberal arts education.”
Davis is the chairman of New Balance, the Boston-based athletic shoe company with annual revenues in excess of $1.5 billion. At the time Davis bought the company in 1972 for a $10,000 down payment, New Balance was making 30 pairs of shoes a day with six employees. Today, it operates in 13 countries around the globe and is among the five largest companies in the athletic footwear industry. But what sets New Balance apart from its competitors are the values that support the company, administration officials said in interviews Tuesday.
“He built this company in a unique way,” said Mike Schoenfeld, vice president for College Advancement. “It was all about family.”
After nearly 40 years, New Balance is still privately held.
Davis’ loyalty to family and community has consistently included Middlebury. Since graduating, Davis has donated over $70 million to the College. He has also spent 15 years as a member of the Board of Trustees, and considerable time as a behind-the-scenes advisor to Liebowitz and to President Emeritus of the College John M. McCardell, Jr.
With his $50 million starting pledge to the Middlebury Initiative, Davis helped establish a financial aid fund that slashed the loan burden for all students receiving assistance from the College.
“The first thing we did with that money,” said Schoenfeld, “was cut everybody’s loans from $4,000 a year down to either one-, two- or three thousand dollars, depending on your income.”
Through a tip from a college classmate, Davis introduced Middlebury to the Monterey Institute for International Studies (MIIS) — paving the way for an acquisition that is to become increasingly important as Old Chapel leans more heavily in the future on its satellite operations for income. The College is expected to take full ownership of MIIS this summer, when the California-based institution formally becomes “a graduate school of Middlebury College.”
The Monterey Institute offers a wide range of language and translation training programs, as well as Master’s degrees in international environmental policy and nonproliferation and terrorism studies. Davis became a member of the Board of Trustees at MIIS after the Middlebury-Monterey partnership was signed in 2005. Liebowitz and Schoenfeld credit Davis with making the agreement possible at all.
“His philanthropy has touched every single piece of Middlebury College for the last 30 years,” said Schoenfeld. “It’s unbelievable.”
Davis proved equally instrumental in the construction of the Main Library, which opened to students in July 2004 after nearly a decade of planning and building. The idea for a new library came about amid discussions over the future of nearby Starr Library — a hundred-year-old structure that, according to C.A. Johnson Professor of Art Glenn Andres, students avoided at all costs.
“Starr Library had 18 levels, and an inscrutable floor plan, and could never be made handicapped-accessible,” said Andres. “You couldn’t run technology there. You couldn’t run proper climate control through there. It was hopeless.”
A stone’s throw away, a science building stood in the Davis Library’s current position. But instead of drawing the eye to the sweeping lawns that sit beside South Main Street today, Liebowitz said, the edifice did little more than cut the College off from the town.
Calling the science building “obtrusive,” “a disaster” and likening it to the Berlin Wall, Liebowitz said the trustees ultimately voted to demolish the offending sight and construct a library in its place. Though some trustees questioned the need for a library in the digital age, Davis argued consistently and forcefully for the project as “the right thing to do” — even when the burst of the dot-com bubble at the turn of the century threatened to kill it off.
When the building finally opened its doors, Liebowitz stopped by one day on his way home from work.
“I talked to some of the language school students — I was only able to talk to the Russian students because of the language pledge — and they loved the space,” said Liebowitz. “They’d been there for 10 days, and they were there every night. It was more crowded in that library that summer than I’d ever seen.”
Nearly six years later, the Davis Library still fills up every night. Mike Roy, dean of Library and Information Services at the College, anticipates that the institutional mission of the library will only become more important as scholarship migrates to the Web.
“Much of a liberal arts education has to do with learning how to use information, evaluate information, present it in various formats and use it ethically,” said Roy. “And so we’re always thinking about what role the library can play in developing those sorts of capabilities.
“As more and more stuff becomes available digitally,” Roy added, “and people begin to prefer the digital, how do we have to change our habits in order to meet the needs of our community?”
Roy’s strategic foresight follows in the Davis family tradition. In his remarks, Liebowitz praised Davis for encouraging Middlebury to become a leader among its peers.
“He has always pushed the College to think big and to be alert to new opportunities,” said Liebowitz. “His goal has been to make Middlebury stronger by, in his words, ‘balancing the College’s traditional but unique heritage with a continuing enhancement of the Middlebury experience, as we prepare our students for leadership in a rapidly changing, more complex world.’"
For a photo gallery of the event, click here.
