| Summary: | By Natalie Hanson Perhaps you’ve noticed those t-shirts that Student Environmental Alliance mem-bers have been wearing that say, “organic FEELS better.” Have you ever touched one? They’re not lying. They truly are the softest cotton shirts I have ever felt. Of course it’s not just the fabric that feels bet-ter. The consumer feels better too, because he or she can rest easy knowing that the organic label on the shirt means it was made free of synthetic fertilizers, chemi-cals, and bleaches. The ordinary cotton t-shirt requires at least one-third of a pound of these toxic substances. There is a lot of hype today about the health benefits of using organic products. It’s common sense that you should not ingest a poison, so why do we put them on our clothes and food? Granted, you may not keel over and die from eating one apple with a spritzing of pesticide on it, but what happens to you when you eat one such apple every day? Unfortunately there apparently has not been enough research on the problem of chronic exposure to come to a definitive answer, but the Environmental Working Group compiled this list of what they call the “dirty dozen,” the 12 most chemical-laden fruits and veg-gies. It includes peaches, strawberries, apples, spinach, nectarines, celery, pears, cherries, potatoes, sweet bell peppers, rasp-berries, and imported grapes. They recom-mend going to the organic section to buy these 12 in order to reduce your chemical exposure by 90 percent. Don’t forget to read the labels on your meat as well! Most livestock are fed con-ventional grain products and are pumped with antibiotics and growth hormones. The widespread use of antibiotics on farm animals has contributed to the growing rate of antibiotic resistant bacteria and human exposure to livestock growth hormones is linked to increased incidences of breast and prostate cancer. I recommend going to the organic sec-tion to buy as much of your foods as pos-sible. Families and neighbors of conven-tional farmers in the Red River Valley have been shown to have an increased occur-rence of birth defects, miscarriage and can-cer. In fact, some common fungicides have even been linked to sex determination in fetuses (favoring males). Buy organic for the sake of the agricultural community. It might be hard at first, but once they con-vert to organic, their families and the com-munity will be thankful. The most important reason I ask you to buy organic, (not to downplay the impor-tance of your health), is for the earth. Organic is the best way to raise crops and livestock in a way that protects and respects the earth. Chemicals spread easily on the breeze or by seeping into groundwater and they will remain in the soil for years. They affect plant and animal communities by altering growth and reproduction, and by increasing mortality. Conventional tech-niques also result in massive topsoil erosion and habitat loss for both above and below-ground organisms. The production of such chemicals is also highly energy inten-sive. Unfortunately, poor college kids like us may not be able to afford price hike that often accompanies organic products. In which case, I recommend doing what you can. Each organic product you buy equals fewer chemicals used. And as the demand for organic products increases, their prices will decrease, and more farmers will choose to convert their practices to organics. Please, make your concerns known through the way you spend your dollars. Read the labels on the products you buy. Remember that if they are organic, not only will they taste and feel better, but you can feel better too. EARTH WEEK COMMENTARY SUPPLEMENT SPECIAL TO THE CONCORDIAN Volume XCVI, Issue 24 - Friday, April 15 2005 6 04 15 By Donna Lenius Tucked away near the north woods of Ely, Minn., is the International Wolf Center. Last week three biology students got a chance to see the center as few do, thanks to a behind the scenes tour opportunity given to them by Greg Hoch, assistant professor of biology. The wolf center featured an exhibit viewing area of a pack of wolves feeding, playing and fighting. The exhibit pack includes two arctic wolves that were born in 2000 and three Great Plains wolves that were added in Aug. 2004. The wolf center is also home to another pack of wolves that the center refers to as the “retired” pack of wolves. These wolves are considered to be retired because they are no longer on display at the center and just get to enjoy their sen-ior years in “peace and com-fort, away from the attention from the public,” said wolf curator Lori Schmidt. The cen-ter is a place where stresses are minimal. All of the retirees are 12 years old, which is the aver-age life expectancy of a wolf. The center itself is a non-profit organization that advo-cates environmental education. “This is a tourist attraction,” Schmidt said. “The center’s mission is an educational expe-rience for everyone who visits.” Through education the cen-ter tries to dispel misconcep-tions of wolves. An animal with such a wide stereotype, it is hard for people to find a con-nection with the wolf. Finding a common ground among the fierce Little Red Riding Hood wolf and the friendly wolves in The Jungle Book is, in part, the aim of the wolf center. The center’s wolves have been raised under what is known as a socialization wildlife management. Social management means that the wolves had constant attention from humans while they were growing up. They were bottle-fed and they are in contact with humans everyday. “From the time they were puppies we (the caretakers at the center) were present and they consider us a part of their pack,” Schmidt said. When Schmidt enters the one and quarter acres that the wolf pack inhabits, she is no longer human, but a part of a pack of wolves. “They will growl at you and try and bite your face in certain situations, but they are also submissive to you by lying on their backs,” she said. “That's their way of showing respect.” The behavior of wolves, such as their preference for lying on their backs, is some-thing Schmidt and the other caretakers focus their education on. In addition to the exhibit and interpretive center, there are a few seminars a week for those interested in learning more about wolf behavior. One of the more popular seminars is on wolf hunting and feeding, where a brief pres-entation guides you through the common steps of the pred-ator and prey dance that the wolf so gracefully executes in nature. The exhibit wolves are not left out in this seminar. They are lucky and are fed a roadkill carcass, this time a deer. They may not have had to do as much work as they would have to do in the wild, leaving out the hunting, chasing, and attacking. But there is still the task of 'defurring' the deer. The two older Arctic wolves leave that task up to the younger Great Plains wolves and let them have first choice of the deer. Sophomore Amy Ravenhorst and junior Natalie Hanson witnessed the feeding. “I thought it was disturbing at first, but once you kept watching it wasn't so bad although my stomach turned a little as I was eating my break-fast the next morning when I saw a wolf carrying the (left-over) deer’s head around,” Ravenhorst said. “I was absolutely enthralled. I couldn't take my eyes off of it.” Hanson said. “Then I remembered that they had licked me earlier.” The sun set before they were done eating. Wolves are very efficient eaters. They will use 95 percent of the meat they con-sume for energy purposes and they can go up to a week with-out eating. Schmidt referred to this as “feast and famine diet-ing.” So when they get to eat “there’s no messing around,” she said. After the dinner segment, another seminar is offered. The seminar was vocalization of wolves, and in particular howl-ing. After some more discus-sion of different wolf postures and common threat and fear positions, it was time to test out howls. The purpose of this seminar is go out into the woods and howl in groups of people to see if your howl is returned by a wild wolf pack. But before you go out to howl there was a chance to practice. The seminar split into groups of three or four people to represent a wolf pack to do the howling. Visiting three dif-ferent sites, each group’s “wolf pack” had a chance to show their stuff and listen if there was any response from a real wolf pack. Unfortunately, the Concordia “wolf pack” did not get a real wolf pack to respond, but studies do show that a wolf is more likely to respond to a human howl than to a recorded howl. Just because they were unable to hear a response does not mean there was not a response. “Human hearing is not as sensitive as wolf hearing, plus that night there was a breeze, which could have easily distort-ed sound,” said Jen Westlund, the center’s program specialist. Despite the wolf response-less night, Hanson remained positive. “The idea of communicat-ing with a wolf pack is in itself is exhilarating,” she said. STUDENTS TRAVEL TO WOLF CENTER Photo by Donna Lenius. By Pete Morsch Five percent. Doesn’t sound like much, but when we ask for five percent of a coastline 33,900 miles long, resource exploitationists tend to get a little possessive. After all, we’ve already given them the other 95 percent of the Alaskan coast, so what’s five more? The answer, in short, is a lot. That last five percent not yet open for drilling is currently called the Arctic National Wildlife refuge, but you can call it America’s Serengeti: 19.8 million acres of untouched wilderness- the only such pro-tectorate of a virgin, arctic ecosystem left in the United States. To be fair, not all of this remote and oh-so-vital habitat is going to be ripped to oily shreds… Only the most biologically diverse ‘beau-ty acres’ will be lured into the dark alley of energy profiteering and raped: roughly 2,000 acres, counting only the points where actual structure-to-ground contact hap-pens, like the single square foot of concrete that holds up a huge section of pipeline, or the 60 centimeter shaft of an oil well. Bad news if you’re one of the 180 resi-dent or migratory birds, 130,000 caribou, any of three species of North American bears, a Dall sheep, a muskox, a fox, weasel, wolf, or wolverine. Devastating if you’re one of the thousands of Gwich’in people whose culture, religion, lives and livelihoods depend on the health of this ecosystem. Good news, of course, if you’re an oil mogul with a surgically removed eco-con-science, or a conservative, corporate pup-pet of a President, banging your head against the wall of the Oval Office, frus-trated and dreaming up ways to reduce your lazy, SUV-worshipping country’s depend-ence on foreign oil. “Now, wait just a minute, play fair,” you say. “Didn’t Jimmy Carter face a gas crisis, too? Didn’t he go tearing up our wilderness to ‘reduce our dependence on foreign oil?’” Actually, no. He chastised his beloved constituency across the board, calling America “the most wasteful nation on earth,” when it comes to energy over-con-sumption. Subsidies were rolled out to increase fuel efficiency, people hopped on bikes to avoid long lines and high gas prices, no war was started, and Carter actu-ally doubled the size of the very same ANWR region that George W.’s administra-tion wants to rip up.How can two southern good ol’ boys be so different? Go back to bed, America, and for God’s sake, don’t properly inflate your tires or walk to the grocery store. Your grandpar-ents fought and died so you could drive, drive, drive! What else do you expect from a cabinet lined with ex-oil execs (and a commander-in-chief who is acutely retard-ed)? It’s teatime in Texas, and they’re hun-gry for Alaska’s freshest and blackest. The not-so-fresh North Slope oil field is being sucked dry. It peaked way back in 1980, and is now giving up one million bar-rels a day, one sixteenth of our daily nation-al usage. Of course, opening ANWR could supply all of our oil needs, sure, but only for about half as long as it would take to construct the pipelines that will whisk it away: six to eleven months of pure, money-and job-generating bliss. Surprising, then, that 75 percent of Alaskans support oil exploration as a guar-anteed boost to their economy. Then again, it’s pretty hard to say no to resource extrac-tion when the state cuts every Alaskan a fat check every time some developer drills, scrapes, digs, cuts down or pulp-ifies a sig-nificant chunk of their gigantic home state. The same website boasts that a full 250 to 700 thousand jobs would be created to construct and maintain the pipelines. So what, they’ll more than double the current population of Alaska with bulldozer driv-ers, crane operators, and pipeline janitors? We have two options at this point. One, we could continue to prod the geological depths, suckle at the fast-drying teat of a non-renewable resource, pump billions of metric tons of hydrocarbons into the atmosphere and choke ourselves out of existence. Or, we could, like a crippled, mewling junkie, tear the needle of addic-tion and dependence from our arm, scream and sweat ourselves out of our comfort-able little bubble, grow up, dust ourselves off, and start living the way we were designed to live: as a non-toxic component of a great fabric of harmonious life… albeit, at first we may feel like the recently released serial rapist who settles in the sub-urbs, and has to go door to door apologiz-ing for our existence up to that point. Soon enough, Earth, our mother, will invite us back to the perpetual block party/barbeque that is living green. And don’t worry, there’ll be cars there, but they’ll run on wind-brewed hydrogen cells, not little brown corpses and holes in the ground. Write your senators and congressmen, kiddies: fossil fuels are so out, so last centu-ry. We’ll have plenty when we have none. By Mitchell Marr Recently, a group of students from the Student Environmental Association undertook an interesting mission of sorts. Raiding nearly every building on campus, the stu-dents diligently dug through the garbage cans and removed every piece of recyclable material including plastics, alu-minum, newspaper, paper, and glass. The findings were, well, disgusting but not exactly dire. On the whole, our students are recyclers. However, there’s plenty of room for improvement. Garbage cans in the utility closets on each floor of the dorm buildings were especially bad. It seems that people can’t be troubled to walk the extra twenty feet to the recycle bins. Also, it just so happens that the ELCA was on campus that day. My former pastor and a congregant were there as well and I caught them on their way to “The Grapes of Wrath.” I told them what I had been up to lately and what I was up that day. “Well,” said the pastor, “you should go inside Memorial Auditorium. There were literally hundreds of people throwing cans in the garbage. But I saw the recycle bin tucked in a corner so I dragged it next to the garbage and everyone started recycling. You should check out that building.” Now, we all know that Lutherans don’t lie. Let alone Lutheran pastors. The problem, it seems, is one of encour-agement and convenience. Simply put, there needs to be recycling receptacles next to every trash can, and examples need to be set. The first thing I’ll say is this: students, recycle. Why wouldn’t you? I’m not gonna throw clever rhetoric at you. Just recycle; you’ll feel better for it. Second: organizations and people in positions of power, make something hap-pen. This isn’t a case of “every little bit counts” cheerleading. This isn’t a plea for everyone to do their part in hopes that, with a little teamwork and goodwill, we can all make a dif-ference. This is a demand for that one person or that rela-tively small committee to stop ordering products like Styrofoam and glass. There’s no good reason not to. Sure, we’ll all whine when we can no longer buy our Starbucks Frapuccinos or Clearly Canadian, but time heals all wounds—yes, even taking away our Tostito’s con queso dip. In fact, start now. Make the transition during the sum-mer, when no one is around, and most people probably won’t even notice. These minor changes are small price to pay and we have no excuse for not making them. We are an institution of higher education, a collective of supposedly well-informed individuals. Our mission is to send out thoughtful and concerned citizens. That mission statement should inher-ently imply sending out environmentalists, at the very least recyclers. As upper class, educated, responsible adults we should be setting an example. Whatever the size, an effort to become a more environmentally friendly campus is worth it. It would benefit us as an institution, as individuals, as community members, and most importantly as members of a not-so-slowly dying world. If you’re interested in addressing these and other issues, I urge you to contact and/or become a part of the Student Environmental Association. If not, at least write into the paper, contact a professor or SEA member, or find some way of voicing your concerns. I’m not going to pretend that this is the absolute top priority for most students—not even for me—but make an effort, however small it is. You’d be surprised how much a single voice can accomplish when it hits the pub-lic ear. A wake-up call for recycling Drilling for oil inANWRdestructive Buy organic, save the earth, feel good
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