Today is Earth Day. So what?
The first Earth Day was a big deal, back when the air in several U.S. cities really was brown, and the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland was so polluted that it caught fire. But, at least in the United States, the Clean Air and Water Acts helped clean up the immediate dangers, and the following eight years of Reaganomics made the environment the last thing on anyone's mind.
By 1990, Earth Day was huge again. The terms "ozone hole," "tropical deforestation" and "greenhouse effect" were brand new and everywhere. Our teachers talked to us about them, we had a school assembly and sang about them; I even remember writing a paper including the word "chlorofluorocarbons." I didn't have a clue what it meant, but the whole Earth seemed in danger.
But then what? We limited the production of CFCs, had the Earth Summit to talk (but do nothing) about global warming, and, as the 1990s have gone by, the growing sense has been that those problems are in the past.
Now it's Earth Day 1998. It's spring in Hanover, and the trees are green again. Does it matter?
Globally, our dependence on burning fossil fuels for energy is growing, despite the fact that world oil supplies are predicted to run dry in the next 50 years. That's about the same time that, at the present rate of deforestation, the last tropical rain forests would disappear. We're still producing CFCs that will remain in the atmosphere for up to 130 years, and we're now adding one billion people to this planet every 12 years. Yes, the economy is good in the United States, where there are more cars than licensed drivers, while in India there are 920 million people, and one car for every 300 of them. What will happen when they start to drive?
But such global trends aren't overly fun or productive to ruminate on. Let's think about what is happening at Dartmouth this spring.
A college-wide and town-wide composting program is beginning, which should greatly reduce the amount of waste being trucked to the Lebanon landfill. "Waste Warriors" are being installed on every floor of more residence halls, to make recycling more convenient. The SPARC contest is giving students money back for cutting down on wasted electricity. The Organic Farm is thriving and will hopefully have its produce in Collis soon. All in all, a lot seems to be moving in the right direction.
Yet the success of all of these programs depends vitally on student cooperation, and that's where things can get tricky. Justifiably, few people want to listen to other people telling them what to do, and when the talk comes to "sustainability" and saving trees -- well, a lot of doors can close faster than you can say "wise resource use."
OK. Seriously, set aside the word "environmental" (and all the biases and politics that have become wrapped up in it) and take an objective look.
Producing a new aluminum can uses a tremendous amount of energy, but recycling it takes just five percent of that energy. Throwing a can in the trash instead of recycling it is literally like filling it halfway with oil and pouring it down the drain. Hauling trash to the landfill also costs a lot more than recycling it, and that cost comes back to us through room and board. And yet? On more than one night this term there have been 14 aluminum cans in a single dorm trash barrel, located right next to the recycling barrel.
The lights in the men's bathroom by the Tower Room in Baker are almost always on, despite the fact that the skylights provide more than enough light for the room's purposes. Burning the oil to power these four 34 Watt lights for 12 hours releases two and a half pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere daily, and costs money. Yet the lights are always on. Why? The myth that leaving fluorescent lights on saves electricity might be part of it (it is true that early fluorescents took a lot of energy to turn on and off, but today's are just like any other lights, so if you're not using them, turn them off. Likewise, if you're not using your computer for at least an hour, it's best to give it a break and turn it off. The average Dartmouth student leaves their computer on 16 hours a day -- a whole lot of fossil fuel just for BlitzMail!).
The only other explanation is that we just don't think about it -- about electricity and where it comes from and how it was made and the impacts of it on our everyday life.
Where does our trash go? At some early time in our lives, we all must have been intrigued by that question, by what happened to our empty Jell-O containers, and at one point, each and every one of us must have asked out loud. "Never mind" was most likely the response (how many parents feel like introducing their children to the politics of waste disposal?) -- and we didn't.
Obviously, most people don't come to an Ivy League school to think about their trash. But, if you do for a moment -- isn't it still interesting? Where does it go? Where could it go? Where should it go? This Earth Day, take a moment to ask yourself those questions. In the next 10 years, virtually every landfill in the US will close; we can't just throw it away forever.
