Conversing with the Fringe

Have you read The Travels of a Tee Shirt in a Global Economy by Pietra Rivoli? Whether or not you have, you would’ve enjoyed a presentation given by Rivoli on February 24 at Fuqua School of Business. The author, a business professor at Georgetown University, spoke about free trade after following a tee-shirt from the cotton farms in Lubbock, TX, to Shanghai, China, to Washington, DC, to New York, NY, and finally to Tanzania.

While Rivoli doesn't believe free trade is necessarily a good thing, she points out that Americans have tended to view it favorably. In 2002, at the height of the globalization debate, 78% of Americans believed that international trade was very good or somewhat good for the country.

That statistic has dropped, however. More and more Americans believe that international trade is a “story of destruction”, creating systems that breed inequality and perpetuate hardship in developing countries. People struggling to survive will work for unfair wages or under harsh and unhealthy conditions just to get by.

Rivoli claims that the people who view trade unfavorably are both the “fringe” and now mainstream Americans who had previously turned a deaf ear to the problems of international trade. She argues that we should never dismiss “fringe” sentiments because they are one of the best “crystal balls”. They predict the world in 10 years and their ideas, seen as crazy today, will become standard practice. If you need convincing, look at the World Bank and IMF protestors who called attention to the pitfalls of globalization. Or look at the groups who pressured corporations like GAP and NIKE to change their supply chain management. “Fringe” demands are now the norm.

As an environmentalist who has felt like the “fringe” when arguing for the benefits of recycling or green building, I believe that the environmental message is a “crystal ball”. Environmentalists have recently made large strides in pushing some issues, like energy conservation and climate change, to the forefront of the public agenda.

But it seems that these accomplishments have only been possible in the past several years because conservationists have begun talking to diverse groups of people, namely the business community, which has historically rejected pairing economic growth with conservation.

So perhaps Rivoli’s belief in talking with a diverse set of people is actually a two-way street. It takes initiative from both groups, the business community and the “fringe” to tackle important issues. The environmental movement has certainly benefited from doing this.

Come In, We're Closed

As students of the environment, we are bonded by trying to solve the largest problems of our world. But lurking in our midst, adjacent to our Nicholas School home in the Levine Science Research Center (LSRC), hides a problem of serious waste so easy but yet so difficult to fix: the perpetually shining lights at the Blue Express cafeteria.

Certainly you’ve noticed. Have you been fooled as I have, running to grab a late afternoon bite before class, desperately pulling on the cafeteria door, only to realize that no, it's CLOSED? But wait! That doesn’t make sense! The lights are on!

It is true- the lighting never varies in the Blue Express. Even if you stumble across it at midnight, you would think that it’s open (unless you are me and have learned the hard way). The cafeteria wastes thousands of dollars and contributes to more pollutants into the air by lighting a completely empty space when its closed for business, 16 hours every day. But neither you, nor I, nor anyone can turn the lights off—ever.

What can we do about this frustrating, age-old problem that still seems to plague so many spaces? If a building like the cafeteria can't use conventional light switches, then the space should use automatic motion sensors to control the lights. Bathrooms in the LSRC use motion sensors so that after several minutes of inactivity, lights will automatically turn off. Is there any reason that Duke couldn’t install these in the Blue Express? Do you have an idea that has worked in other cafeterias or open spaces?

Duke’s campus has made great strides in conservation before. The campus has reduced its water consumption through dual-flush toilets in many buildings, allowing people to use less than half the amount of water as a conventional toilet. Let’s push Duke to conserve on basic energy use, too. After all, nobody likes to be fooled by the lights.