In honor of Earth Week, St. Michael’s Green Up club conserved its resources enough to sponsor guest speaker Jim Merkel on April 15 about the issue of sustainability.
Green Up chose to sponsor Merkel because of his professional resume, says Dan Sandberg, coordinator of the event and Green Up member. Merkel is the foremost speaker on sustainability, has years of experience, and is truly inspiring, Sandberg says.It's radically simple
Merkel’s main message is to get students and college campuses involved in creating more sustainable living conditions, he said.
“People and businesses are doing radical things, why not college campuses?” Merkel said.
A former military arms dealer, Merkel now devotes his life to environmental activism. Merkel is the author of “Radical Simplicity” and founder of the Global Living Project (GLP), which was started to help people live more sustainable lives.
After the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, Merkel had a wake-up call, he says.
“It shocked me when I realized that I was part of the problem,” Merkel says. “When you point your finger, three point back at you.”
In response to his realization of the world’s ecological problems, Merkel visited the Indian Himalayas for about four months, he said.
It was here that Merkel saw a life without fossil fuels, and was inspired to start the GLP in 1996, he said.
“We only have one earth,” Merkel says. “We consume about 130 percent of what it is capable of reproducing each year. In other words, we have roughly a 30 percent overshot.”
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Jim Merkel
points out that if the entire world population
wasted as much as the United States, we would need five earths to sustain ourselves. (Photo by Brielle Domings) |
If all the world’s people lived like the average person in the United States, we would need five planets, he said.
“Economic growth on a finite planet is suicide,” Merkel said.
Merkel has been living a radically simple life for many years now, he said. It saves time, money and decreases one’s carbon footprint, he added.
He has not touched his investments in 18 years, he said. Due to his radically simple lifestyle, he makes sure he does not spend more each year than he is able to gain with interest income, he said.
The problem arises as soon as you take more than you need, Merkel said.
He finds living his radically simple lifestyle to be a thrill, he said.
“If it’s not fun, how can it get done?” Merkel says.
Past projects
Before Merkel was giving talks to local universities and businesses, he was the sustainability director at Dartmouth College.
All Ivy League colleges have a sustainability director, Merkel says.
When Merkel first started at Dartmouth, the college was 100 percent dependent on fossil fuels, he says.
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Merkel shows off an
earth-friendly tote bag used to carry sustainable lunches, an
initiative he started at Dartmouth College. |
He helped to reduce Dartmouth’s dependency by making buildings more sustainable, utilizing solar energy as well as starting a composting program, he said.
Currently, Merkel works with small towns and other universities to make their communities more fully sustainable, he says.
He is currently working with the town of Hopkinton, N.H. on a Municipal Green Plan, he says. Merkel leads sessions with the residents where they envision their town fully sustainable 20 to 30 years into the future, he says.
“We are creating a plan from a vision,” Merkel says. “We are building from the bottom up, not the top down.”
When working with universities, Merkel focuses on sustainable dining and energy reduction, he said.
Sustainable dining encourages the consumption of local, fair-trade and organic foods, Merkel says. He also works to help campus dining halls get rid of throw away cutlery, and use reusable plates, forks and other dining utensils, he said.
Merkel encourages people to “take the medicine themselves,” he says.
He believes it is important to become fluent in a lifestyle before working with one’s family, friends and community, he says.
“I like to start with me,” he says, “It’s not what you do, it’s what I do.”
Searching for sustainable solutions
In all, about 75-100 people attended Merkel’s speech, including senior Steve Schimoler.
“It was nice hearing someone talk realistically,” Schimoler says.
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Green
Up member and junior Dan Sandberg talks with Jim Merkel before his
presentation on April 15. (Photo by Brielle Domings) |
We have to look beyond economics, money and our own interests to really understand the problem at hand, Schimoler says.
It is important that people have a purpose to live other than paying bills, he says.
“I think [Merkel] had a lot to say,” Sandberg says, “I would have enjoyed listening to him for much longer.”
It was a presentation crafted towards college students, but Sandberg wishes there could have been a larger turnout, he says.
Following in the footsteps of Ivy League schools around the country, Sandberg has drafted a resolution fo a new staff position at St. Michael’s of sustainability director, he says.
Sandberg proposed the resolution to the Student Association on April 15, and it was unanimously approved by a vote of 40-0.
These are the preliminary stages of an ideal situation, Sandberg says.
Currently, all of the work being done to environmentally sustain the college is strictly on a volunteer basis, Sandberg says.
It would be ideal to have someone on staff who can make sustainability their primary concern, he says. With someone’s undivided attention on this one area, the school would be able to accomplish so much more, he adds.
In the resolution, Sandberg plans to apply for a federal government grant of $500,000 in the fall, he says.
This grant is given on a state-by-state basis, to colleges and universities with endowments of less than $100 million, Sandberg says. He believes the chances of St. Michael’s receiving this grant are very high, he says.
Sandberg’s resolution proposes that the money from this grant go towards paying the sustainability director’s salary for three years, and after that time, the college would absorb the duty of paying the new staff member, he says.