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Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Wednesday March 13, 2019

Emma Chang

Joel Danilewitz

Samantha Goldstein

Emily Huhman
Tara Jayaram

Jeremy Kaplan
Elias Khoury

Magdalena Mihaylova

Ellery Rosenzweig

Jason Rowland

Anu Roy-Chaudhury

Alex Satola

Ashley Zhang

Erin White

FINNTAN STORER

Managing Editor

Stanford Lipsey Student Publications Building

420 Maynard St.

Ann Arbor, MI 48109

tothedaily@michigandaily.com

Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.

MAYA GOLDMAN

Editor in Chief
MAGDALENA MIHAYLOVA

AND JOEL DANILEWITZ

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

M

ost know the dangers
climate change poses
to both our present and

future, but I will give
a refresher. We are
already experiencing
its impacts. Climate
change
exacerbated

the drought in the
Middle
East
that

partly
caused
the

Syrian
Civil
War,

increased
the

frequency
of
the

wildfires that ravaged
California
in
the

fall and one intergovernmental
report found climate change
causes
400,000
premature

deaths every year.

That is just the tip of the

proverbial
(melting)
iceberg.

The Paris climate accord urged
governments to collaborate to
keep long-term global warming
below 1.5 degrees Celsius, but
reaching that goal is becoming
a pipe dream. With 2 degrees
Celsius of warming (the Paris
climate
accord’s
catastrophe

threshold),
98
percent
of

coral reefs will die, sea levels
will rise by approximately 50
centimeters
(displacing
more

than a billion people by 2060),
the Mediterranean region will
have 17 percent less freshwater
available and heat waves could
increase. But now, 2 degrees
of warming is looking like a
relatively positive outcome.

Pledging to get to these

thresholds
is
meaningless

without actually taking action.
Right now we are more on course
for long-term warming in the
range of 3.1 to 3.7 degrees Celsius,
according to Climate Action
Tracker. There are few estimates
that translate these predictions
into direct loss of human life, but
if we are experiencing 400,000
premature deaths with barely
1 degree of warming, nearly 4
degrees will be Armageddon.

That all of these outcomes

are rough estimates is part of
the problem. Climate change
will bring about continuous,
unpredictable
and
dangerous

change — a complete loss of
normality for the rest of our
and our children’s lives. And all
of these impacts have and will
continue to disproportionately
impact people of color, low income
and working class communities,
women, LGBTQ individuals and
indigenous communities.

These
global
challenges

are so daunting that it is hard
to know how to start trying to
fight them. This Friday’s Global
Climate Strike may be the last,
best chance we have to broadcast
student voices around climate
action.

The Global Climate Strike is

being led by high school students
around the world. This wave
of activism began with Greta
Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swedish
activist, who has skipped school
every Friday since August to
demand the Swedish Parliament
uphold its commitments to the

Paris agreement. Her movement
has spread around the world,
and tens of thousands of students

will be walking out of
classes on Friday to
protest global leaders’
failure to adequately
address
climate

change.

It
is
important

that everyone walks
out of class on Friday
at 11:11 a.m., comes to
the subsequent rally
at 12 p.m. on the Diag,
and to the march at 1

p.m. because climate organizing
of this magnitude does not
happen often. The last march
of this size was in 2015, when
more than 600,000 people took
to the streets in 175 countries
around the world to push for a
strong Paris agreement. If we
wait another four years before
making our voices heard, it will
be too late. The most recent
Intergovernmental
Panel
on

Climate Change report called
for
dramatic
reductions
in

greenhouse gas emissions by
2030. We simply cannot afford to
wait another four years.

While this strike will not

have the same numbers as the
2015 march did, it could be
more powerful. Striking is more
powerful than marching because
it shows that we are willing to lose
something to make our voices
heard, even if that something
is as trivial as lab attendance or
iClicker points.

Furthermore, while in 2015

we were marching to show
world leaders that we wanted
an ambitious plan for global
emissions reductions, now we are
calling out leaders for failing to
deliver on their promises. Hence,
this strike is not organized
by
established
environmental

organizations and leaders; it is led
by high school students inciting
grassroots organizing around
the world. Our claims have more
urgency and more authority now
than they did four years ago.

This strike is also important

because we need to play our
part by taking responsibility to
influence the decision-making of
the institutions we are a part of.
If we do not actively try to change
our institutions, we are complicit
in their inaction. Conveniently,
this strike comes at a critical
juncture for our institutions at
multiple levels. The University
of Michigan, Ann Arbor, the
state of Michigan and the entire
United States all face critical
climate decisions in the coming
months that we have the power
to influence.

First,

the

University.

President
Mark
Schlissel

just
created
the
President’s

Commission
on
Carbon

Neutrality,
tasked
with

recommending
emissions

goals for the University. The
commission’s members need to
know that students recognize
the existential threat climate
change poses to our futures, so

they act urgently to make the
University carbon neutral by
2030. But the University needs
to know that how they get to
carbon neutrality is important
too; purchasing carbon offsets
allows the University to continue
burning
fossil
fuels
without

accountability, while expanding
the new Central Power Plant will
bind the University’s hands in an
enormous investment that will
entrench our reliance on fossil
fuels.

In
Ann
Arbor,
city

councilmembers are considering
abandoning climate action. In
November 2017, voters agreed
to devote 40 percent of a new
millage
to
climate
action,

including the creation of a
sustainability office, as part of a
larger plan that set how the city
would use the money. However,
new city councilmembers want
to nullify the resolution without
an alternative plan for climate
action funding.

Last month, the Republican

Michigan
legislature
rejected

Gov.
Gretchen
Whitmer’s

executive order to strengthen the
Department of Environmental
Quality by giving it greater
oversight over water pollution.

Nationally,
our
two

Democratic senators, Gary Peters
and Debbie Stabenow, have not
signed on to the Green New
Deal, the ambitious framework
for addressing climate change
recently proposed in the Senate.

While
a
massive
strike

may
not
directly
lead
to

climate action from any or all
of
our
representatives,
our

demonstrations
matter.
By

showing we are willing to take
risks and that we actively care
about climate and our futures,
our demands for climate action
will be taken more seriously.

In his terrifying article on

worst-case
climate
scenarios,

David Wallace-Wells mentions
how Jim Hansen, one of the first
influential
climate
scientists,

criticized
environmental

scientists
for
“scientific

reticence” — they knew climate
change was an issue, but were
not bold enough to declare it
an
unambiguous
crisis.
The

University, Ann Arbor, Michigan,
the U.S. and countries around the
world are performing their own
institutional reticence. They are
taking it slow or doing nothing
at all when it is essential to take
dramatic action right now.

It should be unacceptable

for any of our institutions or
representatives
to
continue

slow-walking the process of
climate change mitigation and
adaptation. Our futures are at
stake. Alone, we are just a bunch
of
college
students
yelling.

But our voices are made more
powerful in conjunction with
the tens of thousands of students
striking with us. Let’s play hooky

MARIA ULAYYET | COLUMN

We must come back to our true roots on activism
A

fellow
writer
recently

wrote a column with an






interesting perspective on

student activism and divestment
that inspired me to give our campus
community a quick history lesson.
This column commandeered the
impact of the late Martin Luther
King Jr. in an attempt to highlight
the need to practice activism to fight
for the “outsider.” It is insulting to
use King’s legacy to memorialize
oppression as is done in the column.
King himself was placed on an
“enemies of the United States”
list that included terrorists, spies
or anyone the FBI perceived as a
threat. Historic movements are
seldom popular in the present and
we only celebrate King now after
years of a low approval rating.

The passion behind this piece

truly struck me and also inspired
me to dispel the misconceptions on
campus and beyond surrounding
divestment
and
the
conflict

between Israel and Palestine. Just
as many rightfully possess a deep
love and loyalty to their Jewish
roots, I urge people to consider the
sense of devotion that Palestinian-
Americans owe to their roots as
well.

The
on-campus
push
for

divestment campaigns stems from a
passion for human rights — not anti-
Semitism.

The
Boycott,
Divestment,

Sanctions (BDS) movement is
referenced as “hate-filled,” in the
column. As a form of nonviolent
pressure
on
Israel,
the
BDS

movement
calls
for
boycotts

against Israeli and international
companies involved in the violation
of Palestinian rights. Divestment
campaigns urge the withdrawal
of investments from companies
involved in the Israeli violation
of
Palestinian
human
rights,

encouraging
sanctions
to

pressure governments to fulfill
their obligations to hold Israel
accountable for its violations of
international agreements. Today,
movements
are
decentralized

with millions of participants, and
thus it is impossible to credit such
movements to a few individuals.
Categorically calling out a few
people on behalf of an entire group,
as is done in the article, is racism
in and of itself. According to the
movement’s official website, the
BDS movement “works to end
international support for Israel’s
oppression of Palestinians and
pressure Israel to comply with
international law.”

The author goes on to refer to

the Middle East as a sea of “illiberal
theocracies and failed states.”
However, the author does not put
this in its proper context, thereby
failing to give justice to the complex
history of the region. Unlike Israel,

the Arab countries share the
characteristic of being post-colonial
and are still suffering from the
remnants of imperialism. The CIA
has also openly interfered in Middle
Eastern elections repeatedly, which
has severely impeded their ability
to form effective democracies. The
support of the United States and
other Western powers via aid to the
Middle East has curtailed anything
related to democratic reform, as the
U.S. would rather work with puppet
dictatorships instead of independent
democratic governments.

A democracy is defined as “a

country in which power is held
by elected representatives.” Just
because Israel is a country that
elects its own officials and is a
“democracy” by definition does
not mean that it is a nation of equal
rights for all, nor that is not in
violation of international law.

The BDS movement is presented

as looking away from the “real evil,”
but what about the tangible policies
that Israel implements and that place
a barrier on other human beings?
Currently, Israel is in breach of
more than 30 UN Security Council
resolutions for actions including
the installment of concrete walls,
military watchtowers, barbed wire
fences on Palestinian land, as well as
ethnic cleansing, which primarily
consisted of the forced removal of
700,000 Palestinians and the illegal
annexation of East Jerusalem and
the Syrian Golan Heights. Which is
really the “real evil”?

Furthermore,
the
Israel

Defense Forces has functioned
under the Dahiya Doctrine, in
which it views civilian villages as
military bases and justifies the use
of disproportionate forces in such
civilian areas. Israeli authorities
have also been found to allow
pharmaceutical companies to test
weapons and drugs on Palestinian
and Arab prisoners and children.
The idea of harnessing such
disproportionate force dangerously
mirrors the principle of Manifest
Destiny implemented by the United
States that saw the genocide of
Native Americans. Israel continues
their version of Manifest Destiny
today by building more than 1,000
homes for Jewish settlements on
Palestinian land.

These
injustices
are
the

exact types of issues that should
be combated through student
activism. As mentioned in my fellow
columnist’s piece, Martin Luther
King Jr.’s words “remind us all
that it is our duty to stand against
injustice, wherever it may exist” and
that “none of us can sit idly by while
our fellow members of humankind
are denied their God-given rights.” I
agree with the reverend and believe
that my fellow columnist and I both
have a shared mission towards

peace and equality. The Palestinian
people’s drive for equality mirrors
the “outsider” feeling embodied by
the African-American community
during the civil rights movement.
The mission of movements such as
BDS centered around human rights
serves as a student’s outlet to stand
against the injustices imposed by
the Israeli government onto the
Palestinian people.

Peaceful
coexistence
is

unfortunately not the reality in
Israel. In the case of the Arab-
Israelis that are referenced as
“equals,” a recent Pew Research
Center study found that 79 percent
of Jewish Israelis believe that they
should have preferential treatment
over Arabs and that nearly half
agreed “Arabs should be expelled or
transferred from Israel.” Currently,
thousands of Palestinians must
go
through
Israeli
military

checkpoints, where they wait from
3 in the morning or earlier to secure
a place in “cage-like lines” to Israeli
and Palestinian cities beyond the
Green Line, simply to go to work
every day.

Palestinian and Arab-American

students alike here at the University
of Michigan possess a care for the
rights of their people and showcased
this
through
the
#UMDivest

campaign. The campaign was
simply intended to investigate
alleged human rights violations
committed by companies operating
in Israel and urge the withdrawal of
investments in companies involved
in such violations. The movement
by no means sought to propagate
hate-filled rhetoric toward Jewish
people or Israel as a country, but
rather serves to provide a voice
to the marginalized Palestinian
community.

Ignoring the state of the

Palestinians
and
Arab-Israelis

who are treated like second-class
citizens is inhumane. Securing
the freedom of some at the cost
of others’ rights is hypocritical.
Claiming anti-Semitism as a factor
for all movements detracts from
the discussion of human rights
issues that are occurring. There is a
historically emotional undertone to
the anger within these movements,
and this stems from the pain of
decades of such abuses. This is
the pain that Palestinian and
Palestinian-American students face
and deal with.

I urge students to continue

using their passionate voices to
fight against the inequality and
injustice they see and I hope we can
all eventually see eye to eye in the
search for peace through student
activism.

Maria Ulayyet can be reached at

mulayyet@umich.edu.

CONTRIBUTE TO THE CONVERSATION

Readers are encouraged to submit letters to the

editor and op-eds. Letters should be fewer than 300

words while op-eds should be 550 to 850 words.

Send the writer’s full name and University affiliation

to tothedaily@michigandaily.com.

TARA JAYARAM | OP-ED

I

magine you’re driving in
London or New York,
inching slowly through

patience-testing traffic. You
look to your left, peer into the
car next to you, and see that
there’s no one there. You look
to the other side and notice
there’s no one inside the car
to your right either. This is
a future we can expect: rows
of driverless gridlock, empty
cars
slowly
roaming
the

city, dutifully cruising until
their owners get out of work,
all in the name of avoiding
expensive
urban
parking

fees.

In a recent publication

in Transport Policy, Adam
Millard-Ball
and
his

colleagues at the University
of
California,
Santa

Cruz
illustrate
possible

alternatives that autonomous
vehicles can use instead of
parking.

Society
doesn’t
seem

to have made up its mind
on
autonomous
vehicles.

According to a Pew Research
Center
study,
Americans

are both enthusaistic and
worried about their adoption.
In academia, scientists have
split opinions on whether

future driverless cars will

positively or negatively affect
the environment. On the one
hand, driverless cars fuel
urban sprawl, but since their
design
optimizes
spatial

efficiency, they are also seen
as an opportunity to redesign
cities to promote walking and
cycling.

In the face of future

ambiguity,
there
is
one

clear
consequence
of
the

adoption
of
autonomous

vehicles: the effect on traffic.
An
inevitable
but
rarely

addressed aspect of these
cars is their ability to bypass
expensive parking fees in
ways
that
increase
drive

times and worsen already
rising urban congestion.

One option is to send the

car home after the passenger
is dropped off. While this
may seem like a harmless
high tech chauffeur, there
are distinct environmental
costs to this practice. The
number of trips the car takes
is doubled, resulting in more
congestion and more vehicle
emissions per person.

Another,
more
eerie

option, is called cruising.
After
the
passenger
is

dropped off, the car drives
around the city as slowly as
possible so as to minimize
fuel costs. Instinctively, the
cost of driving all day seems
higher than parking in a
city. But Millard-Ball’s study
found that it is by far cheaper
than parking, costing less
than 50 cents per hour in
contrast to the $4 per hour
cost of parking in many large
cities.

Also, when multiple cars

engage in cruising, each with
the incentive to go as slowly
as possible, the chance of
gridlock
is
high.
Picture

hundreds, even thousands of
cars, sitting in the middle of
residential streets, waiting
patiently
for
the
return

of their owners. Even in
relatively
small
numbers,

less than 4,000 autonomous
vehicles are needed to slow
some streets down to under
two kilometers per hour.

This
traffic
nightmare

comes with a breath of solace
in its possible solutions. Free
or
subsidized
peripheral

parking,
similar
to
the

cell phone parking lots in
airports, can encourage more
sharing of AVs and limit
congestion within cities.

It has also added credence

to
the
proposition
of

municipal congestion pricing,
a policy that has also been
proposed as a response to
the increased traffic caused
by ride-sharing companies
like Uber and Lyft. Without
the
offset
of
congestion

pricing, cities stand to lose
a significant portion of their
municipal
revenue
from

the
decrease
in
parking

popularity. For example, in
2016, New York City made
$545 million in parking fines,
a significant potential loss if
not remedied by the approval
of congestion charges.

While the adoption of

autonomous vehicles seems
inevitable, we can’t know
exactly how our cities will
look
when
autonomous

vehicles gain popularity. We
can only hope that the traffic
they bring doesn’t add to our
road rage.

Tara Jayaram can be reached at

tjayaram@umich.edu.

Solomon Medintz can be reached at

smedintz@umich.edu.

Why I’m striking for the climate on Friday

SOLOMON MEDINTZ | COLUMN

SOLOMON
MEDINTZ

Ghost traffic, a driverless problem

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