S
ome things are out of our control,
like gas prices and traffic. You
can’t control what others do or
say, just like you can’t pick
who’s in your family. Unfortunately,
most of us assume we cannot control
climate change.
Eyebrows have furrowed and
anxiety levels have risen since the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change released a report earlier this
month, outlining the treacherous path
Earth is taking toward increased
temperatures. Scientists now believe
the point of no return is when
our climate changes by 1.5
degrees Celsius, not 2.0 degrees
Celsius as previously thought.
If we don’t “act dramatically”
to reduce the carbon dioxide
levels in our atmosphere, global
temperatures
may
become
irreversible in as soon as 12
years. Time is running short;
realistically, how can one of us
in a sea of 7.6 billion earthlings
keep the planet from getting
warmer? We do it one person at
a time.
Experts offer their opinions
on whether we should consume
less or consume smarter. At
the Society of Environmental
Journalists conference in Flint,
Mich., this month, recognized
experts gathered to discuss how
to mitigate climate change and
literally “Cutting the Crap”. Is
reducing waste or recycling the
key to cleaning up the world?
We need to truly “figure out
how to recycle” and keep those
plastic molecules in play, said
Tony Kingsbury, founder and
president of TKingsbury LLC,
an international sustainability
and plastics consulting firm
said at the panel. “The problem
is that waste is managed at a
local level, on a city-by-city
basis,”
Kingsbury
explained,
denouncing
the
lack
of
standardized recycling policies
from Ann Arbor to Detroit.
Further, the material recovery
facilities we have today were
predominantly built to handle
paper and not the plastics we
consume at astronomical levels.
“We set up the collection for
paper… and don’t have the
infrastructure
for
plastics,”
Kingsbury said. In other words,
to slow global warming, we
need to rethink consumption by
introducing fewer plastics into
the world, and studying how to
reuse the “crap” we already have.
On the other hand, Annie
Leonard, the executive director
of Greenpeace USA, argued we
need to target the factories and
eliminate environmental evils at
the source. Plastic is practically
a euphemism for fossil fuel, she
said, and if we focus all of our
energy on recycling, dangerous
toxins will still contaminate
our environment. The process
of consumption starts with the
earth and move from factories to
homes to landfills, at which point
it’s too late. As a country, she
argued, we need to design waste
out of the system and change
the demand for products such as
petroleum, coal and natural gas.
Recycling can’t keep up with our
plastic intake where the EPA says
34.5 million tons were generated
in
2015
alone.
Instead
of
sweeping the problem under the
rug (to China), Leonard suggests
we remodel our economic base
without utilizing fossil fuels;
fighting fossil fuel extraction
would stop the expansion of
single use plastics.
“Only 10 percent of plastics
get recycled,” Leonard pointed
out, shining a light on the
real
outcomes
of
recycling
campaigns.
I offer my opinion, as well. It
starts with the people. No matter
how we do clean up the planet,
via recycling or redesigning, the
facts need to be dispersed and
understood. It is inspiring to
hear a room of environmental
professionals discuss the future
of the world, but now what? What
about the rest of the country
— college students, kids in
elementary school, the ones who
don’t read the newspaper every
day? We were kids when schools
began cutting worksheets in half
in order to save paper. We are the
ones who refill water bottles and
opt to ride bikes instead of cars.
This is where behavior change
starts: consumers must become
aware and use that knowledge to
act accordingly.
In the 1960s and ’70s, concern
about the environment spiked
for the first time, as did the
desire
to
utilize
reusables
and
recyclables.
However,
environmental activism was not
born overnight. One by one, U.S.
citizens began to recognize what
we had done to our environment,
and consequently changed their
ways. “People start pollution,
people can stop it” was a popular
motto of the era, Kingsbury
said. He says the ’70s gave rise
to terms like “litterbug,” which
deflected the responsibility of
waste from manufacturers to
consumers.To incite behavior
change, the people who knew
the facts took the podium. In
1976 the EPA published a report
that outlined the problems of
pollution. The small set of pages
was sent around the nation; it
provided the public with the
truth and motivation to act.
The pamphlet explained in the
’60s, the U.S. was running out of
water because as the population
grew, the amount of rain stayed
the same; the population grew
from 150 million in 1950 to
190 million in 1964, and has
nearly doubled since 1950 as
we approach 2020. Water use
per person was also growing,
the booklet explained. From
1900 to 1964, individual water
use had quadrupled, bringing
total water use as a country to
about 300 billion gallons per
day. Showers, lawn sprinklers,
washing machines and industry
were a few of the main culprits.
Water, the essential component
for everything living on Earth,
was facing the possibility of a
shortage.
What was the practical, long-
term answer? According to the
booklet, the key was reusing
water and taking political action
with federal, state and local
governments. It urged the public
to ask the right questions and
seek accurate answers.
This is precisely what our
campus, town, state and country
need today: the facts. Did you
know that our country uses
more than 322 billion gallons of
water per day, and Washtenaw
Country
uses
30.3
million
gallons per day? Let’s try to use
less. The U.S. transportation
sector is responsible for roughly
30 percent of our country’s
emissions of greenhouse gases,
which contribute to climate
change.
The
auto
industry
is
therefore
headed
toward
autonomous, electric cars to
make the environment “cleaner.”
What you should know, however,
is that driverless cars do save
fuel and reduce greenhouse
gas emissions, but electric cars
might not be as clean as we
think. We can listen to Leonard
or Kingsbury, or even combine
both
of
their
arguments;
however, the truth is some 18
billion pounds of plastic wind up
in the ocean each year. We need
to figure out how to stop that —
perhaps by consuming less, or
perhaps by cleaning up what’s
already out there. We seemingly
cannot control climate change,
but the resources and knowledge
are here, folks. We need to first
know the facts, since countering
climate change starts with the
people.
Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A— Monday, October 22, 2018
Emma Chang
Ben Charlson
Joel Danilewitz
Samantha Goldstein
Emily Huhman
Tara Jayaram
Jeremy Kaplan
Lucas Maiman
Magdalena Mihaylova
Ellery Rosenzweig
Jason Rowland
Anu Roy-Chaudhury
Alex Satola
Ali Safawi
Ashley Zhang
Sam Weinberger
DAYTON HARE
Managing Editor
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
tothedaily@michigandaily.com
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.
ALEXA ST. JOHN
Editor in Chief
ANU ROY-CHAUDHURY AND
ASHLEY ZHANG
Editorial Page Editors
Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s Editorial Board.
All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
ERIK NESLER | COLUMN
Retailer woes
S
ears, the retailer found in
shopping malls across the U.S.
and “The Original Everything
Store,” filed for bankruptcy early in
the morning Oct. 15. The 125-year-old
American staple reached a deal with
lenders that involved closing 142 stores
by the end of the year. What lies ahead
for the company is uncertain, but its
seven-year streak of net losses signal
that the company may face complete
liquidation in the foreseeable future.
Liquidation will have overarching
implications for the nearly 70,000
individuals currently employed by
Sears. These lives will take a drastic
turn for the worse when the company
finally closes all of its doors and these
individuals find themselves out of
work. The liquidation will also affect
over 100,000 pensioners who earned
that regular income when they once
worked at the company.
Sears is yet another instance of the
serious implications that technological
disruption has had on the retail
industry. The expansion of online
shopping, due to the rise of Amazon,
has had drastic consequences for the
U.S. economy.
In the years from 2012 to 2017,
250,000 department store employees
found themselves unemployed from
aggressive
industry-wide
layoffs.
While this statistic is concerning, it’s
nothing compared to the 6.2 million
individuals who could find themselves
without a job in the future thanks to
intense competition with Amazon.
While technological disruption
and Amazon is certainly causing
headaches in the retail industry, many
retailers struggle with something else:
Retailers are battling to overcome
the hefty debt burdens brought on by
private equity investors.
To illustrate this problem, let’s
look at Toys R Us, the toy retailer that
was forced to liquidate in June this
year. Toys R Us was bought out in
2005 by the private equity firms Bain
Capital and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts
along with the real-estate firm
Vornado Realty Trust. To purchase
the company, the private equity
investors loaded the company with
debt to minimize risk and boost their
eventual return.
Bryce Covert detailed the impact
of this buyout in a piece published
by The Atlantic. He wrote that 2007
interest expense (cash that needs to be
paid every year to creditors) consumed
97 percent of the company’s operating
profit. As the company faced fierce
competition, Toys R Us should have
used this operating profit to fund
projects that could have improved
the company’s performance, like
upgrading stores or enhancing its
online presence. Instead, the firm
was forced to use its capital to pay off
creditors.
When the Great Recession hit
and revenue fell, Toys R Us struggled
to afford its regular interest expenses
and debt repayments. The debt burden
hurt the firm’s chances of weathering
the recession and overcoming the
challenges posed by the rise of online
shopping and Amazon.
As it turns out, private equity-
backed retailers that have filed for
bankruptcy are more common than
you may expect. In this past year,
Payless ShoeSource Inc., the shoe
retailer
with
22,000
employees
worldwide, and Gymboree, a clothing
outlet with 11,000 employees, filed for
bankruptcy. Both companies, along
with a slew of others, struggle with
the massive debt burden forced upon
them by private equity investors.
FTI Consulting found two-thirds of
the retailers that filed for Chapter 11
bankruptcy in 2016 and 2017 were
backed by private equity.
As retailers struggle to fight back
against Amazon, their debt burdens
will put them at a serious disadvantage.
The combination of these components
will have major implications for the
millions of individuals affected and
the U.S. economy as a whole.
As Amazon grows, retailers will
increasingly end up like Sears or Toys
R Us. Amazon needs to recognize
and manage its immense impact on
the economy. While the company
has made progress in providing more
value to the workforce, like its recent
decision to raise its minimum wage
to $15 an hour, the company could be
doing more.
What to do about the things we cannot control
JULIA MONTAG | COLUMN
Erik Nesler can be reached at
egnesler@umich.edu
Julia Montag can be reached at
jtmont@umich.edu.
MARISA WRIGHT | COLUMN
The power of women’s rage
Y
ou probably did not learn it in
history class growing up. You
probably did not learn it in any
books. You probably have never even
thought about. You still may not even
know it. But, you should.
What you probably don’t know
is that women’s rage has been at the
root of almost every social change
movement
since
this
country’s
founding. We are taught mostly of
the patriotic and heroic anger of men
in our history class. We learn of the
virtuous, masculine anger fueling
the rebellions and revolts that won us
our independence. We revere those
men that dumped tea into the Boston
Harbor in an ultimate act of resistance
to tyrannical taxation. We honor the
men who bravely endured the walk
across the Edmund Pettus bridge in
Selma, Alabama. We empathize with
the men who refused, even at the risk
of arrest, to be drafted to serve in the
Vietnam War.
Yet, we never learn of the
indispensable women at the heart of
many of these movements. We are
not taught the names of the women in
the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee who demanded equal
opportunity and treatment in a
movement based on equal rights.
We are not taught the names of the
women in the Young Lords Party
who performed the labor of teaching
the male leaders of their party the
harmful impact of their machismo-
based actions. Even though Black
Lives Matter is only four years old, we
are not taught the names of the three
women whose activism and refusal
to be silenced founded this powerful
and well-known movement. While we
might learn of the women’s suffrage
movement of the early 20th century
in passing, it is seldom pointed out
how it only guaranteed white women
the right to vote or how many of the
women recognized as leaders of those
movements held shameful white
supremacist attitudes.
Even worse than those who
are assigned the task of teaching
us everything we do not know
gatekeeping crucial historical facts,
children, by preschool age, are taught
that boys can freely express their
anger while girls must suppress theirs.
In academic and professional settings,
women and girls are disdained, or
even punished, for expressing anger
or discontent with any sort of gender-
based oppression.
This type of penalty is experienced
by women of all kinds, from celebrities
to regular citizens. Tennis star Serena
Williams is routinely punished for
her expression of rage, which was
evident at the U.S. Open earlier this
year when a male referee took away a
whole game after Williams demanded
an apology for his botched call earlier
in the match, ordinary women also
experience decreased status and
perceived incompetence versus male
employees who are more likely to
be hired and given more power and
autonomy in their jobs when they
express anger.
It is also important to note that
women of color, and Black women in
particular, face additional abuse at the
hands of white men when they express
their ire. The stereotype of the angry
Black woman, and the subsequent
treatment of their anger as irrational,
reinforces racist practices that often
lead to harsher consequences than
white women face.
Still, despite all of the attempted
stymying of women and their anger,
women have been raging since the
dawn of time. If you are inclined to
the Christian story of human origin,
you might want to consider how
Eve’s rebellious consumption from
the tree of knowledge was fueled by
her displeasure for the ignorance
enforced upon her by God. If you are
not, all you have to do is read a book or
study some history, albeit not the same
selective history you were probably
taught in school, to understand how
instrumental women and their rage
were and are to progress.
Not sure where to start? There
are two books that offer the best
history and analysis of women’s rage:
“Good and Mad: The Revolutionary
Power of Women’s Anger” by Rebecca
Traister and “Rage Becomes Her: The
Power of Women’s Anger by Soraya
Chemaly. Once you have learned the
value of women’s rage from those two
brilliant books, ladies: let your rage out;
men: listen to and support our rage.
While doctors and medical websites
are clear that bottling up anger can
have health implications, such as
stress and anxiety, it is also the male
response to women’s anger, calling
outspoken women “crazy bitches”
or undermining them with claims of
overreaction, that induces even more
stress and frustration, ultimately
leading women to hold it in even more
for fear of repudiation and further the
damage on their health.
Marisa Wright can be reached at
marisadw@umich.edu
KENDALL HECKER | COLUMN
Eat your vegetables
M
y family isn’t big on
birthday presents. Most
years I get a nice sweater,
wool socks to replace those I have
worn through and a homemade cake.
So I was surprised on my 18th birthday
when my mom, straining from the
weight, handed me a massive box
wrapped in red paper. I tore it open to
find a bright white KitchenAid mixer,
with three paddle attachments and
a big silver bowl. I suspect most 18
year olds would only be so excited to
receive a kitchen appliance to celebrate
their first year of legal adulthood. I,
however, was ecstatic.
Since middle school, I have loved
to bake. I love the creativity of it. I
love concocting new recipes in my
head, the feeling of flour on my fingers
and that sore ache in my arms after
kneading dough or whipping egg
whites. I love making a cheeky little
piece of goodness. I love getting to lick
the spoon.
Most special to me, though, was
how my baking made others feel.
It became tradition that I made a
birthday cake for each of my friends,
and I enjoyed making them feel worth
all the time it took to decorate. I loved
baking fudgy brownies to make
studying for AP exams a little more
bearable for my friends. I reveled in the
look on people’s faces when I walked
into the room with my signature red-
topped tupperware, and how they all
gathered around to wait for me to lift
the lid and reveal whatever heaven I
had whipped up for that day.
Baking was also a ploy to make
myself likable. I figured out early on
in my baking career that bringing
cupcakes to class was a great way
to get on everyone’s good side, and I
became very comfortable living there.
It made interacting with others feel
safer, as though I already knew their
evaluation of me would come out as
a net positive. I never wanted any
trouble, I didn’t want to step on any
toes and I never wanted to be worse
than neutral in someone’s eyes. People
tend not to take issue with you when
they associate you with dessert, and
my irksome craving to be liked kept
my kitchen busy.
“I make smiles with a big silver
bowl” is the first line of a poem I started
when I was 17 but never finished. It still
conjures for me the feeling of cradling a
mixing bowl in the crook of my arm as
I slide a silicon spatula around its edges
with a practiced twirl. It is a nostalgic
feeling — I don’t have the same time,
space or energy to cook in college as I
did in high school. I also don’t have as
much time for the sentiment. Though
appeasing others remains my instinct,
I work hard to convince myself that it
is neither necessary or healthy. There
are arguments to make, policies to
propose and national political battles
to be fought, and none of them will
be solved with fudge (actually, I
would argue that my chili-chocolate
fudge could probably go a long way to
mitigate national conflicts, but you get
my point).
I have always fled from conflict.
I joke with friends that choosing
a major like public policy, where
every essay and assignment means
choosing a side on a divisive topic,
was a somewhat masochistic choice.
Disagreements make me squirm.
Serious confrontation is like torture.
However, in my adventures down
the rabbit hole of modern politics, I’ve
found that there are certain conflicts
that don’t make me want to run and
hide. I will happily do battle for a
woman’s right to choose. Immigration
reform and immigrants’ rights? I’ll
confront you ten ways to Sunday.
Policies that disenfranchise minority
voters? Debate me, I dare you.
Passion shuts up my inner
peacemaker. I have come to see the
part of myself that replaces conflict
with cookies as this older woman
who just wants everyone to sit down
for some tea and chat about “This Is
Us.” Turns out, though, that she lived
through the ‘60s and burned her fair
share of bras and marched in her fair
share of protests. She fights her own
battles, she just also loves pie.
Conflict is certainly not something
I seek out, but I have come to realize
how important it is to be willing to
disagree with someone, both for myself
and for the nation in this particularly
divisive time when national values
formerly deemed intrinsic have been
called into question. Respectful debate
and argument are valuable and help
us grow and learn. Positive conflict
can be like eating your vegetables. It’s
not everyone’s favorite thing, but it
makes you stronger and better, and it’s
unhealthy to avoid it completely.
I love to bake. I love the warm
comfort of making something that
will make someone else content for a
moment. But a growing young woman
needs more than just pleasantries and
chocolate. She needs to be challenged
and pushed. She needs to learn to
construct a valid argument, to engage
with the world around her and be
willing to fight for something she
believes in, even if it means finally
suggesting to her roomates that they
clean their dirty dishes in the sink.
I’ll always make smiles with my
big silver bowl. But from now on when
I find the precious time to slip on my
apron and roll up my sleeves, I will
try to do it for myself and not to avoid
an interaction that could encourage
me to grow. A balanced meal can be
difficult to come across in college, but
we should all try to remember to eat
our vegetables before we get around
to dessert.
Kendall Hecker can be reached at
kfhecker@umich.edu
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