The Life of a Climate Activist

My last post talked about the goals of the movement at Williams right now. I thought this might be a good time to jot down what I've been up to this week, both for my sake to keep in mind how everything is going, and for those interested in what kinds of things I actually do. Sorry its long, but that's what the scroll button's for.

Working backwards, I checked itsgettinghotinhere.org for the umptienth time this week to see what news and inspiration there was. This visit led me to treehugger.com where I voted on a number of videos as part of a video contest. This afternoon I had coffee with Kate Merrigan who is organizing a county youth conference. I agreed to lead the workshop on environmentalism and sustainability, even though it will mean rescheduling a tutorial, because the chance to inspire a bunch of bright-eyed high school students is too good to pass up.

Last night was Thursday Night Group, arguably the best student group on campus. The meeting started off slowly, but people filtered in slowly and we got down to having a productive meeting, talking about planning high school visits, influencing the curriculum for Focus the Nation and planning the spring Do It In The Dark. We also had Lauren stop by from MassPIRG to introduce herself and talk about what MCLA and BCC students are working on. We pitched MassPIRG jobs as well as the LUCE grant jobs and the upcoming Boston Climate Summit (sign up for any of those!).

Earlier that day, in between finishing a late paper and running between meetings I finally got access to itsgettinghotinhere.org and published a post that I had prepared earlier for that, see here. I was a little nervous and excited about posting this, since the site is read by over 4,000 people daily.

In between blog posts and meetings on Thursday, I filled out an application for summer funding from the OCC to work in Concord, NH this summer on the presidential primary with a bunch of Middlebury and Dartmouth students. Hopefully they'll give me 3,200.

Wednesday I had an interview with my CC co-president, Kim Dacres, on WCFM with Nathan Friend. He asked us lots of questions about our goals for the year, one of which is absolutely sustainability. I said one of the most important things that I'm doing is simply being elected, showing that an activist can become the president of the mainstream student government - climate change is an issue for everyone, not just environmentalists. But I also hope that the CC position will give us more leverage and insight into making changes at school. For example, earlier that day I had lunch with the dean of the college, Dean Roseman, and we talked about how to reduce student driving on campus.

Tuesday we had lunch with Stephanie Boyd, unofficial sustainability coordinator. She wanted to hear about the various projects we're working on and stay in regular communication. Tuesday evening was Greensense, always a nice relaxing evening. We were planning earth day's water challenge activities. And Monday I met with Sara, Justin and Adrian to talk long-term planning, which was the subject of my last post. Then, Monday evening I listened in on a phone training about working with the media and writing good press releases. Useful for sure.

With a quick glance at my sent email for this week I can see arranging coffee, getting ighih blog access and summer funding, a request for someone to lead an environmentally focused college tour for prospective students. There are requests from students about CFLs, planning for Step it Up 2007 with the Congregational Church, a panel that I can't serve on during spring break, updates from the Youth Environmental Squad at Mt. Greylock high school.

So its been a busy week, but not any busier than usual. Just thought I'd write a bit of this down so it feels like I've done a lot.

Re-Focusing the Mission

Sometimes you just need to re-focus everything that's going on. Life has been hectically split between College Council and climate change. There are lots of actions that we've worked on talked about doing, but its good to set down what the main goals are. This comes from a frank conversation with Justin, Adrian and Sarah Gardner this afternoon about goals and plans.

This week at Thursday Night Group we will continue with three groups. The one with raising campus awareness has expressed interest in running Do It In The Dark during April. It seems this is the most visible and popular thing that we do and its important to maintain that status and message.

Another group will continue to pursue the visits to local high schools. The two visits we've done so far (link) have been hugely successful and this is a model that should be expanded. The presentation will probably undergo some editing (again, this is great), but the biggest task for this group will be setting up the contacts and schedule for each school we want to visit.

And the other group will be pushing the planning of Focus the Nation and looking for ways to integrate sustainability into the curriculum. The Focus the Nation team needs to work with professors directly and personally to ask them to teach us more about climate change as it relates to their discipline. The LUCE Grant has given us a lot of money for all sorts of work in this field, and Dave Dethier has largely let this money sit un-utilized. We need to give him a way to spend that money by paying students to work on projects of this kind.

Beyond that, are there other things that deserve to be worked on? Absolutely, Earthweek, Step it up, first days and many more are all important. Can we do them all at once? Of course not. We'll get to them.

Energy Saving Incentives

A thoughtful Record opinion entitled Invisible Incentives asks if there is a better way to encourage students to reduce dorm energy use. It is a response to an earlier piece by Rob Streicker called 'We Need To Do It All Day'.(sorry, unable to find link). Invisible Incentives argues, quite correctly I think, against Streicker's suggestion of putting student energy costs on the term bill. While this would provide an economic incentive, it would be so small in comparison to the total cost of tuition, already rarely born by students, that it would hardly have any purely economic incentive.

Is there a better way to encourage broader cooperation in energy saving across more than the estimated 30%-50% of the students who do partake? Here's one interesting idea that I found in a facebook group at Connecticut College called "I'm Saving Energy for a Kick-ass Floralia!"

The group description runs:

Concert from Conservation is a student led campaign to reduce energy use on campus.

Here’s how it works:

As a campus, if we can use below what we’ve spent the last five years, we get 25% of our savings will go towards better events at Conn. Saving the earth and making money has never been this easy.

TOP TEN THINGS YOU CAN DO:

1) Turn off everything when you leave your room.
2) Don’t open your windows to cool down when the heater is on right below.
3) Put computers in sleep mode after 15 minutes, and turn them off at night.
4) Unplug chargers, or put them on a power strip and turn it off when not in use.
5) Use CFL’s instead of incandescent bulbs for extra lighting in your room.
6) Do big loads of laundry.
7) Make sure that lights are not left on in empty spaces.
8) Encourage your teachers to reduce their energy consumption.
9) Take shorter showers, and use cold water while brushing your teeth.
10) Buy Energy Star Rated electronics.
Every little bit helps.

Eat Less Meat

This isn't news, so much as a reminder. Eating meat is more wasteful in many ways and emissions is an important one. For the full article see the Christian Science Monitor.

Researchers at the University of Chicago compared the global warming impact of meat eaters with that of vegetarians and found that the average American diet – including all food processing steps – results in the annual production of an extra 1.5 tons of CO2-equivalent (in the form of all greenhouse gases) compared to a no-meat diet. Researchers Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin concluded that dietary changes could make more difference than trading in a standard sedan for a more efficient hybrid car, which reduces annual CO2 emissions by roughly one ton a year.

"It doesn't have to be all the way to the extreme end of vegan," says Dr. Eshel, whose family raised beef cattle in Israel. "If you simply cut down from two burgers a week to one, you've already made a substantial difference."

Mr. Williams and Climate Change

My talent in the Mr. Williams pageant was juggling and talking. I don't talk very well, but I figured with a prop to make it interesting, people might listen. I guess I did a good job because I ended up winning. Yay, Mr. Williams is a climate activist. You can watch the performance on youtube.



The pageant was put on by the Hurricane Relief Coalition, a group which is going an amazing job to keep a dying issue alive. We raised over $900 with the performance from donations and the money will go towards sending students to the gulf coast during spring break to work.

Morty sits on the mantelpiece of the new Paresky center to be visible to as many people as possible during the opening of the building. Many people have been asking me what sort of green features the new student center on campus has. Here is an official answer, a page on the green features of Paresky.

The page addresses lighting, heating/cooling, recycling of the old building, materials used in the new building and even the cleaning materials used by the custodians. Maybe most significant are the insulation ratings:

Insulation: The Paresky Center is very well insulated. It has R values as high as R25 in the walls and R72 in the roof; Massachusetts Code requires only R2 in walls and R15 in roofs. A highly insulated building retains more heat in the winter and stays cooler in the summer, and thus requires less energy to heat or cool.

Sitting in front of Paresky is the newly finished CFL sculpture. The five foot tall replica of a light bulb was made by Whitney and Cooper out of the incandescent bulbs collected through the CFL exchange. If the sculpture really used the 1000 bulbs that we had at that point, the materials making up the structure alone would represent $8000 that the college wouldn't have to spend this year on electricity costs. And we do this stuff for free!

Morty Saving the World

The eight foot tall cut out of Morty holding up the globe is now prominently displayed in Goodrich hall. Thursday Night Group members are tabling there and in the dining halls all week as part of the week of action.

Yesterday the "Amherst Blows Greenhouse Gases" T-shirts debuted, for sale at $10 each. They are available in the dining halls. Furthermore, in Mission dining hall alone, 200 signatures were collected on a pledge to reduce energy use in dorm rooms. These people will get a bright sign taped to their door which lets their friends know they save energy.

Other events this week include a 'taste test' where you can compare CFL to incandescent bulbs in Goodrich, Schow and Sawyer. We have two nights of unplugged music in Dodd living room and the dining halls. Yesterday two students ran into each of the dining halls, dressed as a coal plant and a wind turbine respectively. They shouted at each other, got in a fight, and the coal plant lost while the diners watched with slack jaws.

When Morty emailed the campus about the new sustainability initiative, the overwhelming response was, "what does that mean?" Our goal with this week of action is to let people know what that means and what they can do to help.

Week of Action

This week is going to be huge. Thursday Night Group has put together a bunch of exciting events to really get the word out about the sustainability initiative. President Schapiro emailed the whole campus, and the overwhelming response has been, "what does it mean?"

That's where we come in, the foot soldiers of the movement. We're going to be visible to every student on campus, answering questions, catching eyes and getting people to talk about sustainability.

Here’s the schedule for the week:

MONDAY

Posters need to be hung up
The fight over clean energy - Smokestack fighting windmill (in dining halls during dinner)
Cut out of Morty holding up the world in Goodrich

Tuesday

On going light bulb “taste taste” in Sawyer/Schow
Potentially Noah’s art opening in Schow
Potentially Adriann’s prints in Schow (we’ll keep you posted)

Wednesday

Valentine’s day posters need to be put up
UNPLUGGED: Live music and coffee in Dodd, 7-9

Thursday

Unplugged 2: Live music in the dining halls brought to you by Dining Services
Dessert and contradance, Dodd living room 6-8
TNG, 10pm in Dodd

Friday

Winter carnival begins, Baxter opens
CFL Sculpture unveiled on Baxter lawn
That’s all for now. More to come.

Coming Attractions

Guster is playing the spring concert at Williams as part of the Campus Consciousness Tour, posts Mark Orlowski, '04. On April 26th Guster and their entourage will do an afternoon of fun and educational events for the campus, like showing off their bio-diesel bus, explaining how they power their concerts with wind power, and doing workshops for students. Then they get to perform and give occaisional 'shout-outs' to various environmental causes.

And who can we thank for this amazing opportunity? ACE concerts of course, and you can be sure they're going to get a very warm thanks from all of us climate activists.

See the video from their tour last year:

What's in a Name?

This blog is an ongoing project to share the successes and issues of the climate movement at Williams to students here and people doing similar things at other schools. In light of that, the old name didn't seem to fit. It did express some of the feeling of climate action today - we're neither in the dark ages nor very close to a sustainable world - but as far as telling a reader what its about, it didn't do much. So, who knows what sort of a change this will make, but it certainly won't be big.

Get Rich

Get rich working for the climate. Richard Branson, (the Virgin airlines/record label guy) is offering $25 million for an invention that will scrub CO2 out of the atmosphere. See article in Reuters

Also, I have 'discovered' an amazing new blog. Read the Carbon CO2alition blog for general climate change news and specifically the politics in NH. I am particularly interested because my summer plans involve working with the SSC in NH for a few months to influence the primaries in those states. So stay tuned.

College Council Presidency

In the spirit of leading the college community towards sustainability, I have announced my candidacy for College Council president. Along with my running mate, Kim Dacres, I promise to strengthen the support for student leaders on campus, work to make our campus greener and involve the student body in that process. In addition we are going to work to support club sports and re-open the discussion of multi-culturalism on campus.

There is a need for leaders who are environmentalists. We cannot limit ourselves to environmental groups when the work that needs to be done is everywhere. I encourage all of you to run for positions, apply for committees and take part in groups that are not directly involved because there is a difference to be made. There is a need for role models of progressive and meaningful action. There must be a visible face to our common goals. I don't claim to be the best face or the most qualified leader, but I am willing to put myself out there. As I think I've consistantly shown, I'm the one who will put out that energy when its needed most, and that's what I plan on doing as we continue into the future.

Visit our facebook group: facebook.com and be sure to vote on Feb 15th-16th on jose.williams.edu.

Press - The Williams Record

An editorial in the Williams Record writes about the recent high grade (A-) that our school recieved on the sustainability report card. They say:

Williams’ “A” (actually an A-) is misleading. The grading system focused on two categories: endowment practices and on-campus sustainability efforts. Williams’ endowment practices, by the SEI criteria, are superb. They are transparent (a list of investment holdings is available at the investment office) and they are responsible (the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility, including students, deliberates over investments). Williams was prepared for the endowment category of the test and aced it, proving that the College can be green when it comes to cash.

The story goes on to urge us to greater effort and not take too much credit for a report that was somewhat slanted in our favor. It ends:

Before we plug our sustainability grade, let’s unplug our personal refrigerators – those energy hogs – and screw in greener bulbs. Significantly reducing our carbon emissions will mean more than any “A” ever could.

Bravo, Record, you hit the nail on the head. For the news article on the Sustainability Report Card, see here

Focus the Nation - the Video

Yes, its worth watching.

The Onion Weighs in on Winter

Normally this blog is reserved for real news about exciting things at Williams and the student climate change movement in general. But of course there's more to life than just that. Like this recent Onion headline for instance:

Northeast Stunned By Freak January Snowfall

And goes on to note...

SYRACUSE, NY—In a rare instance of icy-cold January weather, much of the Northeast awoke Tuesday morning to find itself buried under nearly 1.5 inches of snowfall.

For the full article of this bizarre weather occurance, go to TheOnion.com

Mt. Greylock Reaches Out

The Berkshire Eagle printed a letter to the editor from a student at Mt. Greylock High School on Global Warming.

On Jan. 18, Williams College students came to my school (Mt. Greylock) to talk to us about global warming. Of course, I already know what global warming is, but I never took a good look at what the effects were. In case you haven't noticed, the weather has been getting warmer. Now some people may think, "Isn't this good? Warmer weather means more time to swim or exercise." Yes, of course that is good because a lot of us like the warmer weather and the swimming.

You can find the full article here.

News Hits

Inside Higher Ed starts of a recent article entitled The Gold Standard for Green Standards with the sentence, "Justin Bates makes the rounds on his campus carrying a sack of light bulbs. They are compact fluorescent models — the kind that use less energy than the standard incandescent ones found in many dorm rooms". Go Justin. Read the rest of the article here

A Great Day for Williams Sustainability

Two major events occured today to elevate sustainability to the forefront of Williams. The first was President Schapiro's announcement to the college of the Climate Action Plan. The trustees met this weekend to discuss and unanimously passed a plan to reduce college CO2 emissions 10% below 1990 levels (or about 50% below today's levels) by 2020. That letter can be found here

The second item was the release of the College Sustainability Report Card. The Report Card examines and grades 100 schools across the United States and Canada on criteria including climate change policies, green building, and investment practices. It was produced by the Sustainable Endowments Initiative which is run by Mark Orlowski '04. I'm not sure if his connection to Williams swayed his organization's report, but Williams was one of only 4 schools to recieve an A-, the highest grade awarded. More can be found and the full report can be downlaoded here or here

Slide Show Available

The high school slide show is available to download. You can get it by clicking on the following link:
http://www.filehosting.cc/?d=0E0D2C65. Scroll down, fill in the three numbers, wait 30 seconds and then click 'download file'. Sorry for the invonvenience, but that's what it takes to do something for free.

It takes about 40 minutes to run through and emphasizes the science and effects of climate change before moving on to the possibilities for student action individually, in their school and in politics.

Please suggest changes and corrections, since there's a lot of room for improvement.

MiddShift Inspiration

Over 120 students from the north east gathered at Middlebury College to discuss plans to shift their colleges to carbon neutrality. The weekend was held by Middlebury students working with the Sierra Student Coalition, the Campus Climate Challenge, Step It Up 2007 and Focus the Nation to inspire and educate student activists. The conference was entirely student run and many thanks go out to Middlebury students for making it all possible.

I got there late, so I missed a lot of the early talks, but the later ones I attended on education, organizing with an action plan and leapfrogging towards distant goals were all very informative. The best part might have been Saturday night, where we had dinner and hung out in the envi house. Good food and good beer was provided by Middlebury and lots of people just wanted to talk about the awesome things they were doing. It was a great way to peer into how other schools were organized and hear lots of amazing ideas. But even cooler was to feel like we were in part of a movement. The power of so many motivated people was palpable and many students said they felt like it was a life changing experience. Some compared it to the civil rights movement in its scope, ambition and support, and I would be inclined (optimistically) to agree. At the end we gathered in the middle of their science library for more snacks, greeting people and saying farewell, and of course some of Middlebury's classic climate action songs and dances.


Most of our good ideas and goals from the weekend can be found on a Willipedia page here. If you are a Williams student please edit and update this document so that we can have some unifying goals to work from.

One final thought on climate action. I admire the ambition that goes into calling something 'carbon neutral'. It means a large monetary and institutional commitment. But its also a loose term. A school might be able to become carbon neutral overnight for as little as $300,000 a year if they simply purchase enough carbon credits to offset their operation. Sort of a modern day buying-of-indulgences. Middlebury is going to use carbon offsets for a large portion of its emissions, but they are using a time frame of the next 10 years to also make other changes. The issue becomes that its not clear how much they are changing and how much they are just offsetting. They aren't just doing offsets, which means education and infrastructure changes will be important, but its not clear to the casual observer how much they can save through efficiency measures.

Why not divide it up. Offset all of Campus immediately to do our part in achieving 'carbon neutrality' and at the same time work to reduce our Campus Emission Reduction by setting goals for local cuts in energy use. With these twin strategies the school would be doing its part immediately for the larger picture while being held to very high and obvious standards of operation at home.

Mt. Greylock Climate Action

Justin Bates starts his talk on global warming in the Berkshires at Mt. Greylock High School

Thursday marked the second day of the Williams regional outreach program. Five Ephs spoke to six periods of classes and one period of lunch at Mt. Greylock High School, reaching about 250 students and inspiring the creation of an environmental club at the school. The talk was based on the slide show developed over our Winter Study class on student activism with professor Singham. The show is intended to bring up some scary and local possible effects of climate change and then turn the focus to student climate action movement. The goal is to inspire students to become leader and motivate their schools and communities to reduce energy use, seek alternative energy sources and raise awareness on the issue.

When we arrived at the school, all we had was contact with a few teachers through email and a presentation that none of them had seen. By the time we left the students had already created an environmental club, they had their first important discussions on what they wanted to work on and we had over 30 email addresses to add to our contact lists.

The class periods before lunch were led by Williams students giving the presentation for the first time, offering them a valuable, 'trial by fire' learning experience into speaking to groups of students in an engaging manner. Then the lunch discussion involved 10 students who were interested learning whether it was possible to motivate students, even Mt. Greylock students, to act on climate change. We assured these potential leaders that a very wide range of people can become invested in climate change, but they must be approached on their own terms. Not everyone will come to a meeting and table to get signatures on a petition. Rather, students interested in engineering should be engaged in installing solar panels or producing bio-diesel and students who have more talent at art or theatre can use their skills to raise awareness and reach people in a different way.

In talking to this group of students I sensed it was very important to emphasize the group aspect of climate action, and really activism in general. Acting as individuals can be extremely frustrating, and pleas to the student body as a whole are rarely effective (if only everyone did this one small thing, then...). Instead, cultivating a group with a strong sense of membership and momentum, while being inclusive and fun is the best way to expand the scope and effectiveness of student actions.

By the time we left after the last bell our table at the front was crowded by dozens of students signing up their email address and asking lots of good questions. Maybe the most rewarding part for me was giving away the last two DO IT IN THE DARK stickers. We had given them out as prizes for answering questions correctly throughout the day and they were a hot item, probably for their scandalous nature. I thought the best way to give them out was based on a quick question: "Who is going to do the best climate action in the next month?" People's hands jumped up to say things like "convince my family to switch to CFL bulbs", "write a letter to the editor of the newspaper", and "sign my school up for Focus the Nation." I couldn't have been more pleased by the energy.

Outreach

Four Williams climate action heroes drove down to Monument Mountain Regional High School in Great Barrington today. We visited four classes to present our slide show and talk about student involvement in global warming. I have given the slide show a few times, and Becca, John Dingee and Collette all took a turn of giving it themselves. The reactions were very good, especially when we gave out DO IT IN THE DARK bumper stickers to anyone who got a question right. We also had lots of props like hats, CFLs, posters and movies which kept the students entertained. The 9th and 10th graders were excellent, asking very good questions and looked very interested.


Perhaps the highlight of my day was speaking to 5 students during their lunch period about what sorts of activism they'd already started on. They have a newly formed club, and at first they said they didn't have much of a plan. But once we started talking about projects like recycling and emissions reductions they knew exactly what they were talking about and how to go about doing it. I was very impressed and could only offer a few words of encouragement. We were sure to encourage them to sign up for Focus the Nation and the Campus Climate Challenge, if only for the resources available on those websites.

Tomorrow we're off to Mt. Greylock High School right here in Williamstown. Another long day, lots more climate action heroes to inspire.

Also, check out my Op-Ed in the Record today. (awaiting link)

King and Social Justice

After the civil rights bill was passed, King turned to focus his energies on deeper problems with American society. We don't heat about these efforts as much because, I think, they are more difficult to solve and lie closer to our core cultural values. He spoke of poverty and worker's rights and criticized America's use of violence in the world. And he urged us to turn away from a consumer society to a people centered society. These two articles say all this much better than I can, so read itsgettinghotinhere.org and FAIR.

Some might say that King is often co opted by many different causes for social justice, and that is as it should be. In fact he stood for many causes and cared about deeply about them all. We have thus far applied temporary bandages (civil rights act, endangered species act, Americans with disabilities act, EPA regulations, etc) to try and fix a bleeding cut. That wound continues to bleed injustice, however indirectly. Are we going to keep adding bandages or are we going to heal the wound?

Thursdays are Wonderful

Biggest meeting yet of the Thursday Night Group Juggernaut! 35 people total showed up, with some drifting in and out to check it out, and others excited about getting involved. Some came because of Jared Diamond last night, others because they'd been meaning to for a while, and still others because their friends dragged them.

We split up into 3 groups again. The first (with Justin) is working on the climate action plan announcement, most likely set for early spring semester. There will be life-size cut-outs of Morty advocating for a cleaner climate, T-shirts that read "Amherst sucks energy (front) Amherst blows CO2 (back)", a 'get some action' party and of course posters, fliers and other information.

The second group (with Adrian) is polishing our ongoing CFL exchange. It is set to receive its second batch of 1000 bulbs and begin a comprehensive plan of notifying dorms before the exchange and then posting a sticker on all doors that have been done. This will show a dorm that everyone is involved and doing something.

The third group (with Julia/Morgan) completed its first project of our "do something" campaign with 120 color posters, printed on re-used paper that went up on campus tonight. After an exciting discussion about a pledge/bumper sticker campaign to reduce driving on campus, we opted to continue to focus on energy, which we know more about here. The project will consist of a pledge and sticker to the extent of shutting off devices when you leave your room. We're hoping to have this project coincide with the climate action plan's announcement.

Although its easy to talk about ideas for projects, TNG has been exciting thus far because of its successes (light bulbs, posters, movie showing, etc) and the ability of people to get involved easily. In most group meetings 20 people sit and listen to the same few people talk. This gets boring. For us, you're involved the moment we get going and everything you have to say or idea you have will get listened to and considered.

I was so excited about it all that I forget to get a big group picture to post here. Alas, some other time.
Happy climate action...

Progress

Two schools are lined up for Williams students to come speak. Great Barrington's Monument High School and Mt. Greylock High School are both on board, probably for next week. In addition, the superintendents of all of Berkshire county are being emailed about our offer.

For those of you who don't know, this involves going to a school to do a slide show on climate change and student activism to several classes. Then we have lunch with students interested in taking on more of a leadership role. We try and use Focus the Nation and the Campus Climate Challenge are our two action plans.

In other news, the CFL exchange is continuing as we speak. The announcement of the climate action plan is going to be heralded by public art (such as a polar bear made from incandescent lightbulbs) and big, cardboard cut-outs of Morty. Tonight a group of 8th graders from North Adams gave a presentation on global warming to a packed crowd in Griffin 6, attended by students, community members and a local senator. Later this week we'll be rolling out a poster campaign, tentatively called the 'do something' campgaign. See example below.

An Inconvenient Dinner

Friday night the Nordic ski team and friends convened in the Mission dining hall to take over the big TV from the football players. We popped in the Al Gore movie and watched it over dinner, much to the consternation of a few of our neighboring tables. Of course we asked if it was OK to change the TV first and they agreed, but some of the football players that came later weren't as happy as their friends.

While we watched we were privy to the interesting conversation going on. A few of them were trying to deny the existence of climate change, while some of their friends were a little more insist ant. The defining argument came down to "...all I know is its 60 degrees outside in January."

I'd call it a successful event. Next week I want to show Who Killed the Electric Car the same way. Perhaps more to follow.

New Dean!

The college will have a new dean, and I, for one, couldn't be happier about their choice. I know Karen a little and I think she will be very interested in making changes to the college that reflect the needs of a warming world and a more aware student body.

To the Williams Community,

I am delighted to report that, after consulting with the Faculty Steering Committee, I have offered the position of Dean of the College to Karen Merrill of the History Department and she has accepted.

Karen will take on primary responsibility for all aspects of student life on July 1 after Nancy Roseman's seven years of remarkable service as Dean. Nancy had announced earlier her intent to return to fulltime teaching and research.

In addition to Karen's distinguished work as a teacher and award-winning scholar she has administrative experience as Director of the Center for Environmental Studies. She also has served on the College's Committee on Academic Standing, the Committee on Pedagogy and Evaluation, and the Stetson-Sawyer Planning Committee.

Williams is fortunate to have someone of her ability to carry on the College's long tradition of calling on members of the faculty to fill senior administrative positions.

I hope you will join me in thanking Nancy and Karen for the important work done, and yet to come, on behalf of all Williams students.

Best regards,
M. Schapiro

In other news, Sweden, led by industrial giants such as Volvo, pledges to eliminate using fossil fuels by 2020. link

Exxon Mobile Accused of Trying to Mislead Public

The Union of Concerned Scientists released a report on Wednesday accusing Exxon Mobil of spending millions of dollars to manipulate public opinion on the seriousness of global warming.

“Many of the tactics, and even some of the same organizations and actors used by Exxon Mobil to mislead the public, draw upon the tobacco industry’s 40-year disinformation campaign,” the report said. link

Similar to the tobacco industries' publicity campaigns, this shows how willing a company is to mislead the public where its own interests are concerned. And yet oil still controls government? Where are they taking us?

Hitting the Ground Running

Winter Study is here. This year that means hardcore activism and we hit the ground running today. 12 students are signed up for our course on student activism in global warming. We come from all different experience levels, but people seem very motivated and excited to work on lots of projects that are going on. Number one will be outreach to highschools, but we'll also be working on a photo presentation from affected peoples in Scandinavia and preparing for the announcement of the Williams climate action plan. Here we go...

Rules for Radicals and John McCain

Senator John McCain wrote a letter to my father today. No, my dads not a big shot in politics - it was a mass mailing - he mailed all registered republicans. My father feels that voting in the republican primary for our state and national districts is more influential than the national presidential primaries, thus he gets republican mailings from time to time.

The short and well written letter was a call to action to support the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship and Innovation act. John McCain, the fairly well respected republican senator, is supporting US action on global warming. From the linked summary, the bill looks good. We'll see where it goes.

I just finished reading Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky. It was great, a real handbook for getting large groups of people excited for change. I'd really recommend it. One comment that I'd like to make: Mr. Alinsky spent his life travelling from one issue to another. Civil rights to housing disputes to labor organization to anti-war protests to stopping pollution. He did it all, and he did it all very well and he never tied himself down with one issue. But in the closing remarks in his book he talks about the world he would like to see. That world is a world where the little guy has rights which are respected, where people who have power will always be held accountable for their actions and where the political will of the people is not manipulated in Washington.

Maybe I'm way too optimistic, but I'd like to think that if he lived 30 years later he would have taken a special interest in the issue of climate change. It seems that dealing with climate change will require many of the huge issues to be solved. The people who will suffer because of global warming are the Have-nots, as he would say. They need to convey their dissatisfaction with the wrongs inflicted on them to the Haves who make decisions. That is the only way the issue will ever be grappled with. But In order to do that, in order for the wronged masses wrongs to be righted, many things have to change. People say accountability is the biggest change that has to be made in our culture, because right now we have a society that specializes in displacing effects from actions. That is the nature of the global political-economy. So Mr. Alinsky, if your dream is to secure a better world for the little guys, the have-nots, then this is it. Global warming may only be one of many impending dooms awaiting the worlds poor, but it is unique among those possible dooms because its solution will a) benefit everyone, even businesses, and b) change the culture of exploitation into a culture of respect and balance.


A few other things: I spoke to the 11th and 12th graders of Keene Central School today about global warming. I wasn't the funniest or most animated speaker, but I did make an impression. The talks focused heavily on what students can do, and most important along those lines was forming a group (or using an existing one) to advocate and plan.

Second thing: I ran today, on the ski trails here. It was depressing. Running in shorts is not a correct way to spend the winter solstice in the Adirondacks.

Working on Outreach

Today I stopped by Keene Central School, my alma matter, to see a few teachers about global warming. I went with the intention of asking for class time this week to talk to students and help start some sort of climate action. I was surprised at how eager my teachers were to do it! My old English teacher and history teacher were all I needed to talk to, and in about 20 minutes I had class periods lined up with 10th, 11th and 12th graders, for either 45 minutes of 1 1/2 hours. Now its time to work on my powerpoint and look up a few facts about climate change in the north country and how it will affect hunting, fishing, snowmobiling and other 'local' activities.

Ephblog

I have just become an author of ephblog. For those of you who don't know, its a blog kept by an alumni, David Kane, and written by several alumni, professors and current students covering 'all things eph'. Its readership is decent and I plan on posting occaisionaly update on our activities and perhaps a few of my more thought-out opinions. Kane, the main contributor to the site, will probably be skeptical or outright opposed to much of what I have to say. This is fine, but I would appreciate comments from friendly readers like yourselves as well.

The Endowment

Is it possible to try and influence how the endowment as a whole is invested?
John Chandler, writing as president of Williams College, asserted that "As an investor Williams is in some measure responsible for the behavior of the companies in which it invests." link And "...the College through its Trustees has a right to expect companies in which it owns shares to follow business policies and practices in their foreign and domestic operations that are broadly consistent with the moral and social ideals of American society."

Of course we do have the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility which has student input on proxy voting and does research on companies, but it certainly isn't a tool for big change.

There is also a very small Williams Social Choice Fund which was met with mixed reviews by David Kane. The full story of that fund's creation can be found here.

As Mark Orlowski '04 says, "We seek to advance the alignment of shareholder practices with educational missions". link

Is this an area we could work for meaningful change, or is this a dead end of financial conservativeness?

Graduate Pledge Alliance

A few schools have started a simple program called the Graduate Pledge Alliance. From the Boston University student environmental website:

ESO has recently brought the Graduate Pledge Alliance (GPA) to BU! GPA is a non-binding pledge made by graduating seniors stating that they will take the environment into consideration in whatever job they take in the workforce. GPA seniors wear a green armband during graduation ceremonies in order to distinguish themselves. Their commitment means that no matter what field these seniors go into, they will work to make their organization more environment-friendly. BU is in good company on this initiative. MIT and Harvard's GPA movements are already in full swing. BU's students finally have the opportunity to show the administration and the rest of the academic community that we are committed to a sustainable future!

Other Schools include: Penn State, Tufts, Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Harvard, Middlebury, U of Massachussets, U of Michigan, and more, totalling about 100. Visit www.graduatepledge.org for more.

This might be something Williams could do fairly easily, but then again we need to weigh it against other projects that we wish to bring up to the college.

CAC

From the Daily Messages:

CAC to make greenhouse gas emissions recommendations in January
Last spring, President Schapiro created the Climate Action Committee to recommend by the end of the calendar year a goal for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and ways to attain that goal. We estimate that it will take approximately one month longer than expected to complete our work.

Last spring, President Schapiro created the Climate Action Committee and charged its members to recommend by the end of the calendar year a goal for the reduction of College greenhouse gas emissions and ways to attain that goal. We have spent the past six months engaged in a study of the various aspects of this complex issue and are working on a final draft of the plan for internal review. Consequently, we now plan to release our recommendations by the end of January. The Committee is very grateful for your interest and patience. from Stephanie Boyd, Facilities

On a totally different note, vegetarians are smarter

Al Gore in Great Barrington

I saw Al Gore speak last night in Great Barrington. Prof. Singham got us two tickets to the press conference as well as the talk and I got to ask the first question: "What is your plan for the next 5 years? Are you going to keep being an educator or is there some program that you plan on pursuing to be even more effective?" He answered, "I don't have any special or different plans, I'm going to keep doing what I do because I think its working and its important. I will keep up my international activities of advising national governments and just trying to make changes where I can."

Yes, he was a little stiff in his movements even as he eagerly sat on the edge of his chair, but as he warmed up, the power of his oration overcame anything noticeable about his demeanor. I've never been so impressed with an orator. Its very rare to listen to someone talk and know that reading the same words just wouldn't have the same effect. The way he jumped from point to point, citing statistics and anecdotes, quotes and jokes led the audience with him on every point. He gave a short talk and then answered written questions from the audience, but even through his answers, which did answer the questions, the momentum and drive of his talk continued so that the climax to the talk came not at the end of the talk but in the answer to the last question.

Good Points

If we are going to solve the climate crisis we need to solve the democracy crisis first. American democracy came from the enlightenment when men believed facts and reason should rule. It was threatened this century by the ideologies of modernity - fascism and totalitarian-communism, and luckily we triumphed. But the enlightenment ideals are under attack again, not from ideology but from a regime of economic consumerism. It is based on the mindless, one-way nature of television (the primary source of America's information about the world). Big-money controlled television allows us to drown out facts and reason with inanity which leads decisions to be made on false opinion rather than reality. At the time congress voted to go to war in Iraq, 77% of the American public believed Saddam Hussein was the person most responsible for the 9-11 attacks. This is a false opinion which was supported by big money interests. Its not that big-money hasn't influence politics before, its that its influence far exceeds any historical precedent.

We cannot rely on nuclear power to get us out of this mess. Not because of dealing with waste and not because of the chance of a meltdown, although both are real. It is because our policies will be mimicked abroad, and any country that can build a nuclear reactor can also easily build a bomb. Increasing nuclear power will significantly decrease the security of the world. And in America there hasn't been a single new nuclear plant commissioned in 33 yrs for economic reasons - the investment is so great and the payoff so long that companies don't think its worth it.

Public opinion change, like climate change is non-linear. They both can seem unchanged for a long time and then suddenly spring to life to create radical change. We are nearing a tipping point in public opinion which will be based on grassroots initiatives but quickly overwhelm the obstacles that big-money has in place. It is not a long process but a short one, a matter of years. And it will happen before it is to late to act effectively on climate change.

Where to Next?

Possibly upstaging Gore, two high school students performed a rap that they composed about global warming. Gore invited them up and it was amazing. It should be on Youtube soon, and you can bet I'll post it. I found these kids after the talk and bombarded them with questions about what sorts of actions and organization they have going on at Great Barrington High School. They said not much but they're looking to get started. I said, 'great, Williams college can help you'.

We must keep up the hard work here at Williams, but there is no denying the huge strides that need to be made in schools that have no organization and no process of change underway. We have the experience and the type of events/programs which have worked well. We are students and yet we are almost as well informed as anyone that speaks about climate change. We must spark the neighboring schools to action. Looking on the maps for focus the nation and campus climate challenge it is painfully obvious that western MA is blank. We're not doing anything and we have the power and imperative to change that.

Steve Klass on Middlebury

These are some quick excerpts from an email I received from Steve Klass when I asked him how the Middlebury trip went.

"I think their greatest achievement has been in institutionalizing the multidimensional principles of sustainability in a very complete and natural way, i.e., it's neither simply top-down (which isn't completely effective in higher ed anyway), nor is it simply a special interest/politically-charged issue...it's something that's a part of their daily lives, a part of every one's shared vocabulary, and a part of everyday decision-making, whether that's business decisions or simple daily behavior choices.

This, in a nutshell, is what I refer to when I talk about making sustainability a guiding principle of the institution. So, they are further down that road than we are and it's provided them with momentum to make decisions about co-generation, composting, engineering, etc. that require substantial resource commitments. When we're ready to make that kind of institutionalized commitment, I predict that we'll build similar momentum and other things will begin to fall into place for us over time.

The other area where they are ahead of us is in the maturity of their narrative. They've done a good job of pulling together all of the actions that they take along
these lines into a single, compelling story. I think that once we look at all the strands of activity that we have going on, we'll have a really nice initial story to tell as well. This makes me think that we're not light years behind them, and that we're positioned to be more successful over time."

Climate/environmental action on campus is as much about concerted effort as it is about presenting that effort in a prominent public way. Writing and talking about our actions is as important as doing them. (What happened to those pictures of the EARTH sculpture?!!)

Articles for today:
NYtimes Business: Why coal companies want us to take action to limit carbon
NYTimes Travel: Buying Carbon credits to offset travel impact

Today's Links

Holiday Energy Police
Christmas and global warming: we can't have one if we have the other. So turn off christmas tree lights of your neighbors and tell them they're ruining christmas.

Buying Solar Power Pays! Finally!

home owners can get a solar system installed on their house with no system purchase, no installation cost, no maintenance fees, no permit hassles, no performance worries, no rate increases, no security deposits for those who commit before the end of the year, and no risk.

Climate Action Week
Adopt a Senator and make the first week of the new congress the biggest week of climate action ever!

Burning Tires and Turning Turbines
Why can't an entire state oppose a test of burning tires as fuel (yuck!) and yet a few people can oppose testing renewable energy projects?

Harvard Commits to Reduction Goals

HARVARD STUDENTS PASS GREENHOUSE GAS REDUCTION REFERENDUM: 88.3% VOTE YES

Thursday night, the Harvard Election Commission announced the results of Harvard's Undergraduate Council presidential elections, which included a referendum entitled A Greener Harvard: Title II asking Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. The referendum passed with 88.3% of the vote. Authored by the Environmental Action Committee (EAC), it read, I call on the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to a level 11% below total emissions in 1990 by the year 2020. I pledge to do my part to realize these reductions while I am at Harvard."

This referendum is an overwhelming student mandate for Harvard to make a tangible commitment to a sustainable future by reducing its own contribution to global climate change. With this strong student directive, the EAC will ask FAS to setup a task force with student representation to work towards the 11% reduction. link

Prospect Ski Area

Quick News brief:

Prospect Ski Area, the cross country trail system near Bennington VT where the Williams-college, Mt. Anthony and Greylock Highschool teams ski is looking into ways to drastically cut back emissions and energy use.

Owner and operator Steve said he hopes to run his snow cats entirely off of bio-diesel by next year as well as looking into forms of wind power for his lodge. Sugaloaf and Sunday River Ski areas already run snow cats on bio-diesel and purchase wind power. Also the Middlebury snow bowl has gone carbon neutral by purchasing renewable energy and carbon credits for the vehicles.

note on Middlebury post

Please see the relevant wso discussion about the Middlebury post.

Middlebury Field Trip

This past weekend two vans of administrators took a trip north to tour the environmental programs of Middlebury College. The trip was initiated by Dave Dethier in Geosciences. His comments on the trip are as follows:

They saw what I wanted Middlebury to show us and heard that it was ok to experiment, calculate building paybacks for long-term, use LEED even if they didn't believe in the "medallion" cuz it was an easy target for fundraising, think about the total built area of the campus, etc...and on a budget far less than ours. We saw architecturally beautiful, high-tech buildings of all sorts and scales and heard that each one built on the learning that came with the previous building, etc. We talked at length to the wood-chip plant VP--it is still a work in progress--and were amazed at their recycling system (loses $) and composting (gains the bucks back). Most of all, I was again impressed with the top-down commitment to sustainability and to helping the local economy.

A quick talk with Bob Volpi, director of Dining Services, today also confirmed that the composting there is very impressive and they are interested here in learning from it.

Another report through the grapevine from Stephen Klass, VP of operations at Williams, was a general observation that Middlebury isn't nearly as far 'ahead' of us as we had been thinking and possibly a year of concentrated effort could bring the Williams campus up to the level of environmental action as them. As an addendum to that, Williams should be much more vocal about the things that we do do and get more credit instead of being so subtle.

Memes

Are memes real? Do you want to find out what they actually do, and if there's anything behind the hype? Then make a quick post with this link in your blog.

Visit with Mitchell Thomashow

Mitchell Thomashow was at Williams yesterday talking about inspiring a sense of wonder in the world around us and how that makes people start to care about the environment and climate change. His book is called Bringing the Biosphere Home.

From his talk, a few things were brought home to me. Our education does not teach kids about space and time. We don't learn what a million means, when the ice ages were compared to the dinosaurs, and how to conceive of how many people and species there are on earth. In part this is because these concepts are culturally very new. It was only 150 years ago that people began to think of evolution, think that the earth was more than 6000 years old, and some people still don't think that way. That change in thinking hasn't come down to the basic levels of education.

Just as we don't learn how to think of very large numbers, we also learn nothing about the immediate world. How many people know off the top of their heads what species live in their nearby woods, which birds migrate through, when the next full moon is, where our water comes from or what the place looked like before European settlement? If we are not aware of what is around us, how can we possibly be concerned when these things change?

But people live indoor lives and for some it is not feasible to get outside enough to really learn about it. But indoors are also unique environments which we know little about. There is just as much to learn about buildings as backyards. Where does our electricity come from? Our heat? Our disposable products? Where does it all go? How much head escapes through leaky windows as opposed to constantly opening doors as opposed to too little insulation in the ceiling? Again, if we are not aware of these things, then how can we care about what happens to them?

We can make that information part of how we build buildings. They should be accessible to learning in such ways that casual users can know how they work. Maybe it's just a plaque near the front door with some basic numbers, or maybe its glass doors around the mechanical rooms, or maybe manual controls for ventilation and instructions on how much ventilation is needed for certain numbers of occupants. In many ways we are talking about putting the controls in the hands of people, and it is possible that it can lead to wasteful practices like leaving everything on. But there is no shortage of waste in the way it currently works. What there is a shortage of is wonder and awareness of what is going on in front of our eyes.

Status Report

We're feeling very successful lately here at Williams, although we're definitely still playing catch-up with Middlebury. This Monday the Climate Action Committee presented a complete plan to the senior staff outlining how to bring Williams down to 10% below 1991 levels by 2020. Its not the ambitious goal I was hoping for, but at the same time it is a commitment of millions of dollars and institutional focus for an important and achievable goal.

We're also in the process of changing out every incandescent light on campus, a few dorms a night and today there was a large ice sculpture in front of the science library which spelled out the word E-A-R-T-H which melted slowly for all to see.

My personal work has mostly been (and will continue to be) on focus the nation and energizing a large group of climate action heroes and concerned students. For instance we have a winter study course this year dedicated to organizing that event.

It seems Middlebury is committed to becoming carbon neutral and I think that's a phenomenal goal. I know the Williams senior staff is taking a trip up there this weekend to see how it works.

What I would really like to see is something really worth doing that could be coordinated between a few schools in a way that got more than just the environmentalists involved. Maybe something revolving around a sports match or something.

But all in all its been a good week and its really nice to see hard work pay off. Now if only the Record would publish my op-ed.

Williams College Should be Carbon Neutral

I was doing some reading this week, browsing around between the NYtimes and the DrudgeReport, looking for something suitable for a few minutes of healthy procrastination, when I happened to find the Stern report. And no, before you ask, I'm not talking about Howard Stern. I'd heard the report talked about a few times by people here and in some blogs, so I figured it would be worth a closer look.

A year ago the British government, after hearing a sub-par climate report full of fluffy data, commissioned Nicholas Stern to give them the real, scientific and economic deal. According Her Majesty's Treasury website, Sir Nicholas Stern is the Head of the Government Economics Service and was delighted to present his report to the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the Economics of Climate Change. Now that sounded like a rather impressive resume, and surely not the idealistic environmentalist type, more like a hard headed economist, so maybe he was going to talk about the other side of climate change, the one we don't see in this liberal bubble of New England.

What does the former chief economist from the world bank advise the world to do? Cut emissions of climate changing gases by 80% by the year 2050. Globally. Not 10% below 1990 levels,which is a 'reasonable' number thrown around by liberal leaning administrations. 80% is a huge number and it might as well be 100% because we know that whatever plan we make, some things will go wrong, and as a citizen, I'd like to err on the side of caution for once.

These are the two most important things I have to say. The cost of doing nothing will be far, far higher than the cost of acting now. And, this task is not hopeless.

Williams college is not the world, although we try and be rather worldly in our aspirations. But we are a community of 3400 (total students, faculty and staff) living, breathing and lucky citizens who care very much.

We might not get involved in every issue we are aware of or not invest ourselves in justice when there's too much homework, but I believe we do care very much. We don't just care about the big picture, we care about buildings designed with as much efficiency as flashiness. We care about the status of Williams college and our coveted number one status, but not just because we do things by the book. We pride ourselves in being number one because we are the ones innovative enough to be a leader in academics, in sports, in dining and in arts. If we are given the chance to succeed and the will to commit, just as in our other fields of success, we will soon come to be leading innovators in environmental sustainability.

Why should Williams commit to being carbon neutral? Why should we invest more in the initial costs of buildings to achieve vastly lower operating costs in the future? Why should we commit ourselves even more to a local food supply? Why should we be installing solar and wind power, recovering heat from building ventilation and renovating our most energy inefficient buildings? Because we are a conservative financial institution.

We are conservative and we don't take risks with the big money. Part of not taking risks is looking at and planning for possibilities that other people might not think to look at. We need to get our geology professors into the board room to tell us what the price of oil will be in 50 years. Will it be $200 a barrel or more? Is that a possibility? Are we prepared for that, or are we going to be caught off guard just because we thought a finite resource was infinite?

Williams needs to use less energy. Our administration knows this and the ball is rolling. Its still rolling pretty slowly, but then again administrators are busy people who do an amazing job of keeping it all together. And because of that, they need congratulations and encouragement. Congratulations on being good listeners and encouragement to do things better. I wouldn't use the cliche, except the long mailing list of alumni, which we'll all be on soon enough and who pay for most of college, hear this all the time. I'm going to throw it right back at the people who make decisions, whether it be in student groups or Hopkins hall. Aim for the stars.

Panel on Green Architecture - (Notes)

Green building Panel discussion 11/11/2006. I know this is long, but a lot of it is just good ideas and data. For the most inspiring remarks, please skip to the end.

Introduction by Stephen Klass who did a reading from Morty's earth day letter to the campus who asks, What does it mean to become with a leader in sustainability?

The panel consists of Bruce Harley who works with mostly private homes with retrofits and new construction. He also trains builders and tradespeople, does design consulting and wrote Insulate and Weatherize which was selected by US green building council. Todd Holland is a sustainability coordinator for Smith, Holyoke and Amherst colleges. Joan Kelsh '85, coordinates green buildings for Arlington, VA. She encourage private businesses in Greater DC area to build green office buildings not because they have to but because its a huge benefit. She holds degrees from Williams in geology and environmental science and a masters from Yale forestry/envi studies. Marc Rosenbaum works on integrated systems design approach – finding the best solution for each project and client. He holds a BS and MS from MIT in engineering.

Harley (who was sporting a sweet MULLET)
Harley has a background in electrical engineering but he wanted to get into some more interesting stuff so he got into energy efficiency through working on mostly smaller, residential buildings. His company, Conservation Services Group (CSG), designs, develops and delivers energy efficiency and renewable energy programs. Most clients are gas and electricity suppliers as well as government policy makers and private homes. He installs solar, sells renewable energy credits, educates builders and contractors. He also worked on making the ENERGY STAR home building guidelines. Most important point? Look at building as a system not as individual parts.

Efficiency and durability before are more important than renewables. This is doubly effective because we can save money in the long run and save money when it comes to buying more expensive renewables. For this, early planning is key. Also essential is health and safety, in other words, the buildings must enhance livability. But thats easy because when principles of durability and efficiency you make big strides towards a healthy building. Another aspect is building with Integrated Design. It is hard to get people to know what to do because there are so many ways to build buildings 'green' yet poorly. “Green” equipment or features do not equal performance. On the ground verification is essential because the label often promises more than is delivered. Energy code inspections are federal programs in 9 states that test the major aspects of a buildings efficient design. Fault Tolderatne details: we shouldn't expect herculean effort from builders and tradespeople. Painting a building green doesn't make it a green building!

Todd is the energy manager for the five colleges. His main points are Energy efficiency and conservation (conservation is tentative because its hard to sell to people), Green and Clean and Energy efficiency is a fifth fuel. The greenest energy is energy not used. Some statistics on computers: according to the Williams website, the average desktop uses 96 watts when idle and 1.8 watts when off while a laptop uses 28 watts idle and .07 watts off. EPA and LNBL say average PC idle 58% during day but only 36% of users power down at night. For more information see www.treehugger.com for a movie on electrical vampires.

Amherst, Mount Holyoke and Smith colleges organized largest voter turnout in college history to vote to power 90% of student power from green sources. That was turned down by the college, but the they did do the three college challenge which pitted the colleges against each other, sort of a Do It In the Dark for colleges. It was led by student groups and saved 961,000 kwh. In conjunction with this the colleges bought 1,000,000 kwh. But the conservation drive was more efficient than the green energy drive! Some problems in buying green energy is people don't understand how you buy it. See http://www.green-e.org/what_is/dictionary/trc.html for more info on that.
Another project was to evaluate the 200 cold drink vending machines in 3 colleges (why so many? UVM has only 82!). those use $75,000 in electricity to run, which equaled exactly the amount of money made from sales. They removed some machines (24) which didn't make any money and installed 144 Vending Misers which save $15,000 per year. Its important because conventional large, de-centralized power statoins waste 70% of their energy as heat. It can be more efficient to generate heat and power all in one place (co-gen) even if just the heat or just the electricity is less effective.
Sources of electricity in new england: 48% natural gas, 10% nuke, 23% coal, 15% petroleum, 10% other. There is a brand new building in Holyoke (3 years old, LEED certified) which has no recovery of heat on lab building which circulates all the air every 10 minutes. They are installing heat recovery for intake/outtake and will save $46,000, 400 tons of CO2.
Problems with LEED are that commissioning is not enough, changes have to be checked. Also, LEED allows “point shopping” to avoid energy saving points.
New Paradigm means financial plus environmental stewardship = energy conservation. Sustainability paradigm: financial plus environmental stewardship plus social responsibility.

Joan (jkelsch@arlingtonva.us) works with people who are forced to do LEED and tries to help them use it as a good thing. What is Green? It means site planning for sustainability, safeguarding water and water efficiency, energy efficiency and renewable energy, conservation of materials and resources, indoor environmental quality because we spend most of our lives indoors, we need to build things that are good for us.

Environmental impact of buildings is 65% of total US consumption. Furthermore, buildings have a big impact on resources like the grid and sewer. Daylit buildings are better for people students have been shown to do better on tests, worker productivity is higher, patients in hospitals recover faster, etc. People like daylight.

LEED means Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. The Green Building Council is a national group. You pay $750 membership, project registration $450, certification based on size - $0.35/sq ft. This gets you a certification. Arlington has a requirement for certain level of Green certification: Joan tries to convince them to do this for the right reasons, even though they have to.

Marc Rosembaum spoke again, without prepared remarks but just what was on his mind. Here's the rough paraphrase.

What is the task in front of us? We aren't doing enough. We aren't doing what we need to do at the rate we need to do it. We are fighting the battle against global warming and we are losing. Heroically, but we are losing. Some people say we don't like to think about it too much because its depressing. But the truth lies in seeing things as they are, and this is very very hard. Because it is so hard, our whole culture is based on ways of avoiding the truth. But maybe beneath the surface all of us know that things are deeply off-kilter, and we know it. There are massive changes in store and they are not techinical. The hurdles are in values.

www.passivhous.de is the standard, the ideal. They build houses that use 80% of normal homes in Germany (this means even bigger savings here) Building a passivhous in Germany costs 10% more. In America if we ask a builder to add 1% to the capital costs of a project they have a heart failure. This is the value shift. Its not a technical problem.

Build the things that we don't need because there are impressive and we have been told that we should want them. The colleges in this country are the worst because they are in an arms race. It is an arms race to attract students. “How do you build to love all the children of all species for all time” Bill McDonough. Another hero of his is Joanna Macey who works on feedback systems which are large and complex. How do we grapple with problems on the largest scales? “Act your age” - we are made up of the stuff of stars and we are as old as the universe.

Some great points I thought I'd share:
Alumni hear about DO IT IN THE DARK etc from newsletter with socially responsible investment fund
One great idea was to put Energyguide poster in every building to show how the building compares to campus, what the numbers are to help make it more real.

How to Make a Green Building

These are the notes I took at the talk tonight by Marc Rosembaum, P.E. - Energysmiths – Meriden, NH. I think this makes the most sense as a sort of checklist to be asking administrators and architects as the college plans new building or renovation projects.

Why do we bother making environmentally friendly buildings?
1) Climate Change and 2) Future energy supply
We can begin by asking what the effects of our actions are on other people and the world. Its easy to forget how much we depend on the reliable natural cycles for our lives. We are really good at displacing the effects of our actions and industry is particularly good at it. For more on this theme check out www.minorheresies.com

We begin by mentioning Mathew Simmons. A lifelong republican and not a treehugger, he is an investment banker who began reading the Society of Oil Engineers publications to figure out what was going on. He found that five Saudi fields produce 90% of their supply, these are running out and require lots of new technology to continue to draw on their depleting fields. Furthermore, they have a strong incentive to say there is more oil than there actually is. Based on this, he predicts oil will be $200 a barrel by 2010 and he's so sure that he made a $5000 bet on it

Buildings are a third of our CO2 emissions in the US and residential homes almost half of that, and that figure is higher than most countries, even higher if we take transportation of people and goods to residential buildings

Reducing Commerical Energy Use – What can we do when we build buildings to make them very efficient and easy to maintain?
Envelope – super-insulate and make it airtight (and test it)- foam not thick enough and usually put in by masons who don't have as high standards. Commercial/institutional buildings leak more than residential buildings because the design is different for every one.
Daylighting – design buildings that don't need lights in the daytime
Lighting – make it efficient – don't put it where we don't need it
Cooling – load avoidance – shade glass, reduce internal gains like heat emitting appliances such as fridges.
Ventilation – enthalpy recovery ventilation – recover heat and moisture from waste air (summer and winter). Building code for ventilation in renovations has changed up and down since '70s energy crisis and it is a political issue, not a scientific one. We shouldn't look at the code to determine how much to ventilate (at least not any more than we have to, but instead look at long-term costs)
demand control – sense how many people are there to determine ventilation.
occupancy controlled – make a switch like the lights to turn on the ventilation.
ventilation wheeling – make the ventilation vary over the course of the day based on expected occupancy.
Mechanical distribution – hydronic (circulate water to control temperature instead of circulating and heating air) get the air into the building with the least impact. Reduction in building mechanical system pays for envelope (insulation) upgrades
Economizer buildings – operable windows, night flushing (open building at night to cool it down)
Identify key loads not common in normal buildings – exhaust hoods, dishwashers, refrigeration, etc and recover heat from unusual appliances light dishwashers.

Dartmouth case study – What have we learned from the projects Marc has taken on there?
The question is how much equipment we need in the building: we want about 20 cubic feet of air per person per minute and we find installed capacity at 80-100. This is overkill, but how do we avoid it?
We can recover heat from shower water. Students there use 50 gallons of water per day per student so lets re-use that heat from waste water.
Valence Convectors separate ventilation from heating/cooling. We shouldn't ask the ventilated air to do the work of the heating. These convectors should be separate because if we turn the thermostat up it increases ventilation, but we don't want more ventilation, just more heat/cool, so separate the two
Use radiant heating which has a low gain so it can't fluctuate much and be prone to human over-adjustment and it works very well the low yield profiles of geothermal heat pumps.
Membrane seal the roof – wrap the membrane around eaves and into walls. Then overlap the three layers of insulation and then test the airtightness. You can use a fog machine to test the seal so that its very obvious what you did or didn't do. This holds the builders obviously accountable to following the plans.

Renovations – Fixing what we already own
New, large, complex buildings are a very small percentage of national building stock so we need to figure out how to fix the stuff that we have. Easy things to change include insulation that can be added; replacing windows with more efficient ones; install GSHP (ground source heat pumps) which are not so complicated that they can't be added to a completed building. Inside mechanical renovations include ceiling mounted valence convectors which are pipes along edge of ceiling which can circulate hot or cold water. This creates a convection current for both hot or cold air. The system was tested in Dartmouth in dorms and the students haven't had any complaints

Lessons Learned
Show up - if you want things to go as you specify you need to show up and look. There has been a serious decrease in the skill of the workers because the trades are more complicated and the education culture among workers is weaker than it used to be. They have a harder job than they used to and less support for doing it.
Commission everything. A separate authority can make sure that the things that the builders say they have done were actually done. Some things are very easy to check
Match system complexity to owners ability to manage. Not every group of management can handle the complexity that top-notch buildings need. Smaller institutions don't have the staff time or staff expertise
The education happens at the client level. When you teach an institution what it wants in a building, they will learn to value that and stand up for themselves in the future. That is the most important aspect. From that point, you need to establish a system of engineers and firms who can share the risk of new designs and systems.

Cooperation between architects and engineers!
Look at building in a whole! Don't compartmentalize these individual issues!


Good projects don't happen by accident – it takes really good people to make it happen! The richest institutions in the world will talk about this and talk about this and talk about it, but where is the action? Why do these institutions reject offers to make hugely effective, money-saving changes? The decision making process is coming from the top down in determining what the priorities are! One person can make a huge change, but they make a change by finding the right people to do the job right. There's nothing in our way except the will of people do do things!

Semi-Open letter to Morty Schapiro

Hi. Thanks for the link. Out of town on Friday.

At 07:17 PM 11/5/2006 -0500, you wrote:
>Hi Morty,
>I'm sure that you've already heard a lot about the Stern report, but I
>couldn't
>help sending you the link, just in case. Since you are someone who tends to
>make decisions based on hard evidence and planning, I thought this new
>critique
>of present efforts to curb climate change by such a renowned economist
>might be
>interesting.
>
>Stern Report
>
>As always, my concern is what Williams can do in the purple valley. I'm very
>curious to see what the final report of the Climate Action Comittee is,
>although I fear it won't contain the commitment or daring goals we're hoping
>for.
>
>Most directly, since heating (and cooling) our buildings is our largest source
>of emissions, I'm distressed to see four current or recently completed
>projects ('62 center, Paresky, Daycare and Stetson-Sawyer) all lacking much of the
>energy saving technology that could have been used. Because of this, I was
>wondering if you would be able to make it to the talk this Friday night on
>building green.
>
>Thank you for your time, as always,
>-morgan-