Reproductive Rights Rally 68–69 Ithaca Decarbonization Plan

MEMBERS OF THE ITHACA COMMUNITY RALLY TOGETHER AT CORNELL TO ADVOCATE FOR REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS

BY ALYSHIA KORBA

Chants of “Not the courts, not the states, women must decide our fate,” flled Cornell University’s Ho Plaza on Oct. 2 as people from Cornell, Ithaca College and the greater Ithaca area rallied for reproductive rights. The rally was incited by abortion restrictions enacted by the state of Texas on Sept. 1. Senate Bill 8 bans people from getting abortions at six weeks of pregnancy and does not include exemptions for pregnancies resulting from rape, incest, sexual abuse and fetal anomalies, according to Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas. Most people learn that they are pregnant between the fourth and seventh weeks of pregnancy, according to the American Pregnancy Association. Senate Bill 8 is known as the “Texas Heartbeat Act” because the bill bans abortion when a “heartbeat” is frst detected in an embryo. However, this is a misleading title because cardiac activity is only detected in the fetal pole, a 4-millimeter-wide thickening next to the yolk sac at six weeks. Abortion rights are historically controversial in the United States. The Supreme Court heard a case Dec. 1 that has the potential to overturn Roe v. Wade, which granted people the right to have an abortion before the fetus is viable to survive outside the uterus. This case led to the decision that states cannot restrict abortions during the frst trimester, that it can be regulated but not banned and, in the third trimester, states can restrict abortions unless it is necessary for the parent’s health. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization will determine whether it is unconstitutional for states to ban pre-viability abortions. Planned Parenthood Generation Action (PPGA) at Cornell and PPGA at Ithaca College organized the rally as a part of a national movement against the Texas Senate Bill 8. Over 150 rallies and marches were held Oct. 2 as a part of the Women’s March Network. Approximately 60 people attended the Cornell rally, which included speakers like New York state assembly member Anna Kelles, professors from Cornell and Ithaca College, members of the Ithaca Common Council and Cornell student-leaders, among others. Julia Ganbarg, Ithaca College senior and president of PPGA at Ithaca College, said the goal of the rally was to provide a place for people to share frustrations and show support for reproductive rights. “The rally was a place for people who had anger but didn’t know how to channel it, to come together and listen to some speakers who share similar passions and who have had experience with fghting laws for decades now,” Ganbarg said via email. Zillah Eisenstein, professor emerita in the Department of Politics, was one of the speakers at the rally and talked about the importance of not only keeping abortions legal but also making them accessible. “It is really important to understand that the legal right to choose an abortion is very different than being able to access and get one,” Eisenstein said. Depending on factors like insurance coverage, the abortion method and how far along the pregnancy is, an abortion can cost anywhere between $0 and $1,500, according to Planned Parenthood. Eisenstein discussed social factors that can make it diffcult or dangerous to access abortions. “You need not look elsewhere to other countries to see women disrespected, undervalued and also feared,” Eisenstein said. “We have our very own Taliban right here. They are homegrown American white men.” Cornell University senior Shamyra Coleman said this rally and Senate Bill 8 are very personal to her because she is from Texas. “I had an abortion myself, so those rights would have been taken away from me,” Coleman said. Hannah Dickinson, associate professor in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York, and organizer with the Geneva Women’s Assembly, spoke

about making abortions accessible for people of color, transgender people and working-class people. “Rich people, including the wives and the daughters of these reactionary lawmakers, have always and will always have access to abortion,” Dickinson said. “They’ll always have access to basic health care. It is working-class and poor people who will bear the brunt of this and all the reactionary laws that are to come and are coming if we do not stand together and fght back.” Cornell juniors Mel Miller and Maisie McDonald and sophomore Presley Church worked with PPGA at Cornell and PPGA at Ithaca College to help organize the event. “We had so many great speakers, and I think now we also have action items that we can continue to share,” Church said. Ganbarg said she thought the rally was suc“You need not look ... to other cessful in helping people work together to protect reproductive rights. “I’m really glad the City of Ithaca, New York, was countries to able to participate in this nationwide movement and provide a space for those who needed to release frussee women tration and come together,” Ganbarg said. disrespected.” At the rally, people were encouraged to sign a Planned Parenthood petition supporting abortion -Zillah Eisenstein rights, write letters to their elected offcials and donate to a Texas abortion fund. Dickinson noted the importance of grassroots activism efforts like these. “History books would like to tell us that it was the Supreme Court … that granted us access to abortion,” Dickinson said. “No, it was groups like this. People who said ‘No, we are standing up for ourselves, for our sisters, for our mothers, for our trans siblings and saying “enough is enough.’”

Zillah Eisenstein, professor emerita in the Department of Politics at Ithaca College, speaks at the rally Oct. 2. Ana Maniaci McGough/The Ithacan

CITY OF ITHACA ANNOUNCES APPROVAL OF PLAN TO BECOME ENTIRELY DECARBONIZED BY 2030

BY CAROLINE GRASS

The City of Ithaca found itself on the national stage Nov. 4 as the city announced the approval of a plan to decarbonize all of its buildings by 2030, making it the frst city in the United States working to become 100% decarbonized. Michael Smith, professor in the Department of History and the Department of Environmental Studies and Sciences at Ithaca College, said decarbonization is when energy systems that emit harmful greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane are substituted with renewable sources. Greenhouse gas emissions are a leading cause of global warming, and world leaders at events like the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP26) are pledging to try to limit the warming of the earth to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

In a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, human-induced global warming is harming the environment in many ways. The report says there is high confdence and substantial evidence to support the fact that human-induced global warming is causing increased land and ocean temperatures, increased frequency of heat waves on land and increased frequency and intensity of precipitation events. The offcial name of the decarbonization plan is the Effciency Retroftting and Thermal Load Electrifcation Program, and the plan is starting with the electrifcation of buildings, which means changing energy in homes that use fossil fuels to electric technologies. Nationally, residential and commercial buildings account for 40% of greenhouse gas emissions. Rebecca Evans, the City of Ithaca’s sustainability specialist, said the decarbonization plan will help to bring the city to its Green New Deal goal to become carbon neutral by 2030. The plan will tackle retroftting 6,000 residential and commercial buildings with electric systems for heating, cooling and electric appliances. The city has secured $100 million in private investments for phase one of the plan, which is targeting 1,000 residential and 600 nonresidential buildings. Evans said the buildings that are going to be in phase one have not been chosen yet. She said there are two components to the process: looking at the oldest buildings and taking into account cultural and equity issues. “We need to look at who are the energy hogs, like where are the oldest and leakiest and crummiest buildings,” Evans said. “The other piece is kind of a cultural and equity piece, like who are the disadvantaged communities … because part of the Green New Deal is to start trying to repair or otherwise address historical inequities in the City of Ithaca.” Smith said he thinks the decarbonization plan is admirable, but he has a few reservations about the specifcs. One of the questions he has is what will happen if residents have newer appliances that are not electric but still have life in them. He said that making a household absorb the cost of appliances that still work and have life might be a problem for many residents. “I’m committed to this stuff,” Smith said. “I’ve been involved in environmental justice since I was in college, but I ft that category. We have this brand new furnace, and I would love to get it out of there, but I don’t think it would be fair to us to absorb the cost of that new furnace and put in a new one.” Freshman Noa Ran-Ressler said that she frst heard about the plan when she was looking for local stories for her newscast for WICB Radio and followed the story as it was proposed and subsequently approved. She said that she thinks the decarbonization plan is a great idea and that starting at the city level is what is needed to make meaningful changes to

Thomas Kerrigan/The Ithacan

address climate change. “We want to make a global impact with our climate change,” Ran-Ressler said. “But the issue is we’re not looking at what cities are doing. To use renewable energy to actually make a difference on a smaller scale … can then be taken on a much larger scale very easily.” Ithaca College is not located within city limits, but it is a part of the Town of Ithaca, which enacted a similar Green New Deal to the City of Ithaca’s Green New Deal that also pledges carbon neutrality by 2030. The college also proposed to become carbon neutral by 2030, rather than its previous promise of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. Smith said that even though the college might not be under the same complete building electrifcation goal as the city, he is worried about the sustainability efforts of the college in general. “I’ve been very distressed by how the commitment to this sort of thing has really diminished for a while,” Smith said. “[It] was looking better two years ago, and now with the austerity measures … I don’t see any way that the college is going to be remotely close to a carbon neutral state by 2030.” Dave Maley, director of public relations, said there has been no change in the college’s belief of achieving carbon neutrality by 2030. The college was going to house a Center for Climate Justice (CCJ), but it will no longer be launched following the Academic Program Prioritization process and the ongoing elimination of 116 full-time equivalent faculty positions. Sandra Steingraber, former distinguished scholar-in-residence in the Department of Environmental Studies and Sciences, was one of the main developers of the CCJ and left the college during Spring 2021. As of March 2021, she said she was trying to fnd somewhere else to start the CCJ. Since leaving the college, Steingraber has become a senior scientist at the Science and Environmental Health Network (SEHN). The SEHN is a consortium of North American organizations focused on the misuse of science in ways that have failed to protect human and environmental health. Steingraber said that the Town of I thaca’s plan for decarbonization is exciting and that she is proud of it happening. She said public pressure with the help of the Sunrise Movement chapter in Ithaca helped to launch the Ithaca Green New Deal in the City of Ithaca and the decarbonization plan. “This was a real example of the way in which really innovative ideas that come out of college classrooms can light a fre in the hearts of young people who then go out into the community after graduation and enact and operationalize some of the ideas they learned about in the classroom,” she said. Smith said his hope was that the college would hire a president who makes sustainability and energy management a priority so the college can get back on track. “We’re just sort of in this holding pattern,” Smith said. “Nobody’s going to make any kind of big decisions until that’ll shake it out. So I think we have to wait probably a year, but my hope is that people who really care about this will make it clear … that we really want a president who has [sustainability] as one of their top priorities.” Junior Kelly Warren, a project manager for the Eco Reps, said the college has focused on its natural gas and energy consumption. The Peggy Ryan Williams Center uses over 50% renewable sources of energy, according to the college’s campus map website. The website also says geothermal energy is used for both heating and cooling, and that the building received a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design platinum certifcation in 2010 from the U.S. Green Building Council. “It is important for the school to incorporate more of this system [geothermal] on campus,” Warren said via email. “It is limited, and although the initial cost is expensive, it is so important for our plan.” Warren said the Eco Reps organization wants to hold the school accountable to reach the carbon neutrality goal by 2030. “It is our job to keep pushing for these reforms,” Warren said via email. “The school tries to be more ‘eco-friendly,’ but sometimes we need to educate the general college community in ways that promote reform on an individual level.” The city set an ambitious goal to have the electrifcation of all buildings complete by 2030, Evans said. She also said that, although the plan is scary and it is a massive undertaking, she is proud of the steps Ithaca is taking toward becoming carbon neutral. A plan like this one has never been done before and there are no examples to look at, but she said that, even so, she has hope for the process and what it means for the world as as a whole. “This is something that I think the people living, working and going to school in Ithaca can be really, really proud of,” Evans said. “This gives me a lot of hope that there’s action being taken at this scale in teeny tiny little cities like Ithaca. Imagine if you could scale this to an entire state or entire region or the world.”

Caitlin Holtzman contributed reporting.

People hold signs at a climate rally March 4 on the Ithaca Commons. Ash Bailot/The Ithacan

TOXICOLOGY LAB AT ITHACA COLLEGE INVESTIGATES THE PRESENCE OF MICROPLASTICS IN CAYUGA LAKE

BY CAROLINE GRASS

Cayuga Lake is the longest of the 11 Finger Lakes, stretching 40 miles from Ithaca to Seneca Falls, New York, and is home to thousands of plants and animals. However, the Ithaca College Toxicology Lab estimates that the lake has 100 million microplastic particles in it, pieces that can harm aquatic life and people.

According to a National Geographic encyclopedia entry, microplastics are plastic pieces that are less than 5 millimeters in diameter that degrade from larger plastics.

Primary microplastics come from microfbers from clothing and textiles, while secondary microplastics come from particles that break down from larger, often single-use plastics like bags or water bottles. The entry states that microplastic particles are often so small that they easily pass through water fltration systems and end up in waterways and the ocean.

Susan Allen, professor in the Ithaca College Department of Environmental Studies and Sciences, is the professor and principal investigator for the IC Toxicology Lab. The lab collaborates with the Ithaca Area Wastewater Treatment Facility and researches and studies microplastics in Cayuga Lake.

In 2018, Allen was awarded a $40,000, two-year grant from the Park Foundation, a charity organization started by Roy H. Park, that promotes education in specifc areas of interest to the Park family through grant-making. During this time, the lab found how many microplastics were in Cayuga Lake. Allen said the lab has been awarded the same grant for another two years — until September 2022 — to research the sources of where the microplastics are coming from.

The National Geographic entry said the problem is that plastic does not break down into harmless molecules and takes hundreds or thousands of years to decompose. The entry also says microplastics have been found in organisms as small as plankton and as large as whales, in addition to being found in seafood and drinking water.

Allen said there are multiple reasons that microplastics are a concern for organisms. She said that Bisphenol A (BPA) is a harmful chemical that can be leached from plastic and that plastic can act as a vehicle for other toxic pollutants that can be absorbed into an organism’s tissues.

“The plastics have other ingredients in them,” Allen said. “You don’t want them in your water bottle material or you don’t want them in your baby bottle material. Those compounds are also in microplastics.”

Allen said that from the research the lab did from 2018 to 2020 to count microplastics, researchers found that Cayuga Lake falls in the middle of other major bodies of water. She said there are fewer microplastics in Cayuga Lake than some rivers in China or downtown Paris, but Cayuga Lake has about the equivalent per mile of what is being reported for the Great Lakes. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, there are 112,000 microplastic particles per square mile of water of the Great Lakes.

“Our research suggests that microplastics are everywhere,” Allen said. “In other words, there’s no air or rain or snow samples that we collect that we don’t fnd microplastics.”

Allen said the study of microplastics is still an emerging feld and has not been studied very much, so it is hard to see trends and confrm data with other research.

“We didn’t really know the extent of contamination until fairly recently,” Allen said. “We didn’t know that they’re everywhere … until about the last three to fve years.”

Senior Jake Espenscheid said that he is the lab intern at the IC Toxicology Lab and that there is not much research on the effects of microplastics on behaviors of organisms, but there is some research on behavior changes of fsh that eat microplastics. Like Allen, he also said that when animals eat plastic, pollutants can be absorbed into the tissues of organisms. “If [the fsh] eat a bunch of microplastics, they’ll think that they’re full,” Espenscheid said. “But it’s not getting any nutrients. It’s hard to make sweeping generalizations, just because there’s not a lot of research that’s been done. But it all points to the idea that yeah, ingesting plastic is actually very bad.” In an article written by Scientifc American, there are physical and chemical effects in organisms that eat the plastic particles. Microplastics can damage organisms’ organs, and hazardous chemicals like BPA can hurt immune function and reproduction, leading to fewer offspring and shorter life spans of animals. Senior Megan Plummer said she has been working as a research assistant in the IC Toxicology Lab since Spring 2020 and explained how the lab is collecting samples this academic year. She said there are four types of samples: rain, snow and active and passive air. The active air sample comes from a vacuum that pushes air through a flter and the

The Ithaca College Toxicology Lab estimates that Cayuga Lake has 100 million microplastic particles in it, which can harm aquatic life and people. Thomas Kerrigan/The Ithacan

passive one comes from large pots that are put out in the Ithaca College Natural Lands and local waterways like Six Mile Creek.

Plummer said the researchers take the samples, put them in water and kill off any organic material with a strong hydrogen peroxide solution. Then the samples are dyed with a stain called “Nile red” before the water is fltered out and the plastics examined.

“[The Nile red] turns all the plastics red, but what’s important about that is it fuoresces under UV light,” Plummer said. “And then we’ll look at it under a microscope … so we can see all the things that are fuorescing or the little plastics, and then we’ll count them [with] a 30-page-long step list of how we’re counting microplastics.”

Espenscheid said there were four students working in the lab, and in Spring 2022, one or two more students could potentially be added. He said the lab’s goal is to take 20 samples from each type of collection method — rain, snow and active and passive air — so the student researchers can try to compare the counts from each sample, a process that can be challenging.

“I feel like we do have a ton of samples, but when you break them down to try and compare them and make some big statement, it’s kind of diffcult because there’s not so many that you can confdently say this is a trend,” Espenscheid said. “But mostly, it seems that rain and snow are really big factors in introducing microplastics into the lake.”

The Cayuga Lake Watershed Network website states that Cayuga Lake and surrounding waterways fow north to Lake Ontario and eventually to the Atlantic Ocean. A 2017 report titled “Cayuga Lake Watershed Restoration and Protection Plan,” prepared by the Cayuga Lake Watershed Network, states that the water resources of Cayuga Lake watershed are used for drinking water, farming, industrial uses and home and business use. The report said that watershed residents, visitors, businesses and municipalities share the water resources and should share the responsibility of protecting them.

The IC Toxicology Lab plans to present its data when its research is complete, and Espenscheid said he hopes to educate the Ithaca and campus communities about microplastics to highlight the importance of protecting the lake.

Plummer said that in years past, the lab has presented its fndings at the annual Whalen Symposium, an event held in the spring semester in which Ithaca College students present original research or creative work. The IC Toxicology Lab has a website and created an Instagram, @ic_toxlab, during Fall 2021 to talk about where microplastics come from and to inform people about the research that the lab is doing.

“I think a big part of the current project has been about trying to communicate to people in the area,” Espensheid said. “It could be pretty important.”

New York state has banned the use of all plastic carryout bags from businesses, and stores in Ithaca charge a 5-cent fee for paper bags. Allen said this is one way that government actions can limit single-use plastic to in turn limit the amount of plastic used. She added that it is very hard to regulate and create policies about plastic.

The college plans to be single-use-plastic free by 2025. In response to the state ban, the college also stopped using plastic bags in the campus store.

“It’s not like all the plastics are coming from one specifc industry that we could clamp down on,” Allen said. “We could make less plastics, but that will be a long time before we see the effects of that.”

Plummer said that because microplastics don’t decompose, getting rid of what already exists is challenging. She said that pledging to reduce, reuse and recycle to curb plastic consumption to make sure that plastic that is created does not end up in waterways is important.

“So our big thing is just to try to limit the amount of pollution that is continuously going into the environment,” Plummer said. “We’re so dependent on plastic as a society to do everything, everything has plastic in it. Trying to move away from plastic-based products is probably going to be our best bet, but there’s just so much of it.” Senior Megan Plummer works in the Toxicology Lab. Kalyasta Donaghy-Robinson/The Ithacan