Why do we DO IT IN THE DARK?

Hopefully all of you at Williams knows what the DO IT IN THE DARK competition is. I apologize for the overwhelmingly attention grabbing chalkings; I'm sorry if we interrupted your day for a few seconds. I also apologize for wasting paper putting up posters. If there's a better way to let everyone know then I'd love to hear it. And I'm sorry for the dark hallways because your friends turned the lights out. I promise you, there is a reason we go to all the work to put this competition on. As much as we really just want to give a dorm puppies to play with, there's a lot more to it.
Last year Greensense took some real strides in the direction of changing school policy regarding energy use. Last fall we held the first ever energy saving competition during the month of October, reducing the total energy use of the dorms by 3% for that month. During the month of December the Williams Climate Initiative was signed by over 1000 students and over 100 faculty members urging the college administration to set a target of reducing the school's total CO2 emissions to 10% below 2000 levels by 2010 and hiring an part-time position to look into how to best do that and monitor progress towards that goal. In the spring, during the month of April, was the second DO IT IN THE DARK competition. During that month, partly due to a more informed and motivated student body and partly due to upgrades made by Facilities such as replacing numerous incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents, the month saw a huge 13% decrease in energy use in dorms. The savings translated to 1,351 tons of CO2 not being released into the atmosphere.
That release of CO2 was not emitted by lights left on, and it doesn't come out of the backs of the little fridges in dorm rooms. Those all use electricity, which is very clean. But that electricity comes from America's power plants that burn mostly coal and gas. Because burning these things is unpleasant for a number of reasons, we build power plants a long ways away from where we live. Therefore we do not see the effects of the electricity we use.
The biggest effect of burning fossil fuels, and therefore our electricity use, is the release of CO2 into the atmosphere. That gas is the driving force between of the greenhouse effect which warms the earth. For 400,000 years, through several ice ages, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has ranged between 180 and 280 parts per million. 280 ppm when the earth is very hot (like now), and 180 ppm when the earth is very cold. The current level of CO2 is 380 ppm and there is nothing we can do to keep that number from rising to at least 480 ppm in the next 10-15 years. (data courtesy of NASA). That means that changes of ice-age magnitude are possible, not in the next couple years and not in tens of thousands of years, but in ways that could be catastrophic to our lives and our grand-children's.
I do not see working on the issue of climate change as a past time or as a issue that environmentalists should tackle. I see it as something that responsible citizens, educators, parents and consumers should be aware of, and let that awareness be shown in daily habits, consumer choices and political elections. I know there are many different issues that people fight hard for every day, but if climate change gets worse (even with the most conservative of scientific estimates), then problems like the AIDS, global poverty, loss of species habitats, catastrophic hurricanes and warfare are going to get worse. It needs to be an issue that is encompassed in all of these.
Now in another reminder of how last year ended, there was vibrant debate over the existence of global warming. As you might have guessed by now, I am of the opinion that global warming is a very real threat and we should act while we can to try and correct it, and I will not argue that here because I'm going to assume the large majority of you agree with me. I would rather point out that reducing the CO2 emissions that contribute to global warming is only one of many possible reasons for increasing energy efficiency at Williams.
DO IT IN THE DARK does two things. It reduces the energy that the campus uses, which reduces the number of tons of CO2 that are released. It also raises awareness, it lets every single one of you take an active role in grappling with the greatest problem human civilization has ever faced.