Student Essays, Opinions & Other Insights on a Sustainable UMD 2013-2014 Academic Year | Page 19

Peter Thacher
Major: Government and Politics and History
Class of 2017

I signed up for the pledge because I feel that with the climate crisis in
particular I must do everything I can in the time that I have to move toward a
more sustainable and just society. Likely the first action I ever took related to
environmental sustainability was when I was in ninth grade I started taking 5
days out of each month where I usually used a car and substituted them with
public transportation. I felt increasingly guilty about my carbon footprint
and while my trip to school more than doubled, I was much happier
afterward. By tenth grade I was taking public transportation to school every
day and in eleventh grade I started an activist club directed at increasing the
involvement my high school on issues such as climate change. While my
emission reduction was small it empowered me to do greater things. That is
essentially why I took the pledge, because while personal action may be small, it is usually the tip of the
iceberg toward much larger action.
Sustainability first became important to me because I realized that if we did not move toward a more
sustainable world, our modern world as we know it would end. Yet over time, I have come to see sustainability
as much as an opportunity to better our world as it is to save it from destruction. Our present society and
economic system is not sustainable and big changes will need to be made to make it so. There is tremendous
opportunity for advancement though, because our present society and economy isn’t really working out that
well. Wage stagnation, high inequality, oppression of minorities are all aspects of our present society,
radically reordering society really isn’t as bad as it seems. Indeed, for me at least, a utopian goal of
sustainability and justice isn’t naïve, it’s absolutely necessary. A better world is possible, and if I didn’t believe
in it would be much harder to act for sustainability the way I do. For me climate change is the utmost message
that our whole system needs changing, and that it is finally time to make the push for a way out of the present
crises we live in.
I think that our university should begin to take concrete steps to close the college park natural gas plant. It
seems a bit out of sync with our green university to have a large fossil fuel plant on campus.

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