DePaul researchers receive grant from NASA for Environmental justice project Page 3
Southeast Side community wants to change narrative about the Calumet River Pages 6 & 7
Environment through the lense Pages 10 & 11
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF | Nadia Carolina Hernandez eic@depauliaonline.com
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Climate change is a complex, multifaceted issue with far-reaching implications on humanity. It is not solely an environmental concern, but a social and economic one too. The effects of climate change have already manifested across the globe, from rising sea levels, increased frequency of natural disasters, shortages of crucial resources like food and water and displacements of entire communities.
In reflecting on our previous special issue led by Nika Schoonover about gender, Nadia and I decided to embark on a new special issue that tackles the pressing matter of climate change. As Editor-In-Chief and Multimedia Managing editor, it’s our turn to address and recognize the severity of the crisis and take action to mitigate its impact. With this issue, we have attempted to balance the multiple narratives regarding our planet’s future.
In our environmental special issue, we have gathered a variety of stories, photos and artwork to encapsulate a young adult’s perspective on the climate crisis. Notably, we have included projects done by our talented art and photo team, who have shared their unique vision of the environment through a photo essay and comic quilt featuring DePaul in various contexts. Their contribution highlights an artistic expression of the importance in raising awareness and inspiring action towards a sustainable future.
It is important to acknowledge that climate change is not only an environmental issue, but also a social justice issue.
Environmental racism affects marginalized communities across Chicago, often situated in areas with higher pollution levels and limited access to resources necessary to adapt to the effects of climate change. Our focus piece centers around the Calumet River and Southeast Side community members working to stop its pollution. According to the EPA, 77% of Southeast Side residents are Black and 14% are Hispanic. The Southeast Side is an industrial driven area and at one time was one of the country’s largest producers of steel. Luis Cabrales, the program and event facilitator working for Ford Calumet Environmental Center is trying to change that narrative.
Along with the focus piece, we opened the floor for our editors to include their own stories within the topic, ranging from opinion pieces of climate doomism and the role veganism has with the environment to features of groups like the DePaul Urban Gardeners Club that show Chicagoans how to have a green thumb while in a metro area.
It is important to note that this publication is not an exhaustive treatment of the topic of the environment. Instead, it serves as a representation of stories that we believe are relevant to the DePaul community in relation to the broader crisis of climate change. We hope this issue continues a dialogue in our community about “what must be done.” We hope that you will engage with the content of this special issue of The DePaulia and that it encourages thoughtful reflection on the urgent crisis that is climate change.
La DePaulia es el noticiero oficial estudiantil en español de la Universidad DePaul, enfocado en proveer una voz para la comunidad latinx. Nuestras opiniones no necesariamente reflejan las opiniones de la administración, facultad o personal de la universidad.
JEFA DE REDACCIÓN | Jacqueline Cardenas eicladepaulia@depauliaonline.com
GERENTE EDITORIAL | Santiago PosadaJaramillo managingladepaulia@depauliaonline.com
EDITORA DE ARTE Y VIDA | Andrea Juárez Hernández eicladepaulia@depauliaonline.com
EDITORA DE NOTICIAS | Cary Robbins eicladepaulia@depauliaonline.com
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EDITOR DE DEPORTES | Santiago Gonzalez Tijerina eicladepaulia@depauliaonline.com
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Chicago is home to 24 industrial corridors comprising about 12% of city land. According to city data, the largest corridor is located on the Southeast Side.
Industrial corridors are areas of land designated by the city for manufacturing and other industrial uses. However, it has come to light in recent years that the communities residing near these areas experience negative environmental and health impacts caused by heavy industry. These communities are historically home to mostly Black and Brown residents.
Last September, two DePaul researchers, geography professors Winifred Curran and Michelle Stuhlmacher, were awarded a two-year, $250,000 NASA grant to work on an online data dashboard called ChiVes. The dashboard would provide information useful for fighting environmental injustices in Chicago’s many environmentally burdened communities.
This grant will fund research on tree coverage, plant diversity and air quality serving as a public mapping tool for anything seeking environmental data on Chicago’s neighborhoods.
“We know, historically in the United States, that it is communities of color, who are overwhelmingly burdened with negative environmental outcomes,” Curran said. “And so providing a source that people can get the kind of information that they need to advocate to, you know, make planning decisions, that’s what the build out of this ChiVes database is all about.”
Amalia NietoGomez, executive director of Alliance of the Southeast, said in an interview with The DePaulia in October 2022 that many community organizations are coming together to resist industry permits trying to further permeate areas on
the South Side of the city.
“We are not in this alone,” she said. “And it is not just the Southeast Side community that is being affected by this. There are a lot of communities. The South and West Sides of Chicago are heavily impacted by toxic industry and not coincidentally, those are also minority neighborhoods.”
The project, called “Designing for Just Green Enough: A Data Integration Tool for Informing Community Green Space Planning,” is a “data integration project [that] will expand the capabilities of ChiVes — an open source geospatial web dashboard prototype — in order to advance green space and environmental remediation initiatives in environmental justice (EJ) communities like Pilsen,” according to NASA.
The ChiVes database is a multi-institutional project released in late 2021 through a partnership between researchers, community organizations and civic groups primarily led by Marynia Kolak, an assistant geography professor at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
“We kind of really envisioned ChiVes to be a data mapping collaborative, where the goal is to have shared ownership,” Kolak said. “The whole idea is to keep on making it available, so that researchers can have their data … and it becomes this kind of depoliticized place that is just about data sharing for [the greater] good.”
Curran said this project builds on research she has conducted since 2004 when she first came to DePaul. According to Curran, the 25th Ward is the community partner for the grant and will assist the research team in collecting data for ChiVes and other communities burdened by environmental injustices.
25th Ward Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez along with residents in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood have been influential in the process to build-up this database, she said.
Because Pilsen is home to one of the largest industrial corridors, the neighborhood is an ideal example of how industrial pollutants are negatively affecting city residents, Curran said.
“[Pilsen] is just such a clear example of the kind of neighborhood that needs this data to make informed policy choices,” Curran said. “Pilsen is a really interesting case study, because it has a whole host of environmental issues [including] legacy industrial pollution issues.”
According to Curran, the project is still in its first six months and the current goal is to begin compiling data for ChiVes.
“So it’s a database of environmental data,” Curran said. “But what we’re doing now is adding on that kind of socioeconomic data, to provide a fuller picture, and trying to do it in a way that is very accessible to the community.”
Kolak said her team is in the process of identifying what data needs to be added, assessing what data they already have available and determining how people might want to use it.
“If it’s not actually useful to the people who need it, it doesn’t really matter,” Kolak said. “I think a big part of the NASA goal is to learn from the community instead of the other way around.”
According to Curran, one of the concerns surrounding improving environmental burdens in areas like Pilsen is that this will also increase the desirability of the neighborhood, and therefore increase gentrification in areas that are already gentrified.
“There’s also the issue of environmental gentrification, where environmental improvements can potentially contribute to increasing housing prices and prices of everything that can lead to the displacement of existing residents,” Curran said. “People are particularly concerned about
that in Pilsen.”
However, NASA claims the risk of gentrification is the reason the project focuses on the “just green enough” framework.
“[This] posits that real environmental improvements can be realized in a community while keeping the risk of gentrification low if the improvements are driven by the needs and values of the community,” NASA said.
For Kolak, this project gives researchers the opportunity to listen to community needs and determine which data will be most useful for them because they are the ones impacted by environmental burdens everyday.
“Those closest to the problem are closest to the solution,” Kolak said.
SAMANTHA MOILANEN | THE DEPAULIA Matt Asphalt, industrial site located in McKinley Park, which borders the environmentally-burdened area of Pilsen.
News Editor
Between moments of moving dirt to the garden beds and planting potatoes and radishes, Grace Gallant, the DePaul Urban Gardeners (DUG) head of operations and senior, said the scene looked like “a heavenly place.”
Gallant said the garden has become a safe haven for many DUG members, but most importantly, it is a place where people can experience community and bring plants to life.
Peter Dziaba, DUG treasurer and DePaul graduate student said the members, totaling 50 to 60 people who come and go as they please, get to experience a community that is like family at every meeting.
Zoharia Drizin, DUG president and graduate student, said one word that represents DUG is energy. She said when members and newcomers walk in, they are greeted with smiling faces, and something is always going on “whether it be arts and crafts, planting, turning the compost or deep conversations about the linearity of time.”
“DUG is perfectly imperfect,” Drizin said. “We are constantly learning and growing, but also because we have a community of people from different places, cultures, experiences and a multitude of identities. For these reasons, we can’t help but create an educational, silly, engaging and semi-chaotic environment.”
Since Covid-19 hit, the executive board of DUG has been trying to grow their membership. With that, Dziaba said they have been working to make sure the environment is very welcoming. He said with this comes ensuring there are no cliques inside the club.
“We make sure we actively not being that way so that students feel that they are a part of this family and not just orbiting this central group,” Dziaba said. “We’re all together in the constellation.”
Drizin said that last year, there were about five people at each meeting, but this year it has increased to around 15 to 20 and the club is always looking for more people to help with the gardens or just to hang out.
However, with more people attending, Gallant said the club needs more resources. Recent budget cuts will affect the environmental science program, according to Gallant. DUG purchases its seeds and equipment with the program’s leftover money. Because of the cuts, Galland said it is unlikely DUG will be able to afford as many seeds as they need unless they host a fundraiser.
Gallant said they want the university administration, who can push resources into different campus life areas, to know that the club is “completely student run.”
The board members meet three times a week to plan out the beds, give updates on the plants, see how to improve the plants’ growth and set watering schedules.
Members water the plants on their own with a hose, as there is no embedded irrigation system provided by the university. This includes needing people to go in person to water the plants over the summer. The board and volunteering members are not paid for their extra work.
“In the future, we’re looking for more support from the university so we can get a lot more done and connect with our community more,” Gallant said.
Gallant mentioned that DePaul President Robert Manuel was supposed to visit the garden and greet the members within the first couple of months of being on campus, but Gallant said he canceled their meeting and has not tried to set one up since.
With more resources, Gallant said the garden can continue to flourish. With
these resources, they would like to have more visibility on campus. Gallant said the board is working to see if they can get windows in the big brown fence that surrounds the garden so people can actually see inside the garden instead of peering through the slits in the barrier.
“Do not let the big brown fence scare you,” Drizin said. “The garden in the summertime is an idyllic Eden-esque place, despite the consistent rumbling of the Brown and Red Line, and we want as many people to enjoy it as possible.”
Dziaba said DUG’s meeting times change every quarter to fit the schedules of the majority of members. This quarter, the club meets in the garden across from Wish Field on Mondays from 3-5 p.m. and Thursdays from 4-6 p.m.
Drizin said students do not need to register in advance to attend meetings. People of any ability can come and they will accommodate the amount of work people can do based on what their abilities allow. Gallant also said people can
just sit in the garden and be a part of the community if they prefer not to do physical labor.
“DUG is a magical place with really awesome people,” Gallant said. “It’s a place for everyone, introverts, extroverts, gardeners and nongardeners, every major and [people] from all over the country. It’s a place for everyone, that’s what makes it beautiful.”
Little Village residents gathered at a community garden to celebrate the annual Semillas de Justicia event with music, food, painting and plenty of laughter.
The event was held by the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) in light of Earth Day, providing residents with an opportunity to beautify their neighborhood by cleaning up, planting in their garden beds, coloring and helping paint a mural that helps tell LVEJO’s history.
Manu Gámez, who recently moved to the neighborhood, said he has wanted to learn how to grow his own food for years and never thought that when he left the event, he would leave behind a garden bed for him to continue to nurture.
“I just want to make it more a part of my life … reciprocity, like tending to the arth and then taking whatever it’s willing to give to me,” Gámez said.
Sergio Ruiz, one of the organizers of the event, said the event not only marks the first day of the season for the garden, but also is a way to remember how the community garden began.
“We always tend to take this day just to commemorate the actions that are going on around us since this neighborhood is surrounded by industrial areas,” Ruiz said. “So there’s a lot of air contamination. It’s just a
fight that the community has always known, and it’s still going through.”
In 2012, neighbors across the street from the site went to LVEJO, complaining about a stench that they later found was emanating from an industrial site that had been used to deposit oil barrels. According to their website, LVEJO and the community fought with the city, and in 2014 they were finally able to transform the lot into a community garden.
When it first was created, 20-30 families tended the land and had their own flower beds to grow plants, but now they have expanded the space to include flower beds for 60-70 families.
According to LVEJO’s website, Little Village “has the least amount of green space per capita in the city of Chicago.” There was an explosion that happened in April 2020 by Hilco Development Partners at the site of the old Crawford Coal plant left the neighborhood in a cloud of dust and caused an uproar among community residents.
Leslie Cortez is a youth organizer with LVEJO and has been organizing with others to fight for answers after the demolition. They went to Philadelphia to talk with other people who have experienced toxic waste from projects by Hilco Development Partners in certain neighborhoods. The city knew about the demolition, and she asked that the city listen to the needs of the community.
“Making sure that community members
get to decide, you know, whether or not we want big businesses or if we want local vending,” Cortez said. “It’s that right to self-determine.”
Jac Vázquez, a park organizer for LVEJO, helped clean up trash thrown around the garden, and she said she enjoyed the conversations that she had with other volunteers as they discussed why people may think it is acceptable to litter.
“It could be ignorance, or it could also just be the assumption that the city will clean it and that’s not the case,” Jac Vázquez said.
At a previous Earth Day Event, Jac Vázquez remembers cleaning up around the garden when a city sanitation truck stopped to ask her and the other volunteers what they were doing. When she told him they were cleaning up for Earth Day, he drove
right by.
“Proof right there that the city isn’t doing all they could,” Jac Vázquez said.
However, the community is making sure to grow and invest in their own neighborhood. Her sister, Jocelyn Vázquez, who is also an organizer with LVEJO, is excited to have her own garden bed this year, where she will be able to plant herbs, tomatoes, jalapenos and more with her mom.
She said that Earth Day is a way for the community to take time away from work and heal themselves by growing with the land.
“For Earth Day, it’s a time to just spend time connecting to the land, growing our own food, touching the wet soil, knowing that the food that we’re gonna grow is for good use,” she said.
Fifteen years have passed since Chicago created the first Climate Action Plan (CAP) in 2008, and it has been a year since the release of the updated 2022 CAP.
The original 2008 plan created a goal to cut carbon emissions by 25% by 2020 from 1990 levels. According to 2019 data from Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, the city missed that goal.
“It’s concerning, because good intentions are great but we’re at the point where we need to make progress,” said DePaul environmental scientist Mark Potosnak.
There were 35 ways laid out in the 2008 CAP that needed to be taken in order to mitigate climate change in Chicago, involving buildings and construction, renewable energy, transportation, reduced waste and industrial pollution and adaptation.
To make buildings more energy efficient, the plan gave specifics about what needed to happen. According to the plan, appliances needed to be traded in for more energy efficient options, water needed to be conserved, the city energy code needed to be updated, and more trees and green spaces needed to be planted.
According to Citizens Utility Board Carbon Free Buildings Coordinator David Weaver, much more needs to be done in this area.
“We need to implement no new construction with fossil fuels combustion rules. So you can’t develop a new housing residence that has gas stoves or furnaces,” Weaver said. “Instead it should be designed from the get-go and implemented with all electric [facilities]. That way we move away from fossil fuels and the extremely volatile natural gas industry. Every building we build today that burns fossil fuels, there’s a good chance they’ll be burning them 50 years from now.”
Increasing tree coverage is another aspect of the 2008 CAP, however how much shade you have often depends on where you live. Communities of color and lower-income communities have less tree coverage than communities that are majority white and affluent, according to ABC-7 news.
According to data from the Chicago Region Tree Census at the Morton Arboretum, from 2010 to 2020, tree coverage decreased in the city of Chicago, despite increasing tree coverage being a goal of the CAP.
Much of this is attributed to ash tree loss from infestation of the Emerald Ash Borer. This insect infests ash trees, requiring these trees to be cut down to eliminate the insect from spreading.
The updated 2022 CAP is much more focused on environmental justice and remedying the harm that has come from climate inequities. Often, the experiences of climate change depend on race and socioeconomic status.
One example is urban flooding.
“There’s other areas within the city of Chicago that experience flooding to a greater degree than Little Village, but like most communities that are near industrial corridors, they face their fair share of urban flooding due to the land use,” said senior policy analyst for water rights at Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) Brenda Santoyo.
According to a map from the city of Chicago, most industrial corridors are located on the West and South Side, leaving these communities, many of which are majority people of color, susceptible to flooding.
“Overall, the trees and shrubs have either not been replaced or if replaced they have not grown sufficiently to create a mature canopy,” the Chicago Region Tree Census said in a statement.
While Chicago needs more renewable energy, simply shifting is not enough, according to Potosnak.
“Where we consume the most energy in Chicago is via electricity. Electricity gets sent into the city, so we’re responsible for all those emissions. We don’t produce much electricity in the city anymore. The city could go to more of these renewable sources, but it doesn’t really change your energy [usage],” Potosnak said.
Not only does production of energy need to convert from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, but all Chicagoans need to find ways of cutting down energy use. They’re producing it somewhere else; you’re getting the credit for using it,
but you’re still using the same amount of electricity. So if we look at the Climate Action Plan, things we could work on are the adaptation piece, so green roofs and trees and trying to make the heat index not so bad, but we also need to mitigate climate change and not emit as much,” Potosnak said.
Organizations such as Citizens Utility Board (CUB)say that renewable energy not only benefits the Earth, but benefits your budget as well.
“Clean energy is affordable energy. In this situation, the things that are best for the planet are also the best for our pocketbooks,” Weaver said. “I think most of the time those align perfectly, but not always. Especially for early adapters, [such as] electric vehicles can be in the tens of thousands of dollars, and are not affordable. [However] when it comes to clean energy, that is affordable, and when it comes to good building performance standards that saves all of us money in the long term.”
If Chicago fails to act, the consequences could be dire. In the original plan, scientists predicted that in a higher-emissions scenario the number of days in the next few decades in which Chicago would be over 100 degrees Fahrenheit was five. However, if emissions still are high and do not decrease significantly, by 2070, Chicago will have 31 days of 100-degree weather.
Fifteen years have passed since Chicago created the first Climate Action Plan (CAP) in 2008, and it has been a year since the release of the updated 2022 CAP.
The original 2008 plan created a goal to cut carbon emissions by 25% by 2020 from 1990 levels. According to 2019 data from Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, the city missed that goal.
“It’s concerning, because good intentions are great but we’re at the point where we need to make progress,” said DePaul environmental scientist Mark Potosnak.
There were 35 ways laid out in the 2008 CAP that needed to be taken in order to mitigate climate change in Chicago, involving buildings and construction, renewable energy, transportation, reduced waste and industrial pollution and adaptation.
To make buildings more energy efficient, the plan gave specifics about what
needed to happen. According to the plan, appliances needed to be traded in for more energy efficient options, water needed to be conserved, the city energy code needed to be updated, and more trees and green spaces needed to be planted.
According to Citizens Utility Board Carbon Free Buildings Coordinator David Weaver, much more needs to be done in this area.
“We need to implement no new construction with fossil fuels combustion rules. So you can’t develop a new housing residence that has gas stoves or furnaces,” Weaver said. “Instead it should be designed from the get-go and implemented with all electric [facilities]. That way we move away from fossil fuels and the extremely volatile natural gas industry. Every building we build today that burns fossil fuels, there’s a good chance they’ll be burning them 50 years from now.”
Increasing tree coverage is another aspect of the 2008 CAP, however how
much shade you have often depends on where you live. Communities of color and lower-income communities have less tree coverage than communities that are majority white and affluent, according to ABC-7 news.
According to data from the Chicago Region Tree Census at the Morton Arboretum, from 2010 to 2020, tree coverage decreased in the city of Chicago, despite increasing tree coverage being a goal of the CAP.
Much of this is attributed to ash tree loss from infestation of the Emerald Ash Borer. This insect infests ash trees, requiring these trees to be cut down to eliminate the insect from spreading.
The updated 2022 CAP is much more focused on environmental justice and remedying the harm that has come from climate inequities. Often, the experiences of climate change depend on race and socioeconomic status.
One example is urban flooding.
“There’s other areas within the city of Chicago that experience flooding to a greater degree than Little Village, but like
most communities that are near industrial corridors, they face their fair share of urban flooding due to the land use,” said senior policy analyst for water rights at Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) Brenda Santoyo. According to a map from the city of Chicago, most industrial corridors are located on the West and South Side, leaving these communities, many of which are majority people of color, susceptible to flooding.
are and index mitigate much,” Board not your this the books,”
“Overall, the trees and shrubs have either not been replaced or if replaced they have not grown sufficiently to create a mature canopy,” the Chicago Region Tree Census said in a statement.
While Chicago needs more renewable energy, simply shifting is not enough, according to Potosnak.
“Where we consume the most energy in Chicago is via electricity. Electricity gets sent into the city, so we’re responsible for all those emissions. We don’t produce much electricity in the city anymore. The city could go to more of these renewable sources, but it doesn’t really change your energy [usage],” Potosnak said.
Not only does production of energy need to convert from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, but all Chicagoans need to find ways of cutting down energy use.
They’re producing it somewhere else; you’re getting the credit for using it, but you’re still using the same amount of electricity. So if we look at the Climate Action Plan, things we could work on
”All of us who became involved came to say we wanted to change the narrative of the Southeast Side,”
Luis Cabrales Program and Event facilitator at Ford Calumet Environmental Center
adaptation piece, so green roofs trees and trying to make the heat index not so bad, but we also need to mitigate climate change and not emit as much,” Potosnak said.
Organizations such as Citizens Utility Board (CUB)say that renewable energy only benefits the Earth, but benefits your budget as well.
“Clean energy is affordable energy. In situation, the things that are best for planet are also the best for our pocketbooks,” Weaver said. “I think most of the time those align perfectly, but not always. Especially for early adapters, [such as] electric vehicles can be in the tens of thousands of dollars, and are not affordable.
[However] when it comes to clean energy, is affordable, and when it comes to good building performance standards that saves all of us money in the long term.”
Scan here to view the Southeast Side Youth Alliance website:
Source: The City of Neighborhoods
Climate patterns are shifting, causing extreme weather, death and destruction. Individuals account for a small fraction of global emissions, and oil and gas companies lobby politicians to write legislation in their favor. Seeing the toll of climate change can make mitigating or reversing its impacts feel hopeless as an individual.
Climate doomism is the idea that global warming will eventually lead to the death of all life on Earth and that there is nothing that can be done to stop climate change or that governments will never take the steps necessary to stop climate change.
“With our current economic and political system, any sort of positive change can feel impossible,” said DePaul junior and environmental science major William Szromba. “What difference does it make that you drive a fuel efficient Prius if celebrities are taking hundreds of private flights a year? I think feeling hopeless and apathetic in a situation like this is understandable, but I think that the apathy and nihilism that climate doomism generates is ultimately counterproductive.”
I have noticed that some people justify wasteful tendencies by stating their individual footprint is nothing compared to major corporations’ impacts. Since 1988, 100 companies have produced 71% of emissions. While most people can never come close to producing as many emissions as a company, that does not mean that people should not be opting for paper over plastic, foregoing the straw or taking public transport.
“I think that individuals can certainly act in ways that help them feel better about their conscience, they can help them feel better about not contributing to the problem,” said Barbara Willard, DePaul communication studies associate professor. “Will that make a significant change? No, but what individuals can do is become engaged and involved.”
There are many ways to get involved, such as protesting, reaching out to politicians, making sustainable personal choices and planting native trees and gardens in local communities.
“I have a student who worked on creating habitat for the rusty patch [species of] bumblebee by planting host plants in backyards and parks and things like that,” said DePaul environmental science associate professor Christie Klimas. “That’s highly actionable. There’s projects like that about monarch butterflies … I think we sometimes don’t focus on this because we need system level change as well.”
Small changes can help biodiversity, but it is also important to champion for larger reform by urging governments to pass legislation that will curb the fossil fuel industry, create sustainable energy alternatives and promote land conservation.
“Stop settling for the lesser of two evils when it comes to elections in this country,” Szromba said. “Campaigning for more direct action and protests against fossil fuel companies is more productive … I think civil disobedience is a very effective tool when it comes to preventing further environmental destruction.”
While the Earth’s situation is dire and its average surface temperature has already warmed 2 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880, with the 10 hottest years on record occurring since 2010, there is still hope to slow global warming and reduce its impacts during our life. Reversing the impacts, however, might still take more time than people have in this lifetime.
“It really depends on how much we can stop the fossil fuel industry from continuing to tap into the fossil fuel reserves that we have and using those fossil fuels,” Willard said. “And if we can do that, then that does not mean that we still won’t lose species or that the Earth won’t continue to warm, but it will mean that we will lose less, and there will be less damage, there will be less catastrophe.”
There are many ways in which we can
exercise our voices to champion clean energy and a sustainable future. One way is championing the Indigenous Land Back movement, which fights to give Indigenous people control over the resources on their land.
“There have been a couple of studies in the Amazon that look at, in essence, who’s most effective in conservation,” Klimas said. “And indigenous groups, by and large, are significantly better at maintaining and conserving biodiversity and … an intact Amazonian forest than all other groups.”
Indigenous people all over the world have a long history of living sustainably and in harmony with the land and with nature. They have some of the smallest carbon footprints in the world and are far more effective in conserving land than non-Indigenous people.
There is so much dismissal and apathy surrounding climate change, and a large part of that is due to the rhetoric that there is little that humans can do to combat climate change.
Recently, scientists discovered a kind of mushroom that is able to digest plastic.
“Consistently, we’re finding ways to combat our environmental problems,” Willard said. “Scientists are hard at work coming up with new innovations, so why can’t we also teach that as well and stress those positive scientific outcomes?”
Focusing on the positives of climate news might help people understand what they can do to combat climate change and encourage more people to be proactive about climate change.
Klimas recalled a Brazilian saying she knew of.
“There’s this big Amazonian forest fire and there’s a hummingbird, and the hummingbird is carrying water in its beak and dropping it on the forest fire,” Klimas said. “And another animal comes up to it and says, ‘This isn’t going to make a difference,’ and the hummingbird says, ‘I’m just doing my part and waiting for everybody else.’”
By Jake Cox Opinions EditorEvery day, the bombardment of climate doomism on the left, and the outright denial of climate change on the right is disheartening. There is no way to avoid it— it makes productive engagement in the conversation around curtailing climate change impossible, or at the very least, turns people off from making small changes for the better.
Climate doomism is the belief that it is too late to stop the effects of climate change. In this mindset, there is no reason to make any efforts towards sustainability since “we are doomed.” Climate denial is the belief that despite the substantial evidence pointing to human made climate change and its adverse effects on the planet, it is not real. By and large, denialists believe either climate change is natural or not happening at all.
With all that being said, it’s also important to note that the majority of the blame for climate change can exclusively be attributed to companies with poor sustainability practices, via Harvard Political Review. So while on a small scale it’s great to do anything you can, don’t beat yourself up over it. You can make waves in the voting booth.
One of the ways this disengagement manifests itself is through civic engagement. When voters start to believe that it’s too late— or it’s not even real— leaves no incentive to participate. Voting for short-term economic improvements rather than long-term sustainability measures, is the norm. We see this in states with conservative leadership. DuringDonald Trump’s presidency, he rolled back over 100 environmental protection laws as conspiracy theories about climate change blossomed.
Rolling back environmental regulations is short-sighted. While many environmental regulations are not strong enough to prevent the ecological collapse— they do keep us safe and healthy. We take our clean air and water for granted but the Clean Air Act (1963) and the Safe Drinking Water Act (1974), are to thank for them. It’s hard to conceptualize what life would be like without things as basic as these.
But when our elected representatives are unfocused on preserving the climate, these protections can easily be gutted. There is no named responsibility in the constitution to protect our country’s natural landscape, and this is used as an excuse not to participate. It’s costly to be sustainable, so if corporations are not legally mandated to, they won’t. In addition to voting for stricter protections, on the other end, consumers can put their money where their mouth is and support businesses with sustainable missions.
It’s a small step, but voting for progressive candidates who have their sights set on stricter environmental regulations can make all the difference. In Illinois, the house just passed a bill to ban styrofoam food containers, a move in the right direction spearheaded by progressive legislatures. Hopelessness cannot create a disinterested, disengaged electorate. Even if it feels pointless, just vote. The climate may depend on it.
‘Climate denial’ leads to not wanting to voteMJ WHITE | THE DEPAULIA
By Lilly Keller Arts & Life Editor
When University of Vermont Junior My When University of Vermont junior Myla Judd decided to go vegan, she thought she was making the best decision for her health and the environment.
“I was working on a sustainable agriculture farm at the time and formed a strong bond with all of the animals,” Judd said. “After watching so many documentaries about how destructive mass production farming is, I realized how evil the meat and dairy industry is.”
Accounting for roughly 14.5% of greenhouse gas emissions — fumes in the earth’s atmosphere that trap heat and cause global warming — livestock has become agriculture’s largest source of climate change worldwide. Unfortunately, the U.S.’s appetite for meat is only increasing. Between 1961 and 2018, yearly meat production increased by 184% and is forecasted to rise an additional 14% by 2030, according to the United Nations.
Following a 2019 publication in the journal “Bioscience,” a global team of 11,000 scientists indicated that to slow the spread of climate change, the general public should aim to eat a plant-based diet and reduce their consumption of animal products.
“At the time, I would have said that veganism was sustainable for me and believed I was getting the right nutrients and proteins to be healthy,” Judd said. “But it wasn’t financially supportable or doable with my lifestyle. I had no energy and was always tired.”
According to a recent study conducted by the University of Oxford, vegan and vegetarian diets could reduce food costs by one third. However this study did not factor in processed meat replacements or eating at restaurants.
Despite livestock’s undeniable role in fueling the climate crisis, the scientific literature regarding the significance of cutting or limiting meat from your diet remains mixed. A 2018 study stated that a vegetarian diet would only reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 3% per person. However, a University of Oxford study says that giving up meat and dairy can reduce a person’s carbon footprint by 73%.
“Veganism itself is not necessarily a good thing,” said Neil Blair, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern University. “For instance, rice is a major source of meth-
ane too, so two of the major sources of methane from anthropogenic sources happen to be rice and cattle.”
While vegan and vegetarian diets may not directly harm the environment, their agricultural systems do. Fruit, vegetable and nut production requires mass amounts of water to grow, risking freshwater depletion. Crops like rice, a staple of many vegan diets, are responsible for 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
“There are options in any of our diets, whether you’re vegetarian or omnivore or a bacon eater to eat more sustainably, but no one of these is automatically sustainable, particularly when you’re trying to feed eight billion people,” Blair said.
However, with the main drivers of climate change residing in collective enterprises such as power grids and the transportation system, many call the individual’s role in lessening the effects of the climate crisis into question.
“So many people don’t want to do anything because one person’s not going to make a difference,” Blair said. “The only thing I can say is that change has got to start somewhere. Every movement started with an individual who managed to convince others.”
Still, some, like DePaul professor Barbara Willard, remain optimistic.
“A vegan diet can significantly improve reduction of greenhouse gas emissions,” Willard said. “This is very well-established.”
While limiting your meat intake will not have the same effect on reducing climate change as planting a new forest or restoring old ones, individuals can be part of the solution rather than the problem. One 2019 study in the journal of Scientific Reports found that if every individual in the U.S. reduced their meat consumption by 25%, greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced by 1%.
“Most of it [reducing greenhouse gas emissions] is going to be at the legislative level. but the major thing that we can do, one, is to have one fewer child or no children, but the biggest thing to reduce your impact on the Earth is to not eat meat and dairy,” Willard said.
While a single individual’s contribution through dietary changes may be relatively small in the long run, it is clear that no social change occurred overnight or by one person.
“Pursuing veganism taught me a lot about how what we eat affects the planet, but also the importance of letting yourself eat freely and prioritizing your own health and well-being,” Judd said.
Ingredients:
carrots
chickpeas
egg
salt & pepper, to taste
2 tbsp dried mixed herbs
100g breadcrumbs or porridge oats
In a food processor, combine chickpeas, oats, carrots, red onion, egg, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and olive oil Blend just until combined
Add lemon juice and blend again until well-combined
Scoop out a handful of the mixture and form into patties
Heat a tablespoon of olive oil over medium-high heat
Cook the patty 4-5 minutes on each side, or until golden brown
Assemble with your favorite burger toppings
Ingredients:
onion
heirloom carrots
red lentils raw
sieved tomatoes
thick Vegetable Soup
cowpeas (black-eyed beans)
chopped parsley
roasted sesame seeds
Peel the onion and dice finely Peel the carrots and slide in to 1 cm thick circles Fry the onion and carrots in a big, hot frying pan with olive oil for 4-5 minutes Add lentils and 400ml water Bring to a boil and cover Cook over low heat for 5 minutes
Add tomatoes and the pouch of Vegetable Soup and cook over low heat for another 3 minutes
Add drained cowpeas, bring to a boil and cover, cook over low heat for another 10-15 minutes
Serve the hearty cowpea and lentil stew sprinkled with parsley and sesame seeds
For our special issue, we asked some of photographers to explore the topic of the ronment in Chicago through their own lenses. We initially assumed that young adults would discouraged when it comes to the environment, whether it be because of climate change, pollution or the depletion of natural resources. What we found through our work is a contrast to the climate doomism we see everyday through out social media and conversations.
of our envilenses. would feel environment, pollution contrast through -
We discovered many communities working to conserve our natural spaces, both within our own DePaul neighborhood and throughout the city of Chicago. Whether it was an Earth Day cleanup or just another Monday testing soil in the lab, there are countless individuals dedicated to this cause. Our photo essay is centered on groups that are making a change in today’s climate.
