PEA Holds Annual Climate Action Day
Exeter held its third annual Climate Action Day on Wednesday, an event that featured a variety of workshops and hands-on activities intended to educate and impassion students on issues of climate change and sustainability.
Before establishing Climate Action Day, Exeter had a long-standing Community Action Day, during which students and teachers would work together to clean up campus. Biology Instructors Elizabeth Stevens and Sydnee Goddard petitioned the administration to make a day fully devoted to sustainability three years ago, and Climate Action Day was born in 2015. According to Sustainability Education Coordinator Jason BreMiller, Stevens and Goddard, “recognized the growing importance of climate change and wanted to arrange a day to really signal to our students how big of an issue this is, and to start to equip them with a framework for understanding just how serious climate change is.”
Since then, Climate Action Day has been a half-day long event in which students can choose one or two workshops. The Climate Action Day Planning Committee has brought a panel of guests and Exeter alumni who work in the sustainability sector to answer questions for students and faculty the night before Climate Action Day. BreMiller, co-chair of the Climate Action Day Planning Committee, has also “tried to create an influx of new workshops that we didn’t have last year.”
BreMiller says adding more workshops “provides students with as many different entrance points as possible.” He added that the breadth of workshops aimed to “appeal to a variety of interests,” and that the planning committee “tried to strike a balance between action-based workshops and content-driven workshops.” BreMiller said he hopes that the impact of the workshops extends beyond the day, and that “something sticks for the students, that they hear something or they encounter a leader that they’re engaged by.”
In order to spur students’ interest in the sustainability sector, Exeter brought back recent alumni Nick Devonshire ‘07, Sophie Robinson ‘07 and Devi Lockwood ‘10. BreMiller said that the alumni would “articulate exactly how and where in their Exeter career they began thinking about environmentalism and climate change,” in the hopes that this “triggers something in our students, and maybe it turns into a passion or a career goal.”
Robinson returned to Exeter to lead a workshop about how students can use their unique skills to enact change on the planet. Robinson said, “What I [wanted] to talk about in the workshop are some ways to start picking apart the system as a whole.” She worked with students to determine angles in which individuals could solve big-scale societal issues that contribute to climate degradation. She hoped that at the end of the workshop students would have “a clearer picture” of how they wanted to spend their adult lives, and maybe even plan initial steps to achieve their goals.
In contrast with Robinson’s discussion-based workshop, Biology Instructor Richard Aaronian’s workshop used a hands-on approach to show students the impact they can have. He was proud of the student’s hard work in planting dune grass in the Salisbury, MA sand dunes. Along with the tangible effect of maintaining the Salisbury ecosystem, the long-term goal of Aaronian’s workshop was to help students focus on and learn how to solve the problems facing the environment. Aaronian said that the workshop “focused upon what those problems are, their effect and what we–students and adults–can do to try to correct the problem which we have, in effect, caused.”
The workshop led by managing editor of “Inside Climate News”, Jack Cushman, combined investigative journalism with sustainability. “Inside Climate News” is a non-profit news organization that reports on climate change and the environment. Cushman implored students to put the needs of society first. He said that Exeter was “an incubator for social responsibility,” and urged students to take advantage of their Exeter experience by not accepting the status quo. He said that although it will be challenging to solve the climate crisis, as the environment will soon be facing challenges that we cannot comprehend, “it’s not beyond us.”
In addition to Aaronian’s workshop, another noteworthy opportunity for students to do hands-on work was in the Disruptive Design workshop, led by Lauren O’Neal, John Sakata and Max Kuo, an architect and teacher at the Harvard School of Design. The workshop allowed students to explore how sustainable design helps solve environmental issues. Kuo demonstrated to the participants how culture, social interaction and the environment impact each other through architecture. In the workshop, Kuo gave student teams the challenge of redesigning the library or Jeremiah Smith Hall by incorporating sustainable ideas from Kuo’s presentation.
Upper Cameron Najafi, who helped plan the workshop, said that “Disruptive Design was not only about how we make a building carbon-neutral, but also about how we encourage/foster community and social interactions through the space.” Sakata thought that the workshop was a success, saying, “It was exciting and impressive to witness this so wonderfully played out by each of the teams.”
In addition to being attentive participants in their workshops, many students played larger roles in helping plan the day. This responsibility fell to members of Environmental Board, a group that seeks to both educate students about challenges facing our climate, and to actualize plans the Exeter community brainstorms to stop climate change. Environmental Board member Senior Joonho Jo said, “I wanted to get involved with Climate Action Day because of its impact not only in informing students and faculty about how to best fight climate change, but also in working with the Exeter community to materialize these ideas into concrete plans.” Najafi joined the board for similar reasons. He added that he participated in the Destructive Designs workshop to, “send a ripple through the administration to think about space in a different way. I hope that we also send the message that sustainability isn’t just about trees and polar bears, but human well-being and happiness—that’s what’s central to sustainability.”
Lower Catherine Griffin hopes that in addition to affecting the administration, Climate Action Day will inspire students to become active in the environmental clubs on campus. Griffin added that she wants to “make sustainability a priority on our campus throughout the entire year.” History Instructor Amy Schwartz said it is important for all students to be interested in sustainability. She said, “I think we need to reach everyone — not just the environmentally committed students — and get across the message that climate change is going to shape all of us in the years ahead.”
Both dining halls also contributed to the Climate Action Day events in their own way. Upper Emmett Shell noticed changes in the lunch served at both places. After attending Chris Hendrickson’s workshop that emphasized the importance of reducing animal suffering, Shell headed to Wetherell to enjoy a wide array of vegetarian offerings. Wetherell and Elm Street’s meat-free menus showed the tangible effect of Hendrickson’s words. Hendrickson told students that, although it is challenging to convince major corporations to lower fossil fuel emissions, students can make a meaningful impact by eating less meat. He said, “Each one of us has that choice three times a day, to choose what we put on our plate,” adding that a simple way to enact change is to choose to eat plants over meat.
Biology Instructor Ebin Bein noted the limitations of the annual event, saying, “it’s really hard to accomplish climate action in a day.” Despite this, he hopes that this day will lead students to join teachers in lobbying the administration to set aside time in the daily class schedule that is devoted to sustainability. Bein says, “Until [sustainability] becomes part of the academic day and part of the academic responsibilities, I don’t think much progress will be made on campus.” Bein added that the day was successful in raising awareness and working toward change, but said, “This is the start, not the end of something.” He wanted students to come away from the day understanding that, “It [the environment] does not have a voice, so you need to speak for it.” Along with Bein, BreMiller tried to encourage students to take the inspiration they garnered from the day and continue working with sustainability. BreMiller attempted to accomplish this by, “[planting] a seed in our student’s minds about maybe taking on something environmentally-minded in their studies, lives or careers.”