Hi all -- well, Thanksgiving is upon us, and we have, as I'm sure you know, just one week of classes left upon your return. So that means just ONE MORE BLOG POST.
Here's what I'd like you to do for this final post. I'd like you to have a conversation about the environment over the next few days, ideally with someone who disagrees with you either about the severity of the environmental situation or about the best ways to respond to it. And then I'd like you to blog about that interaction. Simple, no?
Remember, this should be a conversation, not a lecture. So listen at least as much as you talk. Think carefully, too, about the most effective way to engage with your conversation partner about something that can, for some, be a very controversial issue. Can you find ways to talk about these issues that get people thinking without turning them off? Is it best to be provocative or to be conciliatory?
Happy Thanksgiving -- looking forward to your stories,
Simon
4 comments:
Turkey with the Weyerhaeusers
Coming back from break, I wonder why I left DC in the first place. I had a good thanksgiving, but was doing homework the entire time, worrying about not being able to complete the tasks assigned of me before they were all due. I actually woke up at about 5am on friday morning and couldn't get back to sleep, so I kept going then didn't stop until much later friday afternoon, feeling a mix of pride and disgust upon completing individual tasks. oh well.
Thursday afternoon I cooked up my grandmother's famous stuffing, and carried all 15 pounds of the tray into my roommates living room, full of his cheery (and rather loud) family members. I had dressed conservatively, with my hair tied back in a strict ponytail and sat my legs crossed at the ankles as i bowed my head for grace.
As peter held his right hand up at the dinner table to quiet the room, i realized a smell was in the air. it wasn't the candles, maybe the food on the table helped, or the over-application of the perfume of the woman next to me. i realized when it was time for grace that i missed my own family, far away, and despite my grandmothers same stuffing sitting in front of me as would be sitting in front of my mom and dad, I was the smell. I was the only person at the table who was not a Weyerhaeuser. I did not come from this family.
My father worked for 25 years in the paper industry. I had never appreciated his line of work because it meant cutting down a shitload of trees for a bunch of paper that sat in the trunk of his car and made his axle almost crack every time he hit a speedbump. It put food on the table and warm socks on my feet, so i rarely spoke up about it, but i couldn't have been happier the day he was finally laid off, as it presented an opportunity for him to distance himself from pulp and woodchips, though his line of the industry had nothing to do with the logging.
Weyerhaeuser is another paper company, a competitor with my father's company. This organization goes back several generations, and now includes a family which is strongly attached to their republican values. I couple the notion of clear cutting for paper-making with a touch of manifest destiny in how these folks were raised. I was sitting in an overly warm stuffy room and this prayer of giving thanks was turning into history's longest soliloquy.
about 45 minutes into dinner, as someone poured me my second glass of wine, my roommates mother asked me where i was from (san francisco), what had brought me to dc for school (a fiery burn for politics and debate) and what was my major (environmental studies)... whoops, I realized, I blew my cover without even contemplating it. the air around me grew tight as I realized peter, the older man at the head of the table, clearly an alpha, was staring at me. "So I take it you're one of those prius-drivers, then?" he asked.
"well, no, actually" I said, smiling and trying to stay relaxed in my hot seat, "even if I could afford a car, I probably would wait on the hybrid cars until the technology gets better"
"what do you mean? they're already suited to take all different kinds of electricity and run a car off the combination", he noted in a southern twang, which is true, but still, this man was a born-and-raised consumer, destined to believe everything he read in the papers or in commercials. I explained to him about the battery in the prius which needs to be revampled so it can be recycled after use.
a cousin of my roommate's, seated across from me, began to ask questions about climate change and what type of curriculum I pursue at american. I told him about the classes I take, the gneral topics I speak about in class, which authors we pull from, the club, eco-sense, and its successes with minimizing AUs carbon footprint. the conversation went on, and yes, I was the only person there who was new and had something new for the family to pick apart.
eventually things settled down a little, we got back to the idea of family and I told them about my father and his work with a competing paper mill of weyerhaueser's. peter spoke up again this time, wondering how my dad's job may have pushed me toward environmental studies....
the conversations went on longer into the evening. I was never quite comfortable with these people. i listened a lot, generally the views among the group were homogenous, and all the type i fear on a daily basis. let me pronounce it for emphasis- WAL-mart dynamic.
i wanted to die.
I had a different break than in years past this year. Normally the whole family (and inevitably one of my friends from boarding school) would be at dinner; this year, it was just my mom and me. We sat down to dinner and I asked her how she felt about the whole situation. Our discussion turned into what we have been talking about in class, and she was very interested in the “Cradle to Cradle” philosophy. Unfortunately for us, my dad was not there. He is a former architect who has spent some time building LEED buildings for the Port of Los Angeles. His views, coming from the real-estate and construction side, would have been very interesting.
My mom was surprisingly knowledgeable about the subject of environmentalism and had a lot to say, especially on the topic of consumption. Our conversation drifted to that subject and stayed there for the rest of the evening. She is the business manager of a catering company at home; during the summers and semester vacations, I come on as one of the captains for the caterings. We spent a great deal of time pondering how we might confront the problem. Catering has the potential to be very wasteful, so figuring out how to reduce this waste is the million-dollar question. We were actually quite pleased at the end of the night, having come up with many ideas; hers from the business and economic standpoint, and mine from the “field.”
I asked my brother, my aunt and her partner the same question when they arrived the following day. My brother has been involving himself in a fair amount of activism where he goes to school (Phillips Exeter Academy) and has embraced the “Pickens Plan.” He is relatively unfamiliar with a lot of the legislature and history of Environmental policy, however, so he said it is hard to discuss it.
Overall though, I didn’t really find anyone who really disagreed with anything I had to say or presented from what I had learned. My aunt’s partner said that it would be very hard to implement a lot of what is being called for and how if anything is going to happen, it needs to happen in colleges; she is the athletic director at Wellesley College, so she has a lot of exposure; if a few major colleges and universities get on board with certain ideas, she was very convinced that things would get done a lot faster.
Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite and yet slightly despised holidays of the year. I love the fact that I get to be far away from Washington, D.C. and back in New Jersey, home with my parents, my dogs, and as of a few days ago, $1.63 a gallon gas. This seemed to be a pretty great holiday with a trip to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and getting to finally do my fair share of cooking (which by the way I ‘d like to consider myself a decent cook because I totally know that question entered your head. Don’t deny it.) Nothing could be more appealing than a good glass of wine with some amazing home cooked food. For the most part, the holiday isn’t too much of a hassle, with one minor exception. It is, after all, the one time of year in which I have to sit and converse, let alone be in the same vicinity, of a good handful of my father’s side of the family. To say I hate them would be way too strong of a word. Let’s just say that I dislike them…severely. This comes about from a host of reasons, but one of the main reasons is because talking to them is like talking to a poodle…most of the time they just stare at you as if you have nine heads and then just start barking or doing what they’re told. There doesn’t seem to be a real sense of independent thought process that goes on here. I promise, this leads to my point.
So after spending my morning in the city, I took the quick drive home and joined my mother in the kitchen. After a couple of hours, the family started to arrive. I think that was around the time when the first bottle of Blueberry Wine was opened. I could easily say that I would not make it very far into the day without some sort of drink in my hands at all times. As the morning turned into the early afternoon, there were a bunch of us clumped into the kitchen; most were situated around the breakfast table while my aunt joined my mother and I in the seemingly endless cooking. I’m not the best when it comes to speaking Spanish, but one thing I can rely on is understanding other people speak it. Most of my attention was focused on not burning the green bean casserole but I kept an ear out for their discussions. It ranged from a variety of topics from what was on television to their views on immigration and the financial crisis (I’m pretty sure at this point I was on drink two, if not three). It took a lot of effort for me to bite my tongue and not set them in their place considering what they were saying. It wasn’t simply that they were Democrats and I’m a Republican and what they were saying went against what I believed in. They could’ve said some things and I wouldn’t necessarily care so long as they said it with a sense of coherence and based on an informative foundation. Much of their views came from being told what was on the news or some other obscure place and they were just spewing it as if they were the next great FDR. Then, the conversation steered towards the environment and wouldn’t you know it, my favorite topic in the entire world came up…those damn energy efficient light bulbs. I swear, I have a feeling those things are purposely implanted into every possible conversation in my vicinity by the forces in the universe. It’s quite entertaining. Needless to say, I couldn’t just stand there and listen to the misinformation.
I think the tipping point came around when my grandmother started talking about these light bulbs, and my uncle asked why my house didn’t seem to have any of them installed. In doing so, if I remember correctly, I was preventing the saving of the environment and the human race. I think the first thing out of my mouth was “Are you kidding me?” At that point, they all looked at me, somewhat shocked that I had an ounce of doubt in my voice. Yeah, I guess you could say I’m the odd one in my family. The gay Republican Puerto Rican…I don’t think you’ll find many of those that’s for sure. Anyway, moving back on track, I started to ask them a series of questions. Nothing to strenuous, but mostly something to get those brain cells working. I looked at each of them and said sure, these energy efficient light bulbs are saving energy and money, but, where is that energy coming from? What kind of power plants are giving you that power that you’re saving? Referencing much of what I learned in this class, I sat down and began to have a frank discussion on what they believed to be true and what actual truth. I would bring up things ranging from Cradle to Cradle and the documentary snippet we saw during class, to the lecture with Professor Maniates and the op ed pieces used for previous blogs. I used many of these points to bring up the idea that, well, just because you’re saving energy or performing certain tasks doesn’t necessarily mean you’re solving the overall problem. They had a lot of questions, and some even offered up differing views as to the proper response to environmental question, and it was both interesting and fulfilling to finally hear some of them come out of their shells in a way and talk about something rather than going on like a pre-programmed drone. This ended up not being a conversation dedicated towards rebuking what some might call the liberal agenda, it was more along the lines of discussing a new era in environmental thinking amongst all and not just one or two people. If anything, I even told them myself that yes, the environment has its problems that we must face, but the right attitude is not going to be found in many of the old ways in which we have tried to solve the problem.
At the end of the day, what really stood out from our in depth conversation was that I, along with everyone else, was able to instill new ideas and a new method by which we as a society must look towards the future. By advocating civil discussion and some thought provoking insight, I would like to think I did a small part towards reaching a beneficial solution for the entire planet.
I don't usually involve my parents at all when it comes to school. I take classes, assure them that I'm doing ok and will graduate when expected and will then go on and do something with my life that I will enjoy. We leave it at that. However, as I started to do more and more work for the family business in between semesters, I saw an opportunity to connect these two very different parts of my life. My dad owns and runs, more or less by himself, an environmental health and safety consulting and training firm. He has contracts with mostly energy and infrastructure companies, ranging from Exxon Mobile, GE, United Water, and also with the New York State and New Jersey Power Authorities. I have tagged along on some of his consulting contracts observing and doing some work along the way. Basically he provides independent consulting for his clients on how to abide by current OSHA and EPA standards. He reviews their operations in the area of EHS - Environmental Health and Safety - decides whether or not his clients are operating in a manner that is both safe for their employees and also the environment. After spending time with him and his clients - specifically a whole summer spent working on the HVAC systems in Rockefeller Center - I asked my dad what he thought about some of the environmental politics classes offered at AU. Although my interest thus far has been exclusively directed towards international relations topics, specifically war, I decided to take his advice and try to fortify my background and expand my perspective on environmental issues. So I enrolled in this class and Energy Politics. Granted my interest so far has not shifted significantly towards environmental studies, this class has without question expanded and I must say improved my perspective on environmental issues, and has allowed me to put myself on the other side of the spectrum.
When I went home for thanksgiving, I discussed with him some of the things I've learned in class this semester that have really stuck with me. I brought up the fact that a lot of the people he does work for are the main contributors to the current global environmental crisis. He said "I know, but if I have to shake hands with the devil to get you through college, I'm going to do it." GE and Exxon Mobile basically pay for my college tuition, my food, my family's food, and everything else. (My mom's Yoga studio doesn't really bring in enough to diversify yet) So at Thanksgiving dinner, everything on the plate could be tied back to money paid to my dad's company by some of the most evil corporations on the planet. I'm not one to spoil a good meal, so I had the conversation with my dad afterwards, and he said yes, we do make most of our money from these large, high profile, long term contracts with the energy and infrastructure companies, BUT here's the thing - I can sleep at night, because I go in there and tell them the things that every environmentalist on the planet wants to tell them (without the profanity and obscene hand gestures), and they listen to me because if they don't, that particular operation will get shut down because someone got hurt. It works out perfectly, because in my experience safety standards walk hand in hand with environmental standards - if you're doing something that can hurt people, chances are you're doing something that can hurt other living things. And if you're doing something that can hurt the environment, you're creating a safety problem, and that is where you get EHS from. So even though my dad understands how harmful his clients can be to the environment, he is doing his part by using his position to change their behavior from the inside out.
Oh and don't tell anyone from Exxon Mobile or GE about this. I'd be totally screwed.
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