Well it has been a while since I updated, hasn’t it?!
In the mean time, if you haven’t heard, I was elected President of LEAP (the League for Environmental Awareness and Protection). So yay! I’m posting the e-booklet the club made for the incoming freshmen, featuring advice about how they can make their move to campus more eco-friendly.
As a follow-up to my previous post about Bat Conservation International and White Nose Syndrome, the disease has officially hit Alabama, making it one of the southernmost confirmed outbreaks of WNS. President Nina Fascione noted in her email update that as bats emerge from hibernation this Spring, there will likely be more confirmed cases. Stay up-to-date on your breaking WNS news by signing up for the BCI newsletter.
When I was in fifth grade, my science teacher asked everyone in my class to write a journal entry (Remember when science classes were about journaling? Where are those constructivist teaching methods once you get to college and you could really use a break?!) about the one scientist they would like to meet and why. People chose the usual: Einstein, Madam Curie, Bill Nye the Science Guy… But I chose Merlin Tuttle, founder and then-president of Bat Conservation International (BCI). Bat conservation through education is basically my favorite thing ever. I have been a member of BCI since the age of eight (pause for laughter), and fifth-grade me wanted to meet the man who has done more for bat conservation than anyone else in history.
Little did I know that sophomore-in-college me would.
Me with Dr. Merlin Tuttle, founder and former BCI president.
Me and current BCI president Nina Fascione at the 2011 WNS Symposium.
A few months ago, I attended Bat Conservation International’s White Nose Syndrome Symposium at the Field Museum. I can say with confidence that it was the most emotional science symposium I think I will ever attend. As biologists and conservationists from across the country pointed to large maps that showed the spread of White Nose, they painted a grim picture for America’s bats. Some couldn’t help but break down in tears because they knew that had little to tell us but bad news.
(Wait… what’s White Nose Syndrome?? It’s quite the environmental crisis. Click here to find out!)
In the midst of the bad news, however, there were several glimmers of hope; one came in the form of Merlin Tuttle’s speech about BCI’s past and current conservation initiatives around the world. My favorite part of his speech was when he told the story of how he and other BCI representatives ended much of the bat poaching in a small town somewhere in western Asia. The town was rich with habitat, and therefore rich with bat species, but the local people often hunted them for food until their populations dwindled. (Just as a side note, Asia is home to many large bat species that have 5-foot wingspans in addition to those that resemble the smaller species we have here in America. So it made sense to the local people to hunt them for food.) Through education and the creation of true partnerships, Tuttle and the other BCI representatives not only put an end to the poaching, but turned the former poachers into bat enthusiasts, protectors, and citizen scientists.
“I tell this story,” he said at the symposium, “because it shows how we turned our perceived enemy into an ally.”
It has come to my attention that there is a LOT of in-fighting within the environmental movement, and it has already started at the college level. Some in the environmental movement also love to instigate and fight with those outside the environmental movement. But here’s the funny thing: if in-your-face eco-terrorists were effective, everyone would be one. If fighting with each other and everyone else accomplished anything, the whole world would be saved by now. So why not just… be… nice??
You –environmentalists of all ages– have no enemies, only allies you haven’t made yet. Even the people who you think are working against you or are competing with you might not be, and if you don’t try to communicate with them you will continue to perceive them as an enemy and lose opportunities for outreach and bridge-building. And none of us can afford to lose those opportunities.
BCI’s education director also told a fantastic story. A few months prior, he was in Washington, DC talking to congressmen about securing funds for White Nose Syndrome research. He was out for a walk, and was using his bat detector (it picks up bats’ echolocation calls, which are inaudible to humans) on the national mall. A 6-year-old girl walked up to him and said, “Whatcha doin’?” He replied that he was listening to the bats as they caught insects for dinner.
The girl gasped: “Do we have White Nose here in our nation’s capital?!” she exclaimed.
Here’s another funny thing: I’m pretty sure that that little girl (who could have easily been me 14 years ago and) who knew more about a dire environmental crisis than 95% of the nation would prefer that we all stop working against each other and become allies so that she doesn’t have to clean up our mess the way we’re cleaning up someone else’s.
P.S. If you haven’t heard the latest news about White Nose Syndrome, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has estimated that the bat death toll from the disease has now exceeded 5.5 million.
New Year’s resolutions are like embarrassing medical tests and procedures: everyone (but mostly old people) has them and wants to tell you aaaallll about them even though you REALLY don’t want to hear it.
I fully realize this, and yet I will still tell you about mine.
(And you might be saying to yourself, “It’s January 10th! It’s far, far too late for New Year’s Resolutions!” Well, I say no, no it isn’t. Besides which, I make a LOT of resolutions ALL the time. New School Year Resolutions. New Semester Resolutions. New Week Resolutions. New Day Resolutions… Kinda dorky, but very true.)
ANYWAY, the most important of my New Year’s Resolutions is to once and for all eliminate palm oil from my diet. My reasons are these:
1. It doesn’t seem to have any health benefits. (Apparently, it might very well have negative health effects.) It’s just a substitute for trans-fats, which aren’t great anyway.
2. It is terrible for the environment! Really! Palm oil plantations have replaced large sections of the rainforests in Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia and Malaysia. The forests that are being burned to clear the way for oil palm trees once provided crucial habitat for animals including the Sumatran tiger and Orangutans.
Some of these palm oil plantations are also illegal, meaning that they REALLY have no environmental restrictions placed on them. And I’m sure illegally-grown palm oil bears a striking resemblance to legally-grown palm oil, so some speculate that many companies who use it as an ingredient don’t discriminate.
Here are a couple more resources, in case you’re interested:
The Rainforest Action Network’s palm oil page… don’t miss the “What’s Your Connection to Rainforest Destruction?” diagram.
…And their palm oil fact sheet!
This all really hit home for me after seeing this video, made by Girl Scouts Madison Vorva and Rhiannon Tomtishen. The girls asked Girl Scouts of the USA and Little Brownie Bakers to eliminate palm oil from their much-beloved cookies. The elimination of this unhealthy and environmentally-degrading ingredient from some of America’s most traditional and wholesome desserts would not only send a clear message to Girl Scouts that their organization recognizes that they are the future of the environment and supports them, but would also mean that the Girl Scouts would FINALLY have given up some of the olde-tyme ways that they hold so dear but that make them irrelevant to today’s girls (one of GS-USA’s BIGGEST fears that is slowly being realized). They did not eliminate palm oil, but they did what they could to make everyone happy and made some pretty decent commitments. I wish they would have been more public about them. They had a great opportunity to send a message.
Back to that resolution! If I stay away from processed foods, I’m pretty much safe. But there are some guilty pleasures out there with the stuff lurking in it… Oreos… Vienna Fingers… Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cakes (WHY ARE THEY SO GOOD?!)… I’ll just have to read the ingredients more carefully than I already do and be willing to give up some fantastic-tasting foods that are terrible for me. Worth it, though.
I’m also hatching a plan to ask my school’s food service provider (Aramark) not to serve or sell products that contain palm oil. Will it happen? Who’s to say. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable to bring it to their attention that they are feeding the future leaders of the world (at least) one ingredient that is jeopardizing the future of the planet that we have to inherit.
Not that I blame Aramark. I don’t blame any one person or institution because a LOT of bad choices were made politically, economically, and scientifically that lead to dependence on palm oil. Now, a lot of people just don’t know that palm oil is even a problem. According to the Rainforest Action Network, it is in 50% of grocery store foods and often in small amounts which places it near the middle of the ingredients list (past the point where people stop reading– did you ever notice that? People read the beginning (“Water, high fructose corn syrup…”) and end (“Blue Lake 40″!) of the ingredients list but skip over the middle. Huh.). Besides which, college students like their Oreos and the food service provider is just giving them what they want. So this will require more awareness and commitment on the students’ part, too. But the facts are pretty clear, and the damage is very real, so I hope that by spreading information about it I can encourage others to eliminate it from their respective diets as well.
…Maybe they’d be persuaded if they knew there was a sweet Rainforest Action Network Merit Badge in it for them!
So the old environmental club is hard at work once again (YES, even over Winter Break. ESPECIALLY over Winter Break!), this time on our upcoming environmental film festival. It will last four days and at this point we plan to feature the movies “Bag It,” “Your Environmental Road Trip (YERT),” “The City Dark,” and “Waste Land.” All are intriguing, but “Waste Land” has caught my interest the most. A large part of that interest is due to the movie’s subject matter: how and why people live in the world’s largest garbage dump (which, in effect, causes us as viewers to question why we even have something in this world that is called “the world’s largest garbage dump”). But the movie also interests me because it represents a struggle environmentalists face on a daily basis: the give and take between showing depressing aspects of environmental problems and still expecting people to be hopeful that there is a solution.
Click here to see the “Waste Land” trailer on the YouTube!
I recall past film viewings for similar groups in which amazingly informative documentaries like “Food, Inc.” and “The Cove” were passed over (especially the latter– SO SAD) in favor of movies with more “positive” messages… like “Wall-E.” Environmental groups are often too hesitant to bum people out.
We don’t want people to think that we’re preaching at them!
We don’t want people to feel hopeless!
So we all just watch “Wall-E” or “Disney’s Earth” again and pretend those other movies don’t exist. But I think we can all agree that it is far better to see the serious movies and feel however they make us feel (even if that feeling is a little depressed at times) than to live in complete ignorance. The fear is that when people see movies like “Waste Land” they feel hopeless– like no light bulb they could change or reusable bag they could use could possibly make enough of a difference to help the people featured in the film. Like no individual — let alone a poor, sad, cold, stressed out college student — could possibly hope to change anything about the situations they witness in “depressing” documentaries. The goal in showing such movies is not to perpetuate hopelessness, but to inspire awareness.
Go ahead– by all means, be hopeful about the fate of the environment! But also be aware of the complicated nature of the issues you have to hope have a solution.
Because hopefulness without awareness is nothing but an empty promise of action.
Recently, the old campus environmental club did something that actually made people take notice. We had a photo campaign! No, not like the supermodels who dress up in lettuce or raw meat or fur splashed with red paint or whatever to raise awareness of animal cruelty. (Or was it climate change? Or maybe vegetarianism?? Who ever really remembers!?) This was a campaign inspired by GlobalGreen’s “I am” PSAs about rising sea levels. The PSAs are intended to put faces (those of celebrities and regular people) to places, specifically places that will be affected by the rising sea levels that will accompany climate change. Similarly, our club’s PSAs put faces to environmental issues to raise awareness of those issues around campus. Many people on and off campus have told us how much they like the photos, so any other clubs out there reading this might consider similar projects! Although we didn’t this time, it could also be a great way to partner with the art club, photography club, or graphic design club if your college has them.
See the rest of the photos here!
Unfortunately, the whole thing also reminded me of something Rick Perry said earlier this year; apparently, if he was going to hold up a sign it would say “I am… skeptical. And I am not afraid.”
Really, Rick Perry? Because people across the globe — from Bangladesh to New York, including the people who participated in those GlobalGreen PSAs – who don’t want to see their homes permanently submerged are afraid. I feel like calling people like Mr. Perry climate change “skeptics” may be giving them a little bit too much credit, as “skeptic” implies that the person has given the issue careful thought. Climate change deniers may be more appropriate. What do you think?
My favorite part of this video is the “Why would I put our children’s futures in jeopardy?” I was wondering the saaaame thing.
Sorry to RickRoll you like that. I only bring it up because we shouldn’t forget that these things have been said by the time primaries/elections roll around.
Funny Story:
I was Blackle-ing myself the other day (partly because I will need to apply for summer jobs soon, and partly because I was procrastinating for finals…), and I found this old post on the National Review’s “Planet Gore” blog about… me.
After the initial surreal feelings caused by reading something written about me by someone I’ve never even heard of before, I decided I had better read said blog. It was mostly about my brief and moderately unsuccessful but attention-grabbing campaign for an eco-friendly prom at my high school, which was written up — with photos!– in a few Chicago news papers (including “The Sun Times” and Chicago Public Schools paper “The Mash”). The most (and possibly only) successful aspect of the campaign was the Facebook page I created, which still has a decent number of fans (if you’re interested, search for “Eco-Friendly Prom!” with an exclamation point, added for extra enthusiasm…!). The page was a way for me to share links to kids at my high school and other schools in hopes of giving them ideas on how to green their own proms.
The blog’s last little, stinging comment made me feel pretty defensive at first. (Ask my friends who saw me right after. I did not have kind things to say, and the whole incident reaaally distracted me from writing an epic education paper.) How DARE he criticize my efforts! I worked really hard on Eco-Friendly Prom, and I didn’t get all that media attention for no reason. But then I realized that Mr. Pollowitz was exactly right. Because it wasn’t “How dare he criticize OUR efforts,” they were MY efforts and mine alone. Many people were supportive of the idea, but few — if any — actually made an effort.
His comment also made me realize that my position has not changed. Part of what I was trying to accomplish with my eco-friendly prom campaign was that we didn’t really need to make too many “sacrifices” to change prom (perhaps the ultimate symbol of American teenage entitlement and consumerism) into an event that wouldn’t harm the planet that the prom-goers will one day need to inherit. I maintain this position, and extend it to all aspects of everyday life; only when being eco-friendly is just as convenient, cheap, and aesthetically pleasing as being oblivious to the planet’s well-being will environmental choices become truly mainstream.
These realizations sound like real BUMMERS, I know. But they have actually just made me feel inspired to revive my efforts to share important, environment-focused ideas and information with my peers. As my friend Dee Snyder once said, “We’re not gonna take it…” and by “we” I mean “I.” But as my other friend Alice Cooper once sang, “We’ve still got a long way to go.”
So… Welcome to ecollegey.
I bought this photo at an antique store. I have NO idea who this is. Apparently, her name is Nancy Ray, and this is a photo of her on Thanksgiving Day. I strongly feel that if we asked Nancy Ray what she was thankful for on the fateful day that this photo was taken, she would say, “I am thankful for Keith Partridge, for he has changed fashion forever.”
Me, too, Nancy Ray. Me, too.
Take some time this Thanksgiving to decide how thankful you are for ruffled shirts… and other things, too. I guess.
