A Footprint Up Your…

Full disclosure: I hate the concept of the Ecological Footprint. It’s overly simplistic, vague, and too often mistaken for a legitimate metric of sustainability. That said, it’s one more test that Dartmouth students score pretty well on, and for that reason alone it’s worth looking at.

The Ecological Footprint is a rough measure of how much biologically productive land that any given person uses to support his or her lifestyle. The total amount of productive land, divided by the total population of the planet, works out to about 4.6 acres per person, assuming that all land is being utilized and nothing is left over for other species.

The average American has a footprint of 25.4 acres. Needless to say, that’s a lot. Assuming a steady population level (which there isn’t), we’d need the equivalent of five planet Earths to support everyone at an American standard of living.

Where does Dartmouth come in? Last year, an ’05 conducted a survey calculating the average Dartmouth student’s Ecological Footprint. The result, derived from a sample consisting of more than 200 responses, was 16.2 acres per student. It’s not exactly the 4.6-acre target, but it’s a step in the right direction. To put it bluntly, if all Americans lived like us, we’d be far less dependent on foreign oil, the rate of climate change would slow, and the polar bear wouldn’t be working quite so diligently on its last will and testament.

So should we pat ourselves on the back? Crack open an ice-cold organic beer and bask in the glory of our morally superior crunchiness? Probably not.

When you get right down to it, there are two main factors that make us so eco-friendly: none of us commute and many of us live in relatively efficient dormitories. In both cases, these facts are completely passive and incidental. Students don’t view them in environmental terms and thus aren’t likely to repeat this sort of behavior when they get out of the Dartmouth bubble. For most students, when they go out into the rest of the world, get jobs, buy 4000 square foot houses and gas-guzzling SUVs, this period of relative eco-responsibility during their college years will seem like a distant memory—a nice little karmic check-plus—but it is ultimately insignificant.

For that reason, a student’s individual Footprint is only tangentially relevant. The real measure of campus sustainability is how much students are learning about the consequences of their lifestyles, and how much of that knowledge is applicable to the rest of their lives.

Let me give you an example: If students were being fed locally-grown organic food, they might learn the ecological and community benefits of responsible agriculture, experience its generally superior quality, and maybe even meet some of the farmers that they were buying from. Then they’d take that lesson with them beyond Hanover and perhaps feel compelled to buy local and organic whenever they could. I haven’t seen any studies on the subject, but I’m willing to bet that if there were a metric of environmental awareness, Dartmouth students would rank closer to the national average than our “Footprint” might suggest.

Student Activism

Environmentalism first entered the Dartmouth consciousness in a meaningful way in’69, around the same time that it was becoming a national issue. A group of outing club members started the Environmental Studies Division of the DOC (ESD). Their early efforts included organizing Earth Day programming, introducing recycling initiatives to the College, and leading educational trips.

Their most lasting legacy on the campus was undoubtedly their contribution to the foundation of the Environmental Studies academic department. In the early ’70s, they rallied support and petitioned the college for an academic program that would address the increasingly pressing economic, scientific, and political interactions between the natural world and human society.

The department started off small, but grew through the ’70s, and eventually gained recognition as a full major program. To date, it’s the oldest Environmental Studies major program in the country, all due to a particularly vocal student demand.

Since that time, student environmentalism has waxed and waned along with the national tides of concern. Groups have come and gone over the last 37 years. Some, like the Environmental Conservation Organization (ECO) have stuck around and worked their way into the fabric of student life. Others, like the Dartmouth Vegetarian Alliance and Sense of Place, a predecessor to The Green Magazine, have fallen by the wayside.

ESD, an endowed student organization that many alumni recognize, is still active, at least on paper. Its last major campus accomplishment was to convince the administration to create the Sustainability Coordinator position.

Today, there are at least half a dozen campus groups whose primary mission is fostering sustainability at Dartmouth. Some, like The Green Magazine, the Organic Farm, and the Big Green Bus, have self-explanatory goals. The roles of others like ESD and ECO are more nebulous, focusing mostly on everyday actions students can take to reduce their ecological impact.

As you can probably guess, campus environmentalism has run into many of the same walls as other Dartmouth activist efforts: continuity, the D-plan, and student commitment. It’s just a difficult reality that the long-term programs required for environmental reform are near-impossible to establish when students are constantly taking off-terms and the most experienced quarter of the talent pool disappears each year. Add to that the reality of college that students just don’t always have enough time or energy, and the capacity to commit to bureaucratic reform and spread awareness is highly constrained.

Which is Where the Administration Comes in…

The administration and staff have tried to make Dartmouth a greener place…really, they have. There have been almost as many College-sponsored sustainability initiatives as there have been from student groups. Armed with full-time employees and guaranteed annual budgets, some of theirs have even worked.

Many of the highest school officials have pledged their commitment to managing Dartmouth in an environmentally responsible manner. According to a January 2001 article in The Dartmouth, Dean of Residential Life Martin Redman said that for any new construction projects “the focus [would] be on energy efficiency and environmentally sound construction materials.”

Some pursue environmental work in their professional careers. Carol Folt for example, the newly-appointed Dean of Faculty, is a prominent natural scientist whose current research group is engaged in the study of toxic pollution in aquatic ecosystems and their effects on human health.

Even President Wright is on record as stating that we “must continue to make environmental concerns a significant priority in our decision making, to lead in the implementation of environmentally sustainable practices, and to place Dartmouth at the forefront in the exploration of issues related to the preservation of a healthy biosphere.”

Over the years, there have been dozens of individual programs out of different College departments. Remember those disgusting caterpillars that have invaded the campus the past few years? FO&M now employs a system known as Integrated Pest Management (IPM) to control them and any other harmful pests. IPM involves thoroughly analyzing a pest situation and carefully choosing the most appropriate and least ecologically harmful countermeasure.

DDS makes some effort to purchase locally grown organic food. While their switch to cage-free eggs from a local organic farm has gotten a lot of publicity lately, they regularly purchase a certain amount of locally-grown fruits and vegetables. These are sold mostly in Collis and Homeplate, but Courtyard Café regulars may remember the boxes of organic apples in the Hop last year.

And of course, there are the new construction projects. The school has employed a number of outside architects and consultants to create and execute the green design of the McLaughlin Residential Cluster, the Kemeny Hall-Haldeman Center building, and especially the new Tuck Mall Residence Hall. According to one such consultant, Marc Rosenbaum of Energysmiths, the new buildings will have “more efficient, healthful, comfortable, and maintainable mechanical systems [and] very high quality building enclosures [to improve] insulation, airtightness, glazing systems, and durability.” There are also the more exotic measures like the 1500 foot geothermal well underneath the Tuck Mall dorm and the commitment to purchase more sustainable electricity from the national electricity grid.

Again, just like the individual Footprints, this all sounds great on paper. Indeed, there are many at Dartmouth who should be commended for their commitments to sustainability. But even so, we’re still coming up short. While energy efficient washers and dryers are a step in the right direction, there are further efforts we could be making: independently pledging to meet the Kyoto Protocol’s greenhouse gas emissions targets, constructing a college Sustainability Center that actually generates more energy than it uses, or establishing a $1M “Green Fund” to finance sustainability initiatives around the campus.

Sound far-fetched? Those exact measures have been undertaken by Tufts, Oberlin, and Yale respectively.

For something a little closer to home that we could be doing, look no further than the enormous brick smoke stack that towers over campus. The Dartmouth Power Plant provides between a third and a half of the school’s electricity use during most of the year and nearly all of its heating during the colder months. It’s a well-run facility, but much of the infrastructure behind it is poorly constructed and leaky. Further, it’s 100% powered by oil. College fuel costs have almost doubled in the last three years, and they will only continue to rise.

Is an oil-powered plant really the best solution for Dartmouth? I don’t know, but a thorough study of the plant’s current costs, the feasibility of alternatives, and, most importantly, an analysis of campus energy efficiency certainly seems due.

So what’s holding us back? Maybe if there were a full-time position for an official whose job it would be to unify the college’s environmental sentiment and push for broad and sweeping change. Someone with the ear of the administration and the support of the community. Someone with a background in sustainability initiatives and the passion to make it happen…

The Guy with the Full-Time Job

Dartmouth created its own Sustainability Coordinator position in April 2005, following the lead of other Ivy League schools like Yale, Harvard, and Brown. A panel of students, faculty, and administrators winnowed the field down from scores of applicants before settling on James Merkel, a former electrical engineer whose primary field of work was in industrial and arms design. In’89, after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Merkel had a crisis of conscience and decided to devote his life to promoting sustainability. Fifteen years ago he quit his job to pursue, among other things, a research fellowship in Kerala, India; a sustainable homestead in Vermont called the Global Living Project; and authorship of a book entitled “Radical Simplicity”—a guide to dramatically reducing one’s ecological footprint.

Merkel was favored by many of the students who interviewed him for his wide knowledge base, obvious enthusiasm, and contrarian attitude. The belief was that adding such a radical personality to the college staff would shock a seemingly complacent bureaucracy into action.

Of course, anyone who follows The Dartmouth has watched a different story evolve over the past year. While the editorial staff has clearly supported the administration’s decision to create the Sustainability Coordinator position, the college’s daily paper has published several criticisms of Merkel’s performance in recent months. One such article lamented his lack of experience, while another wondered why more hadn’t been accomplished during his tenure.

Perhaps surprisingly, some student environmentalists have held reservations of their own. Greatest among these was the early realization that Merkel’s job description involved very little time to work directly with students. Indeed, while he often goes out of his way to be available to students, and has submitted several articles for The Green Magazine and attended a number of student meetings, by Merkel’s own account, his job is only supposed to entail spending about five percent of his time with students.

I can’t say exactly how the College expected the Sustainability Coordinator position to function, but I think that it’s fair to say that a majority of Dartmouth’s most persistent, hard-working, and ambitious environmental advocates are found among its student body. We’ve already seen the power of students to effect meaningful change on this campus. Drastically circumscribing their input does a disservice both to them and to the College’s efforts. Interfacing with students alone should be a full-time job.

This five percent commitment suggests one of two things. Either whoever designed Merkel’s position had no sense of how Dartmouth College actually functions, or the position is so all-encompassing that to expect one man to handle it is absurd. Either case seems to suggest a “set-it and forget-it” attitude on behalf of the administration towards the Sustainability Office. It is as though adding one more staff member would allow the school’s environmental problems to solve themselves without any more significant commitment of time, energy, and capital.

Based on my past couple of years working towards a greener Dartmouth, if there’s one thing that I can say with absolute certainty, it’s that bringing our beloved alma mater towards the vanguard of sustainability is going to take a hell of a lot more than the efforts of one man. It’s going to take students, administrators, faculty, and staff all working together, all on the same page, and all utterly convinced of the immediate importance of their cause.

Sustainability is going to happen. In time, out of cost-effectiveness or ease or just necessity, things are going to change. The question that the Dartmouth community has to ask itself is, do we want to be a leader in this paradigm shift? Or do we want simply to be a follower, aping other people’s successes over time? I can’t speak for anyone else, but personally, I’d like to be able to look back at my college and know that we led the way on something this big. More importantly, I know that we can.