The Climate Issue

THE CLIMATE ISSUE THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY NEWS-LETTER | APRIL 2020 | THE SPRING ISSUE

THE PLANET AND US

the earth and us T

his year marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Over the last 50 years, the movement to combat climate change has developed and changed in many ways, but one thing remains clear: this is a universal issue that impacts all of us. Though some of us are more immediately affected than others, we all impact and are impacted by the environment. However, like many other universal issues, climate change affects us all in a unique way.

There’s no denying climate change affects us — and society — on a macro level. News & Features editor Rudy Malcom discusses viewing climate change through a poetic lens in “Arts and the Earth.” He describes how climate change transcends all boundaries of time, existing in the past, present and future, reminding Hopkins students that though it is very easy to lose ourselves in the bubble of stress and schoolwork, there will always be something — in this instance, the environment — that is bigger than us all. Staff writer Jacqueline Vargas discusses the responsibility of corporate and individual action in “Greenwashing,” reminding us that in our current capitalist society, every individual action — or inaction — we take against climate change matters.

Climate change affects us all differently on a personal level as well. Some choose to take no action, but many others choose to combat climate change for their own reasons and in their own way. Some, like staff writer Honor Zetzer, state their motivations to fight climate change are purely selfish. In “For Myself,” Zetzer recognizes the personal toll climate change takes on the individual and urges others to proclaim themselves as “selfish environmentalists” as well. Opinions editor Ariella Shua recounts her struggle to live with zero waste a few months ago in “Living Trash Free,” noting the difficulty in preventing waste but reflecting on the necessity of living without trash during a pandemic.

Climate change is an issue where individual and societal action collide. It’s an issue where every person has a responsibility to help combat the problem. It’s an issue where collective inaction results in the detriment and eventual doom of society as we know. But it’s an issue where we — humanity as a whole — must unite and work to change the trajectory of ecological change for the better. Without collective action, nothing will change. But with awareness, individual action and a little bit of hope, we have reason to believe we can save ourselves — and the world as we know it — for future generations to come.

Happy reading!

Stephanie Lee, Magazine Editor The Climate Issue is a special publication of The Johns Hopkins News-Letter, the student newspaper of Johns Hopkins University. For general inquiries or information on how to join, email managing@jhunewsletter.com or find us at the Student Involvement Fair.

The News-Letter can be found online at jhunewsletter.com and on the social media sites below.

Facebook: JHU News-Letter Twitter: @jhunewsletter Instagram: @jhunewsletter

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Letter from the Editor

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Rising Inequality Amid Rising Temperatures

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The Effects of Covid-19 on Climate Change

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Capitalism, Corporate Greed and Action

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How Poetry Can Help Us Feel About the Earth

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Climate Change Action at Hopkins

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My Journey Living Trash Free

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Why I Fight Against Climate Change

POVERTY AND CLIMATE INEQUALITY AND THE RISE IN TEMPERATURES

by JAE CHOI, arts editor

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HEN WE CONSIDER the question of why climate change is bad, we tend to think of a number of reasons. These may include greater frequency of wildfires, threats to agriculture, ecological damage, decreased air quality, more hazardous weather conditions due to anomalous ocean temperatures and greater frequency of vector-borne diseases, just to name a few. However, there seems to be a deeper issue underlying these reasons that stems from an intuitive understanding that climate change is threatening the well-being of actual people.

Studies have long projected that a prominent effect of climate change due to the emission of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane would be increased risks of drought and wildfires. Record heat waves and extreme temperature fluctuations across the world now stand as a testament to that prediction. Climate change has thus been implicated in the recent wildfires in California and Australia, as well as Hurricane Dorian, and further heat waves are projected to maraud vulnerable regions in the near future.

Amid these reports, I read stories of animals with burn injuries, overwhelmed firefighters, and people losing their homes and their hopes of stable lives.

In particular, while reading about the effects that increasingly deadlier hurricanes are having on island-based populations, it struck me that the undue suffering of countless people, particularly racial minorities and low-income communities, is at the heart of my dismay about climate change and the role that developed and industrialized nations have played in its exacerbation.

An article from the New England Journal of Medicine highlights how Hurricane Dorian’s impact on islander populations is one pressing example of how socioeconomic divides are being reinforced by climate change.

“These escalating effects on population health represent a double environmental injustice: socioeconomically disadvantaged and marginalized populations sustain disproportionate harm and loss, with more hazardous storms exacerbating the inequity; and while the populations most vulnerable to Atlantic hurricanes, especially those in small-island states, contribute virtually nothing to climate change, they are among those most exposed to risks that are worsened by the carbon emissions from higher-income countries,” the article read.

In Scientific American, James K. Boyce, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, talks about one of his studies in which he examined the relationship between the strength of environmental policies and socioeconomic status,

art by STEPHANIE LEE, magazine editor

measured by rate of voter participation, percentage of adults completing high school, tax fairness and access to Medicaid. He found that greater inequality was correlated with weaker environmental policies, leading to poorer public health.

Additionally, as marginalized groups continue to bear the brunt of the effects of climate change, those with greater political power and privilege are able to continue to thrive at their expense, either living in ignorance of the effects of climate change or scoffing at efforts to reduce it. The wealthy then use their resources to estrange themselves from issues like socioeconomic equality and greater quality of public services in the realms of healthcare, education and transportation — a phenomenon that economist Robert Evans described as “the secession of the wealthy.”

There is an inextricable link between protecting our environment and addressing socioeconomic divides, which explains why continued damage to our environment is contributing to inequality. However, the opposite can also be true: by trying to address climate change effectively, we can also help to address inequality.

Recommendations from Project Drawdowwn, a research organization devoted to researching viable climate solutions, are telling in this regard.

In order to combat climate change, Project Drawdown has proposed 80 solutions, including refrigerant management, ridesharing and retrofitting buildings. Project Drawdown ranks these 80 solutions according to the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide that would be reduced as a result.

Close to the top of the list, at numbers six and seven, are investment in girls’ education and greater access to family planning resources. These two solutions, if followed through, would each lead to an estimated reduction of 51.48 gigatons of atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions.

Though striking, the magnitude of these events makes greater sense upon further inspection: By giving women greater access to family-planning resources and educational opportunities, fewer unwanted pregnancies will occur and fewer girls will be married as children or against their will, resulting in a smaller dependent population.

However, Project Drawdown emphasizes that the benefits to the planet, though large, are only side effects to the result of empowering women, promoting their maternal health and giving them the right to choose when to begin families.

Other recommendations include supporting more women shareholders, greater access to cleaner cookstoves and indigenous people’s land management. Giving more women shareholders equal access to resources would increase the

productivity of their farms, reducing pressure to deforest additional regions and leading to fewer emissions, while greater access to cleaner cookstoves over traditional open fires and makeshift stoves would reduce premature deaths due to soot buildup in homes and also reduce emissions.

Promoting indigenous people’s land management is also another important way of combating climate change. Indigenous communities, which have been historically marginalized and substantially impacted by climate change, are at the frontlines of demonstrations against deforestation.

Championing their visions of sustainable strategies such as home gardens, fire management and community-managed forests are another solution to the growing climate change crisis.

More than ever, it’s important for us as community members to be politically involved in voting for stronger environmental policies, engaging in service alongside community members in underserved communities and finding our own individual ways of contributing to the fight against climate change.

Engaging in initiatives such as Meatless Mondays, the vegan diet and the campaign to Divest the Nest are some of the many ways we can do this.

In the process of seeking out creative and productive solutions to climate change, it is important for us to keep in mind that climate change has real consequences not just for our environment, but for the people inhabiting it, especially those who are marginalized. Climate change is an issue with a face, and it would be unethical for us to passively watch our planet and its people suffer.

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CLEAR SKIES, THE EFFECTS OF COVID-19 ON THE ENVIRONMENT

by STEPHANIE LEE, magazine editor

Venice’s usually murky canals are clear enough to see fish swim due to vastly reduced gondola travel and tourism.

The Himalayas can be seen from parts of north India as air pollution levels have fallen.

Beijing’s pollution has cleared as China reduces pollution by 25% due to strict shelter-at-home restrictions.

By sheltering at home, we all save each other and the environment.

Japan’s Sika deer living in Nara Park wander down into empty urban streets.

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Emissions are down across the United States due to lower vehicle and airplane traffic.

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GREENWASHING

CAPITALISM, CORPORATE GREED AND INDIVIDUAL ACTION

by JACQUELINE VARGAS art by STEPHANIE LEE, magazine editor

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AM A history buff. Lucky for me, I am not the only student here that has adopted historical research as a pastime.

To quote Mark Twain, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”

The past can thus serve many purposes, and for our contemporary world, the best we can do is, well, learn from it.

The problem arises when we don’t.

Coming into 2020, I arrived with a renewed desire for real, meaningful change — not only for me, but for the rest of the world. However, we’ve been off to a rough start. The carbon budget is ever diminishing, and our country’s administration has approved more trade deals and slashed regulations that could potentially lower it even more, putting us at a higher risk of swirling deeper into the climate crisis that we have been facing ever since the start of the Anthropocene. For me, this takes place hundreds of years ago, when a group of European settlers decided that their wants were much more important than the needs faced by the occupying inhabitants, both human and not, of the conquered regions.

Arguably, we’ve gone downhill since then.

Yes, we’ve managed to create wonderful things like refrigerators and the internet and anime, but what good are these innovations on a dying planet? The goods that we’ve created — the goods that we consume unconsciously on a weekly basis that bring us a brief moment of joy — form part of our Western privilege and are part of something much, much larger than we can imagine. Hear me out.

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A carbon footprint calculator online estimates that an average person living in the U.S. (such as I) has adopted lifestyles that require the resource equivalent of two to four earths, more or less. If we take a giant oil company like Exxon Mobil, however, you’re bound to find that their carbon footprint readily exceeds that of the average person. Corporations have, for generations, seized control of national economic interests while relying heavily on environmental degradation. Although they seem relatively new, the damage they are causing is far larger than what you and I can fathom in our imaginations combined.

Now try to compare their impact to yours. If we all treated the earth the way Exxon and other large corporations do, namely companies like Fiji, Johnson & Johnson, H&M and even some companies that promote sustainability, we would probably need over a hundred earths to sustain the practices that they actively encourage. These are the same companies that put out ads describing their “green” campaigns, the slogans that promote “sustainability” while they cover their senses with large checks and appease opposition with designer leather and conveniently packaged food. These are the same companies that will later pay their way into our own government and lobby for their own selfish interests.

Ecology anxiety is real. I’ve experienced it far too often these past years to understand it. It is far too unreasonable to allow these large entities to take over our world. It is far too unreasonable that millions in this country are forced to travel miles to find food that hasn’t been sprayed a dozen times with chemicals, packaged in three different layers

of plastic, or mass produced for convenience. It is far too unreasonable that while lower- and middle-class families debate over their finances in order to pay for their utilities and basic necessities, the rich are making money off of selling the earth’s resources in a plastic bottle. It is far too unreasonable that we are at the turn of the 21st century and people are still being guilted into enduring the blame that comes from being forced into a consumerist society when we have little to no say in what goes on above us. Is it fair that while we desperately remove all plastic, meat, and disposable items from our lives, these companies keep making money off the lives of the indisposed?

So who’s to blame? Good question, simple answer: Everyone is — but the bigger question is that of power. We must take this power back. We must not negate the positive impact that has been made through individual choice and action against the larger enemies that seek to separate and divide us for profit. If we recall, the Snowball Earth hypothesis proposes that a slow cooling of the earth allowed the atmosphere to lower its temperatures just enough to freeze the earth’s surface. We have to act like Snowball Earth — we have to make sure that everything we do counts towards our end goal.

You opted for a glass-bottled juice rather than plastic? That mattered. You partook in a protest that was no larger than the size of a classroom? That mattered. You chose to reuse that CVS bag because you forgot your reusable bag? That mattered too.

Oftentimes we let our guilt and fear take control, but not this time. We have to use it to our advantage, we have to take action without fear, with relentless and with perseverance because if anyone is going to save our Mother Earth, it’s — you guessed it — you.

ARTS AND THE EARTH

HOW POETRY CAN HELP US FEEL ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE

by RUDY MALCOM, news & features editor

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HIS INTERSESSION, I took a course titled Poetry and Climate Change, taught

by English graduate student Alex Streim.

I’d initially thought that the class would entail penning sonnets to stop the ice caps from melting. Indeed, on the last day, we were encouraged to share original work (I’m really proud of this line I wrote: “Is that a sustainable metal straw in your organic cotton pants, or are you just happy to see me?”).

Otherwise, though, we didn’t have any poetry assignments; instead, we read poetry. Some poems were explicitly about global warming. Some were not, but we interpreted them through an ecocritical lens, extracting from these texts feelings and ideas related to climate change discourse — lament, revolt, defiance, awe, existentialism.

By discussing poetry, we explored how climate change is past, present and future. How climate change is simultaneously breaking news and old news, something continents away and something right next door. How climate change is something we caused but something we might not be able to control. How climate change is the individual’s responsibility but also that of the corporation. How 70 percent of three decades’ worth of greenhouse gas emissions are from just 100 companies and how, at the same time, climate change isn’t (and is) turtles whose noses are impaled by straws.

As a Writing Seminars major, I’ve had a lovehate relationship with poetry, but this course gave me a renewed respect for it.

This course showed me how the ways in which language is used and subverted in poetry make the genre aptly suited to capture the nuances of how we think and talk about climate change — about nature and society. For example, despite my earlier hatred for a lot of experimental poetry, I now realize that its unintelligibility can have symbolic meaning. It can convey the unknown and the unknowable, the uncertainty of the Earth’s future.

It is important that climate change discourse incorporate poetry — and the humanities in general, perhaps especially in the Anthropocene, which Merriam Webster defines as “the period of time during which human activities have had an environmental impact on the Earth regarded as constituting a distinct geological age.” In his book

Learning to Die in the Anthropocene, American writer Roy Scranton argues that it is most likely too late to do anything about climate change.

“From the perspective of many policy experts, climate scientists, and national security officials, the concern is not whether global warming exists or how we might prevent it, but how we are going to adapt to life in the hot, volatile world we’ve created,” he writes.

According to Scranton, “to philosophize is to learn how to die,” and we as a civilization must learn to die.

Climate change requires, he claims, “a new way of thinking about our collective existence” and “a newly philosophical humanism, undergirded by renewed attention to the humanities.”

“The sooner we confront our situation and realize that there is nothing we can do to save ourselves, the sooner we can get down to the difficult task of adapting, with mortal humility, to our new reality,” he writes.

I don’t necessarily agree with this perspective. And I don’t like to think about whether it’s too late to do anything about climate change.

Yet that’s part of Scranton’s point. Regardless of whether we’re inevitably doomed or if we still have a chance to avert Armageddon, we need tools to think about rising sea levels, about bushfires in Australia.

We are often desensitized to news reports about melting ice caps and ballooning carbon footprints, but poetry can help us feel.

Some of my favorite works from the class were Jorie Graham’s “Underworld,” which depicts the beauty of an apocalyptic flood; Patricia Smith’s Blood Dazzler, a powerful rendering of Hurricane Katrina; and Juliana Spahr’s “Unnamed Dragonfly Species.”

In the final poem, Spahr describes people who attempt to ignore climate change, who “tried to balance out all their anxiety with loud attempts at celebrations of life... in often ineffectual ways.”

“They might talk loudly and excitedly with friends about the latest blockbuster summer

We are often desensitized to news reports about melting ice caps and ballooning carbon footprints, whereas poetry can help us feel.

movie as if that really mattered to them and they could live with the changing landscape because they had things like movies and books and friends and drugs,” Spahr writes, “things that were common in cities and when in the cities they liked to tell themselves that this was enough, that these things were good enough so that the melting didn’t matter.”

We might attribute willful ignorance of climate change to apathy or indifference, but Spahr suggests that, in reality, it might be indicative of overwhelming concern. This definitely isn’t always true; however, it is something worth considering, particularly at Hopkins.

In February, the Second Commission of Undergraduate Education — co-chaired

by Deans Beverly Wendland and Ed Schlesinger of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and the Whiting School of Engineering, respectively — suggested changes to the undergraduate curriculum, reflecting on mental health on campus.

“According to the American College Health Association, more than 50% of American undergraduate and graduate students reported feeling anxiety in the past year; more than 30% felt so depressed at times that it was difficult to function,” the report reads. “The highly competitive academic and co-curricular atmosphere at Johns Hopkins compounds that anxiety and depression: our students report greater stress than those at other schools.”

Papers and problem sets often deprive us of the energy needed to care about what’s happening outside the soapy walls of the Hopkins bubble, or even outside the confines of our cubicles. School work can feel inundating in the short term, but the ocean is going to literally inundate us in the long term. We need to be thinking — and doing something — about it.

I burned out during the fall semester; I often felt like I was floating through the days, but “Poetry and Climate Change” helped reground me in the reality of something bigger than myself.

It is important to know data about greenhouse gases and above-average temperatures, about how quickly the ice caps are melting. But we need the humanities to appreciate the implications of what scientists are telling us about the planet that humankind is killing.

Papers and problem sets often deprive us of what’s happening outside the soapy walls of the Hopkins bubble, or even outisde the confines of our cubicles.

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ACTION AT HOPKINS

HOW STUDENT ORGANIZATIONS HELP THE ENVIRONMENT

by CLAIRE GOUDREAU, social media manager

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by STEPHANIE LEE, magazine editor

AST YEAR, the University unveiled a new initiative that would require two-thirds of all campuses’ electricity nationwide to come from solar power. This was the next step in the University’s 2010 pledge to reduce its carbon emissions by 51 percent by 2025.

However, some students feel as though the University and those who attend it are not doing enough to help the environment. Homewood Campus alone has many student-run clubs and organizations that advocate for greener, more sustainable practices with a wide variety of methods and goals.

mentally conscious. To do this, Planet Runway highlights a wide variety of sustainable options, from local vendors to thrifted finds and fabrics.

“The only requirement is that the clothing has to be sustainable,” he told The News-Letter. “It’s a fun way to be aware about the environment.”

Azmeh seconded Vitty’s stance, saying that Planet Runway was just one of SEA’s many initiatives to keep students on campus aware of their environmental impact.

“Being environmentally friendly can come in different forms,” he said. “It really takes small actions from everyone.”

This year’s Planet Runway was held on March 7 in Levering Hall.

Students for Environmental Action Junior and SEA President Keelin Reilly told Outside the Fresh Food Cafe, Home- The News-Letter that he believed in SEA’s mission wood’s main dining hall, is a small pol- to promote eco-friendliness on a broad, local level. lination garden that doubles as a “mon- To him, even smaller changes can ripple out. arch waystation.” The garden’s milkweed and “None of the things we do are directly focused high-nectar flowers were on climate change in parselected in order to make ticular, but I think that, for the location an appealing instance with Planet Runpitstop for migrating monway and addressing the isarch butterflies, as well as a sue of fast fashion, that has great resource for local polbig implications for climate linators. change,” he said.

This garden is one of Junior and SEA Social Students for EnvironmenChair Chloe Warren says tal Action’s (SEA’s) many that one of SEA’s main goals on-campus initiatives to is to extend an olive branch make the Charles Village to all students on campus, community more environrather than focusing on too — Keelin Reilly, SEA President much environmental guilt. mentally friendly. Projects range from sustainable In doing this, SEA hopes to fashion shows and clothing swaps to cleaning up push students towards environmental action and trash and handing out metal straws. self-reflection.

According to sophomore and SEA Treasurer “Most of the other environmental clubs are so Carina Cain, this variety in initiatives is one specific against one targeted issue, where we’re of the club’s core traits. more about advocacy and education for the stu“We pick and choose what we want dents without scaring them off,” she told The to accomplish over the year and ev- News-Letter. “There’s the fear today of not knowery member has a voice in that, and ing what’s going on, so most people pretend they therefore you can choose what topics know how to recycle correctly... but I think one of you want to focus on,” she said in an the most important things is the humility to be interview with The News-Letter. like, ‘Okay, maybe this isn’t how I’m supposed to For example, juniors Kenny Vit- recycle. Maybe I should just look it up on Google ty and Omar Azmeh, who are SEA’s to figure it out.’” public relations chair and secretary respectively, use their enthusiasm for Refuel Our Future Every week, Refuel Our Future goes to the sustainable fashion to run Planet Runway, an annual student-run fashion show- front steps of Gilman Hall for Fossil Free Fridays.

With posters and banners in hand, the members case.

As put by Vitty, the event proves to students speak out against the University’s ties to the fossil that it is possible to be both stylish and environ- fuel industry, demanding divestment.

“I think that, for instance with Planet Runway and addressing the issue of fast fashion, that has big implications for climate change.”

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Three years ago, the University divested fully have to be inaccessible and it can be done by any- or spreading awarefrom thermal coal after six years of protests from one,” she told The News-Letter. “However, the ness we do tangible Refuel and a recommendation by the Public In- club is very supportive of anyone who wants to projects... [that] terest Investment Advisory Committee. However, join. You do not need to eat a vegan or vegetarian pull from a bunch Refuel does not see this as enough and insists that diet. We just want to teach and educate and eat of subject matters,” the University should end some yummy food.” she said. all fossil fuel investments.

Junior and SHIP The group was founded Sophomore and Refuin order to educate students External Partnerships el Co-Organizer Elly Ren about the environmental and Marketing Chair said that she was originally impact of their diets and Cara Valencia agreed. drawn to Refuel because it “I feel like we really get the harms behind factory reflected her beliefs on clifarming. To do this, they to see our direct impact based mate change. hold a variety of on-campus on all the projects we do,” she said in an interview “It is an organization events, like plant-based pot- with The News-Letter. that treats climate change lucks, to teach students how The first Blue Jay Threads pop-up was held as a crisis and is rooted in to make their plates more last October and brought in over 400 pieces of — Elly Ren, Refuel Co-Organizer eco-friendly. a vision of climate justice clothing to swap and sell. and centers black, brown, Junior and CARE The project was started after SHIP members indigenous and poor folks, recognizing capitalism Co-President Lana Weidgenant told The saw how much clothing was being thrown out or and colonialism as the primary forces fueling the News-Letter in an email that the ties between left behind each May during move-out. climate crisis,” she said in an interview with The fighting climate change and selecting a sustainable Junior and SHIP Project Leader Valeria Hesse News-Letter. diet are clear. said that the realization made it clear that students Freshman Refuel member Lais Santoro be“One of the most impactful environmental needed an opportunity to pass on their clothes in lieves that since fossil fuels are a major cause actions someone can take to lower their carbon a sustainable way. of climate change, protesting the University’s footprint is moving towards a plant-based diet, “It demonstrated that people really do have investments is clearly linked to fighting the cli- and advocacy against the massive climate im- clothing to donate all the time, and many times mate crisis. pacts of the industrialized animal agriculture in- that just ends up in the trash,” she told The However, Santoro sees Refuel’s actions as dustry goes hand in hand with advocacy against News-Letter. more than just an effort to make the University the unfair climate impacts of fossil fuel corporaSHIP plans to hold more pop-up events like more environmentally friendly. To her, Hopkins tions,” she wrote. this in the future, which they hope to eventually divestment could encourage other colleges to folBut the club does not limit itself to environ- turn into a real on-campus thrift store. low suit. mental action. Weidgenant said that she was iniOther past SHIP ventures have included re“Hopkins is a big name. It’s influential, so if we tially drawn to CARE because of the group’s dual searching improvements for campus infrastrucdivest, that’s pretty big,” she said. focus on the environment and animal rights. ture, improving waste disposal and creating a Although the organization has not yet con“I love how CARE... includes discussion of is- “Green Guide” to help freshmen lead a sustainable vinced the University to divest, the members re- sues including cosmetics animal testing and the life on campus. main committed. suffering of animals to produce items such as SHIP members also founded the Sustainability According to Ren, Fossil Fuels Fridays will leather in fashion, which are topic areas that do Coalition, an alliance of on-campus environmentcontinue until the University announces a full di- not have as many outlets for discussion on cam- and sustainability-based clubs. The Coalition aims vestment from all fossil fuels. pus,” she wrote. to promote collaboration between the clubs in or“For us, it’s not really about success, but about Geada said she wanted to join a group that der to make the University more sustainable. consistency. We get to meet different people who shared her values.

Hesse said that she was drawn to SHIP because stop by, visibly display our persistence, and so“I am really passionate about the environment, it values the individual input of its members. cialize and strengthen our relationships with each but I am also really passionate about animals, and “When I entered as a freshman, what drew other. Our protests are also an act of solidarity I feel like this club really conjoins the two and puts me to it was that I saw that the members were all with the other youths protesting climate inaction both of my passions into one very committed and it was a on Fridays,” she said. club,” she said. smaller group with a team Santoro said that she thinks progress will be where everyone had a say,” made by the time she graduates.

Sustainable Hopkins Inshe said.

“I think we’re starting to build up some mo- novation Projects Although SHIP is proud mentum,” she said.

At the beginning of each of their efforts, they still see She highly encouraged other students who school year, Sustainable a lot of possibilities for furshare the club’s concerns to join her at Fossil Fuel Hopkins Innovation Projther ventures.

Friday protests. ects (SHIP) decides what As put by Negandhi, altheir next eco-friendly venthough the University is Compassion, Awareness, and Responsible ture will be. This year, the moving in the right direction, Eating group is working to create there is still work to be done.

Although you don’t have to be a vegan or vege- pop-up thrift stores and “I think that we’ve made — Krittika Negandhi, some efforts in the past coutarian to join Compassion, Awareness, and Respon- clothing swaps in an initiasible Eating (CARE), they certainly encourage it. tive called Blue Jay Threads.

SHIP Project Leader ple years, but I think there’s Sophomore CARE member Izzy Geada said Sophomore and SHIP definitely always room for that she loves how CARE gives her the opportunity Project Leader Krittika improvement,” she said. to show others how a plant-based diet can be both Negandhi told The News-Letter that the hands-on eco-friendly and obtainable. project approach is extremely motivating.

Editor’s Note: Lais Santoro is a staff writer for “I really like the outreach that we do to try to “What I liked about SHIP is that it’s very The News-Letter. She was not involved in the reshow that eating a vegetarian or vegan diet doesn’t project-based, so rather than just doing activism porting, writing or editing of this piece.

“It’s an organization that treats climate change as a crisis and is rooted in a vision of climate justice...”

“[SHIP] is very project-based, so rather than just doing activism or spreading awareness we do tangible projects...”

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LIVING TRASH FREE

FAILING, THEN SUCCEEDING, AT WASTING LESS art by STEPHANIE LEE, magazine editor by ARIELLA SHUA, opinions editor

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EVERAL MONTHS AGO, I had the idea for an article. My initial plan was simple: three trash-free days. I’d prove that the challenge, which has popped up occasionally on my social media, is interesting enough to write about.

However, I didn’t think much about what that pledge actually entailed. I’d seen a few headlines here and there and assumed that it wasn’t too difficult. After all, it’s not as though I am a huge waster.

I always recycle my cardboard boxes. I don’t ask for straws at restaurants. How hard could it be?

As I learned after three days — and the many days that have since followed — going trash-free is not simple.

The hardest part of the challenge includes avoiding all unnecessary plastics and paper products that are meant to be used and tossed. I wasn’t even a day into the challenge until I realized I couldn’t keep up with that much. My bag of chips was wrapped in plastic, but faced with plastic or no snack, I was going to take the snack.

I suppose I just didn’t realize how much trash is hidden in my daily life. I left my water bottle behind while editing articles in the Gatehouse, and used a disposable water bottle instead. I hope that didn’t contribute to the seven in 10 bottles that are tossed in the trash rather than recycled, but I honestly don’t remember what I did. If there was no recycling bin, I probably just tossed it.

When I picked up groceries at Eddie’s, I realized too late that I’d left my reusable bags at home. I couldn’t hold all of my belongings without one, so I had to accept the single-use disposable bag that was offered to me. The average time of use for these bags is 12 minutes; I used it for less than half of that time.

Even worse, I realized that I go out of my way to use items that I don’t even need. Brody restrooms don’t have paper towel dispensers — they only have hand dryers. I typically go into a stall and use toilet paper to dry my hands, rather than letting them air dry. During the challenge, I was painfully aware of the unnecessary waste I was creating.

What did using more paper products save me? 15 seconds of waiting for my hands to dry?

When I tried going trash-free, I failed. But the most important part of the experience? I realized that I screwed up so badly, over and over again. It’s too much to try to do everything all at once, and no one was asking me to.

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JHUNEWSLETTER.COM

Or at least, it seemed that way when I attempted the experiment a few months ago.

As we’re all too aware, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has put a pause on most aspects of daily life. When I left Baltimore to return to my hometown, my concerns were primarily with the people in my life. I wanted to make sure that I, my family and my friends would stay safe. I was not thinking about environmental impacts at all.

But over the last few weeks of living at home, this has changed. I realized that, once again, I’ve been conducting a trash-free experiment. Only this time, it wasn’t for an article. It was for survival — survival in my accustomed state of living, anyway.

The decisions are so straightforward, I barely have to consider them. If I’m in the mood for chips, I must decide if they’re worth eating: there’s no guarantee that I’ll get to the supermarket soon to grab more. If I want a drink, I use a reusable cup: disposable water bottles are reserved for emergencies. If my family is to have toilet paper during the pandemic, I can’t waste it: no one knows when stores will restock.

It occurred to me as I encouraged my mom to wash plastic cups that I’m finally engaging in the behavior I’d aimed for months ago. Am I finally succeeding in an albeit unintentional trash-free experiment? Well, I’m not buying new clothes, eating outside the house or using excessive paper products. All are simple, trashfree actions and commonly cited on lists of tips.

When I failed in going trash-free a few months ago, I took on too much too quickly. Going from zero to 100 without a gradual plan in place leads to inconsistency and burnout. But by slowly incorporating more environmentally conscious decisions into my life because I had no choice, I found that I was able to be, at least partially, trash-free.

Going entirely trash-free has a large toll.

There’s a reason that so few people attempt it. But testing out a few challenges at a time makes the effort seem like less of a challenge. And being forced to engage in unlikely challenges shows just how possible it is to change.

I can’t promise to be entirely wasteless. But I can promise to make incremental changes and pave the way for even more.

FOR MYSELF

THE SELFISH CASE FOR CLIMATE ACTIVISM

by HONOR ZETZER

I

DON’T CARE about the planet. I have no sense of compassion toward the rocks and minerals that make up this gravitational mass. I have no sense of duty to the gases and elements that collect to form our atmosphere.

I don’t care about life. Life doesn’t need caring about. Life is resilient. Microorganisms have lived in hydrothermal vents starting almost four billion years ago, evolving into the life that existed during the time of dinosaurs and again into the life that exists today. Throughout history, life has had its times to flourish and its times to struggle, but it has always persisted and adapted.

But don’t worry, the feeling is mutual.

The planet doesn’t care about me. For billions of years, it has grown and changed through drastically different atmospheres and geologic eras. It has existed comfortably with and without life.

Life doesn’t care about me. I am but a drop in the ocean of life that lives on the earth today. My survival, and my species’ survival, depends entirely on our ability to adapt to environmental changes. If we do not manage, life will simply evolve into something new, something more fit for the new environmental circumstances.

You may be surprised then to hear that I am an environmentalist. I limit my meat consumption. I buy clothes second hand. I am studying to enter a career dedicated toward improving humanity’s relationship with the environment. I frame my daily life in terms of how it will impact the climate crisis.

I don’t do it for the planet. I don’t do it for life on earth.

I do it for myself.

I am a selfish environmentalist.

You should be too.

I want you to think of everything you enjoy about the world. Maybe you are grateful for easy access to food.

Maybe you are glad that you have electricity, modern medicine and warm buildings to duck into when it rains. Maybe you love the natural world. Maybe you cherish a walk amongst wildflowers and the shade of a large tree on a hot summer day. Maybe you love the mountains and the seagulls on the beach and the sunset as it glistens against a frozen winter’s lake.

Whatever you love about this world, it is the result of adaptation.

Your cupboard full of food is because human society has adapted to the obstacles presented by the natural

art by STEPHANIE LEE, magazine editor world. The harmony and diversity of the forest is because life has adapted to live on earth, together, and at this exact moment. Everything that we know today is because of thousands, even millions, of years of growth and change as forces worked to make everything fit together in a way that, to our eyes, looks almost perfect.

But adaptation is slow, and climate change is fast.

Climate change will not hurt the earth, nor will it result in the end of life on this planet. Instead, climate change will leave humanity and all other life that lives today with an environment that none of us have had a chance to adapt to. It will disturb our systems, leaving most life, including us, with no idea how to meet its own needs and no chance to figure it out. Climate change will simply strip away from you everything that you love about the world.

Climate change means that the stream you dipped your feet in as a kid, the one that flowed behind your grandma’s house, will go dry. Climate change means that your mother’s favorite bird, whose song she woke up to every morning, is forced to migrate north. Walls of wind and rain closing in as three of the five most devastating hurricanes in U.S. history hit landfall in the same year. It means a bad corn season in Ohio in 2017, 2018, 2019... Less corn on the cob, less corn syrup, less food for livestock. One day, even corn flakes are expensive. How did that happen?

Climate change means 25 dead in Australian wildfires. Record heat waves in Europe. 113 degrees Fahrenheit in France, as the girl you met two

years ago at a Women in STEM conference experiences her first heat stroke. Climate change means the tree a few houses down is split by a lightning strike. Record flooding in Bangladesh, Indiana, West Virginia. Your cousin’s first floor soaked in foot-deep water. Home videos and the pictures from when you visited in 2007, crumpled and disintegrated. How did that happen?

This world always felt like home. Now, it feels like it doesn’t want you here.

The funny part of it all is that we are causing it. Our infrastructure and industry, the ways we bring comfort and security to ourselves are the very things forcing us into the battlefield, forcing us to adapt or to die. But if we could only be selfish, just this once, we can change that.

When I choose tofu over turkey, when I choose to walk instead of Blue Jay Shuttle, when I vote for candidates who are tough on climate and pester my friends to compost, it’s not for the pandas, it’s for me, because I love to watch videos of pandas being silly. It’s not for the trees, it’s for me because I love to watch the birds fly between their branches and breathe their clean air. It’s not for the 25 dead in Australian wildfires, it’s for me. Because I worry about my family in California. It’s not for humanity, it’s not even for you. It’s for me. I don’t want to lose the things that this world gives to me. I don’t want to see my loved ones suffer. I don’t want to look my children in the eye one day, watching tears tip over the edge of their eyelids, and explain to them why I never did anything to protect them from these disasters.

Climate activism is selfish. Neither you, nor anyone or anything you know and love, will be able to escape the weather patterns that emerge, that neither life nor man-made infrastructure have adapted to. Not with sturdier buildings, better insurance or more money.

If there’s one thing that everyone is good at, it is self-preservation. It’s time to recognize the threat that climate change will pose to you, and the pain that you will experience if nothing is done. Choose to skip meat at lunch on weekdays. Take the bus. Go to a protest. Demand action both from yourself and from your friends, family, community and government.

I know I will, because I am a selfish environmentalist and you should be too.

THE SPRING ISSUE

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