Sustainability is Sexy

Copenhagen Address

2009-06-15T16:20:00.000-07:00

By Abe Lincoln and Andrew Munn

“The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what our nation does or does not do at Copenhagen. It is for Barack Obama to undertake the unfinished work of climate change mitigation and nobly advance a treaty that will ensure the survival of all nations and peoples.”

On the last day of unproductive climate talks in Bonn, Germany, Abraham Lincoln came to the Hill with a message for President Obama: it’s time to rise to the challenge of the century and solve global warming.

Honest Abe was joined by a group of young climate activist from around the country in calling for President Obama to commit to attend the UN climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December. As Lincoln demonstrated remarkable leadership in the face of unprecedented challenges, so too must President Obama show bold global leadership in halting climate change. By publicly committing to go to Copenhagen, Obama will prove that stopping global warming is truly a priority of his administration.

In the halls of Congress (and outside the Capitol South metro station) Honest Abe delivered his “Copenhagen Address”—a riff off of Lincoln’s most renowned speech tailored to address the crippling lack of US leadership in halting climate change:

“It is often said that global recession precludes the possibility of strong climate mitigation. But, in a larger sense, we cannot back down from this challenge, lest it continues to grow until waters overwhelm out coastal cities, deserts encroach on our fertile plains, and the parched voice of a mother with no water for her child calls to her relative far away, only to find that she has been displaced by floods. In the face of such a future, we have no choice but to demand that our leader, Barack Obama, consecrates the negotiations at Copenhagen with his presence.”

Lincoln drew the attention of hundreds of commuters slowly winding their way out of the metro station, and caused quite a stir outside the Energy & Commerce subcommittee markup before he was asked to leave by the capitol police.

The Copenhagen Address was strategically delivered at a key point during the buildup to Copenhagen, on the last day of the UN climate talks in Bonn. The Bonn negotiations failed to spark the dramatic progress that is necessary to produce a strong international climate treaty in December, and time to make crucial international agreements is quickly running out. Industrialized countries refused to agree to the aggressive emissions reductions in the near-term, and the talks largely stalled as developed countries pushed for even weaker targets. Although Obama’s team has claimed to support a strong treaty, the US failed to take a leadership role at Bonn.

Our message as youth is simple: actions speak louder than words. To prove that the US will truly take the lead in solving climate change, Obama must utilize his global political capital to push all nations toward a scientifically sound, politically aggressive Copenhagen treaty. In openly committing to going to Copenhagen, Obama will draw much-needed attention to the negotiations, and send a clear message to other nations that the US will not obstruct climate negotiations this time around.

As President, Obama must also pressure policymakers at home to ensure that the US takes a leadership role by addressing global warming at home. Passing a vigorous domestic energy bill that provides for clean, sustainable energy infrastructure is a crucial part of this process. This bill in it’s current form, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACESA), provides for only a 3% reduction in CO2 emissions below 1990 levels by 2020. As such, ACESA will likely fail to cut US emissions enough to slow climate change, nor is it sufficient to convince other nations that the US is prepared to take global warming seriously on an international stage. With special interests continuing to poke holes in the bill, it is possible that ACESA will generate even poorer results.

The President’s appearance in Copenhagen, in conjunction with moving a strong climate bill through Congress, would provide a serious and committed stance on battling climate change. As young people, we will inherit the disastrous results of global warming: rising ocean levels, extreme storms, widespread drought and desertification, the spread of disease, the rapid loss of entire ecosystems—the list goes on and on. Because we are the ones who must live with the consequences of inaction, we have united around the globe to call for a strong climate treaty. Lincoln’s appearance at the Rayburn Building during the ACESA markups served as a reminder to Congress that domestic leadership is crucial to building an effective, equitable, and aggressive climate treaty in December.

What Moves You?

2009-04-20T19:21:00.000-07:00

The amount of energy that is required to operate a bicycle is 100 watts, about the same as powering one light bulb. The average amount to operate a car is about 100,000 watts, or 1,000 light bulbs. Something that we all need to start asking ourselves when we step into a car is whether we really need to use that much energy for most of our travels? There are without a doubt lots of trips that a car makes the most sense to travel in, on a rainy day I always appreciate a ride to school. Anyone who unconditionally refuses to ride in cars is out of touch with reality, but I think these people would be very hard to find. On the reverse, the people who refuse to ride in anything but a car are much more common but just as equally out of touch with reality.

The uncomfortable truth is that the world cannot afford to have everyone using 100,000 watts of energy to travel to the grocery store. It is mathematically impossible for everyone to create this amount of energy with petroleum and have this lifestyle last. There is obviously not enough petroleum. Lewis and Clark prides itself on being part of the global community. A crucial part of any community is responsibility to people throughout our community. Our overconsumption of fossil fuels today is not only leading to climate change, but also makes it more difficult for developing countries to develop.

Our demand for petroleum raises the prices of oil worldwide, limiting the availability of its usage to the poorest countries. Not to mention all the political problems this resource create. If we really consider ourselves to be part of a global community we need to think about this before the next time we drive our cars somewhere. What are the true costs of our dependence on petroleum?

Bicycling is not the only answer to our transportation crisis but it can make up a big part of the solution. They are cheap, available to most people, don't require much energy to operate, good for your health, fun...

We need to start thinking about what are the reasons that we depend on cars that require so much energy to operate. How and why did we create a society in which everyone has to own a car? Who benefits from this society and who loses out? And most importantly we need to start acting.

We need to start demonstrating in our own individual lives that a society that doesn't require the energy of 1,000 light bulbs to move around is not only possible but is preferable. A more sustainable transportation network is only going to happen if people decide to make it happen. There is no better place in America to plug into this new society than in Portland. Check out bikeportland.org and or just get on a bike.

Getting your bike ready for the summer

2009-04-20T19:04:00.001-07:00

Here are some basic tune ups anyone can do to get your bike ready for some good summer riding.
What you need:

Rags, WD-40, Bike Chain Grease, little piece of sand paper (you can get all of these at Fred Meyer or just stop by the Bike Room located in JR Howard)

First we are going to improve your braking capability.
Begin by cleaning off all the residue and junk on your rims with a dry towel

Next lightly sand the inside of your break pads to get off any residue build up on them, this will increase your breaking ability. To do this you will need to unlatch the breaks and take off your wheel.

Unlatch your breaks – the latch might work differently depending on what kind of breaks you have

Next unlatch your wheel and unscrew the lever until you can just pull the wheel out. When you put it back in make sure it goes in the same way it came out, lever on the same side as your gears.
Lightly sand the inside of your break pads and then rub with a dry cloth to get off any extra residue. Then check to make sure your breaks are tight enough. This is somewhat of a personal preference.

However the break lever should not go to the handle bar

Twist the break adjuster until your breaks are tighter, you want to be able to spin your wheels without rubbing onto the breaks.

This is about how tight I like my breaks

Next we are going to clean and lube the chain, begin by spraying WD-40 into a dry cloth and then running your chain through the cloth. This will remove any grim from the chain.

Then liberally apply bike chain lube to your chain. As you drip it onto the chain have someone crank it and go through all the gears. This will make sure everything is lubed up!

Run another dry cloth over the chain to pick up any loose lube. This will prevent your chain from attracting lots of dirt.

Lastly get on your bike and enjoy your ride!

What Comes After Environmentalism?

2009-04-19T00:45:00.000-07:00

By Charles Halvorson

With just three short weeks remaining between now and graduation, the urge to reflect has begun to occupy this senior. In what must be a perennial activity for graduating classes everywhere, I fill out cap and gown measurements and I recollect. Often this recollection takes me down paths of social remembrances of little interest to anyone who wasn’t there. But sometimes, the object of my reminiscence has far broader relevance.

Central among these is the problem that dwarfs all others in its significance – climate change. Within our four years at Lewis and Clark, we have witnessed a transformation in the discussion of this issue. What was once a demand for radical change put forth by an almost exclusively liberal base has been taken up by mainstream society. This would have been a good thing except most Americans did not want to radically restructure the way we live our lives. Maintaining the status quo has hitherto taken precedence over enacting meaningful change and the solutions we have put forth seek to address the issue in terms that do not threaten the hegemony of capitalist accumulation in our culture.

As it was commercialized, global warming lost its urgency and its capability to inspire radical action. Green became the new black and proved itself an equally capable color when it came to denoting the bottom line. Emission credit swaps and the Hybrid Cadillac Escalade illustrate the degree to which our response to the threat of global catastrophe has been co-opted by the forces of capitalism and to our willingness, our eagerness to let this happen.

Skepticism cuts through the rhetoric of “buying green” and reveals our collective desire to hold environmental protection in high esteem without challenging the status quo of conspicuous consumption. We cannot simply change the names of our deities and presume to continue our vociferous consumption unabated. Our burgeoning population inhabits a planet with finite resources; clearly, our strategy for continued survival clearly cannot be predicated upon unlimited want.

Hardworking environmental advocates have capably synthesized and presented what will be the dire fate of our planet should we remain stuck in our current patterns. The threat of environmental catastrophe is real and plaintively evident to all who care to look: the dreidel on which humanity currently spins is coming perilously close to the edge of the table.

Recollection may remain in the realm of mere nostalgia. But remembering and empathizing with our younger selves also presents an opportunity to reconsider our present condition. The current state of environmentalism is not the inevitable conclusion of our historical circumstances. Indulging in our memories offers a poignant reminder of our continued agency.

Earl Blumenauer

2009-04-05T23:56:00.000-07:00

Lewis and Clark is a place where ordinary people become legends. Earl Blumenauer graduated from the same grounds that we walk on 38 years ago with a major in political science. At the age of 24 he ran and won a seat in the Oregon House of Representatives. Ever since then he has worked his way up through politics. In 1992 he lost his bid for mayor of Portland, however this turned out to be a stroke of luck because a US congress seat opened up afterwards which he won. He has been there ever since.

During this time he has taken a leading role in advocating action against climate change and bicycling as an alternative means of transportation. While many congressmen still sport their American flag pins, Blumenauer shows off a bicycle pin. The Wall Street Journal once commented that Blumenaer's “congressional office is one of the few – if not the only one – that didn't even apply for a parking permit. On occasion, Mr. Blumenauer has cycled to the White House. On Mr. Blumenauer's first visit, the Secret Service, more accustomed to limousines, was flummoxed at the sight of his bicycle.” He is one of only a handful of congressmen to vote against the Patriot Act and the Iraq War.

This past week in a heated debate on the floor of Congress he called out Republicans for fabricating numbers on climate change. In a moment of political passion he called the Republican claim that climate legislation would cost every American $3,100 a “canard” and “outright incorrect” based on the same MIT study the Republicans cite. He has recently been rewarded for his bike advocacy with the passage of the Bike Commuter Act, which pays people $20 a month to bike to work. (wouldn't it be nice if the LC administration followed in his footsteps and offered $20 a month for students to bike to school?)

At a college whose legacy into the foray of politics is usually only referenced to blow jobs and Monica Lewinsky, it is nice to see someone making a difference.

To be or not to be

2009-03-09T20:10:00.001-07:00

The past year has not been an impressive for sustainability at Lewis and Clark College. Only two initiatives really stand out of the school fighting to become more sustainable. We increased in financial aid and the bookstore adopted a “sweatshop free” clothing policy. The school has also decided to turn down the heat in all building to save money.

While all of these advances should be applauded in many regards we have moved backwards. While the cutting of the shuttle service will save the school money, the costs will just be paid by the community, as we have to pay more money for cars, parking, and time spent driving around. The campus farm project, which was covered here the other week, failed to get off the ground and has been shelved because no department was excited enough to take charge of it. The school bike loan library program was a failure.

LC used to be at the forefront of sustainable leadership but over the last few years we are quickly being passed by. If we are ever going to return to being competitive with other schools we must ask ourselves why LC is at a stand still. Here are a small fraction of the exciting things going on at other schools and not at LC. The question is why?

-PSU got a $25 million grant from the Miller Foundation (the same people who our Miller Hall is named after) for sustainability. PSU must match the grant in 10 years, this means that at PSU in the next 10 years $50 million is going to be spent on sustainability.

-Oberlin College has agreed to provide $40,000 to fund a “sustainable house” on campus for students to live at. The renovated house is part of an eco-design class. The class will continue to work with the house after the renovation is complete.

-Oregon State University retrofitted 22 elliptical machines to generate electricity back into the power grid. This will produce an estimated 3,500 KWH every year.

-The University of Washington has begun using goats to eat english ivy and mow its lawn on their Bothell campus.

-The University of Delaware has a hydrogen powered bus

-Following a nine day hunger strike by students, Stanford University is expanding its living wage policy. This policy has now been expanded to include contracted workers. The reason we contract out all of our services is because LC has a similar living wage policy and contracting out allows us to avoid paying living wages. Where are the LC kids going on hunger strikes for our cleaning ladies?

-The Oregon Institute of Technology installed a 150-foot-tall drilling tower to eventually power its entire campus by geothermal energy. The heat trapping plant has a initial price tag of $4.5 million but will result in the school never having to pay for electricity again.

-Construction has begun at California State University, Fresno on a solar panel-topped parking structure system. 1 MW of photovoltaic panels are being installed atop 10 metal shelters that will shade more than 700 parking spaces. The panels will provide about 20 percent of the university's base electricity demand, which is equivalent to the power needs of 1,000 homes. The installation will cost about $11.9 million. LC just finished installing solar panels on top of the gym, which supplies .67% of our energy. And our micro turbine is broken.

-New Hampshire College, which like many other colleges (not LC), already has a full-time paid Sustainability Coordinator. However to show how much they value that position they moved that office along side the Office of the Provost.

All of these things have been dreamed up by someone at LC but those dreams have all lacked support to become realities. Instead every year we spend several hundreds of thousands of dollars on football which benefits a very limited number of students. At LC there has been no creative action to change the priorities of our school to promote sustainability. What are our school's priorities and how do we see those priorities receive the resources they require?

“To be or not to be” was the question Shakespeare once poised to us. We have the ideas to become a more sustainable campus, we have the desire, we definitely already have the words, but we lack action. If we as a community are going to become more sustainable it is going to require people taking action, getting involved, and fighting to make it a priority within our community. If a liberal arts college can't become sustainable then who can?

We should have a hydrogen bus instead of canceling buses. We have the same resources and similar opportunities as these other schools. The reason we are not on that list is that we put our resources elsewhere. Whether it is the football team or not (I think that would be a start) we need to look at that list and think about why we aren't on it and what needs to change to get us on it. Most importantly we need to act. Change requires action. I choose to be.

Taking The Road Less Travelled

2009-03-05T14:36:00.000-08:00

By Sarah Bobertz

Somewhere on South Campus, there is a garden. It went mostly unnoticed by students, until Alex Johnson (’09) wrote a proposal last fall to institutionalize the garden and take advantage of a great opportunity to bring sustainability home to Lewis & Clark. The dream? An organic, sustainable farm project that could employ work-study students and give the Lewis & Clark community an amazing resource: truly local produce. The produce grown on the farm could supply produce to students, professors and neighbors in the Lewis & Clark community.

“This is about making the best use of our resources,” said Johnson, whose advocacy for this project has pushed it closer to reality than ever before. A Lewis & Clark farm would be the first college farm in Portland. The farm would also be a part of the growing CSA community. CSA stands for Community-Sustained Agriculture, and there are about a dozen member farms in the Portland area. It is a trend in local, sustainable agriculture, bringing local produce to a community level.

Lewis & Clark is the perfect place for a community farm. Its students are passionate about organic, local food and outdoor activities of any variety. The chance to learn about sustainable agriculture is a great educational opportunity, equal to any that could be found in a classroom, and there is a lot of interest and support on campus for the idea.

“The project grew really quickly and interest grew really quickly and before I knew it, it was like a wildfire,” said Johnson. Student, faculty, and staff support for a project proposal is not enough on its own to make projects a reality. Funding problems put the farm proposal on the proverbial back burner, presumably to be revisited in better economic times. After much budget trimming, operating costs for the first year of the farm are estimated to be about $15,000, and the profits from the first year would cover the operating budget for subsequent years. However, funding is not currently available from any Lewis & Clark source. Discretionary budgets of various departments have been cut, and there is no ASLC avenue to fund this type of project. Like with so many environmental initiatives, cash flow problems ultimately shelved the proposal.

The moral of the story is one of missed opportunity. The path to sustainability is about taking advantage of opportunities that present themselves to us, no matter what the cost. Energy efficient and environmentally friendly options are most often those that cost the most or are the least convenient in our current system. Organic produce is more expensive than non-organic, solar and wind energy is more expensive than oil and coal, and toxic materials are cheaper than biodegradable options

The opportunity for Lewis & Clark to run its own organic, sustainable farm is expensive, yes, but it is ultimately the best use of campus resources. Lewis & Clark’s commitment to organic, local food has earned the school notoriety among private liberal arts colleges. The chance to launch the first college farm in Portland, maintained by its own students, would create opportunities for both education and experience in sustainable agriculture, an increasingly important industry in the 21^st century. Like solar power and biodegradable chemicals, a campus farm is not the easiest option to pursue, but it is the best one in our search for sustainability.

Eco-Olympics Podcast

2009-02-26T22:58:00.000-08:00

listen to me talk about the eco-olympics

lclark.edu

Live Without Dead Time!

2009-02-24T01:00:00.000-08:00

“Live without dead time; enjoy without chains.” This was the slogan Parisian University students shouted as they fought for a social revolution. In 1968, these students took over their campuses in the name of shaking up the establishment. The people who participated in this revolution were about as engaged as they come, yet as soon as they took over their campuses nothing overtly changed. The unquestionable lack of apathy that had accompanied their triumphs didn't lead to the leftist economic models proposed or even a change in government. For the large part these student revolutionaries failed to connect the real world with the ideals they had written about. Many of the grand idealists eventually abandoned their revolutions not because of lack of effort but because their effort was not sustainable. The only successes of the “May Revolutions” where were students were able to combine what they learned with pre-existing social issues.

In last weeks PioLog Mariah Sheilds asked if LC students could do better. Her concern is what seems to be a general lack of apathy on campus, students don't go to events, sports are a joke, no one really seems to care that our campus is abandoning its promise to reduce carbon emissions by canceling a significant portion of the shuttle service, people drink coca-cola... It is not at all difficult to find the “missed opportunities” Mariah talks about. Last week I hosted a movie night for the Eco-Olympics, however I found out hosting a movie night on campus might as well be called “watch a movie by yourself” because that is what I ended up doing when no one showed up. It would be easy to blame a lack of advertising or that students don't care about the environment but the issue is deeper than that.

Why is it that I can throw a movie night about a deeply thought provoking movie (Children of Men) and no one shows up, however, if I were to host a triple kegger with multiple games of beer pong and blast the same shitty music we listened to at our middle school dances, I would have so many people at my doorstep my doorstep would be made out of people? Student apathy is not about students not caring, it is about them caring about other things too. The apathy Mariah talks about is a result of there not being a connection between the two.

The divisions we create between our school life and our social life dictate how we spend our time. These lines are institutionalized in many ways. Fun is supposed to be spent drunk with your buddies. While drinking is pretty fun, advertisements also try pretty hard to make sure we understand what fun is. On the opposing side work is supposed to be about learning how society is going down the crapper because everyone is out drinking. Our teachers and academia do a good job at rewarding this kind of thought. However, the two are never connected. When was the last time any of us had a truly thought provoking conversation at a kegger? When was the last time someone had a kegger in their classroom? This separation “chains” us to a certain ways of thinking about how we spend our time. This is part of what the French were rebelling against and this is what we need to rebel against as well.

The “Paris Revolutions” only lasted for a little more than a month. The overarching leftist dreams were not sustainable, just like getting people to come watch an environmental themed movie with me is not sustainable. Events must reach out and combine already existing things that people do. We must find ways to put our messages into already existing social functions, otherwise they will never become permanent. How do we make a kegger sustainable? Anyone concerned about sustainability should be asking these questions and working to create solutions. “Sustainable keggers” should be a workshop our school offers, not movie nights with Kiel. It is only when we combine the knowledge we learn in school with how we see the world can change occur. Apathy is not about a lack of effort it is about how we institutionalize and reward effort. We must not be trying to reinvent the wheel constantly because we will never be able to move past the wheel and start working to building the rest of the bicycle.

Last year Focus the Nation was so successful because it combined school with environmentalism. For a day the teachers that we love took a day off from teaching classes and talked about global warming. Rooms were packed. Apathy is only apathy if we choose to see it that way. I hope that student leaders and the leaders of the school are constantly revaluing how we spend our time and money to revision how academics meet the social sphere. This is the only way real change can occur. The trick is not getting students to “Live Without Dead time” it is getting people to realize where deadtime ends and live time begins.

Eco-Sabotage

2009-02-17T13:07:00.000-08:00

By Dana Crane and Kiel Johnson

How we interact in our environment reflects the virtues we wish to uphold. Two weekends ago in one of the dorms this virtues seemed to be guided only by ignorance and selfishness. This may be an over-statement, but the evidence is appalling: someone went into a dorm and purposely left on all the showers and a stove. The attack could have been aimed at throwing a competition: forcing this dorm to waste energy during the start of the Eco-Olympics, or it could have been to make a statement that the Eco-Olympics are trivial. Since the prize is a party with the President it is hard to imagine someone sabotaging just to win. Whatever their reasoning the message was the same.
This attack was waged on two fronts. The unattended stove could have easily led to a fire and done untold damage to dorm and its inhabitants—this violation of personal safety is a blow against the trust we hold as a community to keep each other safe. The attack also made an ideological statement. The Eco-Olympics are the first time the entire campus has been asked to work together to investigate our connection to our resources and avoid wastefulness. By purposely wasting water and electricity the culprit is making the statement that this connection is insignificant. If this was the case any environmental action would be impossible. This attack should be taken seriously and make us question what would prompt such an action.
This person wasted energy while attacking the very values of what it means to be a community. A foundational value of any community is the interdependence of its constituency, which leads to the necessity of being mindful of each other’s personal rights. This incident is not only an embarrassment to the majority of us that share a respect for each other’s right to freedom of action, but a disappointing illustration of a deficiency in our common social upbringing. Our society teaches us to each strive for individual success but this lacks an appreciation of an individual role within a community. It is one thing to choose not to participate in an opportunity to do good, but it is the work of an egotist to ransack the good efforts of peers.
There is no doubt that 99.9% of people at Lewis and Clark would condemn this act of defiance and ignorance. However it’s very hard to deny that such an act characterizes at least a minority within our student body—it is hard to imagine someone doing this without at least believing their friends would get a kick out of it. It is difficult to imagine how the college environment, which is built on integrity and education could breed such blindness. However, we must forgive this crook because at the roots of the attack lie unawareness. This is what the Eco-Olympics and going to college is all about. This attack is a reminder that we must make sure that society provides an opportunity to make real connections with the sources of life that we depend on.
In order to avoid destructive mishaps such as these in the future, I urge you all to get outside and observe what surrounds and supports you. Then look inside at what it has created, and consider the relationship between the two! You are a product of your environment and it continues to be the source of every new cell in your body, idea in your brain, and pulse of your heart; respect it thus!

2009-02-12T23:53:00.000-08:00

Flex your econess in the Lewis and Clark College Eco-Olympics. Go to the website to get more info and a calender of events.

Official Eco-Olympics website

The National Teach In and Letters from a Birmingham Jail

2009-02-08T22:43:00.000-08:00

The inherent problem with a sustainable world is that it requires everyone to consider sustainability to be a good idea. This does not make it a futile venture, just a difficult one. What is required is that the more people continue to be engaged. While you should never trust someone that compares their movement to Gandhi or Martin Luther King the scope of the tasks are similar. Sustainability requires a change in how we see the world. Just as Gandhi showed people that India could be an independent nation and Martin Luther King made people see the flaws of racism, environmentalism requires a shift in how we value our resources.

This past week Lewis and Clark hosted the National Teach In On Climate Change. While all of the talks were well attended and the speakers were engaging, something was missing from the day. For the most part all the people at the events were the same people at every other environmental event. It is almost as if there are about 150 or so people who consistently attend these events and who are also responsible for putting them on. I fear that the environmental movement at our school has become too entrenched within itself. It only serves to preserve itself and in the words of Trotsky, “that is what they become, dried preserves”. Preserving the values of environmentalism is not enough.

The National Teach In exceeded all my expectations and was without a doubt a success. However, these events cannot continue just for the sake of continuing. They must embrace larger goals and draw in people from all areas of the community. Where were the athletes? The cleaning ladies? The leaf blowers? If we are going to have a teach in on global warming solutions it must involve everyone. We must be creative in how we draw these people in, environmentalism must connect in a real way with not only people's existing values but their everyday actions. Otherwise all that is be accomplished is that we had another teach in.

National Teach in on Climate Change

2009-02-03T19:06:00.000-08:00

The National Teach In on Global Warming Solutions is happening this Thursday the 5th as well as the beginning of the Eco-Olympics. I'm going to be documenting the day and taking some pictures to put up here. If you see me at one of the events please say hi and let me know what you think.

Here is the link for the events calender

2009-01-31T13:04:00.000-08:00

Lewis and Clark is a place where people have great ideas, tragically it is also a place where great ideas suffer the neglect of their creators who either eventually graduate or have an even better idea. Bicycling at Lewis and Clark is a great idea, and many people have attempted to do things that make it easier for everyone to enjoy this means of transportation. The bike room is a great idea, as was the bike library, but they have all suffered from the difficulties of any other idea at LC.

Earlier this year the LC Sustainability Council voted to create a bike coordinator position. The goal was to hire someone to organize all these ideas to promote a bicycling culture at LC. After a difficult search the Sustainability Council picked a freshman named Daniel Boyes for the job. For Daniel the decision to promote bicycling is an easy one, he said that, “because of the need for alternate means of transportation, cycling will inevitably become a much more prolific activity in the future. Because of this need for cycling, as well as the health benefits associated with it, I think that it is our responsibility to invest a lot of time and effort into forming a friendly environment at Lewis and Clark where students will be encouraged to cycle, and will experience the benefits immediately.”

Some of Daniel's immediate goals are to create consistent hours for the bike room. When the school rebuilt Howard they included a room for a bike room. Currently this room is just used to store old bike parts. Daniel wants to turn this space into a working bike room. From February 21^st to the 22^nd the bike room will be open for people to get their bikes tuned up and ready for the spring as part of the Eco-Olympics. There will also be an all campus bike ride on February 23^rd. Having a bike coordinator at Lewis and Clark will help turn the great ideas on campus surrounding bicycling into more than just ideas. The question is whether people will get on their bikes and join Daniel.

everyone is having energy competitions

2009-01-30T21:57:00.000-08:00

New York Times endorses the eco-olympics here

Refusing To Let The Journey End

2009-01-25T21:57:00.000-08:00

It is rare that the mention of a single name can fill a person with so much excitement and hope for the future. Barack Obama is our leader and for the first time since I can remember I am proud to be an American. During his inauguration speech, which was shown to a packed Council Chambers last week, Obama asked us to take responsibility for our future. “Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested, we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back, nor did we falter.” Obama asked us to make a moral obligation to protect the future.

After his speech and inauguration the mode of Council Chambers was different. People felt changed. Everyone who watched that speech at some point questioned what the words they were hearing meant. After the poet began speaking, and on que everyone started leaving, what had really changed? I doubt anyone left Council Chambers and immediately decided to volunteer at a food bank. I certainly did not. We still all took actions which diminish the chances of our future generations to succeed. We drove our cars, ate bananas grown in distant countries by people who have no future, and made a lot of waste. Hearing about the need for change is easy, actually doing it is much harder.

While Obama's speech instilled the desire take take responsibility it did very little to show how we can do this. Obama started us on a journey, the rest is now up to us. We must learn about how our decisions effect the future and change to protect this future. We know that driving cars is warming the globe. We know that the coal used to power our light bulbs and computers (50% of all electricity in Oregon is from coal plants) is having the same effect. We know that our consumption is wasteful and unsustainable. That seeking profits for the sake of profits creates a careless society which only values the individual. We can no longer place the blame on government or something larger than ourselves for our future. Barack Obama makes it clear that the future is ours. We must all change if we are going to protect this future.

On February 5^th we will all have an opportunity to participate in this change. Lewis and Clark will be holding it's first ever Eco-Olympics. The Eco-Olympics are a competition among dorms to find ways to reduce electricity and get people to attend events throughout the month that empower us to make these changes. There will be sewing and bike workshops, and chances to volunteer in the community. Our problems can no longer be blamed on other people, their decisions, or their idleness. Barack Obama shows us that we have the power to make change ourselves, all it requires is action. We now all share responsibility for our future.

Sustainable Capitalism

2009-01-25T00:20:00.000-08:00

here is an interesting article about Wal-Mart becoming "sustainable". At the end the CEO of Wal-Mart says, "There is no conflict between delivering value to shareholders, and helping solve bigger societal problems.” What do people think? Do you buy it?

Green-Light Specials

A letter about responsibility

2009-01-23T14:37:00.000-08:00

This is a letter I wrote to the head of facilities, groundskeeping, and IT.

As a school and a society we are pushing ourselves further and further into debt. Each year Lewis and Clark is asking it's community to find more ways to save money. As we all know some of the ways the school is looking at doing this is by limiting bus service, reducing sabbaticals, and reduce energy use by 10%. Tuition has also been raised every year since I've been going here.

However, by shifting the focus of our financial problems on shuttle service and reducing energy no one is taking responsibility for our financial troubles. These troubles are everyone's and we all need to talk about what we can do to solve them. They will not be solved by the executive council holding lots of meetings among its inner circle. They can only be solved when everyone on campus starts talking about them. The students, the cleaning service, the groundskeepers, the facility, and the administrators. A perfect example of this is the President's letter in which he told the school the Sustainability Council was going to find ways to reduce energy by 10% yet he never asked the Sustainability Council to do this.

There is a lot of waste at this college. Today I returned to campus and found that all the computers in the library and templeton are still on. There are only two people on computers right now in the library yet around 70 computers are being left on 24 hours a day to serve those two or so students every hour. As a student it is easy for me to blame the administrators for this waste, they are the ones who are supposed to be "administrating" the campus and should take responsibility. However the administrators blame the students, since the students are the ones who use the computers. They blame it on a communication problem. Students would simply just turn the computers back and so it would be too difficult to monitor. In the end we are both working against each other and blaming the other for our problems. All the while the computers have been left on and nothing is getting done.

One of my favorite symbols of waste are the leaf blowers. Today I saw two leaf blowers blowing a sidewalk that has only a few leaves. In my head I was trying to calculate how much the school was paying these two people to clear a pathway that was already perfectly clear. Again I am troubled as to how to solve this problem. Why don't the leaf blowers take responsibility and only blow leaves when there are leaves and work on other projects in between? My guess is that they are told to just go out and blow leaves. They get paid either way, but in the end we all lose out. Since we spend money on powering computers that aren't in use or paying people to blow leaves that don't exist we aren't able to afford to run a shuttle service that a lot of people at this school rely on, we aren't able to hire as good teachers because they can't get good sabbaticals, and admissions drop, all because no one wanted to take responsibility. The administration is not to blame and neither are the students, we as a entire community all share responsibility. Our problems will only be solved when we all get together and take responsibility through action. Turning off computers and not paying leaf blowers when there are no leaves are not going to bring the college out of financial trouble but it is a start.

-Kiel

Arctic Blast 2008

2008-12-23T13:37:00.000-08:00

There is nothing like a big snow storm to remind a person the power of the weather. This is the first Christmas I will spend away from my family. After spending six hour fruitlessly waiting in a train which was delayed, because another train was frozen to the tracks, I have decided to settle down and spend Christmas in Portland.
Blanketed in snow the city has for a few days radically changed. There are very few cars on the roads, most people have chosen instead to walk. The street, instead of being dangerous dividers, have opened up into a new community space. So far I have hitched two rides downtown, I've meet and talked with more people than I would have if there had not been any snow. I strangely feel united with my Portland comrades, we are all having to change our habits to confront this change. Instead of waiting for the bus with a few drunken hobos the bus stops are filled with every Portlander, many of who have never ridden the bus before. Instead of traveling around the city I have been forced to remain close to home and discover the places around me. It has been a truly local experience. Many of the assumptions that I had made about Portland seem to have been false. People don't need cars to go everywhere, and we can use spaces in our community to benefit the community. The city is relatively quiet, instead of rushing around people seem to be taking it easy.
In a couple of days the snow will melt away and things will return to the way they were before the Arctic Blast of 2008. The most inspiring thing for me was watching how it is possible for people to change their habits and the way we see our city. While it took a snow storm for this to happen, perhaps someday we might be able to make this change happen without a storm. Seeing the city differently gave me hope that we can make a city that works for people instead of working for the sake of working.

new LC bike coordinator position!

2008-12-12T15:40:00.001-08:00

The idea behind this position is to pay someone to support a bike culture at Lewis and Clark. While many students are interested in biking, have bikes on campus, or bike to school, there is no one person who helps to promote this alternative form of transportation. The key focus of the bike coordinator for this year would be to reinvigorate the bike room and make it a functional space. There are many knowledgeable students on campus who are passionate about biking and are interested in helping students learn to use their bikes. The bike coordinator would be responsible for finding and organizing these people by setting up bike room rules and hours.

The bike coordinator is a non work study position and you will get paid $600 over the course of the semester through the sustainability council. There are 15 weeks in the semester so this equals working 4 hours a week at 10 dollars an hour. You would be responsible for either attending the monthly sustainability council meetings or submitting a report on what you have accomplished before the meetings. If you have any more questions please do not hesitate to write to me, kielj@lclark.edu.

All application will be due by January 25th. Depending on the number of applicants we receive we may ask you to set up a time for an interview. We will announce who is receiving the position shortly after January 25th.

if you are interested please email me (kielj@) and i'll send you the questions

Town in Pakistan bans motorized four wheeled vehicles

2008-12-01T18:53:00.000-08:00

here is an interesting example of a town banning cars in order to improve the general well-being of the population and fight global warming

http://www.newstrackindia.com/newsdetails/44076

some final notes about sustainability at the end of the semester

2008-12-01T18:52:00.001-08:00

Historians figure that about 80 billion humans have inhabited the planet over the course of human history. This totals out to about 2.16 trillion years. Due to rapidly increasing population humans over the last 100 years, one fifth of all those years has taken place in the twentieth century. One fifth of all the experiences humans have ever gone through occurred between 1900 and 2000. At the same time our economy and ability to consume has increased dramatically. The world economy is 120 times larger than it was in 1500. Our per capita income has increased 9 fold. Technology has allowed us unprecedented freedom to travel and experience people and places. As the world has increased in size our individualism and freedom have surprisingly increased as well. However the question is at what long-term cost?

The most interesting thing I have ever read about sustainability was in a book called Something New Under the Sun, in it author John McNeill said, “It is impossible to know whether humankind has entered a genuine ecological crisis. It is clear enough that our current ways are ecologically unsustainable, but we cannot know for how long we may yet sustain them, or what might happen if we do. In any case, human history since the dawn of agriculture is replete with unsustainable societies, some of which vanished but many of which changed their ways and survived. They changed not to sustainability but to some new and different kind of unsustainable. Perhaps we can, as it were, pile one unsustainable regime upon another indefinitely, making adjustments large and small but avoiding collapse.” These adjustments have become what sustainability means, simply avoiding collapse. However I am not satisfied with this answer.

Looking toward the future it would seem like at some point in our lives we will get the chance to own an electric car. The incentive for the development of electric cars is based on the assumption that gas prices will at some point go up again. However if enough people start buying electric cars the price of gas will go down causing people to return to buying gasoline powered cars. Perhaps through tax incentives we could prevent this trend but passing gas taxes is a difficult thing to do.

Sustainability has to be about a historical reexamination of what we view as “rational decisions” and place those decisions in a long-term perspective. It cannot be a simple rationality, market driven replacement scheme, but a conscious effort to improve society that is based on knowledge. If we remove our agency and leave ourselves prey to our rational decisions I don’t think we stand much chance of becoming either sustainable or sexy. As our school and society continues to seek ways to “green” itself I hope we begin to see the ways in which our current system is preventing us from saving ourselves. Sustainability needs to be about seeing past our ideological assumptions to develop new ways of how our society could be structured that is both sustainable and increases the individualism and freedom we have enjoyed over the past century.

LC Students Forgo Showers, Attend Environmental Conference

2008-11-18T20:04:00.000-08:00

By Kiel Johnson

There is a certain feeling after good sex when your entire body is exhausted but at the same time completely satisfied. Well this past weekend nine Lewis & Clark students journeyed up to Seattle for the second annual Cascade Climate Network convergence. All of these students felt that way by the end of the weekend. They were joined by 120 student environmental leaders representing most colleges and universities in Washington and Oregon. The student organized and lead event was surprising amazing considering that it was student organized and lead.
The two day event was filled with grand idealism, organic food, and actual genuine inspiration. Jared Schly (12’) said, “The weekend was epic. Mind expanding in every way.”
For two days these students attended workshops and talked with other students about what they were doing at their respective colleges. Some of the trainings offered were on topics such as, starting a campus garden, starting a bike share program, how do you run a meeting, and how do you deal with a school's pesky administration.
The highlight for Jared Schly (12') was the open discussions Saturday night. If you have ever, while in an alternate state, turned to your friend and asked “what is nature?” or “dude look at all those stars, we are so fucking insignificant” then you may or may not have enjoyed the open discussions. While it is unlikely that many people were in altered states we all broke off into groups and had interesting conversations that weren't guided by some professor whose ultimate goal is to turn everyone into himself. One group was titled “what are the social constructs of nature?” and while they never really came close to answering this question they all felt pretty smart trying to.
At the end of the weekend Holly Kellum (11’) was “I was amazed at how much progress has been made in regards to sustainability but I also got a glimpse of how much work is still ahead of us. The knowledge and technology are there, we just need to implement it, and sooner rather than later if it is going to be effective.”
The best part was just getting to be around all these people from other school who were all doing amazing things and passionate and committed to doing more things. Lewis & Clark is not alone in the struggle to change into a more environmentally responsible campus. We still might not know how to deal with the administration, or anything about starting a campus garden but at least we know that it is not just one person, or just our school that is trying to do these things. The convergence gave hope that if we work together we can begin to accomplish some of the goals on our long list of things to do to become a more sustainable place.

Worms

2008-11-18T19:58:00.000-08:00

By Alex Johnson

I have worms, but it's not what you think. A few months ago I decided to start vermicomposting, which is really just a fancy word for composting with worms. I can't remember where I originally found out about vermicomposting, but I've been at it for a few months and have learned a lot along the way. People always have questions about how it works, so I'll tell you a little bit about the process. First, a story:
In 1999, the Medical University of South Carolina built a worm composting system to recycle food waste from their cafeteria. The facility, which is the size of a small bus and filled with worms, can process 250 pounds of food waste in a day (that's over 30 tons in an academic year). Banana peels, egg shells and half-eaten hamburgers go in and high-quality vermicompost (worm poop) comes out.
Composting is nature's way of recycling. You might not be aware of it, but it's happening all around you. An apple core thrown into the brush will break down very quickly. Come spring, you'll hardly recognize the leaves that fell in autumn. Many organisms aid in the process of decomposition, but one of the most helpful is the redworm. Its tendency to live in heaps of decaying material like leaves and manure and its voracious appetite make it ideal for composting food scraps.
There are many good reasons to give vermicomposting a try. You can do it in a small area (unlike conventional composting), vermicompost is great for gardens and house plants, and it keeps recyclable materials out of landfills.
I'll be the first to admit that there's nothing particularly normal about keeping several thousand worms to compost food waste - my friends have taken to calling me 'the worm whisperer' - but it doesn't necessarily have to be a counterculture experience. All you need is a container and worms. Add damp, torn-up newspaper and some food scraps and you'll be producing your own vermicompost. Perhaps someday Lewis & Clark will follow the lead of MUSC and compost all of our food waste on-site, but until then, you ought to give it a try yourself. It's amazing how passionate you can become about a creature whose anus looks exactly like its mouth.

Are Cars the New Cigerettes?

2008-11-10T16:45:00.002-08:00

Reprinted with permission from bikeportland.org by Jonathan Maus

Are cars are the new smoking cigarettes? It’s something that came from my continued bewilderment that, while most everyone realizes the multitude of negative impacts that come with America’s love-affair with cars, we are just now (and hardly still) beginning to think of them in the same way as cigarettes. That is, as something that is very dangerous, has broad public health implications, and claims the lives of thousands of people each year.
Way back when, cigarettes were cool. Everybody smoked them. From housewives to movie stars, nobody considered the negative impacts of puffing away (like lung cancer, asthma from secondhand smoke, and so on). But, as people started dying by the tens of thousands (including two Marlboro Men), suspicions grew.

Suddenly, the health care community caught on, the government started warning consumers, and popular culture eventually followed.
Now, cigarettes are banned in many public places and the number of people smoke regularly has dwindled to a much more sensible amount.
But there’s another silent killer in our midst — cars. They pollute our air, they kill tens of thousands of people each year (usually in “accidents”), they contribute to obesity, climate change, sprawl, and oil dependence, they degrade our public spaces, and so on.
Fortunately, people are starting to make the connection between cars and cigarettes. They’re beginning to understand that there are serious consequences for all of us because of our high rates of car usage.
Today, I came across even more validation that the comparison is valid while reading the excellent blog, How We Drive. The blog is written by Tom Vanderbilt, the author of Traffic: Why we drive the way we do.
In a post he titled, Changing Entrenched Behaviors, Vanderbilt shared a slide from a talk given by Michael O’Hare, a professor of public policy at University of California at Berkeley. In the slide, O’Hare compares cigarettes in 1968 with cars in 2008.

Vanderbilt wrote on his blog that, “I imagine there would have been few people in 1968 predicting that by 2008 smoking in public places would largely be a thing of the past.”
I hope everyone realizes that I’m intrigued by the ‘cars are the new smoking’ idea not because I simply hate cars and don’t think anyone should drive them. Cars have their place, just like cigarettes have their place. There’s nothing wrong with them, the problem is with us.
I drive my mini-van now and then and I have nothing against taking a drag from a cigarette, a cigar, or other rolled tobacco product if the opportunity presents itself.
It’s not the cars (or the cigarettes), it’s how we choose to use them. I just hope it doesn’t take 40 more years for America to kick this deadly habit.

Leaf Blowers Part Three

2008-11-10T16:45:00.001-08:00

I hate leaf blowers, every LC student hates leaf blowers, the faculty hates leaf blowers, the administration hates leaf blowers, and most especially leaf blowers hate leaf blowers. So why do we have leaf blowers on our campus? Not only are they annoying for a community but the pollution and noise is especially damaging to the user who is in constant close proximity to the blower. It is like standing next to the exhaust of a car all day only that exhaust is several times more toxic and that car is located on an airplane runway. Last year I had a conversation with facilities about why we have leaf blowers. The answer was that the Executive Committee wants a leaf free campus, because in their opinion this looks most presentable. So every year we spend lots and lots of dollars paying people to blow leaves around. We have been locked into using these wasteful machines and there is no force for change.
Few people know that last year for a month Copeland was a “leaf blower free zone”. This was because at the end of my meeting I agreed to maintain Copeland in exchange for them not using leaf blowers there. Every week I would go out and pick up trash around Copeland. Students walking by me mostly thought I had gotten into some sort of trouble. However by doing this it allowed me to send weekly updates about my work and continually remind facilities that leaf blowers are bad. At the end of my work I wrote a very long summary in which I said “I don’t think I prevented one leaf blower from being used” and that the problem with leaf blowers was that there is no interaction between the facility workers and those who benefit from their work. Why should they care if they are making a lot of noise as long as it makes their job easier?
Our inability to manage the problem of leaf blowers is a symptom of a larger problem on campus. No matter how many community forums we have or emails from student government asking us to attend meetings most people just don’t give a fuck. We did not go to college and spend thousands of dollars every year to participate in making the Lewis and Clark community a better place. We pay this money to get our degree so we can supposedly go out and make the world a better place, or just make a bunch of money. However, this logic is obviously flawed. The solution to leaf blowers is simple. Purchase a leaf vacuum. This is a big cart that you can drive around that will suck up leaves. It would save the school money in terms of labor and would decrease the amount of pollution we create. But no one seems interested. The only way upgrading would save us money would be to “let go of some workers” and facilities doesn’t want to do that. Furthermore as long as facilities are getting rid of the leaves the Executive Council has no reason to question them. All the while leaf blowers continue to pollute both the air and noise of our campus.
We have reached a strange point in which because we are so focused on passing a test for some class about environmental destruction that we hurry by the leaf blower on our way to pass that test. How are we supposed to prevent nuclear waste if we are unable to solve the problem of leaf blowers? We are caught in a fantasy that by reading about the world we will somehow solve the world’s problems. Our work is the excuse we give ourselves for not engaging the world around us. Schoolwork has become the opiate of the masses. Instead of learning how to actually change the world we are simply learning how to read a book really well. Our campus has been locked into thinking that leaf blowers are necessary. In truth they are actually costing us much more in terms of health and noise. Up until now students have merely interpreted the world. The point however is to change it!

How Sexy is Obama's Sustainability?

2008-10-26T23:15:00.001-07:00

Written by guest writer Ben Brysacz

When members of one political camp are chanting “Drill, baby, drill,” it’s not particularly challenging to figure out who’s more environmentally-friendly. Take a look at Obama’s webpage and you’ll find a few bullet points about his plan to increase fuel economy standards, create millions of green jobs building hybrid cars and weatherizing homes, and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050. These are goals that most of us embrace. Yet some environmentalists might think Obama’s plans are watered down, that they are not strong enough. What they don’t understand is that sustainability encompasses more than the nuts and bolts of environmental policy, and that we need a President who enacts sustainable policies across the board.

First, Obama’s approach to foreign policy is pragmatic and dynamic. Ending our dependence on imported oil from Venezuela and the Middle East will open new opportunities for the next President. He might, for example, make a stronger case for women’s rights in the face of an illiberal Saudi regime. More importantly, he would deprive autocratic rulers of the windfall profits that sustain them. Obama’s emphasis on diplomacy and strong alliances will reduce the likelihood of war, the least sustainable of all human activities.

Governments can pour money into clean technology, greenhouse gas reduction, and environmental protection with sparse results, but it takes a sustainable, private market for green products to effect lasting change. That’s why Obama’s approach unites the interests of free market entrepreneurs with those of environmental activists, harnessing the market to serve noble social goals. In the process of helping Detroit become competitive and clean, an Obama administration would be fostering job opportunities for high school and college graduates in communities that are struggling today. The same goes for clean wind and solar industries – we can make sustainability a family business, one that sustains generations of Americans.

Finally, Obama’s candidacy illustrates his political sustainability. Even today there are Americans who do not believe we should focus on environmental policy. Some don’t believe climate change is human-caused. Even among those of us who prioritize this issue, there is significant disagreement about the way forward. Obama’s campaign has never taken these challenges for granted. According to the accounts of friends and acquaintances throughout his past, Obama takes opposing viewpoints seriously and treats respectfully those who disagree with him. Perhaps his greatest achievement so far has been to create a consensus about the problems we must solve: failing healthcare systems, a damaged international reputation, and global warming to name a few. That is a crucial first step, and one that we cannot afford to ruin by alienating people. Over the next four years, I hope we will see an Obama administration that builds consensus on environmental issues, and pushes meaningful, workable legislation through Congress, knowing when and where compromise is appropriate. He could do more than protect the environment; he could transform American values, and make environmental stewardship a hallmark of our national identity.

Even if we elect Obama, change will be tough. Then again, this election isn’t about unrealistic change, it’s about change we can believe in.

Leaf Blowers Part Two

2008-10-23T17:35:00.001-07:00

The costs of leaf blowers far out weigh the benefits we receive from their use. Leaf blowers cost the entire community in terms of pollution, labor, and noise. In return we get a leaf free landscape. Last year I spent considerable time trying to solve this problem on our campus and I concluded that the issue is more complex. There exists a way of allocating resources at our school that isn’t accountable to anything besides what the mystical “executive committee” decrees. The people who ask and hand out money have very little connection to those whom their services actually benefit.
In California there are several either rich or very progressive cities that have banned the use of gas powered leaf blowers. I spoke with one of the lead groundskeepers for the parks department in Berkley, which is not surprisingly one of the places on this list. She told me how there had to be a change in what people saw as aesthetically pleasing for a park. There are less grassy spaces in Berkley. If leaves aren’t picked up then they stain and kill the grass and at Lewis and Clark we love our grassy spaces but perhaps we should reconsider how many grassy spaces we need. While I agree that we probably have more grassy landscapes than we really need, I think the solution to leaf blowers is much easier than getting rid of these spaces.
At the beginning of last semester I sent a letter to the groundskeepers about my feeling regarding leaf blowers. I’ll be the first to admit that this letter was not very tactful but it got me a meeting. The meeting was pretty tense and not very productive. The school follows the city of Portland’s restrictions for what hours you can operate leaf blowers. They purchased the most efficient and quiet leaf blowers on the market. For the school this was case closed. Their job is to make sure the grounds are maintained; removing leaves is crucial to this. This however misses the larger picture of why we are paying them.
When doing a job becomes more important than the original purpose of that job something has gone wrong. We blow leaves to beatify our campus but who determines what is beautiful? If I have to endure a constant annoying noise in order to have a beautiful campus I don’t really consider that beautiful, just annoying. So what solutions exist? The groundskeeper from Berkeley also told me about a leaf vacuum they use to pick up leaves. Its a machines that you drive around which sucks up all the leaves and puts them in a bag. Having a machine like this would significantly not only reduce the pollution and noise created by our current method but also the amount of time and money we spend blowing leaves. At my meeting I asked what we pay in labor to blow leaves, no one knew the answer to this, but as anyone living on campus will tell you, that number has to be significant. It would be worth looking into whether the savings in labor would offset the cost of purchasing one of these machines.
If you in the slightest share my concern about leaf blowers I urge you to email Gabe Bishop, the head groundskeeper, and politely ask him to consider other, less noisy, faster, and less polluting ways to keep our campus beautiful. His email is gbishop@lclark.edu. Our groundskeepers have no way of knowing what the effects of their policies are. It is important that we maintain some level of involvement and communication with them. After all it is our money and our campus. How sustainable is it for our school to continually raise tuition money but not engage in practices that not only reduce our costs but make our campus more enjoyable? The answer is not very.

Leaf Blowers: Part One

2008-10-21T01:33:00.001-07:00

Evil has returned. This is not the kind of evil that steals bicycles or is named Sarah Palin. It is much worse. This evil threatens to give us cancer and tear our community apart by taking away the most basic necessity of a community, one's ability to talk and be heard. However, unlike a deadly airborne disease, this evil is much more detectable. You can hear its approach from far away, in fact, in most cases that is all you will be able to hear. Leaf blowers spare only the already deaf from their destruction.
Towards the end of last year I began a campaign to fight back against the leaf blowers. For my Environmental Economics class I looked at the “real cost” of leaf blowers. Leaf blowers affect us in two main areas: sound and health. To figure out the cost of noise I looked at how property values of homes next to airports are lower than the property value of a house in a similar neighborhood. Since the noise of an airplane taking off and landing is the same as a leaf blower (in many cases it is actually lower) the cost difference between these two houses is what people would be willing to pay to not have to endure that constant noise. I found that people were willing to pay $2,500 more to have a house in a neighborhood that does not have to hear airplanes. While this study is by no means foolproof it shows that there definitely is a cost associated with noise.
Leaf blowers also cost us in terms of our health. A German study found that people exposed to a constant and loud noise such as a leaf blower are one forth more likely to have a heart attack. A World Health Study looked at noise and not surprisingly found that annoying noises also lead to angry and irrational behavior. As anyone walking around a leaf blower will tell you, they also create pollution. Leaf blowers rely on two-stroke engine technology. This type of engine causes much more pollution then the four-stroke engines cars use. Because fuel is leaking into the combustion chamber each time there is a new charge this creates a more potent air pollutant. The California Air Resource board concluded, “Thus, for the average 1999 leaf blower and car data presented in Table 9, we calculate that hydrocarbon emissions from one-half hour of leaf blower operation equal about 7,700 miles of driving, at 30 miles per hour average speed. The carbon monoxide emission benchmark is significantly different. For carbon monoxide, one-half hour of leaf blower usage would be equivalent to about 440 miles of automobile travel at 30 miles per hour average speed.” Now this all seems pretty alarming and exaggerated but the Toronto Board of Health came up with a similar result. “Leaf blowers can be more polluting than cars. Compared to a new car (1999 or 2000 model), one hour of operation of commercial gasoline-powered lead blowers emits 498 times as much hydrocarbon's, 49 times as much particulate matter and 26 times as much carbon monoxide.” In either study the pollution generated by leaf blowers is significant. The trouble really comes from the carbon monoxide, which reduces our ability to carry blood to the heart. This affects the leaf blower user the most since they are the ones exposed to the majority of fumes. It should be noted that both these studies looked at leaf blowers built before 2000 and since that time there have been significant, although not perfect, improvements to the efficiency of leaf blowers.
Too often our environmental costs are looked at only in terms of CO2 or how many trees we are cutting down. There are many other consequences of our actions that are much harder to quantify but just as damaging. Leaf blowers negatively affect our community in several ways. These costs not just paid by the labor it takes to use them (which is significant) or in the gasoline you must buy to operate them. The real cost of leaf blowers is paid by a community that must endure this constant noise and is exposed to deadly pollution. The most unfortunate part of this cost is that those who blow the leaves aren’t the ones necessarily paying the highest cost. They are imposing this cost on everyone else. In my second part on leaf blowers next week I’ll describe what alternatives to leaf blowers exist and my personal efforts to eradicate them from our campus.

Power Vote

2008-10-15T01:56:00.000-07:00

Looking down our nation’s current path it is easy to imagine a future in which wars over natural resources continue because our economy is even more dependent on using a disproportionate percentage of our planet’s finite resources. With elections only four weeks away, our country is moving towards a time of huge change. This year, people between the ages of 18-29 make up approximately one fourth of the voting population in America. With numbers this large we have the opportunity to change the way politicians campaign, vote on legislation, and run the country. This can only happen if we get people to mobilize their feelings into one loud voice. This is why the Power Vote campaign is important.

Across the nation over 300 schools are taking part in the “Power Vote” campaign (founded by the Energy Action Coalition). This campaign is creating a nationwide movement backed by young voters who are passionate about moving our nation towards a green future. But what does this mean?

Power Vote stands on a platform of ideals that look towards solving not only environmental issues, but also economic and human right issues. The platform includes 6 main concepts:
1. Green jobs now
2. Investing in a clean energy economy
3. Cut global warming pollution now
4. End our dependence on dirty energy (not just foreign)
5. Re-engage our nation as a leader in the international community
6. Take dirty money out of politics

These are the ideals that the Power Vote campaign stands on. This is what we want to see initiated in the next four years and continued on in the future of our nation. Sign the Power Vote pledge to tell our leaders these are important issues. Join the movement and become one of the 200,909 (and growing) young voters building the bridge to a new future. Demand real, tangible, CHANGE!

Another Green List

2008-10-05T22:59:00.000-07:00

I was once told that the best way to reduce my carbon footprint would be to kill myself. While this is probably true I have not reached the personal conclusion that such extreme measures are required to reduce my environmental impact, however I also don't want to live a life dictated by always choosing the most environmentally friendly option. If we were to base all of our decisions on what most was most sustainable our lives would be pretty boring and we would probably want to kill ourselves anyways. So where is the fun in being sustainable? Does it really mean we have to take 2 minute showers?
Well not if you shower with someone else, then you could shower for 4 minutes. For me the fun comes from thinking about my actions. By engaging myself to critically evaluate what my everyday decisions mean for the future and how they personally reflect my own values. I thought I'd use the rest of my column to list some things to think about (I'd like to thanks the SEED members who helped contribute to this list).

-our school spends between $75,000 and $105,000 each month on electricity
-with the on campus washing machines if you set them to “brights and colors” it uses cold water, which doesn't require as much electricity and also does not turn your socks pink
-restarting your computer uses about as much energy as leaving it running, if you plan to leave your computer unattended for more than 2 hours it is always a good idea to turn it off or at the very least put it to sleep
-on a similar note the surge generated by turning on and off your lights is almost zero. it is always best to turn off your lights when you leave the room
-us the “10 second rule” for idling car engines. If your (non-diesel) car is parked or sitting for more then 10 seconds you will have used more fuel then turning it off and restarting it. According to the California Energy Commission leaving your car idling for 2 minutes uses the same amount of fuel as driving for one mile. Also starting your engine has negligible impact on it's overall longevity, in fact leaving it idling can lead to build up of fuel residues.
-use clothes lines and drying racks to dry your clothes
-use your own towel to wash your hands and face, instead of paper ones
-carry around your own set of utensils
-learn to fix a bike at the LC bike co-op
-learn to fix your computer at Free Geek (look it up online, it is awesome)
-when buying a bagel or pastry at Maggie's tell them you don't need a bag if you are just going to immediately throw it away, also bring your own mugs and they will even give you a discount
-when printing readings or papers always print double sided or just do the readings from your computer
-sit by the river every once and a while and drink a beer
-pay attention to how much packaging you use and find ways to reduce this amount
-say hello to people
-give Shane a hug

This list is never complete and for each person it is a little different, but I think it is important to share with others what we are doing because that is much more powerful then just complaining about how unsustainable the school is. This past summer I attended a march in Seattle for universal health care, me and a couple hundred other people went through downtown Seattle carrying signs and stopping traffic. But while doing this I realized we were really engaging people in any kind of meaningful way that made them question the health care system, or show how a different system might be better, in fact we were making them late to work. While I don't think there isn't a place for marching it cannot be the only solution. The real solution has to come from how we create our own environment and how our habits reflect our ideals.

Profitable Sustainability

2008-10-05T22:58:00.000-07:00

If you notice sometime this year the air is a little cleaner and the globe a little cooler look no further than the top of the athletics’ building. Solar energy is coming to Lewis and Clark College, however I am surprising even myself when I say this solar energy is not sustainable. It is an economically sweet deal in which the school will have to pay nothing but will receive solar energy at a lower cost than we are currently paying for electricity. These panels will supply .67% of our school's energy needs and there are even plans to expand the program. It is such a great deal that the only thing preventing us from putting solar panels up everywhere is a lack of roofs which can support the weight of the panels.

Under the power purchase agreement Lewis and Clark is technically leasing the space to Honeywell who is then going to pay all the costs for building and maintaining the panels. This arrangement works out well since we, as a non-profit institution, cannot receive all the government incentives which make putting up solar panels economically feasible (around $900,000 for this system). So everyone wins, we get clean green energy from a source which costs less than through the grid, and Honeywell gets a committed buyer of their energy and a profitable return on their investment. However the story is much more complex than it seems.

Like many things "sustainable" the closer you look the harder it gets to see how an action is sustainable. Honeywell is a huge international corporation. Their one goal is to increase the wealth of their stockholders. To do this they have engaged in some pretty unsustainable practices. Remember feeling bad after seeing the picture of the naked Vietnamese girl running down the street after her village got bombed by Napalm? Well the same company which supplied the bomb that destroyed that girl's village is the one which will soon to be supplying us with clean green energy. But the story gets even more complex. Kent Anson, the vice president of Global Energy for Honeywell Building Solutions said about our solar panel plan, “by developing projects that have environmental and financial drivers, we will see the type of widespread adoption that will have a lasting impact on greenhouse gas emissions”. It seems ironic that a company which is seemingly so concerned about greenhouse gas emissions ranks 44th on a list of US corporations most responsible for air pollution and who is linked to more super fund clean up sites (128) than any other company. Not to mention a long and costly track record of waiting until court orders are handed out before spending money to actually begin cleaning up their messes. While Honeywell generously gives money to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, between 1998 and 2005 they spent over 30 million dollars in lobbying efforts, according to The Center for Public Integrity. Money which I doubt was spent solely on trying to improve our missing and exploited children's center.

So later this year when Honeywell's trucks and cranes arrive on our campus to provide us with the sustainable energy our community demands, I will be torn. Can it be that the company which is partly responsible for our current environmental crisis also provide us with salvation, or is it all just another ploy to line the pockets of their shareholders? For me those panels will not represent the shift into an alternative world that can defeat and begin to come to terms with the environmental impact we have caused. I will look at it with the same sadness I felt after seeing the picture of the Vietnamese girl. The quest for profitability only leads to more problems than solutions. This is not to say that all things profitable are bad, just that profitability by its very nature is based in greed and we are going to need a lot more than greed to save ourselves.

Sustainability is Sexy

2008-10-05T22:57:00.000-07:00

Sustainability is a lot like learning how ride a bike, except you never really learn how ride the bike of sustainability. Once I asked a room full of student environmental leaders from around the Northwest who would consider their eating habits to be ecologically sustainable - and no one raised their hand. It is never very inspiring when even the people advocating a cause aren't actually able to live up to that cause in real life. At Lewis & Clark I took a great class on the political economy of food. We would spend all class talking about how bad the industrial food system is and how the corporations are destroying the environment. However after one particularly heated discussion, someone said, “None of this really matters because we all know that this weekend we are all going to get drunk on some shitty beer”. This has always stayed with me. Now when I go to talks about sustainability they are always exciting but I frequently ask myself whether I could see some frat boy announce to his brothers, “I refuse to drink cheap beer because of the ecological impact corn farms are having on our environment. I will only play beer pong with local organic beer”. Any real solution to the environmental problems we are facing will have to be able to convince even those frat boys to act radically different.
Sustainability is defined as many things, but all of these definitions include three important categories: economics, ecology, and equity. Underlying each is the idea that we should be, as the Department of Ecology puts it, “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” This column understands that sustainability is very important, but that it also needs to be based in the actual so as not to avoid becoming just as useless as another bumper sticker.
So this is where Lewis and Clark stands. In 2005 the 3 campuses of L&C bought 8,216, 514 kW of electricity - the vast majority of which did not come from renewable sources. This is equal to 122,070,284 pounds of carbon per year... which is the same as driving a SUV around for 12,000,000,000 miles every year. However various leaders around our campus have since taken up the charge. In 2007, President Hochsettler signed the President's Climate Commitment which says that our campus will become carbon neutral by 2050. Last year, through the hard work of Elise Maxwell and SEED the school changed its Student Green Energy Policy from an “opt-in” to an “opt-out,” requiring students to check a box saying that don't want to pay for green energy. This raised the amount of renewable energy we bought from 375,600 kW to 1,200,000 kW, or over 1/8th of our total energy purchases. Since 1991 our school's building area has gone up by 41%, students living on campus has risen 21%, faculty and staff 14%, yet our energy consumption has only gone up by 10%. This relatively small increase can be attributed to Richard Bettega, who is a member of the Sustainability Council, and his genuine dedication to making the school consume less energy. If you see either Elise or Richard around campus give them a hug for helping to make us a lot greener (also give Shane Rivera a hug because he has a sign offering you to). Sustainability is an issue that we all have to get to know and I hope to use this column to make some people get to know it a little better so that one day we really will know how to ride a bike and beer pong will be played with local organic beer.

Sharing is Caring

2008-10-02T09:55:00.002-07:00

Sharing a shower is one of the most sexually tantalizing, revealing, and cleansing things you can do with another person. Feeling the heat from their body as you lather them up with soap, unsure whether the hot steam that is filling the shower is coming from the water or your passion. Showering is a wonderful experience that should be shared with many people simultaneously. At least this is what was advocated by Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels in 2006 as one thing you can do to be more sustainable. Sustainability is the acknowledgement that we have limited resources and we must use them more efficiently. Sharing resources is fundamental to this goal however it poses many problems for our liability worried society.
It has been suggested many times that Lewis & Clark provide a car-sharing program for students. Instead of needing to have a car on campus for the once a week trip to the grocery shore or the few times you need to get anywhere besides Sellwood or Downtown you could just borrow a car from the school. Like many good sustainable ideas car sharing is huge over in Europe but in America the idea of sharing a car poses many insurmountable challenges, mainly the threat of who would be liable. LC currently loans out SUV’s to student groups however getting an insurance company to cover loaning out cars to college students on a daily basis is much more difficult. While it makes perfect sense for our community to have a program like this the fear that someone is going to sue the college for ten million dollars because the tires weren’t correctly inflated and they got into an accident makes it a hard sell.
This summer I was involved in forming the LC Bike Library. Students could check out bikes from campus safety for free and ride them around for the day. The bikes were paid for with the left over SEED budget and were given regular tune-ups and an overhaul by the bike co-op. Before biking, people had to sign a waiver saying that no one at LC could be responsible for anything that happened while riding the bike. Over the course of the summer over 60 students and staff used these unadvertised bikes. The program was not only successful at making biking more accessible but one of the most exciting things for me was how into it the campus safety officers got. Instead of writing people up they were providing a service. However just like with car sharing, bike sharing poses many liabilities.
One day in the middle of August I got a call saying that someone had crashed one of the bikes and was in the hospital. While the accident was the result of an inexperienced bike rider I still felt tremendously guilty. Was I responsible because I had made this program available to people? The individual ended up being okay but what if she had died? Immediately after the accident I told campus safety to put a hold on the program. Since then they have contacted me about restarting it but I personally I have found little motivation to put more energy into the program.
While sharing a shower is fun and sexy, sharing things like cars and bikes can be dangerous. It is difficult to judge how to best prevent accidents from happening. How many tests and waivers do you need to make people go through before you can root out everyone who is going to pose a liability? Or do we need to just accept that the liability is there and people are going to get into bike and car accidents no matter where they get them from? While I wholeheartedly support the sharing our resources I have come to realize that it is not as easy as just giving people the opportunity to share. There is a certain fear of each other that prevents us from always offering a lending hand, especially to strangers. It is often difficult to judge if this fear is well founded. However I still believe that controlling this fear is vital to create the foundation for a sustainable society. For now I’m just sticking to sharing showers but perhaps someday I’ll wake up and feel like more people need to ride bikes and it just makes sense for us to share.

How Sustainable is Capitalism?

2008-10-02T09:55:00.001-07:00

When I told my communist father that I was pursing an economics major he sent me a cardboard cutout of Karl Marx in the mail. I now hang this cut out next to my desk. In the past two weeks I swear the grin on Marx’s face has gotten bigger and the hammer he holds in his hand has slowly started lowering, ready at any moment to crush capitalism. With the massive nationalization of our nationals lending firms that has taken place it is very tempting to get out my dusty copy of the Manifesto and think about how Marx saw it all coming. Reading everyday about the billions of dollars governments and companies are throwing in vain to prevent a wider economic collapse one has to wonder how sustainable this system is.
Last year I visited the Stanford Business School and wandered into a lecture where the vice-president of Barclays, the British version of Bank of America, was giving a talk. In his talk he was asked about the mortgage crisis that was only beginning to emerge. People, especially in San Francisco which is next to Stanford, had begun realizing that the speculative prices they had paid for their homes would never pay off and were beginning to default on their loans, leading directly to last week in which the companies that offered all these loans are going bankrupt themselves. In his talk the vice-president told the audience of how this mortgage crisis was a much bigger deal than anything he had ever seen before and that it would make the completely trump the economic recession we saw after the dot com bubble burst. He went on to say that this was a problem, which he had seen before and was confident he would see again. Investment firms are in the business of creating markets based on speculation.
To often we think of sustainability only in terms of the environment but creating a sustainable economy is just as important. Throughout all of our lives we have been lucky to live in times of prosperity however we must also keep in mind how fragile this prosperity is. Our economic growth is largely the result of other countries willingness to shoulder our debt. What will happen when these countries decide we are too risky of an investment?
Since the government is working overtime to print new currency to buy up these firms we will be facing higher inflation for a long time to come, this will make finding jobs and even buying food more difficult. While I don't think the market collapse of the last few weeks proves the need for a communist revolution (just yet) it should make us at least give pause and maybe consider whether this is the best way to do things.

Carbon Neutralizing

2008-10-02T09:54:00.000-07:00

By the year 2050 it is predicted that the Earth will have lost 60% of it’s glacier volume. By that same year Lewis and Clark has agreed to become carbon neutral. In 2006 our President, Tom Hochstettler signed the Presidents Climate Commitment, saying, “Given our institution’s and sector’s responsibility to future generations, we are compelled to do our part to address the pernicious effects of global warming”. (pernicious means deadly) At the time we were one of only a hundred colleges to sign the declaration, now the list has grown to over 500. By signing we have agreed to make a road map for reaching this goal. In two years the college wanted to have an inventory of all its carbon emissions and a plan for “neutralizing” those emissions. Our two years are now up.
Richard Bettega, the Vice President for facilities, was given the task of coming up with the plan. Richard has always been a force for reason and has shown a true commitment towards make our school a more sustainable place. In his plan he encourages the school not to look towards buying carbon offsets from a second party, as many other colleges are doing, but making institutional changes that reduce and directly offset our carbon emissions. Buying carbon offsets are a tricky business because it is difficult to judge how well they reduce the effects of global warming. There are many instances when the random planting of more trees can have unattended consequences which disrupt the existing ecosystems. There are no regulations for buying carbon offsets so it is very easy for a company to just pocket the money. Lewis and Clark needs to do better than just outsourcing our carbon emissions and it is very exciting that we have someone like Richard who also agrees with this. The hard part is how do we reconcile our annual carbon contribution of 18,000 metric tons.
This summer the college looked into placing a wind farm in Eastern Oregon on land owned by the school. Unfortunately every company contacted turned down the deal because there was not enough wind. Now the school is seeking to install a solar array there. In Oregon where a large percentage of our energy still comes from coal this would be a huge step in reducing Lewis and Clark’s contribution to global greenhouse gases a majority of which comes from electricity usage. One of the major hurtles facing this development is the uncertainty investors are facing regarding government financing for renewable energy projects. However, it is likely that these issues will get settled after the next election. By building this solar array our school would set an example for other institutions to follow and would be taking care of our responsibility to future generations. Let’s hope it happens.

What Moves You?

2008-10-02T09:51:00.000-07:00

H.G. Wells once said, “when I see a man on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race”. If H.G. Wells suddenly showed up to the Lewis and Clark bike garage under the library this year he would not be feeling much despair because it seems like the number of bicycles on campus has increased exponentially. Bike parking, which used to be abundant, now is in short supply. The NSO bike ride this year attracted over 50 cyclists who formed the first LC “critical mass” of bikes that managed to “cork” (stop traffic) on Barbur Boulevard for a few exciting seconds of “bicycle power”, and for some a few seconds of confusion as to why we were biking through red lights. At the same time that bicycling seems to be taking over LC the number of people commuting by car is also growing.
The number of commuter parking passes sold on campus, people who drive only themselves to campus everyday, increased by about 2% last year from the year before (about 440 daily commuters each semester). Our progressive staff bought 8.2% more passes over the same time. So it would not seem like higher gas prices or Al Gore begging us to start confronting global warming seems to be having much of an effect on the number of people driving to Lewis and Clark everyday. Locating our school on top of a hill and the rainy weather certainly do not necessarily make bicycling the ideal mode of transportation. Cars are a great invention, they allow us to travel further and do things that 100 years ago would have been impossible yet how do we deal with our rising number of cars on campus and the need to address the causes of global warming? If we as a school are to seriously confront our carbon footprint more needs to be done so that the number of car commuters starts decreasing. Bicycling has to be at the forefront of this shift.
The Lewis and Clark community and especially those already on bikes need to do more to show that bicycling is the best transportation option. They need to help people see that while you can spend your time reading about society and environmental crisis if at the same time you isolate yourself in a car you are missing what it means to be a part of a community and what it means to engage yourself in your environment. Hidden behind car windows it is easier to drive by the homeless man on the corner and forget that our automobiles are responsible for one third of our carbon emissions or how the 5.7 million miles of paved highways in the US effect our environment. The result of this isolation is a culture which does not need to care what happens to the environment because in a car the majority of us are unaffected by the consequences we are creating.
Students need to be more involved in working with the school to create a free bike library and push for more funding for bike projects and other projects that promote alternatives to the commuter car. REED College has a bike loan program with paid bike mechanics and several other colleges offer free bikes to students who do not bring cars to campus. PSU has an active and subsidized Zipcar car loan program. The only reason these programs do not exist at Lewis and Clark is that people who want them are not involved in our transportation decisions. While H.G. Wells might be excited to see all the people biking around campus if he glanced over to the massive Griswold parking lot he would be horrified to find a growing number of people who have decided that commuting to school everyday by car is the best way to transport oneself.