What’s up with the tents? An explanation and call to action

It's cold outside. But the two of us and the rest of the Leadership Campaign, whose members represent 24 Massachusetts campuses and dozens of community organizations, have been sleeping out in tents anyway, and we want to explain why. We are not out there because we think that forgoing our beds, blankets and heating will end global warming. We're out there to send a message to the Massachusetts legislature and the country that our bill, calling for a 100 percent shift to renewable energy by 2020, needs to be passed. We're there to make it clear that reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is not just an issue of personal importance to us, but represents a vital change that needs to happen everywhere to ensure the health and wellbeing of people now and for generations to come. We're also out there asking Massachusetts, the state that started America's first revolution, to start another one and lead the way for the rest of the country to make a similar shift. We're out there because our leaders have just admitted that even the United States, which produces almost a quarter of the world's carbon emissions, is not prepared for the United Nations climate negotiations set to begin in Copenhagen on Dec. 7, because we have yet to pass any comprehensive legislation.

So we sleep outside all week at Tufts and on Sunday nights we move our tents to Boston Common, risk arrest and take a stand right in front of the State House so that we are ready early each Monday morning to go lobby in favor of our bill. These sleep−outs have been exhilarating, inspiring and fun. We read a chapter of a book together every night in the tent. We have listened to experts like NASA scientist James Hansen, who slept in our tent and got a citation with us. And our lobbying is working; 21 legislators have already signed on in support of our bill and Gov. Deval Patrick is ready to negotiate with us. But the experience is also exhausting, and not just because the police wake us up in the middle of each Sunday night to give us citations for trespassing. We're getting emotionally tired, spiritually drained, and we need backup.

No, we are not asking every Tufts student to forsake his or her dormitory and turn our campus into a tent city, although that would be pretty sweet. One of Tufts' most unique and amazing qualities is that almost everyone here is dedicating a lot of time to improving the world in some way. We don't think that everyone needs to abandon every other project to put all of their energy into this movement. But we would like to remind the Tufts community of how pressing climate change is and how connected it is to the other issues that Tufts students are working on so diligently. When it comes down to it, we have goals in common. Most of them are about equality and stability, and we all need to get behind this bill in the various ways that we can to support those goals.

What good will a quality education be to a future generation that will have no water to drink because the Himalayan glaciers, which quench the thirst of almost half of the world's population, will disappear by 2035? How will we address the concerns of refugees when their numbers swell exponentially because the entire population of the Maldives, along with tens of millions of other people, will be displaced from coastal homes due to rising sea levels? How much more difficult will peace negotiations in already tense and nuclear−armed regions like India and Pakistan be when water, grains and fuel become increasingly scarce?

Even today, climate change and environmental degradation already affect the global poor and minorities in the United States disproportionately. According to a recent CNN report, "across the U.S. black children are three times more likely to have ‘hazardous levels of lead in their blood' as a result of living near hazardous waste sites," and that is only one example. When one doesn't look too closely, the environmental movement can appear to be about saving plants, which never sounds as important as saving people. It can also be difficult to conceptualize the gravity of the situation since it does not threaten our day−to−day life at this moment, but when you look at the science it is clear that climate change is about people and that it is a moral issue that needs to be addressed right now.

All of those statistics and projections can be pretty terrifying, and both of us have struggled with the hopelessness that easily follows a good hard look at them. However, there is hope and there is time for change if we act now. Many Tufts students, and certainly Tufts as an institution, have already made lifestyle changes, large and small, to try to reduce CO2 emissions. Tufts is a leader as a green campus and has made an impressive institutional commitment to environmentalism. On an individual level, many students diligently recycle, ride their bikes and unplug their appliances when they are not using them. That kind of consciousness of one's own consumption is a laudable first step and is difficult in the system in which we live. It is heartening to see so many Tufts students making such efforts.

But it is impossible to live a normal life in the United States without contributing massively and disproportionately to global warming, no matter how hard you try, and that is what the Leadership Campaign is trying to address. We need to pair these personal behavior changes with systemic change that only governmental policy can address. That is why we are sleeping outside and that is why we are trying to pass this bill. It's great to hear how many people support our goals and think we're doing a great job, but as the campaign picks up steam we would love to hear more. If so many Tufts students feel that this is important, we would like to call upon all of you to help pass this legislation however you can so that Massachusetts can set a precedent for the rest of the country.