McKibben Speaks at Be Bright Launch

 

On Tuesday, Feb. 26, Be Bright, the College’s energy literacy campaign, held a kick-off dinner event to launch its initiative. The dinner was held in Atwater Dining Hall and featured Professor of Environmental Studies and Schumann Distinguished Scholar Bill McKibben. The dinner was the first of a series of planned events this spring hosted by the campaign.

Be Bright was started by the Sustainability Integration Office at the Environmental Center at Hillcrest in an effort to educate students about energy usage at the College. Communications and Outreach Coordinator Avery McNiff ’12 began planning the campaign this past fall.

“At the end of the summer, I got a lot of questions about energy at Middlebury and our sources,” McNiff explained. “Students wanted to know more about [the 2016 carbon neutrality goal] and where we are in our path to carbon neutrality. Generally, people wanted to be more energy literate.”

To introduce the initiative, Be Bright hosted an Atwater social dinner event, which attracted over 150 students. The menu featured local food, including Misty Knoll Farm chicken, local mashed potatoes, roasted local root vegetables, local tortellini Alfredo with local pasta, milk and cream, mixed greens and an apple crisp dessert.

McNiff opened the event with an introduction to the campaign and sustainability at the College, before introducing McKibben.

“Energy cannot be visible, so we have to make it tangible,” she said.

McKibben discussed the need for a balance between large and small efforts to do anything about the environmental problems the world faces today.

“These problems are big. They’re the biggest we’ve run into,” he said, citing how the atmosphere is now five percent wetter than it was 40 years ago, causing record rainfalls and damaging hurricanes.

“[It's] Just remarkably big change. And much bigger change is yet to come,” McKibben warned.  “This phenomenon and many others happen when you change the temperature of the planet one degree Celsius. Scientists tell us confidently that if we don’t get hold of it fast, then that one degree will be four, five, six degrees before you reach my age.”

Educating the student body and greater community has been one of central goals of the Be Bright campaign from the beginning, according to Jack Byrne, director of sustainability integration, and co-organizer of the Be Bright campaign.

“Energy literacy means a couple of things,” he explained, in an interview prior to the event. “It means understanding basic energy sources — where our energy comes from, how it is generated, what the environmental, economic, and social costs and benefits of those sources are how we use energy on campus, and how it is that we can use it more efficiently in our daily lives.”

In the spirit of informing the College community, McNiff and Byrne explained that the biggest portion of the College’s carbon footprint is the fuel used to heat, cool and cook. Graphical analysis shows that a large portion of the footprint has been reduced with the use of the biomass plant.

“We’re anticipating that another big chunk will be taken care of if and when the bio-methane project [which will use biomethane fuel from local dairy farms] comes online,” Byrne said. “At that point then, the small portion of the footprint that is left will be the more challenging portion to deal with.”

According to the pair, the last portion of the reduction of carbon emission will be achieved through the more efficient use of energy by the college community, what McNiff calls “a behavioral change.”

McKibben said the title of the Be Bright campaign exactly reflects what is required of the school community to initiate change — to be smarter in our day-to-day lives. But he reminded that it is not enough to just turn off the lights and take shorter showers.

Byrne echoed his thoughts, explaining, “one of the [chief] obstacles, is that [climate change is] relatively invisible to us,” Byrne said. “We turn the light switch on and the light goes on but we don’t really see the big dams in northern Quebec that are generating the electricity that sustains the state of Vermont and we don’t see the huge expanses of land that have flooded in order to generate that power.”

Byrne also expressed concern that students lack awareness of the cost of wasteful energy usage.

“Students do not pay the actual electrical and fuel bills — the College does that — so they’re not as aware of the value of that energy,” he said.

Yet at the event, Mckibben was optimistic. “It’s really exciting that Middlebury is taking the lead on all these scales,” he said.  “And the possibility of a beautiful world is there but only if we work hard, if we work quickly, and I guess only if we’re really bright.”

Throughout the night, students were invited to take a picture in a photo booth with their energy pledge written out on a Be Bright dry erase board.  The pictures will be featured on Be Bright’s Tumblr site.

Students who attended voiced their own excitement about the dinner and the campaign.

“I really liked the idea of committing your pledge to a photo and the food was delicious,” said President of Campus Sustainability Coordinators Seton Talty ’15.5, who is involved in the initiative to start sustainability tours and bringing compost bins to residential areas. “It was also a lucky and unique opportunity to get Bill McKibben at such a small forum.”

Students also explained that the dinner event has further inspired their aspirations to become more aware of and involved in sustainability efforts of the College.

“I think I talk about being very environmentally conscious but hearing Bill McKibben talk makes it more concrete and more real to me,” said Meena Fernald ’16, who heard about the campaign through an all-student email. “[The Be Bright campaign] is a really cool thing that we’re doing and now I know how to get involved.”

Other events for the Be Bright campaign this spring will include “pledge rides” with a horse drawn trolley during lunch on March 6, a display in the McCullough Student Center called “Imprints of Energy” by Alison Andrews ’12.5, an exhibit at Davis Family Library on March 11 and a number of sponsored community dinners at language and social houses throughout the semester.

For more information on the Be Bright campaign, visit go/bebright.