Editor-in-Chief
Michael Gergeni
Lead Designer
Erin Nibeck
Contributors
Olivia Amaya
Tori Arduini
Klaudia Babel
Henry Bemis
Trevor Benos
Spencer Durnell
Grayson Hodson
Rudy LaFave
Jason Li
Emily Mair
Raphael Ranola
Averhy Sanborn
Julia San Miguel
Ariana Mizan
Margaret Schmidt
Sauryam Shrestha
Julia Spainhour
Gavin Volker
Joya Weissman
Made possible through support from Students for Environmental Concerns and the Student Sustainability Committee Green Fund. Cover photo by Olivia Amaya.
The Green Observer has always held a special place in my heart. As a first-year undergraduate student, it was the place that gave me an opportunity to raise my voice for the first time in an entirely new environment. Still today, the core belief in the power of each and every voice echoes throughout each edition. When I had the opportunity to come on as Editor-in-Chief for this semester, the idea that we could continue to bring more people together for this was central. After all, it’s always been a community we’re growing!
For this edition, we’ve had the privilege to grow not only our size, but our approach.
This time, we decided to approach it from a new angle – a theme. Each piece is an answer to a question – define currents. In this edition, we explored their multifaceted nature. Currents are social, political, environmental, electrical or even oceanographical, but currents themselves are also neutral, and almost always so large as to lie beyond any single individual’s control.
As you read, you’ll see contributions from a group of twenty artists and writers that reflect each facet to our experience of these monumental currents. As you dive deeper, you’ll find our understanding of ourselves is so inextricable
from our understanding of currents, not only in what we make about them, but in why and how. To that end, you’ll see them show up in a variety of ways – the life’s journey of the Chinook salmon, ameliorative restoration efforts in the San Francisco Bay, even our relationship to the political realm, to the economy, and to freedom – these are guided by the ebbs and flows of a current.
These currents are bigger than us, and to grapple with them by ourselves is impossible. But together, with a community of people, we can start.
I’ve found an editor’s note to be only as good as the work that follows it. Spread throughout this edition are so many special voices, new perspectives, and novel pieces of work from across our campus. Because of their efforts, I couldn’t be any prouder of how this publication turned out. I hope you’ll enjoy reading it as much as we did making it!
Michael Gergeni Editor-in-Chief
Dear reader,
We are constantly participating in movements—across space and time, actively or passively, consciously or unconsciously. What makes the element of conscious or unconscious participation interesting in the context of social movements is that, unbeknownst to everyone, a belief grows. This belief is not rooted in religion, nor does it resemble a cult-like following. Rather, it is a belief in an expected and desired outcome - otherwise known as hope.
In 2024, the world broke the 1.5°C barrier, and reactions to this reality have been varied. One notable response has been apathy. This pervasive mindset has reemerged in the late 2010s as our generation, Gen Z, grows into adulthood and grapples with the reality of increasing economic inequality and the bleak reality of climate change. I, too, have encountered this mindset firsthand.
In high school, I attempted to start a green club. While gathering signatures during lunch, I frequently faced peers who questioned why I continued to fight this “inevitable” force. Why fight climate change, they asked, if these extreme events, life-altering effects, and the unstoppable force of nature are largely outside of our control as highschoolers? At times, I struggled to respond. It’s true that the majority of emissions come from those with immense wealth or companies that wield far more influence than we do as individuals. Knowing this may dampen any individual action taken, as whatever effects come of this often feel as though they don’t matter. Still, I did my best to answer and pressed on.
When I first had the idea for the divestment bill in my
sophomore year, I talked it over with some campus leaders I deeply respect. They called me “crazy,” “delusional,” and “slightly out of touch with reality” for being 19 years old and wanting to write legislation.
When running for Student Body President, I had little idea of what the position would entail. Nonetheless, I dove right in. It turns out that I would encounter interpersonal conflict, endless politicking with vice chancellors and other student council members, and countless hours being spent in meetings. I would find myself questioning if I even wanted to be in the role, and knowing that others were doing the same. But I knew that there was value in maintaining a constant presence to UI administration, maintaining that fossil fuel divestment matters. I knew that the personal connections this position offered could have and has helped us in our movement.
Through all of this, I have continued working toward what I believe in. Call it stubbornness, a refusal to concede, naivety, or something else. But perhaps this belief I carry is an unwavering, unrelenting will to fuel the hope I have. I call this “willingness-in-hope.”
However we move forward as a movement to divest our University, I believe that this willingness-in-hope is a key component of turning a desire for an outcome into action and believing that it will succeed. So far, I have experienced many who have questioned their role in life and what they can do in fighting climate change. But to this I question, “what can’t you do?”
Why not believe in an outcome so intensely you are prepared to hurdle over anything life or others may throw at you? Why not believe in yourself so completely that you
are willing to move mountains for what you believe in? Perhaps you have posed the question to yourself of “What change can I make as an individual?” just as I have many times and continue to do. The answer that has come to my mind everytime is “why can’t I make a change?”
“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” For as cheesy as this Dr. Seuss quote is, I have taken it with me since highschool and I believe it has truly transformed the work that I do. The activism we have chosen to focus on requires an enormous amount of energy, time, drive, and belief from us. I hope my story highlights just how much we need.
Our hope is a desire for a livable world as we grow into adults. Our willingness to get us there fuels the hope we have. Let us go into every organizational charge and fight every setback with the unrelenting willingness in our hope that these hurdles in our movement don’t matterthat one day we will succeed.
I want to leave you, reader, with this: carry hope with you. It’s very important. Perhaps the other side of this coin to the success of our movement is the will in our hope to get us there. Carry this unrelenting, defying, sometimes outright absurd fuel with you. Take this and share it with others. Imagine what we could do if everyone carried this with them.
The fight to save our world is decades long, but we have no time to lose.
With unyielding, unbending, and unshakable hope,
Rudy LaFave
By: Ariana Mizan
These companion pieces, Exodus and The Deeper End, explore the dynamics of current and resistance—forces both literal and metaphorical. In electrical terms, current (I) represents the flow of charge, serving as a metaphor for societal momentum and the inexorable passage of time. Resistance (R), a material’s tendency to oppose that continuous flow, manifests in our constant struggle against these forces—our fight for pause, for truth, for meaning in an ever-evolving world.
In Exodus, resistance is internal. The soul, caught in the chaotic surge of identity and virtue, resists its own impulses and fears. It grapples with the pull of deeper self-awareness and authenticity, suspended between retreat and growth.
The Deeper End shifts to external resistance. The speaker is submerged in an aphotic world, where unseen forces press and pull. Survival becomes an act of defiance—fighting to stay afloat under the suffocating weight of what cannot be controlled.
Together, these poems reflect how current and resistance shape the human experience. It may always seem easier to yield—to the current of tradition, time, and the way of our world—but even so, we might choose to struggle against it, striving to alter its course for the better. Such an attempt may feel impossible and take time, but even in the strongest currents, resistance endures.
My soul led an exodus And my best virtues escaped me Without consent. For one moment, I was real.
I believed in chaos, In something larger than myself. Then I grew lost and Too afraid of conscience–Lacking, or impulse.
I prefer the shallower end, Where nothing stirs or goes mad. But I cannot allow myself to swim there.
II. The Deeper End
March straight through the aphotic, With arms stretched out, For braille. Moses can’t part the sea today.
Avoid what rots In the dark.
Blubber dissipates in your mouth. Don’t swallow.
Kick with both legs, How you learned to tread in the deep end, When you were eight.
Slice your wax ankles. And kick harder andHarder.
And sink like the dead blue whale.
By: Spencer Durnell
To afford the benefit of the doubt in regards to our environment, our livelihoods, our future is the most dangerous occupation of the mind today. This doubt is laid upon the virtues of a free-marketed, fossil-fueled capitalism to right the wrongs seen as a natural consequence of progress.
Industrial humanity has, in recent centuries, solidly established itself as the ultimate regulators and dominators of land, toil, and life. New toys developed from the industrialist pursuit have created the means by which to completely uproot our natural systems. With rising efficiency, the destruction is shared with our human systems. The economic vehicle for this project is capitalism. Its fuel? Coal, oil, gas, and exploited labor.
More exactly, the aggressive expansion of modern development has consistently undermined the environment in every conceivable dimension. Agriculture involves widespread soil erosion, ecosystem dysfunction, pest and invasive species reintroduction, and yield diminishments as a result of activities such as intensification, monocropping, and unregulated pesticides. Pollution in our air and water propagates everywhere. Diverse ecosystems such as prairies and forests are torn apart to make way for
vigorous production. And most importantly, the fossil fuels used to solidify these habits have created emissions that put the entire globe in disarray. Wildfires, droughts, hurricanes, floods, and other weather phenomena are seen now in greater proportion and intensity. Agriculturally feasible regions are being undone. Rising temperatures are making uninhabitable large swaths of our marine and terrestrial habitats, as well as our homes.
In spite of the empirical destruction occurring before our eyes, we must not forget what it’s all for. How might we ever possibly conceive of lifting ourselves out of this vast wilderness in the pursuit of progress? There is a cost, for sure, and it comes at the expense of the environment. But let us be honest: the environment is simply a means to an end. Its key value to us is in its rich resources, to be carved up and distributed to the most entrepreneurial spirits. To the victor belongs the spoils, and the environment was simply too idle to defend itself. If the environment is truly at risk, let the markets, guided by the consumer, dictate its outcome.
But what if I told you that this system, cultivated for manufactured consent by the oligarchs of the American hegemony, is not even to the benefit of the people? In the course of capitalist development, we still find, in one of the most materially wealthy countries mind you, widespread stratification. Wages are largely unlivable, despite hand over fist annual increases in profit and productivity. The costs of housing, groceries, healthcare, and education are staggeringly high. Corruption and undemocratic practice loom large. The development of cities and towns are least integrative to the building of community, even at its environmental costs. Voices of concern are fragmented, isolated, being condemned either as “radical left
In discrete moments we are gullible to the entrepreneurial prophets and their political bedfellows who speak easy about innovation, progress, and development to build a brighter future. These same souls conduct a less-than-moderate agenda and the prouder recognize this. This is all to take the capitalist project to its final form.” “
lunatics” to be feared or “blue-haired social justice warriors” to be mocked. But the pursuit of capital, heralded under the guise of just market forces, has convinced us as being the key to uplift, to prosperity. In discrete moments we are gullible to the entrepreneurial prophets and their political bedfellows who speak easy about innovation, progress, and development to build a brighter future. These same souls conduct a less-than-moderate agenda and the prouder recognize this. This is all to take the capitalist project to its final form. Regulations, especially environmental regulations, are seen as red tape, to be removed to make markets “freer”. Austerity measures are cutting open social services and opening the gate for privatization wholewise. An energy crisis is appropriated to rationalize fossil fuel dependencies.
Make no mistake, what comes of this project is the acceleration of both human and environmental devastation.
Its sources are clear as crystal. Decades of market perversions have left us with this venerable wasteland, admired for its productivity, but with an appetite for destruction that is shamefully glanced over. We have forfeited the greater gift of life in service of simple muscle memory. Profit over everything is the motive; progress can be an accidental byproduct, but is not necessary to realize short-term gains. Real ingenuity, real innovation is taken advantage of and seldom rewarded. Its scant appearances in contemporary developments are cited as proof of success while the rest of history is forgotten. The ahistorical model is thrust upon us to springboard an oligarchic agenda that fills few pockets.
With this in mind, let me say this: the heavy weight of the market in solving environmental issues is not practical or pragmatic; it is a complex, an ideological obsession. The environment is not merely the background or the context for human life. It creates and facilitates all life. It is necessarily invaluable, for without it, we cannot create any constructive way of life. Without its protection, we lose everything. Sharing its value with ourselves is bold but not contradictory. It is to our great convenience that the process that halts human prosperity is the same one that halts environmental prosperity. By dealing its killing blow, we can begin to build on both.
Unfortunately, in the path of change, we hit a wall of oppressive, normalized roadblocks. Our transportation, consumption, and overall ways of life are inseparable from fossil capital; there is an entrapment from care. We struggle to identify with the land because it is no longer seen as intrinsic and free. Even among those who acknowledge environmental destruction, there is an air of indifference. Community, too, is seen more as an idealized
The environment is not merely the background or the context for human life. It creates and facilitates all life. It is necessarily invaluable, for without it, we cannot create any constructive way of life. Without its protection, we lose everything.
abstraction than a tangible, workable reality. Through unspoken words and banal actions the path of entry for a constructive environmental conversation is blocked. Efforts by the concerned few are met in response with trite, performative gestures by policymakers and cards-holders. With attrition comes submission and subsequent milestones of suffering. Our ill minds and dispirited hearts, fragmented from the violent whiplash, hold out still against the milquetoast reactions of speculators and politicians.
To this concern, let me ask you this question: have their reactions been enough? Has this not been over all these years just a charade of care, when the real transitions have yet to take place? Is there, truly, an interest in building a better future for our children and our children’s children? No. We are forced into the role of consumer, made to pursue what is here, right now, in the highest quantity, as often as possible. Our agency is stripped away as the capitalist machine carries on and the violence pours over. What we see today is no change. It is a doubling down. Only in the breaking away from this framework could we dare to move forward and seek change. Otherwise we stumble in the doldrums of false promise.
We once had the privilege of time to settle into our own wholesome frameworks of environmental norms and ethics. Arne Naess speaks of an ecosophy, Aldo Leopold of a land ethic. That time has expired. The destruction of the land is material; it is all around us and, despite best efforts, it cannot be ignored. There are now two routes: change or denial. And the one who speaks of a “free and just market” driving sustainable development is one who speaks of denial.
35.57221° N, 83.18161° W
By: Emily Mair
By: Sauryam Shrestha
Shifting skies through the scorching glass Sheen an orange brass, Lacking possible sights of purity.
My windows smolder from capital greed As specks of gray riddle the air, Infinitely unaware of the home they once used to be.
“Their neighborhood mourns,” Disregarding the souls
Of scattered families and thorns Lingering patiently for the next sun to appear.
Staring into the soul of the star, Willful fires flee afar.
I’m frightened by this long formed affinity
That this warmth may burn indefinitely Without the call to change.
By: Trevor Benos
The first few weeks of the Trump administration have given us plenty of reasons to live in fear. There are seemingly no checks on his power: his aides are nothing more than yes-men, Congress is just as far-right as he is, and even the Supreme Court has been stacked with Trump-appointed justices. In the few short weeks he’s been in office, he has already done immense and irreparable damage to our nation, passing executive orders that have taken away the rights and safety of my loved ones. He pulled out of the Paris Climate Accords almost instantly, and has taken a draconian stance on queer and trans rights. While these policies ultimately can be reversed, that won’t come without four years of suffering.
It certainly feels like we’re miles away from change. On campus, I feel like I’ve been screaming into the void about fossil fuel divestment for years. Nationally, our own house rep barely listens to us. Champaign-Urbana is one of the most left-leaning communities in the country, yet we are represented by a woman who voted in favor of the Laken Riley act. We overwhelmingly voted in favor of divestment from Israel and their atrocities, yet Julia Rietz has levied some of the harshest charges against pro-Palestinian protestors in the country. That shouldn’t happen in a representative democracy. Representatives are meant to reflect the will of their people; Nikki Budzinski and Julia Rietz stand to the right of even the median Democrat in
Champaign-Urbana. It’s also a part of the reason that I’ve almost lost hope in the federal government. Are things ever getting better? Is there even a reason to be optimistic anymore? Can our planet handle four more years of Trump’s policies? If everyone in government has truly been bought by Big Oil and AIPAC, then probably not. Yet, I refuse to give up. If my time in C-U has taught me anything, it’s that there are strong, empathetic, and resilient people all around us, and that community will not stop fighting.
There’s work being done on the ground every day to keep our communities safe, and that’s more impactful than anything the federal government can do. Whether we like it or not, our government can only take us so close to liberation. It can take us to the right, as we’ve seen throughout 2025. That has not stopped our community from delivering food to the homeless, protesting for Palestine, protecting Latine communities from ICE
raids, and, yes, doing whatever they can to create a better Earth. The rising threat of American fascism has not, and it will not, strip Champaign-Urbana of the empathy that has defined us for decades, and it will not stop us from having the uncomfortable conversations that make our world a better, stronger, and more equitable place. When given the opportunity, our Urbana community voted to divest from fossil fuels– this serves as a powerful indicator of our desire to change. It’s a sign that our community wants what’s best for the planet, and will do what it takes to make that happen.
This is not to suggest that we are perfect. Like our federal government, we are fractured, and while we’re farther away from the root of the problem, we still have so much to address. At least on campus, we’ve made what should be the most radically inclusive community in the country feel like an elitist group predicated on pre-existing connections. The barrier of entry is just too high, and it’s just too hard to get activist groups to trust even other activist groups. While the trust issues are somewhat justified, our constant arguing over seemingly minor differences aren’t. Even on campus, there are two coalitions of activist organizations working on similar goals, and while they are different, they fundamentally aim to serve the same purpose– that alone illustrates the division in our community. We have so many difficult conversations to have, covering everything from the role of the Democratic party in leftism to the very ways we define solidarity and liberation. In this moment, where left-wing motivation is seemingly at an all time high, the organizational conversations we have today will define the next 20+ years of community advocacy. They will be divisive, and dramatic, and ugly, but they will ultimately guide us to a more effective and inclusive movement.
True liberation is for everyone, not just those we agree with. These are conversations that happen at home, not in Congress.” “
There is a road to the change we want to see. It’s just a long one, and it requires work from everyone. We need to keep having conversations about how we want our future to look, and how we can keep our community safe. These are the conversations that will help us fight for meaningful climate legislation, hopefully by the 2026 midterm elections. They’re the conversations that will redefine how we discuss the intersectionality of class and climate justice, and they’re the conversations that will lead to a more organized global left. While these conversations happen, we simultaneously need to reach across the aisle, having conversations with conservatives rooted in genuine concern for their problems. This process will be hard. Yet, it is imperative that we simultaneously both refine and grow our movement; true liberation is for everyone, not just those we agree with. These are conversations that happen at home, not in Congress.
Communities like this rebuild. They take hits, sure, but they do bounce back. We’ve been keeping each other safe long before Trump, and we’ll be protecting each other long after he’s gone. While our federal government is seemingly withering away before our eyes, our community is rallying around each other. The compassion and resilience that I’ve seen from my neighbors has given me the hope to keep learning, to keep organizing, and above all else, to keep fighting for a brighter tomorrow.
By: Henry Bemis
By: Henry Bemis
So, in effect, that version of you is trapped there. Well…Well, I mean, not trapped, but… But what? No, no. I’m curious. What were you gonna say? Not trapped, but what? What were you saying?
Severance, S01E01, “Good News About Hell.” Dan Erickson & Ben Stiller, 18 February 2022.
It would be strange in most cases to see one’s reflection in a dog, but I suggest that we try.
Data from UC Davis shows that sniffer dogs used by law enforcement are prone to produce false positives against people of color (POC) – that is, they select POC for further searches at a rate elevated above that of white people without being any more likely to find contraband.1 But dogs don’t understand race, so the conclusion that they harbor resentment against POC would be illogical. Nor do dogs understand what contraband is, making any explanation based on pattern recognition illogical, contrary to the data, or both. It makes much more sense, as the researchers here did conclude, that the dogs simply mirror the biases of their handlers who treat POC with more scrutiny.
It doesn’t matter at all to the dogs whether they perform their searches accurately or not, or whether they’re any help at all keeping contraband off the street. They’re rewarded for finding contraband when they do, but they hardly understand what objects mean to humans and they certainly don’t have a hand in the system they’re a part of. They know what a good job looks like, but not what a bad job looks like. They’re perfect in theory precisely because they don’t understand these things. But that critical element of human bias persists because it’s not a simple sorting task, and the incentives of the dog to go along are in no way straightforward.
What’s necessary throughout the career of an employed dog - and before it, the thing that’s important enough that
1 Lit, Lisa, Lisa B. Schweitzer, and Anita M. Oberbauer. “Handler Beliefs Affect Scent Detection Dog Outcomes.” Animal Cognition 14 (2011): 387–94. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-0100373-2.
a candidate is rejected from his training without it - is a desire to keep his human handler happy. This story does not end with a mathematically-predictable tendency for error. There is a clear overlap, a bleeding-through, between the two jobs the dogs have. They cannot perform their sorting task without being in the good favor of their handlers because they’d be retired if they weren’t, and they cannot be in the good favor of their handlers, for the most part, without doing their job well.
This power disparity has created not just a circular relationship between two tasks that might appear unrelated, but a trap, a cage within that circularity that the dog can’t escape, formed by the plain reality of who controls the food and the even more oppressive reality of who understands the task. The dog thus cannot do either of these things well. Either he complies with his handler’s biases and does a poor job searching, or he ignores his handler’s biases and performs his searches faithfully, in the latter case disappointing what is clearly a deeply-entrenched desire to follow his handler through anything. The dog only knows that he’s done his job wrong when he gets retired. Something has clearly been corrupted to make this possible, and especially so to make it so reliable; how can something be natural if it cannot even be done right?
I propose that humans do this as well. We can make our own choices, but understanding what’s really expected of us is much harder than making any individual decision or any several individual decisions. It’s also hard to understand how we’ve grown around those expectations, like a tree growing around an old hatchet stuck in its trunk. We cannot replace the eternal discomfort of a life we have no say in with the temporary satisfaction of going along with the things that demand our loyalty. This
“
We cannot replace the eternal discomfort of a life we have no say in with the temporary satisfaction of going along with the things that demand our loyalty. This might be the easiest way to go about life, but these tasks become more impossible as more is asked of us.”
might be the easiest way to go about life, but these tasks become more impossible as more is asked of us.
This year, we’re expected to look for jobs that won’t exist and housing that won’t be affordable next year, when we’ll be asked to do the same all over again. We’re expected to avert our eyes from the way things are and look instead to the future when things will certainly be worse again. We’re asked to be loyal to politicians that will change their programs in two weeks. Every order eventually makes itself obsolete and every task requires a whole, enthusiastic investment right before it changes and we start over, or we realize that we’ve just been doing it wrong. We feel that we make our own choices on these matters, but without the possibility of rebelling or abstaining entirely, that can’t really be the case. A system that cannot justify its existence on its own gives us affirmative proof of its own decay, and modern life does not justify itself. It simply survives on its own inertia, an inertia it cannot control or is not willing to control, covering up the past again and again while dreaming that the same bad paint job will
look better next year. So it is rotting.
Think of the laws that can’t be justified, the injustices that go unrecognized, and the powers our government grants itself that it cannot specify a use for. Think of the religious and cultural traditions that exist simply because they exist and nobody can tell you why. Think of billboards and borders. Every pursuit that creates joy, even the trivial ones like a trip to the river to watch the geese or a picnic in a meadow, have a ready and plain justification. But the things that affect us the most and are most dangerous to us have no ready justification, and we can’t even debate their virtue or purpose because nobody would listen. Why are the most dangerous things the ones we understand the least?
It’s probably because we’re not meant to understand them. Life is meant to feel like a hard pill to swallow which must be swallowed whole. Sniffer dogs have to accept both of their jobs at once, and we have to accept all 50 of ours. The proof of this is at once everywhere and nowhere, because seeing it depends on what we consider proof. There is a certain permeance of daydreams, illusions, and mere concepts in our life that cannot be explained unless they were the foundation of almost everything. For example, there is the daydream of popularity and conformity, or the daydream of landing a fulfilling desk job; there’s the illusion of a politician that works for the people; and there are the concepts of a good American, a good Christian, or a good student. Anybody you ask might know a popular person with a good job in a good office, or they might name a politician they still believe in, or they themselves might be proud to be a good American, a good Christian, or a good student. But actually being in the favor of such an impersonal system can never be
guaranteed. It thus can only be an illusion, even when one feels that the illusion has been realized and their wishes have been granted – they’re still just wishes.
The idea of a good person, by contrast, is mostly objective. It can expand and contract a bit, but everybody knows generally what a good person is and does, and almost everybody can think of one very good person from some point in their life. Why, then, does the concept of being a “good American” matter more to Americans, and that of being a “good Christian” matter more to Christians, and so on, more than the concept of being a good person? Why do we shy away from the one thing actually in reach and in our control? Why is it that every new frontier of life, every new adventure to be had, comes with a new loyalty to earn and a new task to be given while we ignore the reality that these things we’re loyal to would exist all the same without us? The only explanation is that we long ago became comfortable with blind repetition. Self-propagation without any connection to the guiding principles of the world, like basic freedom and compassion, is akin to misery and can only produce misery. Rarely ever do we remind ourselves that we are human, so the misery becomes easy to slip into.
Stray dogs living in packs in Moscow and Istanbul will share food and shelter with their friends, but a working dog in America does not understand how his kind used to live, and how many still do live, and he is left to search somewhere else for his sense of self. So he looks to his handler. But humans go much further in pursuit of loyalty than these dogs do, probably even with less self-awareness. Dogs dutifully go to work every day as long as they’re fed, but humans go to work and to war as long as they’re ordered to, even if they’re not fed, and even if
Why is it that every new frontier of life, every new adventure to be had, comes with a new loyalty to earn and a new task to be given while we ignore the reality that these things we’re loyal to would exist all the same without us? The only explanation is that we long ago became comfortable with blind repetition.
those orders are now just echoes through a long hallway. Like dogs, our desire to be okay with the things asked of us will lead us to increasingly more impossible and unbearable tasks. We will lose track of what is really ours and what is just an imitation. And we will lose ourselves.
The logical next question is what can be done. The answer hides in the question itself. The entire dynamic I describe is hard to recognize and harder to accept, but once we begin thinking about being trapped, we immediately start thinking about being free. Even the concept of freedom is a Chekhov’s gun of sorts; just like we would not be caught up in these tiring, circular illusions if we hadn’t long ago accepted illusions as our purpose, we would not find the idea of freedom running like a current beneath all our conversations if it were not the only natural end of those conversations. Chekhov said that it’s wrong to make promises you don’t mean to keep, and we can only talk about being free for so long until we have to seriously consider whether we’re really free at all. To the question of what can be done, the answer is not simple, but it will start with making a promise to yourself that you can keep. Promise yourself that you won’t put up with the things that make you feel trapped. Give yourself a destiny you understand and can hold in your own hands.
by Tori Arduini
When Earth runs out of ink, the flowers will bloom gray. The birds will keep on chirping, but they will have less to say.
Clear skies are never blue, so don’t bother looking up. Dollar bills remain green— go on, try to fill your cup.
When Earth runs out of ink, seasons will blend together. No golden hues marking fall, just subtly cooler weather.
Branches shed their design of vibrant leaves turned pale, and when they bud in the spring, they grow mournful and frail.
Our fingers are stained black from the colors that bleed. Can we repaint the roses?
Can we bury our greed? We’ve traded the planet, ended up on the brink. Who will you choose to blame when Earth runs out of ink?
When Earth runs out of ink, the fashion gals will wail, “Color’s just a passing phase. All the cool kids dress in pale.”
They’ll strut monochrome fits, feigning freedom in their choices. Can’t tell one from the other— muted threads, muted voices.
When Earth runs out of ink, patriots will face the flag. The red has lost its luster, the blue has begun to drag.
The right points fingers left, the left points fingers right. The bees fly ‘round in circles, no colors guiding their flight.
Our fingers are stained black from the colors that bleed. Can we repaint the roses?
Can we bury our greed?
We’ve traded the planet, ended up on the brink. Who will you choose to blame when Earth runs out of ink?
Blame your enemies. Blame your neighbors. Blame the government and the silenced obeyers. Blame the rich. Blame the poor. Blame yourself— you could have done more.
Our fingers are stained black from the colors that bleed. Can we repaint the roses? Can we bury our greed?
We’ve traded the planet, ended up on the brink. Who will you choose to blame when Earth runs out of ink?
By: Gavin Volker
Last year, the International Energy Agency, an intergovernmental organization that provides policy recommendations for 31 member countries, released a shocking statistic.1 The per capita emissions of the average American in 2023 was 13.3 tons of CO2. For comparison, the Environmental Protection Agency states that this amount is roughly equivalent to burning nearly 15,000 pounds of coal. But how do our numbers stack up when put on the global stage? They stack up quite poorly, in fact. The IEA also reports that per capita emissions in Japan and the E.U. were 8.1 tons and 5.4 tons respectively. Imagine, after seeing our jaw-droppingly high figures, you wished to lower your carbon footprint. You immediately sell your car and opt to walk, bike, or take public transportation to every destination. If you were a roughly average commuter, the EPA estimates your vehicle to emit 4.6 tons of CO2 annually. Congratulations, your personal carbon footprint is now 8.7 tons per year.
What makes your emissions so high? You cut out a massive polluter from your everyday routine and still rank worse than citizens in other countries. Americans can switch to LED bulbs and be more cognizant of their food
1 International Energy Agency. “CO2 Total Emissions per Capita by Region, 2000-2023,” February 27, 2024.
waste, but we will still continue to have quite high per capita emissions. To figure out why, we must look towards emissions that are not directly caused by us, but funded by us.
When you receive a paycheck from your job, a little portion is taken out to fund governmental activities. Surely you’re familiar with this concept: it’s taxation; those funds can be a big contributor to our per capita emissions. For example, one of the largest areas of government spending is defense, at $686.1 billion in 2019. According to the Department of Defense themselves, they emitted approximately 55 million tons of CO2 equivalents in that year.1 That is the same annual output as nearly 12 million vehicles on the road.
Another polluting activity our politicians decide to fund with our taxes is road and highway maintenance and construction. The U.S. Census Bureau revealed that in 2021, total government spending on this infrastructure reached $206 billion. This figure is expected to rise due to the additional, later-approved $110 billion for general transportation projects. Determining the emissions of all this is incredibly tricky and no one would be able to agree on an exact figure. But not only is road construction a task with high emissions in the first place, it also creates induced demand. With new roads being built and current roads being improved upon, it makes people want to drive more often, and to greater lengths.
While data on this topic isn’t always readily available, the International Monetary Fund states that the United States averages around $2 billion in annual spending for fossil
1 U.S. Department of Defense. “Department of Defense Plan to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions,” 2023. https://media.defense.gov/2023/Jun/16/2003243454/-1/-1/1/2023-DODPLAN-TO-REDUCE-GREENHOUSE-GAS-EMISSIONS.PDF.
fuel subsidies.1 This may seem like a small figure in comparison to the budgets previously mentioned, but that goes straight towards the destruction of our planet. Withgovernment funds still being funneled to a world-ending industry, it isn’t much of a surprise that greener energy alternatives aren’t getting the attention they deserve. This is why the U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that in 2023, fossil fuel use accounted for 60% of our country’s electricity generation. Every time you do a load of laundry, charge your phone, or run your coffee machine, you are likely using fossil fuels in some capacity.
While the stance of this article is that one should not hyperfocus on their personal emissions, this is not an abdication of personal responsibility. In fact it is quite the opposite, it is our generation that has the greatest duty of them all. We must advocate for environmentally conscious ways of spending our tax dollars. We need to hold our elected representatives accountable and make it known that we demand less emissions. Continue to use public transit and recycle at every possible opportunity, just know that our obligation to the planet and its inhabitants does not stop there. When our country stops polluting in taxpayer-funded activities and aids in the development of cleaner energy sources, then our per capita emissions might look more comparable to our friends in the European Union.
Previous generations sat idly by as they emitted, unaware of the damage they were causing. We are not granted that same luxury. Knowledge is a burden and with that, we must act. Call your representative, join a protest, or write a letter, it doesn’t matter what you do as long as you do something. Your voice must be heard and there’s no time like the present.
1 International Monetary Fund. “Fossil Fuel Subsidies,” n.d. https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/climate-change/energy-subsidies.
... it is our generation that has the greatest duty of them all.
We must advocate for environmentally conscious ways of spending our tax dollars. We need to hold our elected representatives accountable and make it known that we demand less emissions.
By: Klaudia Babel
While the college syllabus has been renowned for due dates and assignment weights, a new wave in advancing technology has implemented a new section into nearly every class curriculum: usage of generative AI and ChatGPT. Since OpenAI’s initial release of ChatGPT in 2018, the program has gained traction among students for its ability to simplify homework assignments down to a quick query on the website. As great as it sounds to just ask the computer to do your homework for you, AI has disastrous effects on education and the environment - ones that can be reduced if you pay attention to what AI actually means for the future.
But first, what is AI and how does it work? AI stands for artificial intelligence, a term describing how computers utilize data sets given to them by a computer programer to analyze and “learn” the information. This process is called machine learning, and it allows the computer to use its knowledge for photo recognition, personalized assistants, product recommendations, and, in the case of ChatGPT, generative AI. However, in addition to general information and data, computer programmers feed
generative AI models data on speech patterns, making the model able to generate answers in a form that replicates human phrasing. These models are called Natural Language Processing (NLP) engines, which can synthesize sentences based on a request given by a user. This advancement in computer science has skyrocketed in popularity, but what caused this surge in NLP development? And what does it mean for future generations?
As of 2024, ChatGPT has found itself in the browser history of nearly 86% of college students. A survey conducted by the Digital Education Council, which spanned across 16 countries and over 3,500 college students, asked students on their usage and their opinions on AI for educational purposes. 69% of the students in the study use it in place of a search engine like Google or Bing. Some of the other reported uses of AI among the surveyed students include 42% using it to check grammar, 33% for summarizing documents, 28% for paraphrasing, and 24% using it to generate a first draft of a paper. When asked about how AI should be used in a university setting, 59% of students say that they would like a deeper integration of AI in classrooms like using it to generate practice exam questions or check homework.1 While using an artificial assistant to help with schoolwork might seem innocent, the long-term effects of cognitive offloading and technology dependence are affecting students’ ability to utilize and form critical thinking skills.
1 Digital Education Council. “AI or Not AI: What Students Want.” Global AI Student Survey 2024, 2024. https://26556596.fs1.hubspotusercontent-eu1.net/hubfs/26556596/Digital%20 Education%20Council%20Global%20AI%20Student%20Survey%202024.pdf?utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-92dYGcjODcsDAT_dPLtZ9Ee58tT4lsENpmLu8JtVX48MN8iGjWt3UZWRjvjOyzXbqclVYZIIZEoBFs8tQL4DZcxqMFYQ&_hsmi=92199303&utm_content=92199303&utm_source=hs_automation.
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While using an artificial assistant to help with schoolwork might seem innocent, the long-term effects of cognitive offloading and technology dependence are affecting students’ ability to utilize and form critical thinking skills.”
Foresight and Sustainability at the Swiss Business School in Zurich investigated the correlation between AI utilization and ability to think critically. The results, unsurprisingly but terrifyingly, found a negative correlation between generative AI tool use and critical thinking and a positive correlation between AI tool use and cognitive offloading, which refers to the brain’s dependence on technology or other tools to reduce the workload the brain must withstand.1 Simply put: using AI reduces the amount of work your brain is doing, thereby reducing the power that your brain has. Cutting corners by using AI depletes your brain’s ability to exercise those critical thinking and analytical skills which are not just nice to have, but necessary for being able to get an education, creating art and music, finding a job, understanding government and society, making decisions, and overall being a real person. These findings, coupled with approximately 40% of young children in the US performing under their grade level literacy abilities, paint a doomed picture for the
1 Gerlich, Michael. “AI Tools in Society: Impacts on Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking.” Societies 15, no. 6 (2025). https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.3390/soc15010006.
future of childhood education with AI.1 With a growing dependency on technology in education, younger students will not exercise the ability to analyze information and develop critical thinking skills which are, well, critical to grow into lifelong learners.
A popular phrase that warns against AI use is that the cost of one ChatGPT search costs the same as wasting a gallon of water. AI, due to its complexity and vastness of materials, utilizes an egregious amount of both physical and nonphysical resources to function. To train an AI model to be able to perform any of the aforementioned possible functions, it takes around 313 tons of CO2 waste, the equivalent amount of CO2 that one person produces in 1 year, or 18 times the amount that Taylor Swift has produced with her private jet. Using the model and keeping it updated with new data, however, effectively doubles the amount of CO2 it produces every 3.4 months. The usage of AI also produces tons of “e-waste”, which are hazardous chemicals like lead, calcium, and cadmium that can pollute soil and water systems if not disposed of properly. 2This information begs the question: if AI is so terrible for the environment, why are we using it? Much like aerosol cans in the 80’s, the environmental effects of AI aren’t publicized due to the lack of transparency from companies that create and manage the NLP models that have struck gold in a market where the daily consumer is a teenager looking to skip their homework in favor of scrolling on TikTok or any task that requires less brain work than sitting down and “locking in.” No one pays attention to the effects of a bad thing if it benefits them directly.
1 National Literacy Institute. “2024-2025 Literacy Statistics,” 2025. https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/2024-2025literacy-statistics.
2 Kanungo, Alokya. “The Real Environmental Impact of AI.” Earth.Org, July 18, 2023. https:// earth.org/the-green-dilemma-can-ai-fulfil-its-potential-without-harming-the-environment/.
So, what can we do about AI – or rather, what should we do? First, it is important to recognize that technologicaladvancements will always be accompanied by protests. A decade ago, teachers were rampant against using Google and Wikipedia for assignments, instead advising the utilization of “old-school” methods, like dictionaries and thesauruses; now, both platforms are widespread and ubiquitous to a student’s repertoire. But should we be so quick to welcome ChatGPT to our search bars, especially since it’s so damaging to our societal ability to think critically? While AI is terrible for our future, it’s hard to ignore the truth: AI is super cool. However, just because you can use it doesn’t mean you should. Writing a rough draft for your essay? Instead of throwing the prompt into ChatGPT and submitting what comes out, write a sentence that summarizes each paragraph that you want to write. From there, expand on your ideas using nothing but your own brain and write a couple more sentences till you realize, hey! You’ve written a whole rough draft of a paper! Want to use AI to summarize a reading you need to do for your class? Skim the first paragraph, then the second one, and keep skimming until you get the general idea and you can reread from the top for the nitty-gritty details. Using AI to find a quick answer for a question? Dude, just Google it. When has ol’ reliable Google ever failed anyone? The most important thing to acknowledge with AI is that it profits off the idea that people aren’t willing to exert the mental bandwidth it takes to not use it. Pay attention to the ways that we as a species have become dependent on making our lives easier with technology and realize that an A on a paper doesn’t mean anything if AI wrote it and your professor used AI to grade it.
AI functions on the premise that it only knows as much as the people that made it; so, when the future engineers,
lawyers, doctors, and other professionals are using AI to cop out of doing their homework, where does that leave us as a species? Is it nihilistic to absorb the impending technological annexation by admitting that technology is going to take over eventually, so why not now? Is the doomsday situation that ends the world the global takeover from a screen servant that knows you better than you do? Do rising sea levels take out humanity because you were too lazy to do your history essay or your physics homework? The encroachment of technology in our daily lives is making people dependent on screens, so the best thing to do is recognize how you use technology in your daily life. Do you need to fill the empty space in your day with mindless scrolling? Is ChatGPT actually helping you do your homework? Instead of resorting to technology, can you solve the problems in your life by just thinking? René Descartes, French philosopher, once uttered the famous phrase, “I think therefore I am.” If you let a computer think for you, what are you?
By: Margaret Schmidt
By: Margaret Schmidt
By: Margaret Schmidt
By: Margaret Schmidt
By: Grayson Hodson
Meeting with an elected official is always a gamble; you never know whether they are genuinely interested in hearing your thoughts or are simply fulfilling the duty of constituent services. However, during my last visit to Springfield, Illinois, as my colleague and I sat across from one Democratic representative, I knew that our luck had struck out – their mind was made long before our discussion. Having taken the meeting under the pretense that we were advocating for HB 1155 – a bill requiring the University of Illinois to divest from fossil fuels—I knew it would be difficult to find willing ears.
The reality is that most legislators have little reason to listen to people like me because they know that as environmental advocates, we truly hold no power over them.
Companies have monopolized the people’s ability to lobby legislation, distorting it into a bidding war with politicians as the products, leaving their “profit motive” to dictate policy. Even those who ostensibly support our movement are firmly in the grasp of monied interests.
Fleets of corporate lobbyists bombard local and federal politicians daily, engaging in multiple strategies to influence policy — giving direction as to which legislation is in the elected official’s best interest to pass. Various forms of legalized bribery enable these corporate forces to utilize the most possible leverage when coaxing votes out of politicians, with the lure of fundraising being the most powerful.
Lobbyists and politicians understand this dynamic alike: corporate lobbyists will offer fundraising events to powerful legislators, which will be reciprocated with an open ear. Of course, these politicians don’t have to consider these opinions when it comes time to vote on legislation, but they will, lest fundraising events cease. And since legislator’s first priority is re-election — at whatever cost — they follow willingly.
However, some want more than re-election, even if that means sacrificing their integrity.
Legislators most loyal to the corporate agenda will often – not coincidently – be offered lobbying careers with salaries exceptionally higher than when they were government officials. This is referred to as the “revolving door” of government and is the most blatant form of legalized bribery lobbying firms engage in.
These corrupt methods have directed the attention of our elected officials away from the most dire existential threat facing everybody on this planet, climate change.
The domino-like effects that follow from inaction won’t only hurt wildlife, forests, and glaciers, but will also lead
to societal collapse as sea levels rise, wildfires increase, and hurricanes wipe away coastal cities.
However, we must remember that it’s never too late for change. Moving away from fossil fuel dependency and toward sustainability is our only option to save the environment – regardless of its possible effects on Big Oil’s stock price.
This is still a democracy, and we, the people, have the power to make this change. We’re the only ones who can, but we have lost our ability to take collective action and apply pressure to those who represent us.
In the past, civic mobilization of the community happened weekly; people would come together at their local Union, Elk Lodge, Democratic Party, or American Legion, and discuss what they wanted to fight for. These organizations were the biggest forces of social change and political action in the 1950s.
For example, The American Legion was created to advocate for the interests of veterans; as such members of the organization wanted to fight to secure benefits for their time served. Following these demands, a group of organizational leaders drafted the original ideas and concepts for the GI Bill of 1944. Following its introduction as legislation, the group lobbied for the bill and, upon its passage, assisted in its implementation – this is true civic engagement.
Then, things changed.
The Vietnam War divided the country with the youth choosing to split themselves from the older generation, Republican-led states broke down unions with right-to-
work laws, and communications technology expanded — restructuring these organizations from the top down for the sake of “efficiency.”
As a result, membership dropped, local chapters closed, and participation in these organizations became a donation button on a website.
The reality is that the people’s power — our power — didn’t go away. We just collectively forgot how to use it. Without pressure, corporations rose to the occasion, and politicians learned that people no longer win elections; money does.
However, as we are seeing in America, history repeats itself. If fascism can crawl into power, then we can rise in opposition. HB 1155, requiring the University of Illinois to divest from fossil fuels, a bill lobbied and drafted by our community organization, shows this.
We won’t be able to change these already diminished organizations, namely the Democratic Party. However, we can amplify and support organizations that have active member participation; many of these still exist and are prevalent in communities across the U.S.
It all starts with taking action. Go to a general meeting, voice your concerns, and continue to get more involved. Advocate for and write your own legislation within these organizations, then collectively push for its passage.
Representatives follow the power above all else, so let us reclaim ours from the corporations that stole it and start making the government represent people, not money.
The reality is that the people’s power — our power — didn’t go away. We just collectively forgot how to use it. Without pressure, corporations rose to the occasion, and politicians learned that people no longer win elections; money does.
By: Julia San Miguel
I was born in the Bay Area in 2003, after it was too late to reverse the evolution of the Bay into the foreboding ‘Silicon Valley’, as it is currently known. While the Bay is an epicenter of industry today, I have always associated it with domesticity and family; my parents grew up and met there and it’s where I was born before heading east to Illinois. I grew up watching baseball games at AT&T Park, a beautiful stadium built right on the shores of the bay at the turn of the century. An impressive batter at AT&T could send an easy pitch coasting towards the water,
where upwards of a dozen dedicated fans would await in kayaks, ready to catch anything coming their way.
In 1951, the year my grandfather was born in the South Bay, no one dared to kayak in the bay.
During a quieter era of Northern California, the biggest issues plaguing the landscape weren’t the suburban sprawl in San Jose or the critical housing shortage of San Francisco, but something more vital to the ecosystem –the bay itself.
Sitting at an imposing 550 square miles, the eponymous San Francisco Bay dominates the geography of the entire region. It separates the San Franciscan peninsula from the communities of Oakland and Berkeley, and the Golden Gate Bridge oversees the transition from the Pacific Ocean into the bay. While the bay was certainly unable to be ignored, it wasn’t exactly showered in love.
While my grandfather was growing up surrounded by fields and orchards, where a one-lane road was the only way to get around, the San Francisco Bay was akin to a dirty puddle. Municipal trash and raw industrial sewage were routinely dumped into the water; the situation became so dire that my grandfather’s hometown of Milpitas would regularly be visited by an unconscionable odor. 1Milpitas was unfortunately situated in the perfect geographical location in the South Bay where it was assaulted by wind patterns that carried this smell to my grandpa’s backyard. This caused Milpitas to quickly become known as ‘the dump’.
1 San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission. “History of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission,” 2025. https://bcdc.ca.gov/whatwe-do/our-story/#:~:text=In%201849%2C%20as%20California%27s%20Gold,additional%20 square%20miles%20of%20fill.
These issues were not just external. A look at the tumult under the surface of the bay in the 1950s reveals that the trouble started a century earlier. The dogged search for gold, after its discovery in the foothills of Northern California, brought three hundred thousand would-be miners to the area in the mid-nineteenth century. This quite literally put California on the map by ushering in its statehood in 1850, but rapid industrialization had its consequences.
The physical process of gold mining is heavily reliant on mercury, which is particularly good at binding to gold particles present in sand, dirt, and silt. Miners would mix these substances, which they knew to contain gold, with mercury and it would stick to the gold in the mixture, making it easier to find. Large scale efforts to obtain mercury caused the metal to leach into the San Francisco Bay.1 Mercury mining was so concentrated in the region throughout the 19th and 20th centuries that the leading Bay Area newspaper is still called the Mercury News. Mercury deposits were often excavated irresponsibly and with limited understanding of waterway pollution, causing massive amounts of it to seep into the bay, where it enters the food chain and becomes extremely harmful to the aquatic ecosystem. We know now mercury poses an intense risk to human health, where it can cause poisoning if concentrated at high levels in the bloodstream.2 Despite its pollution from waste and mercury, the San Francisco Bay was a leading source of sardines and crab in the diets of Bay Areans, who were at risk of mercury poisoning as a result.
1 California Water Boards. “San Francisco Bay Mercury TMDL,” September 8, 2023. https:// www.waterboards.ca.gov/sanfranciscobay/water_issues/programs/TMDLs/sfbaymercurytmdl.html#:~:text=Sources%20of%20mercury%20include%20runoff,already%20in%20San%20 Francisco%20Bay.
2 Water Science School. “Mercury Contamination of Aquatic Environments.” U.S. Geological Survey, November 13, 2018. https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-school/science/mercury-contamination-aquatic-environments.
In 1972, several amendments to the Clean Water Act were ratified. These amendments went a long way, transforming the previous weak-willed version of the act into a dog with teeth.1 The Clean Water Act was particularly good at cleaning up ‘point-source pollution’, which is pollution that comes from easily attributable sources, like industrial waste pipes spewing sewage into the bay or an oil spill from a rig in the middle of the ocean. Aging mercury mines and waste pipes were two examples of pointsource pollution that were able to be attacked by thenew regulations. Polluting industries had to seek permits in order to discharge into public waterways, and had to use the best available pollution control technologies, as established by the EPA.2 These permits could be expensive and onerous for companies to obtain, so they were incentivized to decrease the amount of pollutants they emitted. Close inspection of polluter activity combined with quickly-filed lawsuits for any violators of the act allowed for proper enforcement of the new regulations.3 Water quality substantially improved over the following decades, and the bay was no exception. Bacteria and toxic metal concentrations sharply declined throughout the 1970s and 1980s, meaning the mercury problem and the industrial waste problem were both getting better.
By the time my dad was growing up in Milpitas in the 1980s, the bay had improved its reputation. His hometown is no longer known for its horrific stench, but rather as an equal contributor to the Bay’s massively innovative output. Now, marine life fished in the bay no longer poses
1 Self, Deb. “The Clean Water Act (Also Known As the Law That Made the Bay Smell Better) Turns 40.” San Francisco Baykeeper, June 1, 2012. https://baykeeper.org/update/news-columnclean-water-act-also-known-law-made-bay-smell-better-turns-40/.
2 US EPA. “History of the Clean Water Act.” Overviews and Factsheets, February 22, 2013. https://www.epa.gov/laws-regulations/history-clean-water-act.
3 US EPA. “EPA History: Water - The Challenge of the Environment: A Primer on EPA’s Statutory Authority.” Policies and Guidance. Accessed March 2, 2025. https://www.epa.gov/archive/epa/ aboutepa/epa-history-water-challenge-environment-primer-epas-statutory-authority.html.
a risk to human health, as the risk of mercury poisoning has been almost entirely eradicated.1
I returned to the Bay Area at the tail end of last September, where I watched two games at AT&T Park (now renamed to Oracle Park) to bring an end to the regular MLB season with my grandpa, who had watched the bay transform throughout his life. I was joined by thousands of Bay Areans, all hoping to be among the lucky few getting to see a spectacular hit into the now-clean western San Francisco Bay, where dozens of kayakers braved the San Francisco chill, patiently waiting to be a part of baseball history. What they didn’t know was that they are already a part of the Bay Area’s history of attempting to conserve one of their greatest resources.
Afterwards, we strolled along the bay to glimpse the ever-impressive Golden Gate Bridge. Today, the bridge stands as a friendly guardian to recreational fishers, frequent boat traffic, and all general enjoyers of a unique aquatic landscape. The Bay Area is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the US today, and is nationally renowned for its beauty and idyllic landscape, thanks in no small part to the impressive results of the Clean Water Act.
The bay is not completely clean; it may never be. Despite this, we can revel in the achievements of historically powerful legislation and the equally powerful regulatory will it took to carry out our legislative promises. Without the ability of the federal government to know a better future was possible back in 1972, we would never have been able to step up to the plate and help clean up this iconic body of water in the backyards of over seven million Americans.
1 SFEI. “The Pulse of the Bay: 50 Years After the Clean Water Act,” 2022. https://www.sfei.org/ sites/default/files/biblio_files/The%20Pulse%20of%20the%20Bay%202022_50%20Years%20 after%20the%20Clean%20Water%20Act_lowres%20101322.pdf.
By: Julia Spainhour
Some time last August, my family had been puttering around Seattle, exploring the shops and restaurants that dot the city. At the end of one of the days, we decided to make our way to Salmon Bay to see the Ballard Locks, a waterway that carries boats from the freshwater of Lake Washington and the saltwater of Puget Sound. The Ballard Locks transport more boats across than any other system of locks in the US, but when we went, there were no boats in sight. We were disappointed. What was the point in making the trip out there? But before we left, something else caught my attention.
The fish ladder. More than just boats make a passage through these waters. Species of salmon jump up the twenty-one steps of the ladder, fighting their way from the salty Pacific to the freshwater above. Just like the boats though, there weren’t any for us to see.
Then we found an entrance to an underwater viewing station, a building to the side of the ladder. When we got
inside, my eyes widened. There you could see them: big shimmery fish bodies floating around in the murky water behind the glass window. They weren’t really swimming, and they definitely weren’t jumping. They were more so just drifting there, spinning in small circles in one place. A sign on the wall told me that this is where they rest in between steps, to regain their energy and continue their way up the ladder.
The current pushes hard against these salmon. Freshwater cascades down the steps as they swim upstream. To jump takes a lot of energy. We could see the fish as they worked themselves up to get to the next level, swimming back and forth in a winding up motion. A crowd cheered them on, clapping as they finally made the leap. I felt a leap of pride in my heart watching them, especially when I learned about the story of their life cycle.
Pacific salmon are anadromous, meaning that they hatch in freshwater–lakes, rivers, streams, and fish hatcheries–migrate to the sea, and return at the end of their lives to the freshwater to spawn before dying. They start off as eggs burrowing in freshwater gravel, and spend up to a year as fry in their natal stream once hatched. Eventually, environmental cues, including water temperature, tides, and Earth’s magnetic field, prompt them to float or swim downstream into the sea. They spend some time in estuaries, where they eat lots of food to prepare them for the new ecosystem that lays ahead. Depending on the species, some salmon then stay near the coastline, while others migrate northward to feeding grounds. They spend years here, in the sea, eating smaller fish, eels, squid, and shrimp to survive. Then, and perhaps most fascinatingly, they use instinct to swim back, often hundreds of miles, to enter through the locks, return to the exact stream where
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As their bodies decompose, all the rich nutrients they acquired in the ocean are released into the freshwater ecosystem, supporting the growth of plants, insects, bears, birds, and their own offspring. Even in death, they bring life to the river.”
they were born, and spawn. This is an arduous journey, in which they use up all of their fat reserves, leaving them with no energy to survive upon spawning. Females lay thousands of eggs at once, and then the salmon die. As their bodies decompose, all the rich nutrients they acquired in the ocean are released into the freshwater ecosystem, supporting the growth of plants, insects, bears, birds, and their own offspring. Even in death, they bring life to the river.
Their life story adds a layer of depth to seeing the salmon in the ladder pushing against the current. Their weakening energy levels are a sign they are headed to the end of their lives, and still they fight with all they have left to get there. And yet, humans have put even more challenges in their way. Dams alter the natural flow of the watershed, hindering the salmon’s instinctual migration pathways.
According to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, “more than 40 percent of the spawning and rearing habitat once available to salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River Basin is permanently blocked by dams.”
Dams in the Columbia and Snake rivers, which were once the most productive salmon rivers in the world, are driving populations to the brink of extinction—since the 1970s, wild Snake River salmon populations have declined by more than 90%. This is bad news. Salmon are a keystone species, essential to the functioning of the ecosystem. Declining salmon populations results in declining brown bear, eagle, and orca populations, just to name a few species who would be affected. Furthermore, salmon are a crucial part of the economy due to recreational and commercial fishing, and they hold significant cultural and provisional value to many indigenous communities in the Pacific Northwest.
Dam removal is an important step in the process of restoring biodiversity and allowing for Pacific ecosystems to thrive. Luckily, there’s already been several signs of hope. 2024 saw the beginning of the biggest dam removal project in the world, on the Klamath River Watershed stretching between California and Oregon. Within a month of the deconstruction of dams, species of salmon returned to creeks they hadn’t seen in generations. They will likely be able to make a full recovery within the next ten years.
The salmon swimming their way through the Ballard Locks fish ladder inspire me. They push and fight against the current, not for their own survival, but for the survival of their entire species. They are returning to their homes, the little streams where they first came into this world, to leave a legacy for those who will come after. Their nutrients will feed their entire community, and push forward the next generation of salmon to do the same.
By:
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By: Raphael Ranola
Beholding a sunset, the 19th-century environmentalist John Muir notes a “fine a union of rock and cloud in form and color and substance, drawing earth and sky together as one; and so human is it, every feature and tint of color goes to one’s heart, and we shout, exulting in wild enthusiasm as if all the divine show were our own.”
His work “My First Summer in the Sierra” is chock-full of passages like this, featuring beautiful language that inspires awe and conjures up an image of nature that all can relate to — even if you’ve never been to the Sierra Nevada. It’s what makes reading works about nature appealing to me, and perhaps a contributing factor to authors like Muir, Henry David Thoreau, and Richard Brautigan’s presence in the canon of American literature.
A crucial part of environmental writing is the use of personification, done expertly by Muir. His view of nature can be best summarized by his reference to nature with a capital N. In certain descriptions, he ascribes to nature
an almost godlike quality.
“One is constantly reminded of the infinite lavishness and fertility of Nature,” he writes, “inexhaustible abundance amid what seems enormous waste. And yet when we look into any of her operations that lie within reach of our minds, we learn that no particle of her material is wasted or worn out.” Nature’s machinations are beyond mankind’s understanding. She’s omnipotent, all-knowing; our mother.
Giving nature a voice is powerful. This concept of a feminine Mother Nature is the classic example of a “cultural universal” — which, as the name suggests, is a concept that is virtually universal and prevalent in all cultures. We see this concept most often in storytelling where Mother Nature is a digestible symbol to depict all of nature. Muir captures this well; language remains the most evocative medium for portraying Mother Nature, surpassing photography or film in its ability to convey her depth and presence.
Similarly, the way that environmentalists like Muir write about their natural surroundings presents a depiction of natural beauty that cannot be captured by a photo. It perhaps even transcends photography. Literary imagery allows readers to fill in the blanks with their own lived experiences and connection to the environment — the air they breathed, the vistas they beheld.
What writers like Muir do is tap into the human subconscious where our ideas of a nurturing Mother Nature reside. He writes, “More and more, in a place like this, we feel ourselves part of wild Nature, kin to everything.” Maybe our indifference toward nature isn’t just neglect,
Similarly, the way that environmentalists like Muir write about their natural surroundings presents a depiction of natural beauty that cannot be captured by a photo. It perhaps even transcends photography. Literary imagery allows readers to fill in the blanks with their own lived experiences and connection to the environment — the air they breathed, the vistas they beheld.
but an inability to imagine — a consequence of not living deeply, not reading widely, and not seeing the world with wonder. This brings me to Thoreau.
Henry David Thoreau approaches environmental writing a little differently. Instead of the theological reverence Muir gives to nature, Thoreau writes in a more slice-of-life manner. Not just a deity, nature was a friend that Thoreau lived alongside when he lived in relative isolation in his log cabin at Walden Pond. He notes the wildlife and the sounds, the toil of labor, and the simplistic lifestyle that living out in nature afforded him.
Thoreau’s famed book Walden explores his time at Walden Pond. Each chapter is a kind of essay about an aspect of simple life in harmony with nature, like “Sounds,” where Thoreau describes the sounds of wildlife that accompanied everyday life and the railroad that was less than a mile away. This clues the reader in to the idea that Thoreau himself did not live an ascetic lifestyle, totally secluded from the rest of the industrialized world. Rather, he lets nature in, allowing it to become a larger part of his life but not totally consuming it.
In “Where I Lived and What I Lived For,” Thoreau provides the thesis of his book by first describing the refreshing experience of waking in the morning as a chance to renew oneself. To Thoreau, each day is a miniature reflection of his larger decision to move into his log cabin, seeking to live deliberately and in harmony with nature. Thoreau’s nature — his companion out in the wilderness — sends warm regards in the form of serendipitous encounters with passer-bys, warm rays of sun, and birdsong. Thoreau’s living in relative isolation forces him to meditate on these messages and, in the process, learn more about
what it means to be human.
Thoreau’s simple living alongside Mother Nature is best illustrated by a passage in “Sounds,” where he writes, “I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise until noon, rapt in revery, amidst the pines and the hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house.” Note the sensory details here, the tranquil woodland scene — I want to be there.
Indeed, Thoreau personifies Mother Nature as the greatest teacher, inching him closer to self-actualization. Continuing the passage, Thoreau remarks, “I grew in those seasons like corn in the night and they were far better than any work of hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance.” The lesson from Thoreau is that nature is everywhere, and to listen better is perhaps the greatest lesson of all.
The last writer I’ll be discussing is Richard Brautigan, who wasn’t exactly an environmentalist like Muir or Thoreau but whose novel “Trout Fishing in America” I’d argue adds another dimension of depictions of nature. Brautigan writes surreal and absurd novels, depicting a vision of nature that is not nearly as godly with an emphasis on transcendence or preservation — rather, nature is used to explore memory and the quirks of American culture. Brautigan’s vision is classic Americana, belonging within the annals of West Coast writers like Jack Kerouac and Raymond Carver.
“Trout Fishing in America” follows a narrator — Brautigan — as he looks for fishing spots; this description does a
Excerpt from Brautigan’s “Trout Fishing in America”
disservice to the work because the narrative resists conventional storytelling. While the premise revolves around the narrator searching for trout fishing spots, the book turns out to be a series of loosely connected vignettes where depictions of nature are interwoven with semi-autobiographical anecdotes, surreal short stories, and satirical social commentary. In the novel, the title “Trout Fishing in America” and variations of it are used as a name, location, or abstract concept.
One way to interpret the novel is to see the narrator’s vignettes as the product of wandering thoughts emerging from the idle, meditative nature of fishing. The result is absurd, dreamlike, yet fragmented recollections. This reflects the process of fishing itself: patient, reflective, and punctuated by unexpected moments. In this way, Brautigan’s writing makes for an ideal companion to a slow afternoon by the water.
It is hard to pick a passage to exemplify what exactly I mean by this, and it is probably best demonstrated by simply reading a chapter or two. The book is strange, antiquated, and maybe a little less accessible and less of an environmental book than the other two that were previously explored in this essay.
In one of the first chapters, the narrator sits down on a rock under a tree next to an old abandoned shack. The front door “had a sheriff’s notice nailed like a funeral wreath” that reads: “NO TRESPASSING / 4/17 OF A HAIKU”. Maybe this offbeat humor is just brilliant to me, but I find it enjoyable nonetheless.
Brautigan, fundamentally a counterculturalist and one of the last writers of the Beat Generation, rejects strict
definitions and convention — of traditional novel structure, names — and extends this to his conceptualization of nature. Reading magical realist works like Brautigan’s requires a suspension of disbelief and a succumbing to the rules of the work, demanding that the reader simply experience the text and not try to find deep-seated meanings.
Brautigan’s idea of nature subverts the previous authors’ exploration of nature through personification. If we are to read the novel’s title and by extension the main conceit of the work, “Trout Fishing in America” in terms of its fluidity and surreal ambiguity, you could argue that Brautigan seeks to commentate that nature itself is fluid, highly personal, and a surreal thing that is not worth trying to understand, but to experience and feel. Much like fishing — a menial task — it’s the journey, the experience.
All of these authors offer a reason why nature should exist. For Muir, nature should exist because it is greater than all of us; it will outlast us all and is an incomprehensible mystery that we can only behold. His reverence for nature as the divine is like a strong current, unyielding. For Thoreau, nature is a fundamental part of the human experience and something we all too often forget, especially as industrialization increases and nature becomes less and less a part of our lives. This he learns while exploring the rhythmic currents of daily life, with nature as a quiet companion. For Brautigan, nature is a fluid current, not easily defined, but something that one should simply experience for themselves, akin to a running stream where trout swim.
Environmental literature does more than describe nature; it invites us to imagine it, a task that Muir, Thoreau, and
“
Through imagination and ways we personally relate to scenes depicting nature, we are reminded that nature is fundamentally entwined with our existence.
Nature’s reason to exist is the same reason we deserve to exist.”
Brautigan successfully accomplish. No matter what form an author conceptualizes nature as, great environmental writing calls us to something beyond ourselves. Through imagination and ways we personally relate to scenes depicting nature, we are reminded that nature is fundamentally entwined with our existence. Nature’s reason to exist is the same reason we deserve to exist. It is a strange, beautiful, and endlessly unknown miracle to be felt and pondered in awe and reverence for as long as we have the will to protect it.
By:
Index
Olivia Amaya
Tori Arduini
Klaudia Babel
Henry Bemis
Trevor Benos
Spencer Durnell
Grayson Hodson
Rudy LaFave
Jason Li
Emily Mair
Raphael Ranola
Averhy Sanborn
Julia San Miguel
Ariana Mizan
Margaret Schmidt
Sauryam Shrestha
Julia Spainhour
Gavin Volker
Joya Weissman
