The Mirror - 01/30/15

MIRROR

Anthony Chicaiza/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

01.30.2015

Permaculture|3

Divestment|4-5

OUR WORLD IS CONNECTED|6

Climate skepticism| 8

2// MIRROR

EDITOR’S NOTE

Dartmouth, 2050 When you return to Hanover, how will campus have changed? satire

It’s the time of term where people start to step a bit quicker and the durations of conversations dwindle.

Just one twinkle wrests this campus from black-hearted despair. For the people of Dartmouth College — intelligent as they are — know that while two can be chalked up as a coincidence, three makes a pattern. After muddling through three unintelligible Editor’s Notes, only the most optimistic of readers would dare predict anything other than another 2.6 terms of shockingly uninteresting drivel.

Thus no matter how crummy their midterm papers are going, my readers fairly reason, it is unlikely their writing could possibly turn out as vacuous as the weekly Editor’s Note. My column, I can safely say, is responsible for a campus-wide writing confidence boost more palpable than that from attending an extra office hours or RWIT session.

“To which subject will Charlie turn his unsharpened ‘thinking’ this week?” my readers mutter as they stream into lecture halls. “Will this week’s column be as devoid of interest or substance as previous weeks’?”

(As an addendum, they might further wonder how many Editor’s Notes will be turned to the subject of the Editor’s Note — a subject that might fairly be considered “miles below the bottom of barrel.”)

The weekly Friday morning ritual of reading this Note, relishing your deep-seated revulsion and then ripping this column to shreds gleefully comes highly recommended.

Having filibustered away about two-thirds of the column, I’ll briefly mention this week’s theme before bowing out of your lives for six days — a period that I’m certain you cherish yet more each week. This Mirror approaches some of the overlooked stories tangled around the topic of climate change. There are some gems here, from a discussion of the politics of climate denial to a feature on a student building permaculture oases.

My column, I know, induces existential stress about the fate of writing in the 21st Century. But I feel confident that the rest of the issue will ease your concerns.

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MIRROR R MIRROR EDITOR CHARLIE RAFKIN

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF KATIE McKAY

PUBLISHER JUSTIN LEVINE

EXECUTIVE EDITORS LUKE McCANN JESSICA AVITABILE

But this winter is cold. Is global warming still real?

B y mary liza hartong

It’s the year 2050 and your mid-life crisis has brought you back to dear old Dartmouth, as you always knew it would. You may not remember all the words to the alma mater, but you’re ready to skate on Occom Pond, build a snowman and tear up the slopes with your bionic post-knee-replacement legs.

“Oh the places I’ll go, like the BEMA and King Arthur Flower!” you tell yourself as you attempt to zip up your old parka and eventually decide the zipper is just broken. The Dartmouth Coach, which is now a high tech hovercraft that travels from Boston Logan to Hanover in three minutes, pulls up to the Hop. As you look out the window you encounter the first sign of change at Dartmouth — bare stomachs. Nay, bare stomachs in January.

The class sweaters you and your classmates adored so much have been replaced with class tube tops. Your green 2015 sweater looks ridiculous compared to the miniscule, clingy swag of the class of 2050. Not a hoodie is to be seen among the sea of pinnies, coconut bras and Hawaiian shirts.

“How on earth are they warm enough?” you wonder, until you happen to notice the next strange thing. In place of a giant snow sculpture, pine tree or multiple feet of snow, the Green is covered in sand and water — not to mention the bathing suits. Such numbers of bathing suits you’ve never seen. Say it ain’t so! The realization that the Green has been turned into a beach finally hits you when you see President Hanlon, now 95, sitting atop what was once AXA’s lifeguard stand, actually lifeguarding.

You hope this is all just a bad dream, a byproduct of your cholesterol medication, but you are proven very, very wrong when you step off the bus and into the 95-degree heat.

The still north and the hill winds cannot save you now. You are sweating like a hipster at a music festival, and are soon forced to rip off your ill-fitting winter garments until you are down to your miniscule Trips t-shirt and a pair of jeans which you have, in the literal heat of the moment, cut off at the knees. You swore you’d never succumb to the jorts fad that was so popular in middle school, but nevertheless, here you are, baring your veiny calves to the world. Students stare you down and whisper insults in slang you do not recognize.

“What does ‘frito’ mean?” you moan. “Why aren’t they calling me ratchet or awkward?”

Hoping to find solace in KAF, you swim across the Green. On the way there you manage to fist bump an old professor, have a brief reunion with a classmate who now regrets his “#YOLO” tattoo and swim quickly away

Are students powerless with respect to climate change?

Samuel Health/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

from the shark that now guards Hanlon’s throne. You ache for a latte, but find that KAF has been turned into a tiki bar called TAF — short for Tiki And Fun. After a couple of consolation piña coladas you turn to the bartenders, Katniss and Elsa, and ask, “What has become of this place? Where’s all the snow? When does anybody actually go to class?”

The manager, Groot, pops his head out of the back room. “You wanna know what happened to this place?” he asks. You nod.

“Global warming.”

Reality break: In composing my narrative of Hanover’s future I decided it might be wise to actually consult an expert about what that future will plausibly look like. According to geography professor Jonathan Winters, who has done extensive research into regional climate change in the next century, my tale is far from accurate.

“By mid-century it will be about 5.5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer,” said Winters.

“There’s a range of projections, so it could be plus or minus a few degrees.”

Winters noted that Hanover is likely to experience a 7 percent increase in precipitation by 2050. Yes, that means you should prepare for more rain.

“Hanover gets about three feet of precipitation a year so about three extra inches of precipitation a year. For snow, ball-parking it, you’d get approximately 75 percent of what you used to get,” said Winters.

While Hanover will not become a beach

How many climate skeptics have you met on campus?

Dang! Got ’em! It’s super hilarious and It’s not news that many of us feel like our colinsightful to wonder aloud whether the lective hands are tied. Most student-driven snow dump we experienced invalidates environmental campaigns seem aimed at One reason for hope: I have never of decades careful scientific reasoning. symbols, like opposition to investment in met a single person on campus who And it’s even funnier when paired with fossil fuel campaigns or the construcdisagrees that climate change occurs the converse of this joke — namely, when tion of the Keystone Pipeline, rather and is anthropogenic. We have reason to it’s hot out and you ask, “Where’s global than dramatic governmental rethink that as our generation takes charge, warming when you need it, huh?” This forms. That’s why the TTLG from reforms might be possible. strategy wins The Mirror stamp of approval Leehi Yona ’16 is so inspiring. She as the key to any comedic career. proves that it’s possible to lobby for tangible change.

by 2050, according to Winter’s research the temperature rise in Burlington, comparable to Hanover’s climate, will result in 20 more days a year above 90 degrees.

“By 2050 the climate in New Hampshire will be around the climate of Pennsylvania or Maryland,” said Winters.

In case you thought you were off the hook, Winters made it clear that this change is absolutely due to human activity.

End of Reality Break.

You listen with rapt attention as Groot takes you back in time to 2015. He reminds you of the time you slept in your buddy Oscar’s van with the engine on all night, the evenings you cranked up your heat to the maximum setting and left your window open and the gasoline you used to burn down that abandoned warehouse.

“I can change!” you moan at Groot, clutching his palm tree speckled shirt. “I can change!”

You are still mumbling this phrase when your eyes snap open. You use your fully functioning knees to spring up, open the blinds and gaze upon the feet and feet of beautiful white snow.

“What year is it?” you ask your groggy roommate.

“2015.”

“There’s still time!”

From that day forth it was said of you that you kept the environment close to your heart all the days of the year. And so, as you would later observe in an EARS 06 paper — Mother Earth bless us, every one.

A Student Dreams of Kiwis profile

B y caroline berens

Although the windows reveal the icy, barren scene of a Hanover winter, thoughts of warmer weather and spring sunshine fill the air in the Collis second floor lounge. Six students sit together and ardently plan the extensive fruit-and-vegetable-producing garden that will be planted in a sorority’s yard this spring.

The small group consists of Malcolm Salovaara ’17 — the impetus behind a campus-wide project to implement self-sustaining gardens on the properties of 10 different Greek houses this spring — as well as his scientific expert, Jonah Sternthal ’18 and four members of Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority in the Class of 2015.

Salovaara pulls out a hand-drawn blueprint of Kappa’s land and begins adding to the plans with fervor, crossreferencing with Google maps.

Their first major decision? Whether the sorority will choose to grow grapes or kiwis. Salovaara explains the pros and cons of each possibility, weighing which fruit will be the most successful on various parts of the property.

Despite the scientific nature of his project and the technical language needed to explain it, Salovaara refrains from being esoteric.

In once instance of some confusion about the difficulty of growing grapes, Salovaara references Italy’s love for wine, explaining that the drink’s popularity in the country is due to the dryness of the land. In rainy Hanover, grapes have a higher probability of rotting, but growing them is not impossible.

Although one of the women makes a note to bring up the grapes versus kiwis decision at meetings, they decide on the latter when Salovaara shows them a picture of kiwi plants’ beautiful foliage. With the aesthetic benefits and wine-making potential of kiwis, combined with grapes’ risk of rotting, it’s a clear victory for kiwis.

Salovaara scribbles a note about the kiwis, seemingly relieved to come to a decision so quickly, while he begins discussing the possibility of growing other fruits — papayas, blackberries, persimmons, pawpaws. It’s not hard to imagine that soon the women could sip smoothies made with fruit grown in Hanover, even in their own backyard.

As the meeting draws to a close, the

sisters express how “stoked” they are for the project and their regret that, as seniors, they will only see it in its beginning stages.

“Why will I not be at Dartmouth to see this in 10 years?” one asks.

Salovaara’s eyes enliven at their enthusiasm, and he smiles down at his papers as he organizes them with care.

He has three more meetings like this in the next two days, planning potential gardens for Chi Gamma Epsilon and Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternities and Kappa Delta Epsilon sorority.

Salovaara, who is originally from New Jersey, became interested in sustainable agriculture when he worked at the Dartmouth Organic Farm last spring with his friend, Sam Kernan ’14.

He first learned about these practices — loosely termed “permaculture” — when a friend sent him a link about the practice when he was in high school.

So what exactly is permaculture?

When explaining it to students, Salovaara describes it as a way of creating self-sustaining orchards and gardens.

Instead of growing plants that must be replanted every year — called annuals — permaculture involves cultivating plants that live for more than two years — called perennials — including foods like fruits, nuts and leafy greens. Permaculture also includes strategically growing some plants, like flowers, alongside those that produce fruits and vegetables.

The goal is for the perennials and other plants to develop synergistic, symbiotic relationships among the plants.

“Permaculture sets up systems that passively accumulate value and fertility naturally,” Salovaara said. “The goal is to create a system unlike a vegetable garden to which, for example, you have to add fertilizer every day.”

Environmental studies professor Andrew Friedland explains that one of permaculture’s most significant benefits is its sustainability.

“Agriculture is one of the most destructive activities in which humans participate,” Friedland explained.

“Every time you turn over soil, you’re making it vulnerable to erosion by water and wind, and you’re increasing the amount of carbon that had been buried below the surface, and that might be returned to the atmosphere

Gabrielle Kirlew/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

Malcolm Salovaara ’17 has been organizing a number of permaculture gardens.

as CO2.”

Friedland said that anything to reduce energy inputs and disturbance of soil — the expected results of Salovaara’s work — is a “noble goal and worthy pursuit”.

Why then, if permaculture is such a sustainable and beneficial practice, is it not being used on a more massive scale?

Marcus Welker, a PhD student in ecology and evolutionary biology at Dartmouth who is also familiar with Malcolm’s work on the Organic Farm, explains that there are monetary incentives against the practice.

“The yield is lower with permaculture, and there’s also a multi-billion dollar industry associated with making chemicals and pesticides to allow you to grow your fruits and vegetables,” Welker said. “Permaculture is just harder, much like riding a bike is harder than driving a car.”

Friedland also noted that many of the foods we eat, like wheat, corn and soy beans, are annuals, not perennials.

Salovaara, however, is not afraid to devote much of his time to increasing the presence of permaculture on campus. Salovaara’s plan is to plant orchards and vegetable gardens on the properties of three fraternities, six sororities and one co-ed house — but he doesn’t want them to be merely “gardens.”

“I want it to be something like a zen garden with nice smelling things and birds singing that also produces food,” he said.

That’s why when some of the organizations inquired about growing hops — in order to produce beer — Salovaara guided them toward fruits that could be used for wines as well as food.

It’s this vision that Salovaara shared with the members of various Greek houses when he first proposed the idea.

Emily Leede ’15, a member of Alpha Phi sorority, said she was almost immediately convinced.

“I had no idea what permaculture was at first,” Leede said. “But Malcolm was very professional, and within a week of him approaching us we had contacted [Greek Letter Organization and Societies].”

She said that some members of A Phi were quite enthusiastic right off the bat, while others were a little confused, but eventually Malcolm’s charm got more people on board. (She noted that his good looks didn’t hurt.)

Now Leede says she and her sisters are looking forward to the “relaxation heaven” Salovaara has described.

Matt Stanton ’15, a member of Sig Ep, noted that the gardens might mark a shift in the current tenor of Greek spaces.

“The gardens are a very wholesome and nurturing idea, in a place that’s normally associated with destruction and negative things,” he said.

John Conley ’15 of Alpha Chi Alpha fraternity agreed, explaining that the benefits extend beyond food and the yard’s enhanced beauty. He thinks that

fraternity members will “take pride” in their garden and enjoy its benefits alongside the community.

For Salovaara, who is unaffiliated, Greek houses were a natural choice for the location of the project.

“Some of them own their own land, so there are far fewer administrative hoops to jump through.” Salovaara explained. “And for most members of a Greek house especially, it is exciting and meaningful to do something that will make a difference in the life of a future member of that Greek house in five, 10, 50 or even 100 years.”

This past fall, after getting approval from various Greek houses, Salovaara visited each yard and surveyed the landscapes to plan blueprints. Currently, he is conducting weekly meetings — like the one with Kappa — with each Greek house, where they spend most of the time planning out logistics of the gardens. It won’t be until the spring that they can start planting, and it’ll be a few years before some of them will come to fruition.

Friedland and Welker, however, noted that it may take a while for the plants to become full-fledged gardens.

“It’s possible that 30-50 percent of the plants could die in the first year,” Welker said. “They might have to be replanted.”

Friedland also expressed concern about how well the gardens will be protected, especially at night when people are out.

“I do wonder and worry [the gardens] might get trampled during parties and on weekend nights, when people aren’t as mindful,” he said. “Even the dogs in fraternities could make it difficult to sustain the gardens.”

However, both are highly supportive of Salovaara’s plan.

“Where else, besides on a college campus, can you do things like this?”

Friedland said.

Beyond the environmental, community-building and food-producing benefits, Welker speculated it could hold greater significance for Dartmouth’s Greek system overall. With heightened scrutiny on Greek life as a result of Moving Dartmouth Forward, he noted that Salovaara’s plan could become identified as a positive feature of the Greek system.

Salovaara, ever-modest, does not have such grandiose plans.

“It’s not realistic that we will feed all of Dartmouth with these gardens,” he said. “My long-term goal is just to have as many people exposed to [permaculture] as possible. I want it to be something that connects people, something they can discuss and relate on at their 50-year reunion.”

Ultimately, though, Malcolm realizes that people’s motivation for doing this — although most do seem genuinely excited about the prospect of gardening and harvesting food — is more about intangibles.

“At the end of the day, people don’t really care about the plants,” Salovaara said. “They care about members of their houses that will come after them.

MIRROR //3

THE D RUNS THE

NUMBERS 12

The number of principles, including “o b s e r v e a n d interact” and “design from patterns to details,” invoked by permaculture advocates.

1,211 600

The number of signatures accrued on the Divest Dartmouth campaign’s online petition and the number of likes on its Facebook page, respectively.

35 The percent of Amer icans who express skepticism about the science behind climate

2,155 The number of pages of the latest IPCC report.

4.5 million

The number of gallons of Fuel 6 oil Dartmouth consumes annually.

4// MIRROR

Is Divestment Worth It? Advocates make a convincing case, but is the statement worth the financial hit? analysis

B y sam forstner

This past fall, Perri Haser ’17 sat in Reed Hall, room 103, listening to philosophy professor James Binkoski. The class, “Environmental Ethics,” solidified Haser’s commitment to environmentalism and helped inspire her to become more involved with the Divest Dartmouth campaign.

This term, Haser has taken the lead in some aspects of Divest Dartmouth’s operations, as usual leaders Noah Cramer ’16 and Leehi Yona ’16 are off-campus.

In September, College President Phil Hanlon asked the Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility to prepare a report that details the implications of withdrawing the College’s investments in publicly-traded fossil fuel companies.

Haser says Divest Dartmouth is urging the College to terminate its investments in order to send a message and deal an economic blow to firms involved with fossil fuels. About 200 firms — the publicly traded firms with the largest fossil fuel reserves — are on the Divest Dartmouth’s list, but the organization does not seek to divest from all companies involved with fossil fuels.

“The point of divestment isn’t to try to shut down the company. It’s to make a moral statement,” Haser said. “Fossil fuel companies are dinosaurs, and they’re really bad for the environment, and they’re destroying the future of students here.”

It seems that with the emphasis on sustainability and outdoor activity that permeates much of Dartmouth’s campus, from emphasizing waste reduction on First-Year Trips to promoting recycling and composting in dining facilities, the College would be a natural choice to lead the way for divestment across the nation. Money, however, doesn’t appear from thin air, and every dollar decrease in the endowment could ripple down to affect student life or the College’s academic excellence. Is making a moral statement worth a possible decrease in financial aid or funding for residential life, especially when the impact of an individual institution’s divestment on the fossil fuel industry as a whole could be negligible?

It’s time to move beyond jargon and scrutinize the benefits and costs of divestment.

The ACIR executive administrator Allegra Lubrano, who is overseeing the report, echoed Haser’s sentiments. She said that divestment

could make Dartmouth appear to be taking the high ground on an important issue.

While there’s a number of causes that student groups rally behind, from groups like the Women of Color Collective to organizations like J Street U, Divest Dartmouth seems to be gathering momentum among the student body.

With orange signs plastered on the doors of a several campus buildings, the group is ensuring that their message reaches students. One cause for its popularity could be that its environmental angle is fairly non-controversial in its most basic sense. It’s not hard to besmirch an oil company.

Divestment, however, wouldn’t come without the possibility of serious drawbacks. Lubrano and Haser, among others, said that it is entirely possible that divesting could hurt the College’s endowment.

A May 22, 2013 column in The Dartmouth by Kevin Francfort ’15, “The Cost of Divestment,” argues that divestment will cost the endowment $200 million during a 10-year timespan. That means the College would lose about $10,000 per student per year, according to the column.

Francfort, a former staff columnist, declined to comment.

Lubrano says she admires the hard work and dedication of the students who make up Divest Dartmouth. She noted that they are fighting for a not-always-popular cause.

“They are not struck by the inertia that strikes so many of us,” Lubrano said.

Interestingly enough, Haser used the same word — inertia: a tendency to do nothing or remain unchanged — to describe the College’s current investment situation. Haser, for her part, claimed that the College is allowing inertia, rather than the time-sensitive needs of the warming planet, to dictate its action.

Brian Chen ’17, College Republicans executive board member, declined to comment on the possibility of divestment.

Morgan Curtis ’14 has been involved in the campaign for divestment since spring 2013 and has remained very active in campaigning for divestment after graduating. She currently orchestrates alumni relations for Divest Dartmouth, encouraging alumni to write to the school and fostering an increasing number of alumni connections.

Divesting, Curtis said, would allow Dartmouth to “once again be on the right side of

history and be at the forefront of the divestment movement.”

The current issue of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine features novelist Louise Erdrich ’76 speaking out in favor of divestment, with the headline “Earth Mother.”

“Why should Dartmouth divest from fossil fuels? Because when you are educating students to have a better future, you should do all possible to ensure they have a future,” Erdrich is quoted as saying in the magazine.

Curtis said she has often heard the argument that Dartmouth can make the biggest impact on oil companies by remaining invested and being an active shareholder, but she said there is a long history of shareholder activism making no impact.

Additionally, Haser speculated that opponents could claim that the purpose of an endowment is not to make statements, but rather to fund research at the College.

Activists are quick to note, however, the precedent that would seem to refute this claim.

“Dartmouth divested from Apartheid in the 1980s, so it’s not like we haven’t used our endowment to make moral statements before,” Haser said.

By the end of 1989, Dartmouth announced it would terminate investments in companies conducting business in South Africa. According to an article in the New York Times published in November of that year, the board made that decision because the investments had “great symbolic meaning” and that they interfered with Dartmouth’s educational aims.

While divestment may be a popular position for students, most do not have all of the background information at their disposal. In an ideal world, the College could be morally pure while cultivating the endowment through profitable investments, but it is unclear whether those two outcomes could coexist.

Still, Haser reiterated that economic analysis is not the driving force behind divestment.

“It’s just sort of logic. Everyone talks about how they want to save the environment,” she said. “It’s not logical to invest in fossil fuels if you don’t want to destroy the environment. It’s logically incoherent.”

While economics may not be at the root of the campaign, divestment advocates are taking action to hit colleges financially as well.

CECILIA SHAO/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

Terry Tempest Williams, a conservationist, spoke with student organizers about divestment in 2013.

Organizers from Dartmouth, including Curtis, as well as those from Boston College, Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other universities in the Northeast, are working together to create the Multi-School Fossil Free Divestment Fund. The fund allows students, alumni, parents and faculty to make tax-deductible donations to what Curtis calls a sort of “alternative endowment” in order to show support for divestment. The money in the fund will be distributed to schools only after they completely divest from fossil fuels.

Curtis said that while Dartmouth is taking very similar actions as its peers in the Ivy League, the College’s crunchy culture suggests that it could propel environmentalism from merely a campus matter to a national concern.

Divest Harvard and Fossil Free Yale are currently fighting for very similar results on their respective campuses. Harvard and Yale Universities possess the two largest endowments of any institutions in the nation, each worth more than $20 billion. Both groups have received definite “no’s” from their corresponding administrations.

Harvard’s divestment campaign received a boost in 2012, when 72 percent of students voted in favor of divestment in a referendum.

In the fall of 2013, President of the University Drew Faust released an open letter affirming her deep-seated opposition to divestment. Then, in the spring of 2014, students blockaded the President’s office for a day and a half, ceasing only when one student was arrested.

Harvard sophomore Talia Rothstein, a member of Divest Harvard’s board of directors, said that it is especially important for well-regarded institutions like Dartmouth and Harvard to be leaders in this movement.

“The opportunity for universities whose names bear a lot of moral and intellectual weight is really powerful,” Rothstein said. “The University’s name can create some actual tangible good.”

Fossil Free Yale project manager Mitchell Barrows says they’ve needed to reevaluate their campaign efforts after receiving the “no” from the administration this past August. Barrows said he believes that alumni need to call in to make a bigger impact, as money is the most effective form of communication.

“We need to start speaking the language of the Yale corporation,” he said. “It’s called the Yale corporation for a reason.”

Haser says divestment would hopefully lead to a more environmentally conscious student body, and ideally the College would reinvest the money in renewable energy.

According to a 2014 report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, clean energy will attract as much as $5 trillion in new investment between now and 2030. However, the report also spells out divestment as a far-from-painless process.

It states that while divestment from coal would be easy due to the relatively small size of the companies, divestment from oil and gas will be more difficult and drawn-out.

Despite the difficulties, more than 400 organizations in the U.S., including colleges, cities and churches, have joined campaigns promoting fossil fuel divestment.

“We’re not at the time when we have the luxury of being able to make choices that are convenient,” Haser said. “I don’t know if [divestment] will succeed. But I know that the movement will keep going no matter what.”

MIRROR //5

Alyssa Schmid/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

6// MIRROR

Through the Looking Glass:

Our World is Inherently Interconnected COLUMN

B y Leehi Yona

I never went camping as a child.

The one time my family and I went to a cottage in rural Ontario, I was so terrified of being out in “nature” that I couldn’t eat or sleep. We went back home that same night.

By all means, I shouldn’t really care about the natural world. I grew up in a suburban area of Montreal that has one of the fewest percentages of green spaces in the city (a suburb that continues to develop what’s left). In eighth grade, I dreaded our yearly outdoor education trips, which included canoeing, quinzhee-building and — the horror — sleeping outside.

Loving nature wasn’t something people necessarily expected from me.

Which is why I was as surprised as anyone else to find myself, five years later, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil at the June 2012 Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. I spent most of my time in Rio crying, raging against hope, experiencing cynical spirals and feeling more empowered than I’d ever felt in my entire life.

Several people on campus know I do “environmental stuff,” but few — I’d even venture to say none — know what that means. When I was asked to write about my experiences at the U.N. for this column, I hesitated. I usually talk about my “environmental stuff” without namedropping. But I want to share some stories with you, stories that will, at the very least, provide some perspective on why the climate crisis is the single most important issue facing young people today.

I don’t think about climate change in a onedimensional way. I see this challenge from so many perspectives: as a climate scientist-intraining, as a budding policymaker, as a first generation student in the U.S, as a Canadian, as an Israeli and as a representative of young and future generations.

I grew up instilled with the fervent belief that it didn’t matter what a person did with their life, so long as they were doing good — so long as they were kind. This conviction is why I care about climate change.

The reality of climate change is that it’s not about whether or not the planet will be able to cope with these changes, but rather whether or not humans will. Climate justice is inherently about the people who are — and will be — directly affected by others’ actions. Climate change is intersectional — it’s about wanting to have a stable economy that isn’t reliant on fossil fuels. It’s about the right to live in a neighborhood that is healthy and free of smog and pollutants.

Our changing climate is not just an issue of environmental policy, but is connected to a wide range of other political issues — the economy, health reform, education and national security.

In the same way, climate justice is inherently connected to other forms of justice.

I care about these issues because climate change constricts my heart and causes me so much pain, because every time someone says “climate change,” I think of the people who are disproportionately affected by climate injustice.

My heart remembers the stories of First Nations people like Crystal who are exposed to carcinogens at the Canadian tar sands, northern communities like Olivia’s whose water supplies are polluted. I think about my uncles who farm in Israel, whose crops are noticeably changing.

I think of Ula, who lives in the Maldives, making career plans without knowing where she will live in the future. I can’t possibly share enough

stories to do them justice.

So many people — government officials, classmates, U.N. climate negotiators, university trustees, oil company executives — tell me that what’s being done for climate change is enough.

How is it acceptable for even one person to die or live a life reduced to poverty because we’re deciding to stick our heads in the sand?

How can some argue that this issue doesn’t matter? That young people, that women, that people of colour, that indigenous communities whose rights to the land have been stolen, that people of lower socioeconomic status, that all who have already perished due to climate change and those who have not yet been born — that these lives are insignificant?

I often want to scream within the U.N. conference halls. I want to shake U.S. and Canadian decision makers and tell them not to make the mistake of ignoring climate science, of ignoring the citizens they have been tasked with representing. I want to tell them to pick another battle because they will lose this one, if not to me or to the voices here at the U.N., then to their grandchildren, who will ask them how they could possibly have allowed such inaction, and to whom they will be able to offer nothing more than apologies. Even that will not be good enough. *** Dec. 13, 2014, 3:50 a.m. — I’m at the United Nations Climate Change conference in Lima, Peru. The negotiations have officially run into overtime. There seems to be no binding, equitable agreement in sight.

I sit with my friends Chris from Australia and David from New Zealand. We’re citizens of the infamous trio of countries at the Conferences of the Parties. We’re exhausted, mentally and physically, glued to our computers as we wait for the COP President to make announcements regarding the status of the current agreement draft. After 14 straight sleepless nights, I’m wondering why I’m here when I could be at home with my family and friends. By the time I leave Lima a few days later, I will have seen nothing of the city, having spent 20 hours a day in a makeshift conference center.

It’s difficult to communicate what it’s like to attend one of these conferences. On the one hand, you’re incredibly privileged to be able to attend, but on the other hand, you’re automatically dismissed as young and insignificant once you get there. Nearly every young person experiences a meltdown during their first COP, in which they realize just how broken and impossible the negotiating process is. The U.N. doesn’t operate by consensus, and any process that aims to get over 190 countries to agree to curb greenhouse gas emissions typically deteriorates until more powerful countries bully developing countries into accepting a sub-par agreement.

At the same time, attending COP as a young person is incredibly inspiring, and you make friends in all corners of the world. From the Maldives to Norway to Ghana to China to Australia, the other youth delegates I’ve met are a testament to the fact that no person is alone in striving for a better future.

We are all inherently interconnected to each other in this world. *** I wake up in my tent to the sound of waves crashing. I’m on the Biology FSP in Costa Rica, moving from field site to field site every few days.

Today, Jan. 17, 2015, we’re in Santa Rosa. It’s 5

Courtesy of SustainUS

Leehi Yona ’16 was named Canada’s top environmentalist under 25 in 2013. a.m. — still dark out. Part of me can’t believe I’m waking up so early. The next two days are the only chances we have to sleep in, with breakfast only at 7 a.m. We’ve been working 16-hour days ever since we began our FSP. There are no days off. Sleep is precious.

But — the turtles are hatching. I feel a gravitational pull to the ocean. As I walk out of my tent and onto the shore, I realize I’m the only person who’s been able to resist the lure of additional rest. I’m rubbing my eyes, noticing how breathtaking the stars look, how the bioluminescence of the water is still visible, sending sparks of light that mirror the endless sky above me. Slowly, the sun starts to rise behind the mountains, and I feel a sense of deep calm as some previously unnoticed weight leaves my shoulders.

I run into Erik, a turtle monitor who is trying to aid the struggling populations here. We walk along the shore and notice jaguar footprints that lead to turtle carcasses. It’s a typical morning by his standards. We don’t see any hatchlings yet, but he promises to let me know if he sees any.

Later at breakfast, Erik stops by. With my rudimentary Spanish, I can’t pinpoint what he’s saying, but he reaches into his backpack. Next thing I know, I’m holding a baby olive ridley sea turtle in my hands. And I’m crying.

Everyone around me laughs at my tears. It’s only a baby turtle, after all — such a touristy thing to be excited about. We’re scientists. We do cool research, and there are other organisms here worthy of our attention — blue-crowned motmots, bromeliads, jabiru. Ecology is about looking at whole systems, both the adorable and the seemingly mundane.

Tears are streaming down my face at this point, but not because I’m holding a cute turtle — because I’m realizing that I’m holding an improbable miracle in my hands. Cheesy, but shockingly true.

Sea turtles struggle more to survive beyond any other organism I’ve seen. Their reproduction process involves danger at almost every step, from jaguars hunting nesting mothers shoreside, to raccoons eating eggs, to crabs snatching hatchlings as they scramble to the water. In fact, these same adorable turtles we later released to the ocean were all promptly consumed by frigate birds. Go figure.

As I looked down at the creature in my hands, I was in absolute awe of its existence. By all accounts, it shouldn’t be living. All the odds are stacked against it — yet it lives anyway. Sea turtles have, indeed, been on this planet for over 110 million years.

It dawned on me in that very moment that, in the same way that successes against incredible odds are possible in nature, they are also possible when it comes to the movement that strives to protect it. Adequate climate action may seem rather improbable, but it is deeply possible. Thanks for that reminder, olive ridley.

The next day, I was up at 4 a.m. again.

*** Sunday, we moved to high-altitude Monteverde. Walking along the cloud forest, I can’t help but stop every seven steps (and not just because I’m still scared of slipping in mud). This world we live in is just so beautiful.

There are no words.

And I’m looking around me now and am recognizing how much of this incredible world I haven’t seen yet, feeling viscerally that I am no more than a speck of dust, of nothingness in this moment in time; remembering all the times I have been told to “stress less,” to “sleep more,” to not to spend 99 percent of my waking life fighting for climate justice because the fact is that we’re fighting the Goliath within ourselves, that we’re stuck within a system that “cannot exist” without fossil fuels, that climate change is going to happen anyway, and so I might as well give up.

I see how beautiful this world is, and I refuse to accept the fate that scientists predict for us.

I’m reminded of the prayer I heard ringing through the streets of Lima merely a month ago: “Somos semillas.” They tried to bury us, but they have forgotten — we are seeds.

As NASA scientists affirm that 2014 was the hottest year on record, I know that we cannot afford to wait for any political action to come when it comes to climate change. We must demand better from the people whose job it is to provide for our futures: our elected officials, our community leaders, our university trustees.

We deserve at least that much.

Why would this matter to you? I was once told that youth wield immense power by being able to bring the future into the present. We are young, we are students and we are barely even just beginning our lives — but we are society’s moral voice. It is our birthright to demand a future that is at least as good as the ones into which our parents were born.

I’m told that the action I seek on climate change is impossible, unrealistic, idealistic. But I look around me and see how awe-filled this world we live on is, and I can’t bring myself to accept that apathy and greed are greater than humanity. I refuse to believe so.

Working on climate issues is by far the most physically and psychologically exhausting and spiritually exasperating thing I could ever see myself doing. It offers very little rewards, almost consistently beating you down. And yet it’s filled with the most emotional, inspiring, empowering experiences I’ve ever had.

I couldn’t possibly be doing anything else.

Author’s Note: I highly encourage the trolling of this article in the comments section. Nothing makes me happier than seeing climate deniers waste their energy attacking me instead of doing something more productive with their lives.

Leehi Yona ’16 is co-coordinator for the SustainUS Agents of Change youth delegation program to the United Nations climate negotiations and lead organizer of the Divest Dartmouth fossil fuel disinvestment campaign.

FRIDAYS WITH MARIAN

MIRROR //7

Boots and RallIES COLUMN

By Aaron Pellowski

COLUMN By Marian Lurio

Dennis Rodman still hasn’t responded to any of my tweets, so I don’t want to spend too much time talking about him this week.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, amirite? But please do visit dennisrodman. com — you won’t be disappointed. The site is an educational adventure, and I learned several things about the basketball superstar’s life. For example, he has written a children’s book entitled “The Wild Bull,” there are Dennis Rodman “action figures” and for the reasonable price of $250 dollars, you can have your very own! You can even buy an off-white fur jacket-and-pants combo for the figurine.

Personally, I wouldn’t settle for anything less than the legend himself. And an invite to North Korea wouldn’t be the worst gift I’ve received.

For the time being I’d even be content with a mere tweet back once in a blue moon. It’s just the right thing to do.

Speaking of evil dictators... Can ANYONE play by the rules?! Lance Armstrong was in the news this past week for his comments on his doping in the 1990s (and after??) and how he would do it again if he were to go back in time. In the world of politics — Sheldon Silver.

On Jan. 22nd, Silver, the longtime speaker of the New York State Assembly, was arrested on federal corruption charges.

Enough about NYC. Not all that far away from here is an allegedly historic city known as Boston. I’ve only been to the airport in said city, so I really know nothing about it. However, I have been following the “Deflategate” scandal of the New England Patriots, a team that I naturally associate with the city of Boston.

The Patriots aren’t strangers to controversy. All this talk about deflated balls has left me thinking about Aaron Hernandez, whose murder trial for allegedly killing Odin Lloyd in 2013 is now underway. While he has entered a plea of not guilty, there’s been a lot of talk in internet communities as to whether or not Hernandez is a psychopath. Given my obsession with psychopaths, I was eager to do some investigating of my own. I think he may be more of a high-functioning sociopath, but my biases have gotten in the way of my personal investigation. One look into those brown eyes of his (via the computer screen), and I’m lost. Don’t get me started on how handsome he looks in an orange jumpsuit.

TBH, Tom Brady is beautiful. However, the moment he opened his mouth for that news conference, I was simply disgusted with

him. We are not stupid enough to believe your stupidity, Tom! Therefore, I suppose I will have to root for the Seatle Seahawks even though I have never even been to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

The world could be crumbling around us and “Deflategate” would still be stealing the headlines. For heavens sake, Skymall has filed for bankruptcy! I don’t know how this didn’t happen years ago because who actually has the ability or lack of self-restraint to purchase random “Star Wars” memorabilia and the other unnecessary — but awesome — items sold.

I’ll be honest — if I had the disposable income (or if Dartmouth would refund my tuition on account of the alleged lack of academic rigor), I would be one of the 10 people to order stuff from Skymall. Although, since I sometimes have presumed they make the catalogue and don’t actually have a Skymall store/inventory, perhaps they could continue to produce a catalogue to read on flights.

An aside: The need to add “-gate” (#clickergate) to everything that may or may not be a conspiracy/unlawful act needs to stop.

“Clickergate” certainly grabbed our attention and made national headlines, but here in Hanover, we’ve moved onto a new set of issues. You may have attended College President Phil Hanlon’s riveting speech in Moore Auditorium, or — like me — you may have just experienced it vicariously through the #DartmouthMDF Twitter feed from the comfort of your futon and full-flannel outfit. I did get some goodies at the Vermont Flannel Company store in Woodstock, and I can confirm that they are still selling flannel thongs, which are branded as “vongs.” I think that “flongs” is more intuitive and really rolls off the tongue, but perhaps that name has been copyrighted/patented.

Back to MDF/Phil Hanlon’s public speaking skills (jk... hey Phil, I know you’re out there), if I wanted to be treated like a sevenyear-old while taking college-level classes, I would have gone to Brigham Young University.

Since, according to Phil, Dartmouth is not academically rigorous enough, I would like a large portion of my tuition back. Then I could scrape up the money to buy some Skymall items for the first and last time, and buy a Dennis Rodman figurine as well as multiple outfits to put him in. @StudentFinancialServices, I’ll be waiting for that check — please send it to my Hinman box.

Last Friday night, I was strolling home from the Nugget Theater where I’d just taken in “American Sniper” (2014). I was a little underdressed, so my timbers were shivering a bit, and my head was lit with a myriad of ethical considerations provoked by the film I’d just seen. What are the allowances and concessions we must make to those who kill for their country’s security? Is sniping a dirty mode of warfare? Did the film-makers deliberately dehumanize the Iraqi and snipers in order to swerve off the tines of moral relativism? How has our culture grown to recognize and understand the impact of returning soldiers upon families since Aeschylus wrote Agamemnon?

Just about all my attention was seized in this cluster headache of “right” and “wrong,” but not so much that I did not spy out of the corner of my eye something absolutely queer. Like fickle goblins fitted in parkas stealing across the lawn by the light of the moon, I spotted a pair of girls outside Butterfield holding a large rectangle of familiar proportions and walking at an unusually brisk pace.

I quickly tamped down my ballooning stream of moral aporia as I swiveled on my booted heel and chased these two gremlins down. I caught up and turned the first around by her shoulder.

“Is that a composite?”

“Oh. Uh. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...”

“I’m going to take this from you. Whose is this anyway?” I flipped it over. “Zete. 1983. Huh. You know, this is a profoundly shitty thing to do.” I let them go without a further word.

If you don’t know what a composite is, they’re those big, framed, plaque-type things hanging on the walls all over the insides of fraternities and sororities with little pictures of all the members. In the first place, they’re extremely expensive to put together, but that’s overshadowed by the immense, non-monetary value they have to the house. Now, you may stand somewhere far out in Dartmouth’s vehemently anti-Greek contingent and therefore believe that any crime done to a fraternity is a punch in the favor of justice. If this is so, there is nothing in my following complaints for you.

Please take this moment to set down the paper you are holding and return to your joy-filled, righteous lives, lest they be threatened by unwelcome syllables of dissenting opinion.

If you’ve been following “Boots and Rallies” closely, you will already know that I have some pretty severe ideas about stealing at Dartmouth and what kinds of trauma I believe ought befall those who take part in our persisting, sad tradition of petty larceny.

Stealing composites, however, is categorically more revolting than pocketing the occasional Courtyard Cafe sugar cookie. This is because of the sequence of events that must occur in order for the act to take place.

At least half an hour before I apprehended this pair, they must have left their respective

dorm rooms in order to “go out.” They might have visited 10 Greek houses, or just one. They definitely came to Zete last, where they must have stood on the cold porch and knocked on the door. A brother would have opened it and let them in, at which instant the peculiar social contract of visiting a Greek house would have been set into swing. Visitors are allowed entrance into the warm, private home and sleeping quarters of about twenty of their peers, unfettered access to as many free beverages as they can keep down (all while allowing Greek houses to shoulder institutional liability if they do become ill) and an affable scene of music and bouncing camaraderie.

In return, guests are obligated to nothing.

This inevitably foments a culture of gross entitlement as visitors forget how good they’ve got it, and the feelings of gratefulness and respect rapidly flicker out into oblivion. With this warped pathology in full bloom, this heartless sticky-fingered duo would have been welcomed within the walls of Zeta Psi, where they commenced to thoughtlessly gorge themselves on the expensive generosity of their fellow students as if it were their birthright until the clock struck midnight. At which moment, they departed for home, and as a note of thanks, they chose to rob their benefactors of an irreplaceable artifact.

Showing up at someone’s door and openly violating their hospitality by stealing from them is historically one of the worst things a person can do — it is literally how the Trojan War got started (look it up). What troubles me more, though, is the unshirkable thought that one or both of these degenerate young women I caught is likely in the habit of raising her hands during class discussions concerning ethical issues like the ones raised by “American Sniper.” For college-age kids, morality consists of having strong, spirited opinions about lots of political and social issues — politically correct or not — but almost never in the habit of responsibly monitoring one’s choices and actions. “Right” and “wrong” are topics for English papers and op-eds, but not the sort of thing you’d drag into reflection on your daily conduct. That seems retrograde to me.

So I can’t help but feel weird imagining that drunk mouth — the one smiling “Yaaaaaaaaaaa” at me — that same mouth in the classroom, turned stern and uttering terms of strongly-worded contempt for actions, policies and people that are in fact deeply ambiguous.

It is an endlessly strange feature of people that they can be so duplicitous, even (or especially) unto themselves, that they can have such strong moral opinions and rant with such booming judgment. Meanwhile they commit daily acts of wrongdoing like it’s nothing.

Which is why it’s a such a dang lucky thing I’ve never done anything wrong. Otherwise this column might come across as a tad hypocritical.

8// MIRROR

Disbelief Amid Certainty It is time to explore the politcal dynamics underpinning climate skepticism analysis

B y hannah petrone

If you find the United States’ international rankings in health care, education and social mobility dismally low, don’t despair — you still have the top rank in climate change denial to keep you warm at night! According to a 2014 survey by Pew Research, 35 percent of Americans disagreed that the Earth’s average temperature has been rising within recent decades. This statistic is only a few percentage points lower than the rate of Americans who believe in ghosts, according to a November 2013 Harris Poll. Further, a survey from Ipsos Mori, a market research firm located in the United Kingdom, suggests that the United States lags behind other developed nations in the percent who believe climate change is caused by humans. It’s a striking thought, especially when compared with the 97 percent of scientists who agree that climate change is not only real but also very likely caused by human activities, according to NASA. Our initial goal at The Mirror was to explore climate change denial at the College. Reflecting the consensus in the scientific community, however, several professors said that climate change skeptics are in short supply on campus.

Even so, as an institution of higher learning, the College’s mission remains intertwined with the questions of evidence and education that the prevalence of climate skeptics in the United States raises.

And while educating students and society alike, Dartmouth must be wary of alienating 35 percent of the country’s population.

We can start to understand why it is important to combat denial by exploring the dynamics that underlie the disconnect between fact and fiction.

American politics is a major driver in climate change denial. For example, as a presidential candidate, Senator John McCain was openly critical of President George W. Bush’s lack of effort toward combating a changing climate.

“Instead of idly debating the precise extent of global warming, or the precise timeline of global warming, we need to deal with the central facts of rising temperatures, rising waters and all the endless troubles that global warming will bring,” he said at a manufacturing plant in Oregon in May of 2008.

Yet, as McCain became more involved in the race, his dedication to introducing climate change legislation wavered. Bipartisan messages aimed at addressing climate change gradually became muddled, both by the economic crisis and by the increased partisanship seeping into the climate change debate. Ultimately, there have been few — if any — legislative items directed at climate change passed by Congress, with most major changes coming from the White House or Environmental Protection Agency.

“We have gotten more polarized over climate change, even as the evidence has gotten stronger,” said government professor Brendan Nyhan, who studies misinformation and misperception in politics.

Nyhan spoke about a sort of insidious tipping point in which an issue goes from scientific consensus to a polarized political issue. The messy and cumbersome mechanisms of democracy foil efforts to keep science and politics separate, he said.

“Once [these problems] are mapped onto the political spectrum, it’s really hard,” Nyhan said.

“But it’s also the case that when something is important, it is going to be addressed through the political system.”

Scientists who stand behind the credibility of climate science are often perceived as left-leaning. During an appearance on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show in 2011, Rick Santorum said that the idea that human beings are largely responsible for recent changes in climate is “absurd,” and called it a “beautifully concocted scheme” by the left. More recently, Senate Republicans agreed that the earth was experiencing a change in its climate, but denied that it is the cause of human activity in a floor vote last week.

This refusal to acknowledge the impact human development has had on the planet’s climate illustrates the erroneous belief that studies on climate change are motivated by scientists’ political beliefs and therefore biased.

According to earth science professor Erich Osterberg, combining scientific evidence with

Annika Park/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

political advocacy can have unfortunate effects on the credibility of that information.

“I think it is important to stay away from advocacy because then your results of the science can be easily questioned by people on the other side,” he said.

This cautionary point is profoundly relevant to our education here. Students must be careful not to filter information through political bias.

Sometimes a fact is just a fact.

While advocacy may backfire on the scientific community, it seems to work well for those leading the denial campaigns.

“There is a lot of deception out there, and it is purposeful deception,” Osterberg said.

Mary Albert, an engineering professor at Dartmouth and Executive Director of the United States Ice Drilling Program Office, sees campaigns devoted to misleading the public on climate change evidence as a tremendous obstacle to educating the public.

“Some people are easily led astray,” Albert said. “If a publication looks real, it has a great cover, it has graphs — it appears to have it all.

But if it is not from a peer-reviewed, reputable journal, then one should not count on it.”

For example, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change is designed to attract people searching for scientifically accurate information, like the data that be found through the International Panel on Climate Change, the NIPCC website is chock full of graphs, numbers and all the trappings of a legitimate science forum — only it lacks context. The NIPCC’s legitimacy and credibility has been called into question by several scientists and organizations in the field of climate research, citing a lack of rigourous standards and an association with The Heartland Institute, a policy think tank whose own credibility has been criticized by

several news publications and scientific experts.

The College takes pride in the rigorous intellectual pursuits of its students and faculty, so flimsy academic standards elsewhere should trouble us. Fortunately, we have the resources to cull truths from the misinformation.

Osterberg notes that while we invest much of our efforts into a heated political debate about widely-accepted scientific facts, developing nations are already seeing the effects of climate change.

“Right now we aren’t even dealing with [climate change], we are still debating if it even exists,” Osterberg said. “We have to get past that point so that we can actually have an intelligent discussion about our limited resources, and how we are going to allocate money to deal with this.”

The consensus among the experts with whom I spoke is that mass education is crucial to combating the forces of climate-change denial. Which educational tack we should pursue, however, is not entirely clear. Nyhan’s research revealed that presenting individuals with facts that negate their views often has the paradoxical effect of strengthening their misconceptions.

“Move away from the assumption that it is your job to shovel facts at people, and think more carefully about what is the more effective way of communicating with people,” Nyhan said.

Nyhan notes that people respond more to visual information, like graphs and images, than to text. He also stressed the importance of depoliticizing the issue of climate change, noting the pressure that politicians feel to toe party lines.

Albert directs climate change skeptics to the IPCC, which presents its information on three levels, the third of which is written at a 5th-grade level to ease comprehension, she

said.

Still, she believes it is possible to motivate people who may have the information on climate change but show no particular concern for the environment.

It all comes down to economics, she said.

Over the next 10 years or so, for example, the cost of electricity in the Upper Valley will rise.

As opposed to more traditional methods of generating electricity, Albert said that a person investing in solar panels for their home today will, in roughly eight years, have low or no annual electricity costs and recoup the price of the initial installation. That the economic benefit of using renewable energy often motivates more powerfully than the environmental benefit of doing so is not important.

“Even if people are only using renewable energy for economics, from a scientist’s point of view, it is still the right outcome,” she said.

It’s easy to chalk up the views of climate change deniers to a frustrating, but ultimately innocuous, disregard for the facts. We should not, however, be passive about climate-change denial. It prevents us from addressing issues crucial to the survival of our planet, and willful ignorance of the facts threatens higher education’s most sacred values. Our investment in Dartmouth uniquely positions us to take a leadership role in helping truth triumph.

In “The Ethics of Belief”, W.K Clifford wrote about the implications of a belief formed without the basis of evidence.

“No belief held by one man [...] is ever actually insignificant or without its effect on the fate of mankind. [...] Belief, that sacred faculty which prompts the decisions of our will, and knits into harmonious working all the compacted energies of our being, is ours not for ourselves, but for humanity.”