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.