Dear Wesleyan Community,
As the ink dries on this very paper, our freedoms, our liberties, and our rights are evermore in a state of peril. It is unfair to say we have been sitting completely idle. Indeed we have been consciously fighting the governmental regime so that Democrats now hold the lead in Congress and we have been consciously protesting for peace in our nation’s capital. But we have been consciously ignorant of the most pertinent issue of our time: the fact that human waste and consumption is steadily eroding the earth’s soil beneath our very feet. On the subject of the environment, we seem to be bound by some apathetic force of inaction. Do we not care enough to contend for the preservation of life? If so, then what is the point, what exactly is the purpose of fighting—of dying—for civil liberties if we are left homeless with no land to enjoy them? Our forefathers and our foremothers fought for our nation, our civil liberties and it is now our turn to fight for the very air that sustains them. The time to act, to change our destruction bound course, is now. If the government will not sanction laws to save our emaciated land then we the people must force the institutional revolution; it is our civic duty to preserve human life and liberties.
Although the following is solely a first step, it is an imperative first step, a necessary move towards a healthier world; movements can start small. Right now, EON, the Environmental Organizers’ Network, needs your help: we need your pledge to reduce the environmental impact of our campus, we need you to commit yourselves from the very grass routes level, to curb the emissions of our buildings on this campus. In the next two weeks EON will have a petition to make the new science center green.
Wesleyan is currently in the process of designing a new science center that will be completed in 2012. Buildings are the silent but deadly contributor to emissions and energy consumption. According to the American Institute of Architects, buildings account for as much as 48 percent of all greenhouse emission. The knowledge and the physical ability to produce a stainable building is readily available, and we the conscious community members must demand that the University take advantage of these technologies. EON asks you, the Wesleyan Community, to unite with us and petition for the new building to meet LEED standards and meet the American Institute of Architects’ goal of a 70 percent carbon neutral building. These goals are not beyond our reach, indeed they are at our very finger tips we just have to reach out and grab them. Without fighting, without demanding a proactive change, without raising one fist, we are condemning ourselves to a smoggy slouch towards Bethlehem.
Indeed, it is our duty to confront our litter and unite in positive action. If we fail—if we leave our environment to a less caring hand then our own—then we are solely culpable for our actions. We face many challenges today in our sacred pursuit of happiness, the greatest of which remains in hidden in our subconscious, the fact that we are the deadly consumers, we are the predator of the environment but we will become its prey. While America makes up only 19 percent of the world’s population, we consume nearly 75 percent of the world’s resources. It is time to be critical of the American history of cheap and fast. With this small first step of petitioning, it is time to start demanding that we act with care, producing a long, sustainable, viable lifespan, where our children, and our children’s children, will be able to pursue happiness under a clear sky.
P.S. Look for EON petitioning at food places around campus!
Sincerely,
Brendan McEntee (An ardent EON member)
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