Imagine you’re in your hometown hanging with your friends and family. The sky is blue, and the temperature is just right. Suddenly, you find yourself running for your life. An infinitely large and porous blanket is nipping at your heels and destroying everything: your house, plants, animals, your friends’ houses, your friends, and finally you can’t run any longer and are swallowed up as well. It’s not an alien invasion, but it’s still terrifying.

Now imagine the ocean: that vast tract of blue that occupies the majority of the planet’s surface, containing specks of green, white and brown. Every single day, many, not just one, of those large and porous blankets, called trawl nets, scrape the ocean floor, leaving destruction in their paths and claiming the lives of billions of marine life forms. Yet when looking at marine life depletion, there are many things other than trawl nets that contribute to the decrease of marine systems in the Earth’s oceans. I want to explain some causes and effects of marine life disruption, point to local outreach groups working in the area, and suggest solutions for Drexel affiliates.

One of the easiest ways of understanding detrimental behavior to the oceans is to look at pollution. With the coverage of BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010, one could see that the devastation to the Gulf of Mexico was vivid. At the disaster’s peak, it necessitated the closure of commercial fishing activities over 88,000 square miles by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. According to the Federation of American Scientists, “coastal areas are especially vulnerable because oil can be stranded in wetlands and other coastal ecosystems after being washed in by waves and tides.”

In addition to mentioning that oil can coat and suffocate small animals and plants that live on shores, the FAS says that oil can remain on the Gulf floor, affecting corals and bottom-dwelling organisms. Oil left unattended in wetlands can cause long-term damage to growth, as these areas provide shelter to many organisms. It literally affects the entire food web as organisms dwell in the polluted areas, and it outweighs the devastation to individual fish species in the open ocean. The BP oil rig explosion is just one out of many examples. The Exxon Valdez disaster, Nigerian oil spills and the Gulf War oil spill have all added their share of oil to the oceans around the world.

Besides fossil fuel extrapolation and transportation pollution, waste and agricultural runoff have created dead zones in the Gulf and around the world. As I mentioned in an earlier op-ed, almost 173,000 miles of dead zones populate U.S. waterways due to agricultural runoff from intensive farm practices and factory-farmed sewage runoff. Because this type of pollution is ongoing with increased production in factory farms, thousands of dead fish wash up on shores every year.

Consider the effects of climate change and our warming planet. Some of us have heard of carbon sinks. The ocean acts as one, but it is losing its ability to absorb carbon every year, just as the Amazon is losing its ability to act as an effective carbon sink with more deforestation taking place. As the planet absorbs carbon less effectively (in addition to increased anthropogenic emissions) and produces less oxygen in the atmosphere, more carbon will remain in the atmosphere, causing heat absorption from the sun. As the planet increases in average temperature, the ice caps that help reflect sunlight and divert heat absorption will decrease in size and melt, not only accelerating the rate at which future ice will melt but also unbalancing the sodium levels and temperature in seawater. The cold and fresher water that was kept in ice for centuries will enter major currents like the North Atlantic Current. This will not only affect the marine life system (which is used to a warmer current as the current continues the Gulf Stream northeast) but also decrease the temperature of the current that provides moisture and warmth for Northern Europe.

Sea life will be affected particularly with warmer ocean temperatures in areas like Australia and the Great Barrier Reef. The collection of coral reef acts as a filter for ocean waste and as shelter to many different marine species. Factors like increased water temperature, reduced salinity, acidification, overfishing and sedimentation cause large-scale coral bleaching, which kills the reefs and thereby reduces the efficiency of the corals at filtering the ocean and providing a habitat and protection for marine life. Humans that rely on coral reef organisms for food and trade will be negatively affected if more coral reefs undergo bleaching events. Although it sounds like the ocean is heating up and cooling down simultaneously, the ocean is on average warming up. Despite this, the decrease and increase in ocean temperatures in different areas of the world causes various effects on marine ecosystems that will ultimately lead to rising temperatures.

Human waste contributes to marine life depletion as well. As of now, there are floating plastic islands in the five gyres of large ocean currents, with the plastic pollution in the North Pacific Gyre measuring to almost twice the size of the U.S. There are a few other gyres that have accumulated plastic waste, but the five gyres have the largest amounts of plastic whirlpooling and breaking into smaller particles, affecting marine life health and ultimately human health. Persistent organic pollutants, such as PCBs, DDT, pesticides and hydrocarbons, are absorbed by these plastic particles and build up enough that marine life will unknowingly consume them.

Going back to the fishing industry, we find increasingly more devastating practices used by the industry to capture and trade marine animals for consumption and consumer products. Tyler Kruszewski, representing Shark Angels and Fin Free Pennsylvania, also a biology major at Drexel in the cellular molecular genetics biochemistry concentration, spoke to the Drexel Sierra Club about the need for banning the sale of shark fins. Seventy-three million sharks are killed each year for their fins, the main ingredient in shark fin soup. Regional shark populations have already decreased by 95 percent, and the continued sale of shark fins will lead to even fewer populations. Sharks are necessary predators of the marine ecosystem, as they regulate the food web and control the fish populations’ effect on marine plant life and micro-organisms.

The fishing industry also uses environmentally destructive fishing techniques that not only decrease the levels of fish populations but also do not allow those populations to grow back to sustainable levels. As I mentioned earlier, the use of trawling nets results in large amounts of by-catch (fish species that are not intended to be sold) that die as a result of the inability to escape and thrashing against other fish as changes in pressure cause rapid decompression of the swim bladder. Little is known about the deepest depths of the ocean floor, and areas around the seamounts and vast sea forests contain estimates between 500,000 and 5,000,000 unknown species. Bottom trawlers are able to destroy these areas within our own lifetimes and leave these undiscovered species virtually unknown.

Gill netting, a less intensive fishing practice, also contributes to overfishing, leaving fish trapped for hours and days, causing some to die from lack of movement and predation. The economics of these techniques may stand to show profit in the short term, but the long-term effects of these standard fishing techniques will eventually bring economic collapse to the industry as fishermen have less fish to haul back in the coming decades.
I don’t think we’ll end up like Kevin Costner in “Waterworld,” but current trends certainly don’t deny the plausibility of that plot. So what can we do, particularly for marine ecosystems? One easy solution is to decrease the amount of plastic you use and buy, as that positively correlates to a decrease in plastic pollution. While not using plastic bottles and bags, you can either reuse old canvas bags and secondhand clothes, or you can buy from organic clothing and accessory companies. Brian Linton, founder of United By Blue, a Philadelphia-based apparel company that sells organic shirts and bags, spoke to the Sierra Club about its efforts to remove trash from U.S. waterways. For every item sold, UBB removes one pound of trash. Three years since their founding, they have removed over 140,000 pounds of trash, including 22,000 plastic bottles.

Another behavior to consider changing is fish consumption. The above data have shown that not only are wild caught fish subjected to cruel practices that destroy marine ecosystems, but intensively farmed fish (one solution in the eyes of the fishing industry) are equally concerning, environmentally speaking, with respect to poor diet, lack of welfare concern, economical waste, biological waste and lack of sustainability. It would be wise to reduce or even eliminate fish consumption, as these fish populations and other marine life need time to repopulate and recover. With current amounts of fish being caught (over a trillion fish per year), the consumption of fish is not environmentally sustainable.

Although there are many hazardous practices taking place at this moment, there is still some time to act. Fin Free Pennsylvania and Shark Angels are two great organizations to support, as they focus on one of the root problems in the fishing industry. You can decrease the amount of plastic you use and discard as well as volunteer or donate to organizations that are working to clean waterways. Most importantly, you can get more informed and inform others.

Benjamin Sylvester is a member of the Drexel Sierra Club. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.
The Drexel Sierra Club contributes weekly.

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The decision of which university to transfer into involved many more factors than the decision of which one to dive into directly from high school. I geared my focus toward an institution that proved it could foresee America’s future developments to lift my career as well as set the standard for sustainable behavior in higher education. Programs such as Drexel Green; the Sierra Student Coalition; Drexel Smart House; the University’s partnership with the Academy of Natural Sciences; and the formation of the new Department of Biodiversity, Earth & Environmental Science brought me here to pursue my bachelor’s degree in environmental science. Even more so, Drexel’s commitment to 100 percent wind power in 2010 convinced me to believe in its ability to help lead the shift of organizations everywhere toward reducing the effects of climate change. During my time at Drexel, since September 2012, I discovered the finer details of the University’s involvement with the fossil fuel industry.

After the most recent presidential election, Bill McKibben and 350.org toured the U.S. over eight days. He moved across the U.S. with his “Do the Math” campaign to educate students on fossil fuel resources. Here are some numbers I learned about:
390 — the parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide currently in our atmosphere
275 — the ppm near the dawn of human civilization
350 — the ppm that was chosen by lead climate scientists such as NASA’s James Hansen over 20 years ago as being a safe zone for life on Earth

NASA and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also reinforced this number. McKibben emphasized how a moral and political strategy such as divestment would display the youth’s concern while hitting the dirty energy companies in their sweet spot (their wallets).

Knowing Drexel’s reputation as a science, technology, engineering and mathematics school, I feel that an appropriate explanation of divestment is needed. Every year Drexel takes a portion of your tuition payment and includes it in its endowment. An endowment is invested into buying bonds and public equities of other companies for profit, and the said company benefits as well. As of 2012, Drexel’s standing endowment is $555,381,000. The most profitable companies will give Drexel the largest return. Many of those businesses are also within the 200 publicly traded enterprises that hold the majority of the world’s proven coal, oil and natural gas reserves. My hopes were that Drexel knew well enough to avoid investing in these companies if they were apparently promoting themselves as a sustainable campus. Yet when members of the board of trustees were approached by Drexel Green earlier in the year, they refused to release any information regarding the endowment and simply said they were doing enough in environmental activism as it is. So the question that arises is: Why wouldn’t Drexel endorse a lack of involvement with the fossil fuel industry if it is prominently displaying a banner across the Drexel shuttle saying “100 percent wind-powered campus”? The obvious explanation is that Drexel falsely advertises its commitment to sustainability to encourage enrollment.

Now the Sierra Student Coalition is going to push the boundaries of “doing enough” and demand that Drexel divest its money from the industries that are the world’s largest source of air pollution. Our initial request: The board of trustees should immediately freeze any new investments into the top 200 offending corporations. This will prevent a fiscal shock and allow them to explore new clean energy companies and companies using eco-friendly practices to supplement the change. Then, having such an ultimatum planned by 2018, Drexel can fully divest any direct ownership and any commingled funds that include fossil fuel public equities and corporate bonds within five years. We consider our request rational enough to allow Drexel to make conscious decisions about where its endowment is being placed and whether or not it is morally right to invest in these companies.
Could this work? The idea is so foreign to younger students that they may have forgotten about college divestment from South Africa. Universities divested in protest of the apartheid system being used in South Africa’s government practices. It succeeded! Negotiations and policy changes in the mid-1990s changed South Africa’s racial segregation drastically. In regard to 350.org’s divestment campaign, success stories have already formed in the early years of its existence. These include Sterling and Hampshire colleges, the First Unitarian Society of Milwaukee and the entire city of Seattle. We could be next, but it is a matter of our students’ determination to make the changes we want to see in the world. The carbon addiction needs to end, and we’re starving ourselves from innovation and success by ignoring the problem of climate change.

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After all these years, is it still worth it? Our ancestors began a great political experiment: commoners who rule themselves. They believed that the volatile masses have the right to think what they want and say what they think. These unconventional freedoms and powers are rightfully celebrated because they are, more than anything else, what makes the United States unique in history. Yet here we are, decades into a war. A war that would require a revocation of these essential rights in order to win.

President George W. Bush was right when he called our struggle a war on terror. We are not fighting other people; we are fighting the human condition. There are men and women who are basically evil, and to them, freedom means blowing things up and causing mayhem. There are men and women who hate the very idea of free expression. It is up to us to accept this reality and acknowledge that, despite reasonable precaution, our freedoms mean that we could die.

We still speak as if only soldiers can make the ultimate sacrifice for this country, but let me tell you, this notion is unequivocally untrue. Not since the First World War have men lined up and attacked each other head-on like you see in the movies. The images from Boston resembled a war zone because it was one. The battle came to the city, and there were casualties and wounded — just like Oklahoma City, Columbine and 9/11. Would you lay down your life for your country? Lincoln spoke of soldiers sacrificed upon the altar of freedom. We are no longer given that choice. The battleground could be anywhere.

Sanctuary is not guaranteed because there is a balance between personal freedom and security. Complete freedom would be anarchy; complete security would mean stifling restrictions. Although we currently side with liberty, we are slowly inching toward safety. I am not referring to small changes such as tweaking gun controls or items allowed on aircraft; imagine control on the level of Soviet-era communism. Look at the Patriot Act, Guantanamo, the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance, The Military Commissions Act, invasive airport screenings, etc. Have these actually made us safer? With today’s technology, Orwell’s Big Brother is not so far-fetched. We could end terrorism, but it would come at a cost: intrusion into every facet of life and an end of privacy. Would you be willing to live under those conditions?

The men who created this nation believed that personal rights were more important than public safety. Benjamin Franklin saw the future and warned us that “those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” What has changed since Franklin’s time? I have been through airports over 40 times since 2001. Every pat-down has felt invasive, as have the several times I’ve been through body scanners. I believe that these measures invade privacy and set dangerous precedents, even if they prevent terrorism. Our Founding Fathers would have died to protect our right to privacy — the impassioned cries of a certain Mr. Patrick Henry come to mind.

I would never have called myself patriotic, yet after this week, I realized that I am in love with a principle: the inane sentiment that I deserve the same respect as you. That no one — no government, person or institution — can infringe on me without consent. The men and women who have died in acts of terror should be commended as martyrs who sacrificed for this idea, not victims of needless attacks. Their gift should not be forgotten.

The human evil is always ready to strike. Our nation might be in its dying throes, or it might yet endure for countless millennia. But right now, our freedoms are in danger of being curtailed in the name of safety, the freedoms that are the only things worth protecting. Two hundred years ago, a few lunatics decided that liberty was more valuable than safety. And after all these years, it is still worth it.

Micah Watanabe is a freshman at Drexel University. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

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It takes less than 10 seconds to report a murder on the news — a life completely obliterated. But what about all the time it takes to create and sustain the life that was just eliminated? How many meals did Charlotte Bacon’s parents prepare for her? How many times did they take her to the doctor and the dentist? How many hugs and kisses did Charlotte Bacon’s parents and grandparents give their beloved 7-year old girl before she was killed in her elementary school in Connecticut? The huge investments of love, time and dreams for their daughter, as well as their daughter’s descendants, were wiped out with a single lethal bullet. Do we even know how many children like Noah Pozner, another child killed in Newtown, and Victoria Soto, a first grade teacher at the school, are killed every day in the United States? It’s surely impossible to calculate the number of families and family members — parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and teachers — whose lives are eternally changed because of such devastating losses. But for those who haven’t yet endured such a loss, these people who perish are just numbers, names reported before or after the weather and sporting events.

As a mother, grandmother and educator, I can’t stop grieving over the stunning loss of life that occurs every day in the Philadelphia area where my children and I live and work. And I can’t stop thinking about the resistance to practical steps that Sen. Dianne Feinstein and other responsible lawmakers have recommended be taken in an attempt to avoid future carnage. Many Democrats, as well as most Republicans, clearly love their guns more than the people they represent. As I watch them on TV trying to defend their outrageous neglect, I’m overwhelmed with frustration, disappointment and disgust. Where is their humanity? Where is their shame at their own inaction? Are they genuinely serious when they say that they can’t support background checks for gun purchasers or the elimination of assault weapons because they are defending the Second Amendment? How do these changes endanger the Second Amendment? Nobody has ever threatened to take all of their destructive toys away from them, and they know it. They say they are worried about the “slippery slope.” The only things that are slippery in Washington are their slippery tongues. They believe they can say anything at any time, and with the right amount of money behind them, get away with it regardless of the harm their ideas and policies may do to fellow human beings. Anybody who is intelligent enough to get elected to a public office is smart enough to know that it is reasonable to ensure that guns should only be sold to law-abiding and mentally competent people and that nobody really needs an assault weapon to go hunting or to protect oneself.

The fact that these legislators would rather implement a filibuster than permit the American public to witness its leaders discuss, debate and vote to expand background checks and other legislation to reduce gun violence is a sign that they are afraid to be exposed any more than they already are. But what right do these people have to prevent the American people from witnessing their government representatives doing their job? This is supposed to be a government of the people and for the people! Who are these lawmakers representing when they refuse to officially vote on the gun bill? Especially when they know that 90 percent of Americans want background checks, and a majority of Americans want a ban on assault weapons! Who is being served when topics of great importance to the general public are not even allowed to be publicly aired?

Time and time again, we are all witnesses to the cowardly, self-serving behavior of our government officials, who are much more concerned about protecting their jobs with money and positive ratings from the NRA than protecting the lives of the people they serve. It’s not President Obama whom people should worry about; he doesn’t want to diminish the freedom of responsible citizens. He certainly doesn’t want to take away our guns. It’s our Congress we should fear — the members who are doing an amazing job of using the government to serve themselves at any cost. I can only hope that those responsible for blocking the passage of improved gun legislation will pay a penalty for paying homage to the wrong people. Until then, I’m grieving for the terrible loss of each life we hear reported and for the loss of faith in the ability of too many of our legislators to fulfill their obligations to the people they have sworn to represent.

Alexis Finger is an associate professor in the Department of English and Philosophy. She can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

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No. North Korea will not strike South Korea first under rational circumstances because the North Korean military has fatal weak points, even when compared to the South Korean military.

The North Korean military force has a clear superiority in numbers against the South Korean military. According to the Defense Report of National Intelligence Service of South Korea, North Korea can theoretically raise an army of 8.87 million, including reserve forces, while South Korea can only raise an army of 3.67 million. North Korea also possesses more military equipment, like tanks and artillery.

With no military knowledge, people may assume that North Korea is an imminent threat to both South Korea and the United States. However, many fatal disadvantages of the North Korean military clearly prove that North Korea desperately wants to avoid the total war against South Korea and the United States.

Most importantly, North Korea is suffering from an extreme scarcity of resources, including food and fuel. With desertified land and primitive farming technology prevalent in most areas, many North Korean military personnel are forced to farm instead of train for battles. In most times, even these methods are not enough to feed all personnel, so the majority of them suffer from malnutrition. Most of North Korea’s fuel is supplied by China, and its energy self-sufficiency is slim to nonexistent. With the limitations of North Korea’s economic situation, there simply are not enough resources to maintain a standing army of any practical size.

Even the geography of the Korean Peninsula is not in North Korea’s favor. Since the establishment of the North Korean Navy, two separate commands were formed because it was impossible to exchange forces between the Yellow Sea and the East Sea. However, in the case of South Korea, naval forces can freely move from one sea to another through the South Sea. On land, the vast majority of North Korean terrain is covered by mountains, making air-base construction difficult. As a result of this, there are few North Korean air bases. It would be trivial for the U.S. or South Korea to put the entire North Korean air force out of commission.

Lastly, the South Korean military is of a much higher quality than the North Korean one. During the Korean War, the only reason that North Korea was able to push as far south as Pusan was the element of surprise and some Soviet tanks. North Korea still uses those same tanks, which cannot even scratch modern third-generation tanks. Although North Korea has 200 third-generation tanks called “Pok-Poong” (Thunder Storm), which are merely a cheap knockoff of Russian third-generation tanks, South Korea has1,800 third-generation tanks. Furthermore, South Korea recently finished development of a fourth-generation tank called “Heuk-Pyo” (Black Panther), which can annihilate a North Korean armored platoon in a matter of minutes. On the ocean, the South Korean Navy owns three Aegis-equipped destroyers. One Aegis ship can locate over 200 enemy ships and strike 24 enemy ships at the same time. To make a boxing analogy, North Korea’s navy is a couple of toddlers while South Korea’s is an angry Joe Frazier. Lastly, North Korea’s 40 MiG-29s may be a threat, but with their poor maintenance and inexperienced pilots, I seriously doubt that they can match against any modern jet fighter. Any North Korean jets lesser than a MiG-29 are really just target practice.

With the support of the mighty United States Pacific Fleet, which could obliterate all of North Korea in days, North Korean military forces are simply no match against the joint forces of the United States and South Korea. But why does North Korea keep provoking hostility and speaking of unceasing war? I believe the answer lies in the internal situation in North Korea. The only reason that the North Korean people silently allowed iron fisted-rule of the Kim family is the belief that the government will protect them from the imperialist forces of the United States. If the Korean War or perceived “hostile acts” cease to exist, there are no reasons to follow the unjust rule of Kim Jong Un. This is why the propaganda ministry keeps the North Korean people on edge.

However, North Korea’s recent successful nuclear tests suggest that the DPRK may be an actual threat. Fortunately, this development is only the early part of the weaponizing of nuclear power. With midrange missile technology, the only possible targets for North Korea are South Korea and Japan. However, if we let North Korea develop long-range ballistic missiles and minimize nuclear warheads, North Korea will ultimately become uncontrollable. In a worst-case scenario, if North Korea sells a minimized nuclear warhead to an extreme terrorist group, no place in the world could be made safe from a nuclear apocalypse. It could even happen right here in Philadelphia.

I doubt that North Korea will actively launch nuclear missiles pre-emptively because the primary role of these weapons is to protect Kim’s regime from outside threats, unless the situation in North Korea becomes “irrational,” in which case even the assumption that North Korea will only use them to protect its government will be a null theory.

Therefore, the fate of the world relies on decisive actions by the United States and South Korea, either to let North Korea own “the grip of the sword” or to strike before the North can pose any more threats to world peace.

Alex Cho is a freshman political science major at Drexel University. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

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Last term I tabled with the Sierra Club in the Handschumacher Dining Center and rec center to encourage students to participate in Meatless Mondays. I’d like to explain why Meatless Mondays are an important step in furthering Drexel’s sustainability and how the argument for sustainable meat is not a valid solution.

So why Meatless Mondays? How can the environment benefit from Meatless Mondays? Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for a Livable Future backs the Meatless Monday campaign, which dates back to World War I to reduce consumption for aid in war efforts and has been providing resources to public health centers and students since 2003. Meatless Monday means something different than it did back in 1917. Today, Meatless Mondays is a campaign focused on environmental and health responsibility as well as better welfare for animals.
Meat production uses a great number of resources, including land, water, grains and energy. In 2003 the American Society for Clinical Nutrition wrote in “Sustainability of meat-based and plant-based diets and the environment” that “The U.S. food production system uses 50 percent of the total U.S. land area, 80 percent of the fresh water and 17 percent of the fossil energy used in the country.” One might argue that most of the land used for food production is due to grain, wheat, soy and barley production. However, 70 percent of that food is fed directly to 10 billion factory-farmed animals every year.

By reducing your meat consumption once per week and finding meat-free alternatives, you help to decrease the amount of resources used for meat production because you are directly lessening the demand for animal products and eating plants that require many fewer resources. For instance, production for one pound of beef takes between 1,800 and 2,500 gallons of water, based on whether it is home cooked or retail purchased. Meanwhile, for tofu production or even rice production, the amount of water used is between 220 and 250 gallons of water. For every day you avoid meat, you can save up to 2,000 gallons of water.

Livestock operations also account for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, which actually exceeds emissions from the transportation sector. Air quality around these factory farms is negatively affected by the release of significant quantities of toxic gases, particulates and bioaerosols that arise from feed, animals, manure and micro-organisms. These noxious vapors are then transported through the air to neighboring communities. In addition, the waste accumulated by animal agriculture adds up to 500 million tons of manure annually, which is three times the Environmental Protection Agency estimate of 150 million tons of human waste produced annually in the U.S. This waste goes back into our environment. Some of it is used as fertilizer, but because the amount of waste produced is more than what is needed, it usually ends up polluting our rivers, streams and drinking water. Agricultural runoff is a major cause of dead zones, accounting for 173,000 miles of dead zones in U.S. waterways. Runoff from animal farming also accounts for 55 percent of soil and sediment erosion and more than 30 percent of excess nitrogen and phosphorus presence in drinking-water resources.

One attempt at a solution is to raise animals in a manner that respects their natural lives. For example, one might feed cattle on a free range with grass rather than on a concentrated animal feeding operation with grain. On the surface, this might seem like a step in the right direction. Certainly for the cow, the quality of life increases because the animal experiences life outside a CAFO, but its alleged sustainability still remains in question. Gidon Eshel, a geophysicist and professor at Bard College, has illustrated that not only do plant-based meals require half as much acreage per person per year and emit a third less greenhouse gas emissions than the average U.S. diet, but “grass-fed meat is more, not less, greenhouse-gas intensive.” Eshel demonstrates that grazing animals emit two to four times more methane than feedlot animals due to diet — essentially, grass-fed animals release more methane due to eating a more cellulose-rich diet than feedlot animals eating mostly simple sugars and not ruminating. From another logical perspective, because both intensive farm animal production and organic animal feeding operations are occurring in the U.S., the methane release from cattle alone is detrimental to biodiversity and the environment. Even with an increase in organic farms and a decrease in factory farms, the amount of methane and carbon dioxide emitted by agriculture would still increase due to the need for more grazing land, resulting in equal agricultural runoff and an increase in energy and water used.

We’ve established why factory farms are bad and can conclude that organic free-range farms aren’t a solution; we know that plant agriculture has a much smaller carbon footprint and is less devastating ecologically than animal agriculture. Therefore we can conclude that plant-based meals are a solution, as emphasized by Meatless Mondays, to many of the environmental challenges we face.

Abstaining from animal products at least one day per week has a significant and measurable impact on the agricultural industry. Although this is a very rough figure based on mean averages and estimates, the following equation provides an idea of how many animals could be saved through Meatless Mondays. If you take the amount of animals a vegetarian spares every year (around 50, including fish) and divide that number by 365, that vegetarian saves about 0.14 animals per day. Students spend 34 Mondays at Drexel during their freshman year. Assuming that a freshman goes to the dining hall every one of those Mondays and participates in Meatless Mondays by choosing plant-based meals, that freshman will save almost five animals in his or her first academic year.

Obviously, there are more than just freshmen eating in the dining hall, and not every freshman will participate in Meatless Mondays or even be guaranteed to be in the dining hall on Mondays. Yet even if you take a fraction of those freshmen, say 500 of 2,700, those freshmen will save 2,500 animals from the beginning of fall 2013 to the end of spring 2014. Considering that it would take one vegetarian 50 years to save 2,500 animals, this is an astronomical amount for a community to save in a single year. The amount of water saved and greenhouse gases not emitted is almost inconceivable, considering that it takes 660 gallons of water to produce a pound of chicken meat, and chickens comprise 90 percent of the animal population in the U.S. Beef and pork take even more water to produce, transport and shelve. The environmental sustainability of eating plant-based meals is unmatched by any other attempt at a solution.

Meatless Mondays is a step in the right direction to reducing our impact on the planet. It is good for us and the rock we live on, and Meatless Mondays helps to reduce animal cruelty.

Benjamin Sylvester is a member of the Drexel Sierra Club. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.
The Drexel Sierra Club publishes EnviroWeekly every week.

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Fanaticism is one of the most dangerous mindsets of the individual, and when it is combined with strong religious or political backing, it is also the most detrimental to a cause. It comes as no surprise, then, that in regard to the marriage equality debate, fanaticism reigns supreme for opponents of same-sex marriage. Whether based in religious dogma or personal feeling, many (not all) lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals have grown to reject religion and label all who agree with or who practice religion as “homophobic.” It is important to keep in mind that individuals are entitled to their own opinions and that trying to change a person’s opinions is ultimately detrimental to a cause. While those against same-sex marriage may be zealots in their own way, zealotry from the LGBT community only serves to further fuel the fire of disagreement.

So what sparked me to write about this in particular? Recently I had a discussion with several LGBT individuals who seemed to express great animosity toward those who did not agree with them. One went so far as to state that according to their views, anyone who thought that being homosexual was a sin was automatically less of a person At first I agreed, but the more that I thought about what this person had said, the more I sympathized with the “homophobe” in question. The truth is that we live in a diverse country that provides a place where people of different beliefs can practice those beliefs freely. While I support same-sex marriage across all 50 states, I do believe that the LGBT community as well as the opposition can come to a compromise on the issue.

Providing a framework based on the separation of church and state is the best approach to the issue. Allowing individual religious groups to choose who can and can’t marry but still providing secular marriages to all who wish to marry is a fairly reasonable solution, if not the most practical. Yet this still seems to offend some in the LGBT community. My message to those individuals is to stop acting like children. Not everyone who disagrees with marriage equality is a homophobe, and by claiming that they are, you are only further alienating your cause. This is why progress within the LGBT community has been an uphill trudge with consistent setbacks. Calling for equality does not mean a right of way for a specific group but rather that all opinions are heard on that issue, including your own. While the cause is certainly an emotionally charged one, radicalism should not be the go-to solution for both sides.

Yes, marriage equality is a very prevalent political and social issue, and there are no doubts that tensions arise from both sides of the aisle. In many cases it might seem that supporters and their opponents may never come to some agreement, when in reality a solution lies right before our eyes. Unfortunately, radical voices from both camps prevent a logical and legal end to the debate from ever happening. So the cycle continues: the individual is brainwashed into rallying behind a cause with such intensity that it separates an entire group from the middle ground, and actual results are never achieved. Now, more than ever, it is important to deradicalize the movements from both sides and adjust toward a mutual compromise.

Vaughn Shirey is a freshman computer science major at Drexel University. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.
Queerview publishes biweekly in weeks 3, 5, 7,and 9 .

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By now, I’m certain we are all familiar with Justin Bieber’s ill-fated PR visit to the Anne Frank house. His note, “Hopefully, she would have been a Belieber,” while ill advised, was probably meant as a compliment. The social media scene, however, immediately blew up. We zipped through the jokes, self-righteousness and justifications in a few hours, and no one noticed it was a comment indicative of our culture.

The trademark feature of Facebook is not friend requests or status updates. It is the “like” button. For example, when Google attempted to enter the social media market, the first thing it did was create a “+1” button to compete with “like.” We live in the time of the loose connection: Facebook friends, Twitter followers, and supporting causes from couches. The term “like” is so generic, so harmless, so versatile even, that it has become the word of our generation. Centuries from now, historians will call these decades “the age of ‘like.’”

It is well documented that social networking websites are not offering services to the public; they are selling people’s information and views to advertising agencies. To the number crunchers at Facebook, everything is extraneous except likes. The bands, causes, movies, foods and anything else that you like are what gets sold back to you. Strangely, though, not only have we accepted this, but we have also altered our language and culture to reflect our obsession with liking things.

Truthfully, I am more interested in our side of the “like.” When one is creating an online profile, think of how much one’s personal tastes in food, music, clothes, etc., factor into the equation. The average Facebook user is said to like around 70 pages, which doesn’t even include statuses and photos. Or consider Pinterest, literally a social networking site that is nothing more than boards of what one enjoys, while Twitter is a maze of favorites and retweets. Defining not only our avatars but also our personalities through what we like is what we do.

This strange desire to associate by likes carries over into everyday conversation. It is how we connect with new people: online forums, interest-based websites, clubs, etc. It is what you say to acquaintances: “I don’t like the professor. On the other hand, I do like the sports team.” More importantly, we have to make sure our likes are acceptable and relatable to our peers. When was the last time you heard someone say, “Hey, what do you think about the Jonas Brothers?” Five years or more, right? We constantly manage our likes and dislikes to keep them relevant because we are judged by them.

This brings us back to Bieber. He either thought about the message he was writing for a few seconds or had planned it in advance. If he had thought for a few seconds, it is an easy jump from, “I want this to be relevant, related to me and complimentary at the same time,” to “Hopefully, she would have been a Belieber.” If he had planned it in advance, what reason would he have to write anything but, “I thought this girl was amazing. Hopefully she would have thought the same of me”? It isn’t strange he tried to convey the desire for mutual admiration. It was bizarre because there is a label for things.

What I found so strange about the blowback of Bieber’s comments was the cognitive dissonance it represented. In our culture we pretend to judge people by deeds, but we define people by what they like. Hundreds of years ago, when men and women began giving each other surnames, they focused on family ties or things people did: Edward, John’s son or Robert the baker. To our ancestors, occupation and family were the most symbolic and indicative of a person. Considering the society in which we live, if we began renaming people, wouldn’t we start with Danielle the Belieber or Anthony the Whovian?

Micah Watanabe is a freshman at Drexel University. He can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

The post Writing on the wall appeared first on The Triangle.

In the years since the September 11 attacks, the federal government has taken measures to make the public feel secure against terrorism. Monday’s bombings should serve as a tragic reminder of just how vulnerable we are as a country. The security measures put in place after 9/11 did their job: they gave us back our sense of security. It’s a pain in the neck to go through the security line at the airport, but we go about our day feeling just a little bit safer because we know that someone is looking out for us. It’s still too early to draw any conclusions about who set off the bombs or why.

The images flooding the 24-hour news cycle are images that we expect from places like Iraq or Afghanistan — images of innocent citizens fleeing for their lives, when just moments ago, they were living their lives. The streets were literally red with blood. I’m left wondering how this attack will figure into the future for all of us. Will there be annual memorials? Will there be a follow-up special 10 years later, asking, “Where are they now?” All evidence suggests that the Boston Marathon will go on next year, as it has for the past 117 years. Maybe that’s the best course of action: We continue our lives, refusing to let fear dictate our actions, all the while remembering that we must be proactive instead of reactive.

Most of us never questioned our safety in the pre-9/11 world, but now we are hypervigilant when it comes to our mass transportation. How far will our fear take us this time? We, as a nation, have to start thinking about preventing tragedies instead of reacting to them. No one is perfect, and no one system is perfect. It’s most likely a tribute to our security system that we have seen terrorist plots thwarted. We will never be able to prevent every act of violence, but our own recent history has shown that when we build an efficient system of prevention, lives are saved.

As we wait for new details to help explain what happened and who is responsible, we will begin to draw a more complete understanding of what went wrong. We will feel compelled to try and fix every hole that this attack reveals. We must make sure that the lesson we learn from this event is one of observance and logistics. But above all, we have to learn how to better protect ourselves instead of letting our fear run rampant.

Brionne Powell is a freshman political science major at Drexel University. She can be contacted at op-ed@thetriangle.org.

The post Lessons from Boston appeared first on The Triangle.

Dear Editor,

A residence hall: For many students at Drexel it’s a home away from home, as well as their first time living on their own. Many freshmen walk into their hall on the first day with high expectations but are quickly disappointed. Missing doors, broken windows and cockroaches have been reported in many halls. As time goes on, these dreadful conditions only get worse. While these qualities sound more like the description of an abandoned building, many students like myself are unfortunately forced to live in these conditions. What makes this situation even worse is that most residents are paying an average of over $1,000 per month to live in these conditions. Drexel residence halls are in deplorable condition, but who is to blame? Many students are eager to point the finger at maintenance or housekeeping staff, but in reality these conditions are the fault of no one other than ourselves. So what can we do to improve our quality of living?

One major thing we can do to improve our quality of living is to treat the halls more like our home. The residence halls are home to over 92 percent of freshmen at Drexel, and yet students continue to destroy their living area. So what can we do to treat the halls with more respect? One thing we can do is pick up after ourselves. Whether it’s hair in the sink or trash in the hallway, if we all do our part to clean up after ourselves, we will find the conditions of the halls greatly improved.

Besides simply picking up after ourselves, another major thing that can be done to improve our quality of living is to treat one another with respect. It can be a simple “hi” when passing someone in the hallway or just waving to a maintenance employee. These simple acts of kindness matter because people are much more likely to have a sense of accountability when they know their neighbors. For example, instead of leaving a gum wrapper on the floor, someone will think twice and pick it up. Even the smallest acts of kindness help to build a community and improve the sense of responsibility.

The general rule to treat others the way you want to be treated can be applied to taking care of the residence halls. We should treat our things and public shared places, like the lounges and bathrooms, the way we would want to see other people treating it. This causes a cycle. One person will see someone picking up after him or herself and will feel compelled to do the same thing.

Most of the maintenance issues at Drexel are not the fault of the staff, but of the residents. If everyone cleaned up after him or herself and treated property with respect, we would see a great improvement in the quality of the residence halls at Drexel. Until students are willing to be responsible for themselves, conditions of the halls will remain the same.

Christina Wilkins
Drexel University