The Bowdoin Orient

Everybody loves to hate environmentalists.    

But why is that? Surely, the number of people that love to hate our planet is far smaller.

If we all agree that clean air, a stable climate, and biodiversity are great, why is there animosity towards the green-minded? Maybe it’s our propensity for chaining ourselves to trees. Or the weird barefoot hobbit feet? The hemp clothes? The yurts? The undercooked vegan food? 

Last time I checked, the only thing I was chained to was my computer. My toenail polish is a little chipped, but otherwise my feet are fairly pristine. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an item of hemp clothing in my life, much less a yurt. And when my friends and I eat vegan food, it’s generally pretty delicious (my former roommate’s dark chocolate-avocado-banana bread comes to mind).  

Sorry to break it to you, but environmentalists are just like you. 

It’s always amazing to me to see how many people are reluctant to identify with a movement—even if they agree with its goals—because of a fear of being associated with its radical fringes. While I won’t deny that the dreaded hippie still walks among us, getting on board with progressive environmental policies doesn’t mean you have to douse yourself in patchouli and start doing chakra meditation. 

This kind of stereotyping might seem harmless, but it actually has a fairly pernicious side effect. If fewer people are willing to come out and say that they support pro-climate legislation and policies because of a fear of being painted with the hippie brush, it’s much less likely that progress on these issues will happen any time soon. And with an issue like climate change, progress needs to be made, like, yesterday.

The dirty-hippie stereotype still exists, even though the goals and practices of the “environmental movement” (if such a huge entity can be said to exist anymore) have changed significantly in the past fifty years.

It’s hard not to notice how little today’s climate movement resembles the environmentalism of the 1960s. The climate crisis requires a far more radical and swift response from our society than the tree-huggers of yore could have ever desired. 

The need for more drastic actions is not winning environmentalism (including older versions of environmental activism) many new supporters among the silent majority—those who would much rather spend their Saturday afternoon watching a baseball game than going to a protest.These perceptions seem to alienate a great deal of people from publicly supporting environmental goals. Other misconceptions only compound this problem. One of these is the sense that environmentalists, as their name might imply, prioritize the well being of the natural environment over more seemingly immediate problems facing human beings. 

Most environmentally-minded folks would never argue (and I feel the same way) that other issues facing humanity—the fights against poverty, disease, oppression, and so  on—are not important. But those who frame environmental goals in opposition to these other humanitarian aims are missing the point on two accounts.

First, the majority of environmentalists that I’m familiar with are committed to their goals because they know that having a healthy and safe environment helps all people, and that imperiling the environment can hurt human health and social stability, especially for those unable to buy themselves a solution. The short version of this? Environmentalism is for the people. Second, many of the problems faced by societies worldwide (poverty, disease, social unrest, etc.) are exacerbated by environmental damage, especially the types associated with climate change. 

When drought wipes out a vital harvest, the food insecurity and price spikes that result don’t occur in a vacuum. They affect the ability of real people to feed themselves and their families and, in extreme cases, can contribute to wider social instability. Protecting the natural environment is the best and most efficient way to prevent these types of crises: it allows us to get at the root cause of the disease rather than just treating the symptom.

However, this reality is not always readily apparent. Especially considering the widespread misinformation circulating around the issue of climate change, the question remains: what is the environmental movement to do? 

To use a well-worn phrase, environmentalists must be able to win the hearts and minds. Keeping environmentalism a niche ideology for anti-mainstream radicals doesn’t seem promising, and diluting the message to lure in the unsuspecting masses seems like it could only end up being counterproductive. 

To me, the solution lies in reminding people what they have to gain by supporting environmentalism, and what they have to lose should it fail. 

Three weeks ago, as the rest of campus was bracing for midterms, seven Bowdoin students were arrested after participating in a planned student protest in Washington, D.C. against the contentious Keystone XL pipeline. The pipeline, which would transport tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast for shipment, has been adopted as a rallying point for many environmental activists. 

What is tar sands oil, exactly? It’s an unconventional form of oil, meaning it’s not extracted using the conventional oil well technique. Tar sands contain a heavy, viscous type of petroleum called bitumen. This substance, which has the consistency of cold molasses, is found in sandstones from which the tar sands get their name. In order for crude bitumen to be transported and processed into other products like gasoline and diesel, it must first be “upgraded,” or purified, so that it can flow through a pipeline. Upgrading the bitumen to be transported takes energy and makes it one of the most carbon-intensive fossil fuels.

Because of tar sands oil’s oversized carbon footprint, the debate over the Keystone XL pipeline, and over tar sands oil more generally, is a fairly high-stakes one. Put plainly, the tar sands oil matters, both in its own right and as a harbinger of the future of energy policy in the United States.

Leaving politics aside, our nation’s decisions about tar sands oil will directly impact the climate. Because of the refinement process, tar sands oil creates far more carbon dioxide per barrel than conventional oil. On a scale from clean to dirty, tar sands oil falls somewhere between conventional oil (not impressive) and coal (public enemy #1). This decision will also carry significant political weight. Debate surrounding the pipeline is ongoing, and anti-Keystone activists have leveraged President Obama’s promises regarding climate change policy against him.

They insist—quite possibly rightly—that his decision about the pipeline will ultimately determine his legacy on curbing climate change, and that a decision to allow the pipeline’s construction flies in the face of his promises. The president’s indecisiveness on Keystone XL especially stings considering that his election was largely underwritten by the youth vote, a group to which many anti-tar sands activists belong. I’d imagine that most of the kids protesting on Obama’s front lawn earlier this month probably voted for him.

Proponents of renewable energy fear that a large newfound source of fossil fuels, even an unconventional one like the tar sands, will sound the death knell for any hope of serious investment in renewable energy in the coming decades. According to most climate scientists, we don’t have that kind of time to twiddle our thumbs. Many people hope that a technological “silver bullet” will save the human race from climate change without requiring any major lifestyle, consumption, or infrastructure changes. I can assure you that opening the Pandora’s Box that is the Alberta tar sands will not bring us any closer to achieving this goal. 

So, what could possibly have compelled over 1,000 students to come knocking on President Obama’s door earlier this March? Many anti-tar sands activists hope that, since the tar sands oil must almost certainly be transported by pipeline (rather than by rail) in order to be profitable, halting the construction of Keystone XL may prevent the tar sands oil from being brought to market, and possibly prevent further exploration of tar sands oil in the future. They hope that by protesting publicly and making their voices heard, they will be able to make people listen in Washington and beyond. 

It might seem a little crazy to those of us not raised in an era of widespread activism, but this is the reality of the American political process. For those of us without Koch Brothers-level money, these are the types of actions available to us. Write or call your congressperson. Vote. If you’ve got a lot of free time (and maybe some of that money), run for office. And, if you realize that you really care about something, don’t be afraid to take it to the streets. I’m proud of our student protesters for making a big statement, and I hope that everyone can someday feel passionately enough about something to do the same.

Going to lectures on climate change might not be everyone’s ideal way to start the weekend. And while I wouldn’t call last Friday’s lecture a mood booster, I’m glad that I attended.

The keynote speaker for the President’s Science Symposium presented to a crowded Kresge audience during last week’s Common Hour. The speaker, Dr. Daniel Schrag, is both a professor of geology and the director of the Center of the Environment at Harvard University. Climate change, as Schrag described it, is a massive experiment on the order of nothing ever before seen by the hominid species. Our planet is likely to experience its residual effects for tens—if not hundreds—of thousands of years. The planet’s “recovery time” will hinge on how much longer we prolong fossil fuel combustion.

According to the scenarios presented by Schrag, our options for a clean-energy future are: highly efficient use of all forms of energy; exclusive use of zero-carbon (both renewables and nuclear) power sources, and large-scale CO2 sequestration. Schrag believes that a realistic zero-net-carbon future must include all three.

In the chaos accompanying the start of the academic year (not to mention the recent uproar over the shutdown of our federal government), you may have missed the news that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) just released its 2013 assessment report on—you guessed right—climate change. 

The report is essentially a condensed version of all the significant climate science research that’s been published in the past few years, and an updated one is released every five to seven years. It’s meant to provide apolitical recommendations that set a baseline for decision-making on climate change.

Created in 1988, the IPCC is a collection of the world’s leading climate scientists who also have the power to act as delegates for their respective governments. As neither a solely scientific nor political body, the IPCC does not conduct original studies, but instead evaluates recent climate research and digests it into one very long report, the first of which was released in 1990.