Being Green and Suave

It ain’t easy being green, or at least it didn’t used to be.

Environmentalism was a very different scene at Harvard when I first unpacked my bags in stately Greenough Hall, and I was a very different person.

The last two and a half years have taught me a lot—about sustainability, about effective advocacy, and about myself. (One learns quite quickly one’s tolerance for PBR, the Kong, and DVDs of the syndicated television show “Stargate.”)

I came roaring into freshman year as a knee-jerk liberal, ready for a life-changing experience. Wide-eyed optimism led me, as it has led freshmen since time immemorial, to join every possible student group.

I canvassed for the Green Party, tried out the Socialist Alternative, joined the Environmental Action Committee (EAC), and wrote an article in Perspective. Hell, I even thought about Greenpeace. I appeared on the cover of The Crimson twice, once as a “founding father” in a wig and a band uniform (don’t ask), and once in an article about how I petitioned for lower temperatures in Greenough (do ask!).

I even became a vegetarian. For most of my freshman year, I ate salads and tofu at every meal. Today, I can’t even look at those glistening white cubes without getting queasy. Then, I was willing to stomach them for an ideal: not for the sake of the animals or my health, but for the environment. Meat, I would’ve been quick to tell you, is a bigoted inefficiency to which only those of us in flabby America are privy; Annenberg was my church and fake meat my pulpit. (After reading Michael Pollan’s book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and super-saturating myself with soy, I’ve changed my tune. As with many things, I’ve found that what is “sustainable” is much more complicated than I once assumed.)

Soon I had became another cog in the problem-set machine of introductory science. By mid-November, I had jettisoned all my newfound passions in the throes of that ubiquitous Harvard-freshman identity crisis.

Only the EAC remained. In a bizarre twist of fate, I had become its co-chair by my freshman spring.

The previous fall, we had worked tirelessly on a referendum calling for an optional termbill fee that would go towards wind energy. To boost publicity, I built an eight-foot windmill with my bare hands. We yelled, we postered, we e-mailed, and the referendum passed with a resounding 82 percent of the vote.

That spring, however, the administrators all shook their heads in unison. President Summers even issued a special fiat expressly forbidding termbill fees. We found ourselves shrugged off into meetings with assistants, all the fall’s energy blowing away like dust in the proverbial wind.

As a freshman, I was in way over my head. Fresh off Lester Brown’s “Eco-Economy,” a Bible for anti-capitalist environmentalists everywhere, I was full of big ideas and bluster, little of which I really understood.

Learning how to navigate Harvard’s administrative labyrinth could be a full-time job, and I just didn’t have that kind of time. After all, I had to pick a concentration and comp The Crimson.

The next fall was similar in many ways. We had a few initiatives, a few events, but most had forgotten the referendum. By second semester I had become EAC “historian,” a position usually occupied by retired co-chairs partying away their senior springs.

While that period marked a lull in my involvement, I still had non-recycling roommates to berate and sarcastic quips to mutter at EAC board meetings.

Oh, and I had to lead a one-man campaign to rid Kirkland Dining Hall of plastic cups. Instead of shouting “Those are made of dinosaurs’ bones!” I politely asked that the cups be relocated. Sometimes, yelling is the only way to be heard; here, civility paid off, and use declined significantly. Working with the system can be an efficient, and painless, solution. My activism began to shift, though my ideology did not.

Thanks in large part to Al Gore ’69, the EAC now has more members than at any time in institutional memory. This past fall, we aired “An Inconvenient Truth” to over 1,000 people. We then passed another referendum with almost 90 percent of the vote, this time to pressure Harvard to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Our subsequent meetings with administrators have been promising, and with the clout “sustainability” has garnered in business and popular culture, we may be getting somewhere.

While some might find such acquiescence antithetical to “activism,” I’ve found that, in doing service to my ideological goals, smiles and handshakes are invaluable tools for advocacy.

When I think about this movement and where it will go, I can’t help but think of my own transformation. I remember sitting in a room at Greenpeace’s (sketchy) offices in Boston, getting the “canvassing” job pitched to me. Now, when I see those green-jacketed young people hassling folks on their way to work (there’s nothing I hate more than being asked, “Hey, do you have a second for the environment?”), I sigh and shake my head.

It can be a drag to work with the administration instead of against it. Meetings, e-mails, closed doors, red tape—it’s never as sexy as spray painting your chest and hooting call-and-response chants through a bullhorn at University Hall. In many ways, I regret not doing more of that.

Still, I tell myself, I’m not a complete suit. I’ve realized over the last two years that what’s best for the environment isn’t just tea and Birkenstocks (although I like both those things). Sustainability involves building sustainable relationships, with those around you and with those in power. Environmentalism is still a “fight,” but I’ve sheathed the swords I brandished my freshman year.

Solutions are complicated, but they shouldn’t be alienating. I’m still very much a contrarian—I still like to argue and raise a stink—but I see the environment as a great unifier. Being green is getting easier as more people realize this. Bridges are being built between former rivals: Republicans and Democrats, evangelicals and atheists.

Stay angry, stay eager, stay active, but don’t burn these bridges—those coming after you will thank you.