JADE April 2019

JADE A CRAVING FOR CATASTROPHE: THE INSIDE SCOOP ON CLIMATE CHANGE

The Fourcast Magazine

The Hockaday School Volume 2, Issue 2 April 2019

ABOUT JADE

In 2017, The Fourcast added a new magazine to its traditional coverage. Named for the stone set in the ring of all graduating seniors, which was designed by Tiffany in 1917, JADE offers an in-depth look at the most pressing issues to the Hockaday community.

Former Hockaday Dean of Upper School Ed Long, once remarked that Ela Hockaday chose the jade stone because she considered it to be a symbol of wisdom. In honor of the stone's legacy, JADE hopes to help inform the community and foster knowledgeable conversations about challenging topics.

JADE | The Fourcast Magazine The Hockaday School 11600 Welch Road Dallas, Texas 75229 214.363.6311 Volume 2, Issue 2 April 2019

JADE is a magazine supplement to The Fourcast, The Hockaday School's student newspaper. Magazine Editor: Eliana Goodman Assistant Magazine Editor: Julia Donovan Staff Writers: Ava Berger, Kelsey Chen, Michelle Chen, Sahasra Chigurupati, Kate Clark,Charlotte Dross,Shea Duffy, Ashlye Dullye, Paige Halverson, Ponette Kim, Niamh McKinney, Erin Parolisi, Eugen Seong, Kate Woodhouse, Emily Wu Faculty Adviser: Nureen Patel Editorial Policy: The Fourcast Magazine is written primarily for students of the Hockaday Upper School, its faculty and staff. The Fourcast Magazine has a press run of 600 and is printed by Greater Dallas Press. It is distributed free of charge to the Hockaday community. Businesses who wish to advertise in The Fourcast Magazine should contact Ashlye Dullye, Business Manager, at adullye@ hockaday.org. We reserve the right to refuse any advertising which is deemed inappropriate to the Hockaday community. Opinions are clearly marked and are the expressed opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect that of The Fourcast staff, its adviser or any member of the Hockaday community. Any questions or concerns about should be addressed to Charlotte Dross, Editor-in-Chief, at cdross@hockaday.org

FIND INSIDE

Cover Photography by Eliana Goodman, Karen Lin and Francesca Starkie

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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8 4 UNTIL 2030

UN's announcement of irreversible damage Polarization in Politics

8 THE TEA

How straws affect the environment and legislation against them

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12 TEXAS & CLIMATE CHANGE

Legislation in Texas Food Deserts and Sustainability

16 GREEN AND WHITE

Hockaday Goes Green Sustainable Students

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21 DEAR DENIERS

Addressing Climate Change Deniers

23 WHAT YOU CAN DO

How to make a positive change

photos provided by wikimedia commons and flickr user stockcatalog

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Until 2030: A Global Effort

by Shea Duffy, Sports Editor

“Dear friends of planet earth… I have asked you here to sound the alarm” were the words that introduced United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ address confronting climate change at the UN Headquarters in New York on Sep. 10, 2018.

Guterres’ speech confronted the fear-inducing reality of global warming, but it was not the information he revealed nor the haunting statistics that caused shock to ripple throughout the building. It was the fact that he put a timestamp on climate change, acknowledging that if people don’t take action to reverse the detriments of climate change before 2030, the earth will face irreversible damage.

For decades, scientists and environmental experts have warned policymakers about the looming impacts of climate change if the correct measures are not taken to combat it.

Now, the worst effects of climate change are beginning to emerge, and the earth is running out of time.

On Dec. 12, 2015, the United Nations launched the Paris Agreement, an agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The 195 members of the UNFCCC who signed the agreement pledged to stop temperatures rising by less than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to work to keep the increase as close as possible to one-and-a-half degrees Celsius. But according to a United Nations study, the commitments made so far represent just a third of what is needed. Especially given the extent to which the human population relies on fossil fuels to power their everyday lives, the carbon footprint is growing larger by the day.

Guterres pleaded for world leaders to realize that the world’s fate is in the hands of the people, who need to rise to the challenge before it’s too late.

“If we don’t change course by 2020, we risk missing the point where we can avoid runaway climate change with disastrous consequences for people and all the natural systems that sustain us,” Guterres said. “Even after the Paris Agreement, we still lack the leadership and ambition to do what is needed to make our actions effective.

The continuation of high global carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions is a telltale sign that world leaders are not on track to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. According to a United Nations report, the current rate at which the globe continues to warm contradicts the one-and-a-half degree Celsius decrease that world leaders pledged to meet upon their commitment to the agreement.

However, with the world’s annual carbon dioxide emissions amounting to 40 billion tons per year, world leaders need to work to decline these levels to meet their goals. For this to happen, there would need to be a complete transformation of human civilization and their habits; unfortunately, while this can be an act as small as carpooling to school or planting a tree, not many are willing.

The United States withdrew from the Paris Agreement in 2017, due to President Trump’s statement that the Paris Accord was

“an agreement that disadvantages the United States to the exclusive benefit of other countries.” Formally, there is no way for the U.S. to withdraw from the agreement until four years after it went into effect. But the withdrawal instead stands as a statement to other countries in the agreement, especially China, the largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world, as Trump believed that “the draconian financial and economic burdens the [Paris Agreement] imposes on our country” did more harm than good.

Tracy Walder, Upper School history teacher and Model UN sponsor, feels that the withdrawal from the agreement has not significantly affected our environmental policies, but rather, the symbolic withdrawal demonstrates the irony of Trump’s foreign policy.

“A lot of people put the blame on China, as there isn’t much environmental regulation there, especially given that they don’t really abide by greenhouse emission laws,” Walder said. “But yet we continue to demand goods and services from them and continue to rely on them and our dependence on manufacturing.”

Especially after the withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, the issue of climate change has become politicized in the United States. With the different political parties and presidential administrations tending to go back-and-forth on legislature dealing with environmental regulations, the issue of climate change has led to a split amongst the American public.

“Unfortunately, I believe climate change and reducing greenhouse emissions has become a political issue,” Walder said. “Some issues should not be associated with politics, especially because climate change does not only impact people’s lives but also affects the world as a whole.”

Junior Riyana Daulat is an ardent advocate for taking action to combat climate change. Through her involvement in co-founding Hockaday’s All Green Club and passion for the environment, she has urged her community to reconsider their carbon footprint.

“From a political standpoint, there is still so much that needs to be done,” Daulat said. “People are unwilling to acknowledge that climate change is a problem, and this needs to change. Empowering people and informing them that everyone can do something to fix our environment is something that can feel so small but have such a huge impact.”

Daulat and the All Green Club are some of the many people who have taken measures to emphasize the importance of educating the public on the dangerous effects of climate change and global warming.

“Already, we are experiencing so many effects--on animals, on ourselves, and on the land we live on--from global warming as the earth continues to heat up faster than we are taking action to stop it,” Daulat said. “If we don’t cease our greenhouse gas emissions, it leaves us to wonder… ‘What is going to happen to the world?’”

30 2030: THE YEAR WHICH THE WORLD HAS UNTIL THE EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ARE IRREVERSIBLE. ACCORDING TO THE UN

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Polarization in Politics Niamh McKinney, Arts & Life Editor and Erin Parolisi

1 For decades, climate change has not been a popular topic to be addressed by politicians.

However, since the 2016 presidential election, the word “polarization” has become an increasingly common one regarding conversations about various political topics and ideologies.

Statistically, polarization in American politics has increased rapidly since the start of the 21st century, according to a year-long Pew Research study in 2014.

According to this study, “the share of Americans who express consistently conservative or consistently liberal opinions has doubled over the past two decades, from 10 percent to 21 percent” and this polarization has only increased since 2014.

Lucio Benedetto, Hockaday history teacher, believes that political polarization has increased over time.

“It’s not something that’s been a constant.

We go back and forth. However, in my time of being politically aware, which would have been beginning late 70s through now, we seem to be much more polarized now, in terms of climate change,” Benedetto said.

More specifically related to climate change, the numbers demonstrate a growing divide between Republicans and Democrats. Sociologists Riley Dunlap and Aaron McCright have conducted a study since 2001, and their information reveals that self-identified liberals largely increased their concern over the environment while conservatives overall decreased.

For example, while 70 percent of Democrats agreed that climate change is due to human activities in 2001, 84 percent of those same people agreed in 2016. However, the 53 percent of Republicans who agreed with this statement in 2001 dwindled to down to 43

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percent in 2016.

This polarization has translated into what many call a lack of government action in relation to climate change.

Over a dozen federal agencies recently published a report that shows that human greenhouse gas emissions are the largest contributor to global warming, but the Trump administration has expressed support for the fossil fuel industry.

In fact, President Trump has, on numerous occasions denied the existence of global warming, such as in October, when he accused climate change scientists of having a “political agenda” and said that he was unconvinced that humans are responsible for global warming. In 2016, Trump enforced this opinion in a radio show interview.

“I’m not a believer in man-made global warming. It could be warming, and it’s going to start to cool at some point,” Trump said. “And you know, in the early, in the 1920’s, people talked about global cooling...They thought the Earth was cooling. Now, it’s global warming…”

Many of the officials he has appointed have similar points of view when it comes to climate change, adding to fears of environmental activists. For instance, Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has worked consistently towards repealing Obama-era policies that regulated power plants.

This trend towards denying climate change also worries members of the

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Hockaday community.

“Scientists have said that if we want to have a chance at avoiding the worst consequences of climate change, the level of carbon emissions must decrease sharply over the course of the next few years. I believe that the Trump administration needs to face the facts and begin initiatives that can reduce our carbon emissions,” said Riyana Daulat, president of the All-Green Club at Hockaday.

This February, President Trump’s staff members drafted an executive order to create a 12-member committee to examine if and how climate change affects national security, but created outrage from newspapers like The New York Times, as one of the members included was a White House adviser, William Happer, a known climate change denier.

The plans for this committee, among the White House’s opinions on climate change were revealed through a White House memo dated Feb. 14. The memo additionally, according to The New York Times, “casts doubt on multiple scientific and defense reports concluding that climate change poses a significant threat to national security” and the proposed panel “appears to be the latest step by the Trump administration to question the science of climate change.”.

While many current and former members of the Trump administration have expressed their views against the science of climate change, such as Scott Pruitt and Ben Carson, Trump has also been accused of largely ignoring advice from members of his own administration.

In November 2017, several federal agencies published a crucial scientific

BEHIND THE PHOTOS:

1: Congress is just as stormy as Colleyville, Texas, as photographed by senior Carolina Stewart while dissenting opinions about whether or not to turn America green brew in Congress.

2: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Representative for New York's 14 District, is sitting proudly while she gains international attention for her proposed "Green New Deal."

3:

President Trump, on the other hand, has publicly

denied climate change and would prefer to exert

­­

America's resources elsewhere.­­

report demonstrating that global warming is largely caused by human greenhouse gas emissions, but so far, Trump has only questioned the findings of this and other similar reports.

On the other hand, Democrats have developed different views on the climate change issue. They believe that global warming is an urgent problem that must be solved immediately or else their will be detrimental consequences. These consequences have an effect on the economy, national safety and our future as a country.

One of the most polemical claims made

by Democrats is that climate change has been directly caused by humans. This opinion is extremely separated from what most republicans believe about global warming and environmental issues.

Recently, Democrats have made large strides to transform our environment and economy into a greener one. Under Barack Obama’s presidency, democrats had the opportunity to create changes to protect the environment and prevent global warming.

Democrats such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York U.S. Representative, and Ed Markey, Massachusetts Senator, have developed upon liberal standpoints through their proposal of the “Green New Deal”.

Unveiled in Feb. 2019, the “Green New Deal” is a plan that is aimed at combating climate change. The proposal addresses revamping the nation’s energy sector over the next ten years, and investing in education and healthcare and revising the economy.

“That’s what this agenda is all about. Because climate change and our environmental changes are one of the biggest existential threats to our way of life —not just as a

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nation but as a world,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

“In some respects, just to be blunt, it [The Green New Deal] almost seems like a progressive letter to Santa Claus, as a progressive laundry list of things,” Benedetto said. “Many of which, have nothing to do with reducing carbon emissions.”

In the 2020 presidential election, it is expected that many Democratic candidates will push for more extensive policies to protect the environment from climate change. Global warming is anticipated to be addressed as a more crucial issue in elections and in America as more studies about the topic are released.

Overall, Republicans overwhelmingly do not believe that climate change is caused by humans, 31 percent, but in a sort of paradox, the majority of Republicans, 57 percent do want to regulate carbon emissions.

“We see this rhetorical one upmanship where either we’re not going to do anything or we’re going to do all of this and it seems like because we’re stuck in this either-or binary we’re not discussing the spectrum of compromises we could make to move forward on this,” said Benedetto.

Only time will tell, but as the government and the public struggles with the question of global warming, perhaps this statistic will help bridge the partisan divide and result in environmental protections.

image provided by Wikipedia

However, because of the political polarization in the U.S. government, the deal lacks support from the Republican controlled Senate and White House and even the Democrat controlled House of Representatives. The deal is controversial because it calls for drastic change and is a massive undertaking. Others believe that the policy is not realistic as there is still uncertainty in the ease of the project.

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What's the Deal about Straws?

by Paige Halverson, Managing Editor and Ava Berger, Staff Writer

Blood drips down a sea turtle’s face as a plastic straw hangs from its nose.

The majestic creature squirms, trembling in pain as a plastic straw is being ripped from its nasal cavity in the viral 2014 video. The video racked up more than 34 million views and helped to raise awareness about the danger of plastic, specifically straws in the ocean.

In the U.S. alone, 500 million plastic straws are used every day, according to National Geographic. Over 8 billion straws pollute the world’s beaches and since it takes 200 years for them to decompose, they aren’t going anywhere.

Even though straws make up only one fourth of a percent of the eight million tons of plastic floating in the ocean, straws have become the major focus in many environmental campaigns because the world could easily do without them.

Brandi Finazzo,Hockaday Biology teacher, has watched the movement against the usage of straws grow over the past few years.

“Until the consumers send a message to the businesses, straws will continue to be made,” Finazzo said. “It has to be a group effort, with the public behind these groups. Money drives change.”

Recently, the spur for change has grown: at the beginning of July 2018, Seattle became the largest U.S. city to ban plastic straws. To continue the movement, all restaurants across California are banned from serving plastic straws, unless directly requested, because of Assembly Bill 1884, written by assembly leader Ian Calderon.

As well, many major restaurants have also joined in on the effort. Starbucks hopes to phase out plastic straws of their 29,000 stores by 2020, which will elim-

“THEY 'RE CONVENIENT AND A MAN-MADE IMPROVEMENT FOR A BETTER QUALITY OF LIFE, BUT THEY ARE NOT GOOD FOR OUR ENVIRONMENT." -BRANDI FINAZZO

inate more than 1 billion straws a year.

McDonald’s has recently announced that it will ban plastic straws at its United Kingdom and Ireland restaurant locations. Bon Appétit Management also announced last May that it is planning on removing plastic straws and Alaska Airlines will be one of the first airlines to remove plastic straws. Even Swedish home-ware giant, IKEA, has announced its plan to remove all single-use plastic by 2020.

The push for reduced use of straws has even reached the local restaurants near Hockaday, including the beloved Snappy Salads. Snappy Salads switched to paper straws in 2014. The straws are provided by Aardvark, a manufacturer of eco-friendly paper straws using 100 percent chemical free and FDA food-grade approved ink, according to their website.

The restaurant switched after seeing a 2014 video of the sea turtle having a plastic straw extracted from its nose.

"The video of the turtle with the straw in its nose sparked a huge response,” Finazzo said. “People care and get involved when animals or children are injured or effected by something that could be easily contained. You have to pull at the heart strings to get the ball rolling.”

Snappy Salads’ website boasts that their paper straws are “biodegradable, compostable, 100 percent chlorine free and always made in the USA.” They are also the only straws on the market made with FDA food grade-approved inks and papers. Just since their 2014 movement began, they have saved oceans from approximately 1.3 million straws.

Snappy Salads also uses drinking cups

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made from PLA, a biodegradable material derived from renewable resources, like corn. Under the right conditions, the cups will biodegrade and turn back into organic matter, an eco-friendly alternative to plastic cups.

Following this eco-friendly trend, Starbucks has also focused on their cups, attempting to create more reusable and recyclable cups. They also offer a discount to anyone who brings in personal cups or tumblers.

As more and more restaurants promise change, a future with plastic straws is getting brighter and brighter.

The conservative Texas Supreme Court has not yet addressed the issue with straws. In fact, they’ve made efforts to stop improving eco-friendliness across Texas.

In 2018, the court reversed Laredo’s ban on plastic bags. In the case, the justices ruled unanimously that a state law against plasticity bags would override local laws throughout Texas. Since then, the Texas Supreme Court has not addressed issues with plastic waste.

Margaret Woodberry, a junior at Hockaday, has done excessive research on the dangers of plastic straws and believes the main solution to the issue starts with every person on Earth.

“The biggest thing is that there is not going to be one solution because it’s a consumer driven market. So, if more and more people make the conscious decision to limit their use of plastic straws, then they're going to start limiting manufacturing,” Woodberry said. “There’s not going to be a need for them so enough.”

8.3 billion straws pollute the

world's beaches, according to a Science Advances study

500

million plastic straws are used

by Americans every single day

Woodberry even uses her own environment friendly alternative: the Final Straw.

The Final Straw is a portable, eco-friendly straw that Woodberry keeps with her at all times.

“I’m not asking [anyone] to completely cut straws out of [their] lives, but try to limit it and be conscious. It doesn't only hurt the sea animals; No matter what, plastic is going to wind up in the oceans and it’s not biodegradable, once plastic is made, it’s in the world forever,” Woodberry said.

Although straws have captured the world’s attention, plastic in general remains the main culprit.

“What people don’t understand is that everything end up somewhere. It is not just about straws. It’s about plastic, like styrofoam, but publicity drives a movement, and [styrofoam] doesn’t have a popular video,” Finazzo said. “Plastics never break down, but instead become smaller and smaller fragments that are eventually incorporated into the environment. They’re convenient and a man-made improvement for a better quality of life, but they are not good for our environment.”

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"The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything." —Albert Einstein

TEX

by Kelsey Chen, Staff Writer

Legislation in the Lone Star State “Are you staying or going?”

That was the question thousands of families had to answer on Aug. 25, 2017 when Category 4 storm Hurricane Harvey hit south Texas. By Sep. 1, 2017, one-third of Houston was underwater and homes were destroyed.

Now, many of the environmental initiatives in the 86 Texas Legislative Session have been addressing recovery efforts of Hurricane Harvey, including a one point eight billion dollar package that was unanimously approved by the Texas Senate on March 20. Senate Bills 6, 7 and 8 deal with training local officials on disaster response, managing debris removal and financing flood-control projects.

Although Harvey was the second most expensive storm in United States history, Texas Democrats in Congress are still hesitant to implement climate change initiatives because they have to choose between an increasingly urgent call for climate change and Texas’ lucrative oil industry.

Houston Democrat Lizzie Fletcher was elected to Congress last November.

"Houston is the energy capital of the world.

Any conversation about our energy future we need to be a part of,” said Fletcher.

Just a few months after the election, progressive representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced the Green New Deal (GND), aiming to transform the US economy to 100 percent renewable energy.

Congressman Colin Allred represents the 32nd district of Texas.

“It is a misconception that we must choose between a healthy environment and a prosperous economy,” Allred said on his website, “Texas can and should lead the way in renewable and clean energy, creating good paying jobs for hardworking Texans and protecting the planet for future generations.”

However, Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn expressed his opposition to the GND. "The Green New Deal is not the answer to our problems,” Cornyn said, “it is a solution in search of a problem, and it is a naked power grab by Washington D.C. seeking to impose on each and every American.”

While he believes that the climate is changing, Cornyn believes that the environment can be protected without affecting the economy.

“Not only does [the state of Texas] lead the nation in oil and gas production, [Texas] also leads in wind energy production too,” Cornyn said, “we’re proof that you can implement policies that get government out of the way and leave industry experts to do their jobs.”

Even environmentalists concede that a rapid shift from fossil fuels will be difficult. Voters may be forced to choose between the environment and their jobs.

So far Texas Democrats have been wary, awaiting draft legislation from Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey (D-MA). Expressing

support for the GND risks alienating independent voters, which have become crucial since the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced that it would be targeting Republican congressional seats.

Mark Jones, a political science fellow at Rice University, said, “The Green New Deal has the potential to help the Republicans running for these seats. You can imagine the campaign: ‘My opponent is going to be voting with Nancy Pelosi and Alexandra Ocasio Cortez to end fossil fuels by 2025.’”

XAS DALLAS LEGISLATION

With the rise in temperatures around the globe, Texas could see up to 60 more days per year with temperatures above 100 degrees, according to the November National Climate Assessment. Sea levels along the gulf coast would rise, leading to more intense flooding followed by intense droughts, which would be detrimental to the agriculture industry in Texas.

In response, the Dallas City Council voted in January to advance the city’s first climate action plan. The first resolution, spearheaded

by City Council Member Sandy Greyson, will be partially funded by Dallas’s unsuccessful five-cent plastic bag fee that was repealed in 2015. The leftover money will pay for a $500,000 climate change study conducted

by AECOM Technical Services to develop a “Comprehensive Environmental and Climate Action Plan”.

"The federal government pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement. And so the mayors across the United States said, 'We're going to support this effort. We're going to work on it with our local government,” Greyson said. "And it's not just going to sit on a shelf.

It's going to have action items that follow it, and we already have funding for those action items."

The second resolution formalized support for Dallas’s membership efforts to C40 cities, a global network of large cities that pledges to “take action to address climate change by developing and implementing policies and programs” that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

"Cities play an important role in addressing global challenges. Dallas is proud to join the dialogue w/ G20 nations and work towards development & resilience through climate action, infrastructure investment & workforce development.” Mayor Mike Rawlings tweeted in October.

Junior Celese Gierhart serves for District 15 on the Dallas Youth Commission, representing Rawlings and City Hall. Although

she was not directly involved in the climate action plan, she has heard a lot about it on the Youth Commission.

"I honestly just hope that it creates awareness in our city,” Gierhart said, “I hope that if they enact it, there’s actual, substantial change and that it works.”

The city council has also expressed support to urge Congress to enact the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act, which would place a slowly increasing fee on nonrenewable resources. Studies show that in 20 years, this system could reduce carbon emissions to 50 percent of 1990 levels.

However, Gierhart expressed some concerns about the public response to the plan.

“Dallas is such a conservative city. Even though there is a fair balance, I feel like there are some people who are really against something like this,” Gierhart said, “it has some strong wording on some points, and I feel like it needs to be able to appeal to everyone.”

To increase public engagement with the city’s environmental action plan, the Dallas Office of Environmental Quality also hosted

the 2nd annual North Texas Climate Change Symposium. Over 200 local experts, environmental advocacy groups, municipal officials and concerned citizens attended the symposium.

"Some people may say well, if we already get all those naturally, what's the big deal? The big deal is that climate change is loading the dice against us. It's taking those dice and decade by decade it's replacing another and another and another with a six," said Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, a professor & climate scientist at Texas Tech who gave the keynote speech.

Hayhoe added that Texas has seen 105 billion-dollar weather events since 1980, more than any other state in the United States.

“Dallas is heating up at the third-highest rate of any city in North America,” James McGuire, the Dallas Director of the Office of Environmental Quality, said. He plans to have the climate action plan finalized by April 2020, with goals for Dallas to ramp down emissions.

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Trash Cans Full, Grocery Stores Empty In Dallas, the wealth gap is especially apparent regarding access to nutritious food: there are over 40 food deserts in DFW, but there are at least 15 grocery stores within Highland Park alone. On the other hand, local and national companies are taking strides to combat food deserts and prevent waste.

Kate Clark, Staff Writer

the farm for five years, watching it grow from a backyard garden to a two cite, 42 plus acre farm. "[Bonton farms] decided to show a pilot version of how to get out of food desert. They opened a farm and market in a food desert and they sell everything that they grow,” Day explains.

The backyard farm eliminated a food desert in an area that did not have a grocery store within three miles and 63 percent of their neighbors did not have transportation.

“Watching our friends get married, purchase homes, get clean from drugs, earn their driver's licenses on top of giving their lives to Christ and getting baptized, is when I realize the impact that we are making,” Trogdon said.

And thanks to Bonton, people are less susceptible to diseases and health issues.

FOOD DESERTS

The cash register beeps as a plastic bag fills up with packaged, processed foods.

Then, the plastic bag is dragged out of the gas station and eventually plants itself on the kitchen table. And that’s the meal for the week.

A food desert is not a foreign aspect to many Dallas residents.

A food desert is an urban area in which it is difficult to buy affordable or good-quality fresh food and there are no grocers within a one mile radius. According to Texas Tribune, a non-profit media organization, 40 Dallas communities are considered food deserts.

Laura Day, Director of The William B. Dean Service Learning Program at Hockaday, explained the effects of food deserts.

“Life expectancies in a lot of neighborhoods are lower by eight years than some high income places,” Day said. “It doesn’t seem fair that just because you’re born into a neighborhood with a certain family, and you don't have access to healthy food shouldn’t determine anything else.”

All that a community needs is a fresh food supply, such as a grocery store or a farm to rid the name “food desert” from their description. Interestingly enough, studies have found that wealthy districts have three times as many supermarkets as poor ones do. So while wealthy neighborhoods have access to not only grocery stores but transportation, poor neighborhoods oftentimes have neither.

“It’s about the impact of profit opposed to the impact on society,” Day said.

But unlike some of these grocery stores, private organizations such as Bonton Farms are making a significant impact in their communities.

Vice President of Bonton Farms, Matthew “Trog” Trogdon, has been apart of

This map of Dallas, provided by Dallas City Council's website, highlights the approximately 40 food deserts in DFW. "We had the highest rate of stroke, cancer, [type two] diabetes and heart disease in [Dallas] and the [US]. Therefore, [Daron Babcock] planted a garden in his backyard in order to provide fresh and healthy food for the community,” Trogdon explained.

Growing to what it is today, Bonton is not only farm but a market, restaurant, housing ministry, transportation ministry, Christian school, financial assistance ministry and more.

FOOD WASTE

Misshapen fruit often end up in landfills; companies like Imperfect Produce prevent unnecessary wasting of food.

Food waste is thrown away food in landfills that was either not sold, expired or not eaten.

There are plenty of ways to diverge food from landfills, but they are not as simple as throwing away rotten food into the trash.

Mary Katherine Bass, the owner of The GEM, a local juice bar, reflected about how her company reuses, recycles and composts to stay green.

“I think of it as loving the earth as it is and

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When one pictures a desert, they typically view a mesh of sand and sky as pictured by Swiler Boyd in Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado Food deserts, however, are much more common and there are 40 in Dallas alone.

wanting to do as much as you can to keep it in its natural state,” Bass shared.

Composting is diverting food waste from the landfills to be repurposed. The GEM donates their compost to a unique compost system called the Texas Worm Ranch in Garland. There, the worms eat the compost and their castings create an ideal fertilizer. In seven years of business, the GEM has composted 140 tons.

Another company, Imperfect Produce, tries to limit food waste by preventing the waste of “ugly fruit or vegetables.” The idea of the website is to buy funky, misshapen fruits and vegetables for lower prices, because if these items are not purchased, they are wasted.

According to their website, 40 percent of all food produced in the United States goes uneaten.

“It’s a problem we can all play a role in solving,” Imperfect Produce said on their website.

Food waste has a greater effect on the planet rather than just simply being wasteful. When food is thrown away it piles up in landfills and large amounts of methane is released into the air. Methane, a greenhouse gas that is deteriorating the ozone, allows more heat to enter our planet, resulting in global warming.

The GEM, a local juice bar located at Preston and Forest, composts all of their food in an effort to keep Dallas green.

Project Drawdown, a plan proposed to reverse global warming, says that reducing food waste is one of the top three ways to reverse global warming.

When food is wasted, all of the resources that went into growing it are wasted as well. According the Imperfect Produce, growing the food that goes to waste uses 21 percent of freshwater, 19 percent of fertilizer, and 18 percent of cropland.

By working together with places such as the GEM and Imperfect Produce, people are desperately trying to diverge food and items from landfill.

“We are waiting for someone to take up the charge of [promotion to limit food waste] at Hockaday,” Days said.

In October, the Lower School raised awareness of their food waste, and they were able to cut down the weight of their waste by half after just a week of awareness.

By composting food instead of throwing it away, someone is making a sustainable choice. Know that any small decisions make a greater impact on the earth, so by choosing sustainable choices, one is doing their part to help the Earth.

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Teaching for A Greener Future

Kate Woodhouse, News Editor

On a sunny Wednesday afternoon, Lower, Middle and Upper School students piled into Clements Lecture Hall to witness an innovative approach to learning in the classroom: Hockaday’s first social impact Shark Tank.

Four student groups from the Anatomy, Evolution and the Zoo class pitched their environmentally-conscious ideas to the “sharks,” who chose a winner to be given a little seed money and strategic partnerships with the organizations involved. While this class was the only class this year to present their culminating project in this format, other Hockaday science classes have introduced similar capstone projects that are aimed at helping the environment.

According to Anatomy, Evolution and the Zoo teacher Brandi Finazzo, students spent one class a month developing their projects with W.T. White, a nearby public high school, and also brainstormed ideas at Hockaday when learning lessons about biology fundamentals. Teams employed the process of design thinking, which uses empathy building to identify their chosen problem and develop a solution.

“To really solve a problem or to propose a solution to a problem, you really have to understand the problem from all different angles,” Finazzo said.

After identifying a multitude of problems facing the environment, Anatomy, Evolution and the Zoo students surveyed a variety of people from diverse backgrounds, including the Hockaday community, shoppers at the local Walmart and community liaison for Tom C. Gooch Elementary and Chapel Hill Preparatory School Dr. Soraya Gollop, to see what people all over the community felt about their problems and solutions.

“Their job was to go out and survey, to go out and understand the problem from all different angles, to understand the consumer side, the business side. Whatever that target audience was, they needed to know all the problems,” Finazzo said. “Then, they tried to distill all of that information down into one thing that they could actually attempt to tackle.”

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shark tank pitches from Hockaday students

classes taught by Kirsten Lindsay which help the environment

When interviewing shoppers, one group discovered that many people wanted to use reusable bags and had reusable bags in their car but forgot to bring them in and therefore had to use plastic bags to carry their groceries. To remedy this environmental problem, they invented Sacked, a reusable bag that rolls into a scrunchie-like bracelet, so shoppers will never forget their reusable bag again. They plan to target urban markets like downtown Dallas or New York City, where residents do not carry multiple bags home from the grocery store.

Other presentations included Ecoseek, an internet plugin to show the environmental impact of potential purposes, GreenTops, a BoxTops-like-product that donates money to the environment and Scrap That!, an app to teach kids about recycling. These groups presented their idea to the four “sharks,” businesswoman and philanthropist Lyda Hill ‘60, President of Lyda Hill Foundations Nicole Small, President of Hunt Utility Services David Campbell and President and CEO of the Dallas Zoo Gregg Hudson.

Scrap That! took home the grand prize.

The team, which comprised of juniors Anika Bandarpalle, Chloe Johnson and Casey Freeman, designed an app to teach kids how to properly recycle through games and provide a database for recyclable and non-recyclable items.

“Recycling incorrectly is just as bad, if not worse, than not recycling at all. [Non-recyclable items] will ruin that entire batch of recyclables,” Bandarpalle said.

In order to further develop their product, Scrap That! will receive help from the Dallas Zoo to code their product and launch it to Dallas Zoo members on Earth Day 2020.

Scrap That! also hopes to put their app on student devices throughout DISD for students to play on when they finish their work.

"From the beginning, we knew that our target audience was kids. This is truly the most effective way to long-term to fix the problem, to fix the way we talk about recycling, to fix the way that schools recycle,” Bandarpalle said.

Director of The Dr. William B. Dean Service Learning Program Laura Day has also been implementing projects to help the environment in the AP Environmental Science and AP Human Geography classes.

Her innovative approach to learning helps to give students greater knowledge in their subject area beyond traditional classroom lessons. To change a class curriculum, Day partners with an interested teacher and tries to find lessons that could be substituted with real world examples.

“We don’t add. We just look at what you’re already doing but try to make it connect to something in the real world.

Repurposing curriculum is where that all came from,” Day said. in the new curriculum, students in the AP Environmental Science class complete a fall project, where they build a water filter from trash and other materials people found laying around. In the spring, students develop a quantifiable experiment with a focus on the environment in a local sense. AP Human Geography and AP Environmental Science teacher Kirsten Lindsay did not place many guidelines on the students, so they could take charge of and be passionate about their chosen project. Senior Meredith Jones believes that Lindsay’s emphasis on “thinking globally but acting locally” has really impacted her view on the project.

“Sometimes talking about environmental issues in class can feel depressing and hopeless, but it’s easier to make change by scaling down and starting locally. Any positive change is good, and what starts as a local change has the potential to spread,” Jones said.

Jones, senior Kate Short and senior Sophie Gilmour designed their project in an attempt to restore the Trinity River through phytoremediation. Phytoremediation uses plants to ameliorate the high nitrogen levels found in water. After taking water samples from the river, the group created a simulated Trinity River, plant duckweed and test their water after a couple of weeks to see if the plants affected the nitrogen levels in the model system.

“It’s disappointing that because of its [cur-

rent] degraded state Dallas does not and cannot use [the Trinity River] to its fullest potential,” Jones said.

Day believes that projects like those in Anatomy, Evolution and the Zoo, AP Environmental Science and AP Human Geography all have the potential to have a large impact on the environment.

“I think that teenagers hold the answer to solutions because adults haven’t fixed it, so why are we not going with younger people trying to solve problems?” Day said.

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Green Garments: Sustainable Fashion at Hockaday Charlotte Dross, Editor-in-Chief

In an age in which it takes nothing more than the simple click of a button to purchase something online, the public as a whole is becoming heavily dependent on the guarantee that their purchases are produced and delivered quickly. This idea of instant gratification has manifested itself within various different sectors of life, but ultimately, it has deleterious effects on the environment: such rapid production releases harmful gases into the atmosphere.

Industries like “fast fashion” are notorious for being some of the biggest polluters in the world. Ultimately, this monopoly pumps out the newest, cheaply-produced garments that are supposedly the up-and-coming fads of the time. However, this means that, globally, we are consuming more pieces of clothing per year, and as a result, more of our clothing is ending up in landfills.

Upper School science teacher Kirsten Lindsay-Hudak, sophomore Annie Herring and junior Simone Hunter are three members of the Hockaday community who have taken the fight for a clean earth to their wardrobes.

KIRSTEN LINDSAY-HUDAK

For those who have ever been enrolled in one of Lindsay-Hudak’s classes before, they might have noticed her characteristic classy style that is reminiscent of a movie from the 1950s. This look is one hard to come by in today’s department stores, so as a result, Lindsay-Hudak has adapted to the issue at hand: she makes her own clothes.

“I had always wanted to learn to sew, and I found a sewing machine on sale, so I bought it and taught myself,” Lindsay-Hudak said. “I make a lot of [my daughter’s] clothes, and I make some of my own clothes.”

Lindsay-Hudak first got into sewing within the last five years. Since then, she has crafted countless outfits for both her and her daughter, Olivia.

When Lindsay-Hudak makes clothes, she does so using two different methods: making something from scratch or upcycling.

“If I am going to make something from scratch, I pick out the pattern that I want—and you can find a lot of patterns for free on the internet—and the material that I want, and I get a lot of material from estate sales, so people who are cleaning out their fabrics,” Lindsay-Hudak said.

Lindsay-Hudak very rarely buys new fabrics. By making the decision to get her material from estate sales, she actively

chooses to limit her waste and therefore makes strides towards having a cleaner earth. After she has picked out a fabric, Lindsay-Hudak must cut out and sew the fabric, then fits it to complete the finishing touches.

For upcycling, the process is slightly different.

"If I am going to upcycle something else, which I do a lot with my daughter’s clothes to make them last longer, then you just modify it,” Lindsay-Hudak said. “So, if it’s pants, and I want to make it a skirt, I just cut it out and sew it. Upcycling just involves modifying whatever you have and then embellishing it.”

Ultimately, Lindsay-Hudak acknowledges and appreciates the fact that this process is environmentally-conscious.

"I think it is always good if you are not buying new resources. So, I am able to reuse so many things and I can upcycle so many clothes, and that right there is a nice way to not get new things,” Lindsay-Hudak said. “And because I am able to source the fabrics, [that makes a positive impact on the environment].”

SIMONE HUNTER Hunter has taken to thrifting as an outlet to not only express her unique style, but simultaneously keep the planet clean.

Hunter first started thrifting before freshman year, after being introduced to the concept through YouTube.

“YouTube first [is how I got into thrifting]. I stumbled across thrifting videos of people going to thrift shops and finding good pieces to wear,” Hunter said. “I really liked that.”

After she began thrifting, Hunter quickly found that she gravitated towards a certain style of clothing: old clothes.

I am really into fashion and expressing myself through clothes. And the idea of wearing older clothes because they have a style and have a story to them.”

Since then, Hunter has explored various different stores across the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex and beyond in pursuit of new finds. In addition to D-FW, she looks for clothes in DeSoto, where she used to live.

Although Hunter thrifts largely for stylistic purposes, she certainly appreciates the added benefits that come with it, like the idea of reusing clothes. “ I like the idea of not wasting things and reusing things that already exist,” Hunter said. “There are a lot of things in the fashion industry, like fast fashion, and they’re really cheap clothes that are made in bad conditions for the people who work there, and it is tragic. I don’t like shopping from places like that.”

ANNIE HERRING

Herring expresses her environmentally-conscious attitude through a different medium: thrifting. Ever since she visited a New York thrift store with her mother five years ago and bought her first thrifted piece—a jacket—she has had a continued interest in reusing clothes.

"I feel like I can find more unique clothing through thrifting,” Herring said.

“I am not going to be wearing the same

thing that everyone else is going to be wearing. It will be my own style.”

For Herring, one of the most appealing aspects of thrifting is the freedom that it offers. There is not set of rules she must follow when doing so.

“You always have fun thrifting no matter what because it is very liberating,” Herring said. “You can go and say ‘Oh, I’m going to spend an hour here.’ And maybe you don’t find anything within the first 10 minutes, and then you can just leave. You can pretty much just do whatever you want.”

Herring’s favorite spots are locations scattered around Dallas, such as the Goodwill Thrift Store on Harry Hines Blvd. and the Genesis Women's Shelter Outreach on Lemon Ave. In addition to this, when she’s not thrifting, Herring is always aware of the brands that she is purchasing and tries to buy from those that are environmentally-conscious, such as Reformation.

Ultimately, thrifting allows Herring to express her passion for protecting the environment via a medium that appeals to her. It is her way of fighting against the conditions of global warming that continue to worsen with each new product that is produced.

“Whenever I am reading articles or seeing news about the pollution and the waste from fast fashion, it scares me,” Herring said. “I know it is easier to buy something from H&M or from Target than to go spend hours trying to look for a piece of clothing, but I know that in the end it is going to be easier to have a clean planet than to buy something cheap.”

Green Students and Alumnae

by Emily Wu, Views Editor and Eugene Seong, People Editor

Lynde Schoellkopf ‘93 "I had gone a semester abroad in Ecuador and my senior thesis on the effect of exploitation in the amazon rainforest,” Schoellkopf said, “It really brought me to realize the legal battle and the policies issues involved in major environmental crisis.”

Karen Lin

“It’s something that I can do that will be effective for my local community, and I think that the environment and global warming is what everyone should be aware of and should know."

Jillian Mocke '10 “I hope to have [others thinking] of the impact that humans have on the planet and what that means, and what we can do about it."

To read more about Schoellkopf, Lin and Mocke in their pursuits as an EPA lawyer, co-founder of the All Green Club at Hockaday and science journalist, respectively, scan this QR code.

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Going Green (& White) Ponette Kim, Copy Editor

Hockaday’s club roster is full of both educational and entertaining clubs, from Model United Nations to the Taylor Swift Fan Club. But one club it lacked was an environmental awareness club, until juniors Riyana Daulat and Karen Lin founded it one year ago.

Daulat has been interested in environmental awareness from an early age and began raising awareness about the environment in the third grade.

Upon entering Middle School, Daulat joined environmental school, which is similar to a sort of Earth Club, where they participated in Earth Day and other environmental activities.

Daulat founded the All Green Club her sophomore year with Lin. Currently, the All Green Club has around 50 members and meets about once a quarter, with most of its efforts being through GroupMe. After its conception, Daulat and Lin wasted no time with spreading environmental awareness.

“We’ve been teaching the third graders about different environmental things like recycling, saving water and air pollution,” Daulat said. “I think it’s really important to educate future generations about it as well.”

Along with educating the Lower Schoolers, an effort that started Daulat’s sophomore year, All Green Club takes on environmental matters both as a club and individually. The club is preparing for this year’s Earth Week, which is the week of April 22.

Director of The William B. Dean Service Learning Program and All Green Club sponsor Laura Day has been planning for Earth Week with the club.

“I think they’re going to do the Water Walk again, which is where they do a simulation of what it’s like to live somewhere where water isn’t easily accessible and people have to walk far to get water,” Day said. “They’re also going to turn lights off in advisory, and do a Kahoot at lunch. " Daulat also plans to run a bake sale to donate money to environmental efforts.

Some All Green Club members also participate in outside community service,

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number of all-girls teams at the EarthxHack competition

number of years which the All Green Club has been at Hockaday

where they volunteer at the Perot Museum and teach about the environment.

“Some of the club members volunteer at the Perot Museum every other Saturday and teach others about science, so that’s the service component of the club,” Day said.

Another big event that All Green Club participates in is EarthxHack, which, according to the website, is “a hackathon designed to inspire you to use technology to solve real issues plaguing the world today.”

At EarthxHack, teams of two to five (high school and college students) are faced with an environmental problem where they have to design and code an app to help solve it, which is then pitched to a panel of judges. Last year, five students from Hockaday attended the competition and won first place, beating the team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“The team actually made money from the app,” Day said. “Real life companies work with the winners to try and develop the app.”

Senior Isabel Peppard attended EarthxHack last year, and was intimidated because Hockaday was the only all-girls team.

Yet the team persisted, and presented their app in front of a panel of judges twice—once during the preliminary round, and again before being named as a finalist.

"It was interesting to see how they reacted to our presentation as well, especially because our product was meant for women," Peppard Said Though All Green Club is less than two years old, Daulat, Lin and other dedicated group members have already invested hours with various project and community service.

“I hope that we can use All Green Club as a way to inspire and educate our community to make changes in their lifestyle that can help support our environment and make it more sustainable,” Daulat said.

DEAR DENIERS,

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by Eliana Goodman, Magazine Editor

Magical scenes of snow and adorable footage of polar bears and seals in “Arctic Tale,” a documentary about arctic life, captivated my six year old self; living with polar bears in a winter wonderland was honestly my wildest, biggest dream. That is, until my mom sat me down to explain that when I have children, polar bears might be extinct because of global warming.

From that point on, I was determined to do everything I could to protect Nanu, my polar bear pal from the movie. I kept lights off when I wasn’t using them, reduced my plastic usage and even invented “waste free” cups at my fourth-grade invention convention. Up until around 2014, I just assumed that everyone felt the same way as I did.

I remember first hearing the term “climate change denier” when I was talking to an old family friend, who was a very successful researcher and physician. He subtly mentioned how he didn’t believe in global warming, and I didn’t really understand what he meant by that. How could someone who was clearly so intelligent deny something that the entire scientific community so adamantly backs?

For a little while, I forgot that whole conversation and, for lack of a better word, denied the existence of people who don’t believe in climate change.

After that, I was reading an article about the early presidential nominee candidates in 2015, and quickly realized that global warming—something I had come to accept as fact— was becoming a highly partisan issue.

According to a nationally representative survey which describes how members of each political party view climate change, about 74 percent of registered voters believe in global warming. Although this above average number might not seem concerning, this means that roughly one in every four people deny climate change.

In my experience chatting about global warming with members of the

25 percent, I’ve found that these are a few reasons they often deny climate change: a supposed lack of evidence, a general lack of understanding why it’s happening, the idea that climate change is good and natural, that it cannot be stopped or that it’s not economically feasible to prevent it.

Although I am not trying to be rude or insensitive about anyone’s beliefs, I do think it is important to educate anyone and everyone about a serious issue that our world faces today.

Climate change is and will continue to be a very real and prevalent problem in society; for those of you who don’t believe there is enough evidence to back the changes our earth is currently undergoing, satellite data, radiosondes, borehole analysis, glacial melt observations, sea ice melting, sea level records and permafrost melt records all support that climate change is happening. This data could be one of the reasons why 97 percent or more of actively climate publishing scientists believe in global warming, according to NASA. While some of the results of climate change cannot be reversed, the United Nations recently announced that we have until 2030 to make changes and prevent global warming related irreversible damage; this prompted the signing of the internationally collaborative Paris Climate Agreement, a global attempt to enact change.

I also understand that it might not be the economically profitable to go green. Making big cuts to carbon dioxide-emitting industries, plastic companies and other environmentally harmful businesses would definitely take a negative toll on the United States’ and world economies. These cuts would also probably detrimentally affect the personal lives of the individuals employed by those companies.

And my heart aches for them.

But at the same time, the definite famine, droughts, loss of major cities and potential mass extinction event that will definitely ensue over time because of climate change will surely be more harmful to the economy and living standards on Earth than business industries.

The chaos that will undoubtedly incur over the next few generations is looming and omnipresent; it is also still preventable. I am not asking anyone to completely change their lifestyle or start a movement. For the welfare of our lives, our planet and our futures, however, I am asking anyone who doesn’t believe in climate change to do a little bit more research and consider doing something environmentally friendly, regardless of your motives.

We can all prevent damage to the environ ment by collaborating and doing small things together—it will make a big impact. Turn off the lights in empty rooms, bring a reusable water bottle to school, drink without straws, eat slightly less meat, buy from environmentally and ethically responsible companies.

Perhaps, making small changes to your daily routine will brighten your life, make the air a little fresher, the grass a little greener and the polar bears a little happier. Whether or not you believe in global warming, you and I are both inhabitants of this Earth. And I (and hopefully all of you), as its guest, want to treat the planet the same way I would at a friend’s house: leave it a little cleaner than when I came.

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How to Start Worrying and Save the World Michelle Chen, Web Editor

In the summer of 2018, British sustainability professor Jem Bendell published a controversial paper by the name of “Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy.” In his paper, Bendell argues that in the next decade, there will be a full-scale climate-change induced social collapse that is, at this point, completely inevitable.

If you’re wondering what he means by societal collapse, consider this: "When I say starvation, destruction, migration, disease and war, I mean in your own life. With the power down, soon you won't have water coming out of your tap. You will depend on your neighbors for food and some warmth.

You will become malnourished. You won't know whether to stay or go. You will fear being violently killed before starving to death," Bendell writes.

Aimed at a small and specialized audience at first, the paper soon gained a larger following among those who are outside of academia. The grim prospects that Bendell seems so certain about in his paper drew much attention, and the professor’s sound credentials—respected scholar at the University of Cumbria and his past work with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) that is recognized by the World Economic Forum—only made his conclusions scarier and his evidence more real.

After all, this is a respected expert in the field telling us that we’re pretty much doomed.

Within months, some readers sought therapy. Support groups popped up around the internet, poetry was inspired by Bendell’s prophecy,

"WE MUST TAKE FASTER, MORE DEFINITIVE ACTIONS TO SAVE OUR PLANET."

—MICHELLE CHEN

some—like Dr. Alison Green, ex-pro vice-chancellor of Arden University—quit their jobs to become closer to nature. People struggled with finding meaning in everyday life when they believed that humankind screwed-up and that society will no longer exist after a decade.

Ultimately, those examples are only extreme cases, and many academics argue against the absolutes of Bendell’s paper, but what “Deep Adaptation” does incredibly well is its ability to force its readers to face the grim reality of climate change.

Although I didn’t drop out of school after learning about Bendell’s paper, I did reach out to my friend, a fulltime environmental activist and social entrepreneur in China, who confirmed that climate change is indeed irreversible and that large-scale actions must take place in the next ten years before the damage exacerbates beyond control.

Navigating a paper like “Deep Adaptation” brings up an important question: what can we do in the face of a reality so grim?

According to the EPA, Americans recycle 35 percent of all trash they generate as of 2018. Also in 2018, metal straws became popular in an attempt to reduce the plastic waste from regular straws and to “save the sea turtles” who mistaken straws for food.

As Americans, we all feel compelled to make up for the damage that we’re inflicting on the environment, but deep inside, there’s always a voice that asks whether throwing paper into the right bin can really save the planet.

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photo provided by Sara Schultz

The truth is, one person throwing paper into a blue bin will not rescue the planet’s fate. Nor will quitting your job and moving into the mountains.

We have a better chance at doing that if all of us throw paper into blue bins together. Saving Mother Earth requires collective, systematic action from the top-down rather than bottom-up.

As real as climate change is, it is far from being our institutional priority.

With U.S. President Donald Trump tweeting, “What the hell is going on with Global Warming? Please come back fast, we need you!”, it is clear that our government has decided to do little in terms of helping the environment.

If we really want to save the planet, then we have to make sure that our politicians can look at climate change in the face and commit to environmentalist measures on a large-scale level. This is understandably hard to achieve, especially when important environmentalist interests such as reducing carbon emissions seem to conflict with business interests that politicians

appear to take much more seriously. But don’t lose hope yet. New technologies that involve renewable energy are quickly developing. This revolution is already making an impressive impact on industries and more companies are considering the potential to replace fossil fuels with more sustainable options.

A leader in renewable energy, Tesla has saved 4,339,409,181 pounds of CO2 to date.

In order for the growth of more sustainable businesses, an article by the World Economic Forum argues that capital from the banking sector must be poured into environmentally friendly industries.

The idea is that if businesses be come sustainable, the interests of Mother Earth will no longer conflict with that of important industries. On the other hand, many are beginning to question whether the two sectors’ interests disagree with each other in the first place.

According to the World Economic Forum’s 2019 Global Risks Report, climate-change is the “gravest threat” to our socio-economic systems in the next ten years. Climate-change-induced extreme weather will only become more frequent and more physically

threatening to businesses. More wildfires, more hurricanes and more floods will continue to disrupt supply chains. But this risk is often ignored.

When businesses are not willing to take action themselves, policymakers must. Progress has been made. The UN Sustainable Development Goals lays down a set of guidelines for what we must achieve by 2030, and the Paris Climate Agreement involves international cooperation in an attempt to moderate and adapt to climate change.

But those are far from enough.

In the next ten years, we must take faster, more definitive actions in order to save the planet. This involves stronger international policies that address climate change and a large-scale move towards an environmentally sustainable economy.

Meanwhile as average citizens, besides recycling, drinking from metal straws and riding our bikes, we can all do better by raising our voices and raising climate-change awareness around us in hope that those in power will find enough courage in them to save the planet, starting now.