Engaging on environmental issues with Profs. Salma Monani and Sarah Principato

Sarah Principato: This is partly why I love Gettysburg College and I love the environmental studies department in particular, because we really get to work across disciplines and find ways to communicate science better.

President Bob Iuliano: Hi, and welcome to Conversations Beneath the Cupola at Gettysburg College podcast. I’m Bob Iuliano, president of the college and your host. Over the past several decades, scientists have spoken with increasing urgency about climate change and the role of human behaviors in the warming of our planet. The consequences of climate change have become more apparent and more destructive, including through more intense storms and sea level rise. At Gettysburg, we are committed to understanding the causes of climate change and how our actions can have a positive or negative effect on our collective future. We also acknowledge our responsibility as stewards of the environment, and as an institution of higher education, the essential role of environmental education, research, and scholarship, not just on Earth Day, but every day.

President Bob Iuliano: In this episode we will be speaking with two professors from our distinguished environmental studies department, Salma Monani and Sarah Principato. Salma is the current chair of the department, and her teaching and research is in the environmental humanities with a specific focus on cinema and other forms of media communication. Sarah holds the Thompson Endowed Chair in Environmental Studies, and is a geologist whose research focuses on glacial geology, glacial sedimentology, and climate change. Using their research and expertise as proof points in the conversation, we will explore the progression of climate change, the ways in which the media shapes and is shaped by environmental issues. How environmental issues relate to the questions of social justice, and how we can all play a part in combating climate change. Salma and Sarah, thank you both for joining me for this Earth Day episode on a topic that affects us all.

President Bob Iuliano: So, Sarah and Salma, I said a moment ago in your introductions, a brief overview of the work that you do, but I’m hoping you might both say a word or two about why did you get into this field, and what’s the nature of the work that you’re doing specifically at this moment in time? So why don’t we start with Salma?

Salma Monani: Sure, yeah. I grew up in India and so coming from an environment in which we were sort of always entwined, nature and culture weren’t necessarily considered separate. And my childhood has many sort of formative experiences of being part of nature. And I have a memory of the cow coming by our house and being able to milk cows. But those sort of intrinsic cultural values of sort of seeing the environment as part of your everyday life, followed me to the U.S. where I went to a liberal arts college. And I had the wonderful experience of taking of all things a geology class, which I think until that class I hadn’t actually been able to give direction to what it was that I wanted to do with environmental studies in the sense of that the world was so huge and remarkable. And there was so many questions that we could ask about our relationship to that world was sort of what fired me up.

Salma Monani: And those questions have followed me through my PhD and to being a faculty member here at Gettysburg, is how do we think of these relations that we have with the world around us, and that world is both the human world and the non-human world?And so my work has sort of moved from thinking about scientific questions, into cultural questions that have always been part of that conversation. And so I see myself as a humanities faculty member here at Gettysburg, and that’s where my work as a teacher and a scholar fits to try to think of how we as environmental humanists engage with environmental issues.

President Bob Iuliano: Thank you. Sarah, how about you? How did you end up on the path of environmental studies?

Sarah Principato: A great question. When I was a kid I loved to play outside. I was outside as much as possible. And another thing I was just thinking as Salma was speaking, I loved to play school. I loved to play teacher with my sister and my cousins. And ironically enough, all four of us are now involved in education in some way. But I also in classes, and I loved science and math and I didn’t know which one or what exactly I should study. And when I went to college, I took a environmental geology class in my first year and I thought, "Wow, this is what I want to do. I can be outside and do science and math." And my path was kind of set from there.

Sarah Principato: When I went to Wisconsin, my masters advisor, Dave Mickelson, he led a field course to Iceland and I got to take it and that’s what got me interested in working in Iceland in the first place. And my master’s project was focused in Wisconsin research, but when I went for a PhD like, "I have to go somewhere where I can get back to Iceland and work in the Arctic." So I was really fortunate to get to go to the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at Colorado and work with John Andrews, who’s been a wonderful mentor to me over the years. And so, I keep getting back to Iceland as much as possible doing research there with students, and I love teaching too. So that’s another part that I really enjoy.

President Bob Iuliano: And doing it a liberal arts college, where you get to marry those two, interest and aspirations, it’s a special opportunity. Salma, let’s go back to your notion of the humanities as being a prison through which we can understand the environment better. I suspect that’s going to surprise some people. When you think about environmental studies, you tend to think about the science of it. So help us understand the lens through which you look at this and how it illuminates our understanding in a different way?

Salma Monani: Sure. And I’ll use the example of climate change, Bob, because I think that’s a nice way to sort of think of the relevance of the humanities. If we think of climate change and we think of how scientists think of climate change, most scientists across the world believe that climate change is happening. But then they sort of scratch their heads and say, "Why is it that the rest of the world doesn’t have as much of a consensus as we do?" Especially in America, not everybody believes as strongly that climate change is an issue that we should be concerned about. This is where the humanities is useful. This is where the social sciences are useful, because we’re asking different kinds of questions from the scientists and were thinking about how we make those relationships with the world in somewhat different ways from what the scientists are thinking.

Salma Monani: And so as a humanist, I am very interested in what motivates humans to even believe in certain things that they believe in. And the humanities brings us, we’re rich in those disciplines that sort of ask those questions of meaning and value, and sort of look for philosophical senses of what is it that drives humans to do, believe, make the choices that they do. And so, as a humanity is we sort of stop and say, "What is our history? What has our history given us? What has our language? How are we using these sort of cultural factors to make sense of our world?" And the humanities and social scientists add that lens and that perspective to the sort of facts that science brings to the field. So we’re interested in facts, but we’re also very interested in values and meaning-making, and so that’s what I think we’ve done is sort of help the scientists think about these issues in much more subtle, nuanced, complex, uncertain ways that I think scientists have necessarily grappled with those issues.

President Bob Iuliano: So you brought our conversation someplace I wanted to go, which is the skepticism in some quarters about the existence of climate change and whether human behaviors have contributed to it. Salma, you asserted that scientists generally agree with the proposition that there is climate change and that it is human-generated at least in part. Can either of you say more about that? Sarah, I think you do a lot of research in this space. Is there any ambiguity within the scientific community on those two points?

Sarah Principato: It’s really clear that climate change is due to human activities. The increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is shown in the ice core records and measurements around the world, so it’s not just one place with one record. So that’s one thing that the scientists have this consensus on. And part of the issue is, how do we get other people to understand our science better? And this is partly why I love Gettysburg College and I love the environmental studies department in particular, because we really get to work across disciplines and find ways to communicate science better. And so that’s something that Salma and I have worked on together. It can be the science, like glaciers are melting it, so obvious they don’t have a political agenda. They’re just melting away as the earth warms, and Salma expertise can kind of lead the students and me on how to communicate that better.

President Bob Iuliano: Salma, how do we get them to accept the expertise, accept the work? Are we making progress in that?

Salma Monani: Yeah. So this is something that I do with my students. Again, and I love that Sarah says the sort of interdisciplinarity of students’ interest, and the department itself. So they come to my class, knowing the science and with the same questions you have, Bob, and as someone who sort of straddles the humanities and the social sciences in communications studies, these are questions that we’re very, very interested in. And there’s a lot of research to suggest that what we need to do is really think carefully about how we’re framing issues and who we’re framing issues to. And so with climate change in particular, we have this sort of bipolar dual way of thinking, polarized way of thinking, that half of our Americans don’t believe in climate change and half do. And we just aren’t going to have a conversation, because it’s been so politicized and nobody wants to have a political conversation in this very polarized world.

Salma Monani: And a lot of what I tell my students is that that’s one thing we need to break down. We need to break down that perception that we are so polarized. Because at the end of the game we’re actually not as polarized. The research clearly shows there’s no two ends. There might be two ends of the spectrum, but there are all sorts of shades in between. And we want to sort of pay attention to the shade and not make assumptions about people on the political right or the political left, or the sort of stereotype of, "Because you are this kind of person, you’re not going to believe X, Y, and Z." And so what we first need to do is generate the possibility of conversation. So what we do in my class is really sort of think about how do we have conversations. And how do we have that in ways where we listen to each other?

Salma Monani: Because the reason someone might not believe in climate change might be very crucial to their livelihoods. They might have jobs in the coal industry, which are at stake, and those are things that we do need to pay attention to. And we have to think about how we can find common ground from which we can proceed, even before we get to the point of sort of solving the issue. And so that’s kind of where we start, but there’s so many other ways in which we can go from there, but I love how our students sort of take up that challenge of trying to have conversations and listen across whatever divides they thought they had. And it’s really fun. We have an exercise in class where they go off and talk to someone they’ve never talked to about climate change, and often they’ll come back, absolutely pleasantly surprised that the conversation went really well. And I think that is a start.

President Bob Iuliano: That sounds transcendent, of course. We do perceive ourselves as increasingly polarized. Things that have become politicized that you wouldn’t expect to such as the wearing of masks. And so teaching our students these skills strikes me as something all of us could use by the way. And that will have benefit that extends beyond your class, extends beyond environmental studies, and is a lifelong skill that has particular relevance today. And it’s something you’ve heard me talk a lot about in my brief time here, the importance of breaking down those barriers and talking to one another, hearing one another and find the space of common ground, where we can, as I understand it, at least examine the role of the media and understanding of environmental issues. Can you say more about the nature of the work that you do and the conclusions that you’ve drawn from the work that you’ve done?

Salma Monani: Sure, yeah. So I, in my own research tend to be more of a humanist and I look at particular media texts, as opposed to sort of large media effects of a lot of media. So the different ways we can approach that. But when I work with my students, they’re very, very interested in these large media effects. And so Sarah and I have worked with students, looking at some of these effects. So just as one example, a climate change film, does that have an impact on how people think or know or believe in climate change? And that’s easy to study from a social science perspective where you do a survey before students watched the film, they watch the film and then you do a survey afterwards and you can see what the effect is pretty clearly. And you can, of course, we used our colleague Chris Bartlett in psychology.

Salma Monani: So this is the other thing, right? These projects tend to be so beautifully interdisciplinary. And the Liberal Arts College allows us for us to reach across departments to do this. But he brings the psychology expertise into helping us design this survey to try to understand what these media effects are. And yeah, media has an effect. There is no way around it. The question is, how long does that effect last? What is it competing against? What are the other narratives and ways in which people are engaging with the world, and what dominates and what doesn’t. Those are also the things that we really need to think about. And it’s fun as a scholar getting students to think about those nuances as well.

President Bob Iuliano: So climate change is both incremental and profound simultaneously. On the one hand one degree doesn’t sound like a lot, right? It doesn’t affect your day in and day out life unless you are in the place of the wildfires or the place of the more intensive hurricane. So how, given the busyness of everyone’s lives, how do we get, and Sarah and Salma, how do we get people to really focus on this as a problem that requires the urgency that the science suggests requires? Because, it can sometimes have an abstraction to it I think in the day in and day out lives that we lead.

Sarah Principato: Yeah, I think in my upper level class on disasters and global change, we talk about how there are different types of disasters and climate change is kind of one of those stealth disasters. It’s sort of creeping up on us and it is a complicated issue. I think it’s often not until a more extreme storm comes that suddenly people are, "Oh yeah, I should do something about climate change." But partly what leaves me so hopeful is that I do think this generation now, our students, they are focused on it. I mean, I was just speaking with Annie Douds as and our scholars, and many of them are alarmed about climate change and they’re concerned about it. And those are, they’re just first-year students, they haven’t all declared majors yet. So it was, to me speaking to that group, I was kind of excited to see how much concern there is out there. I think they may be more concerned than we then we even have quantified yet. But I don’t know in terms of generations, the older, it’s trickier.

President Bob Iuliano: And the people who are in power versus the people who are going to be most directly affected by it as it manifests itself. Sarah, you brought us into another topic I’d like to talk about, and that is not just the environmental consequences, but the social and the economic consequences as well. And there’s been increasing literature demonstrating that the effects are not uniformly felt. They’re disproportionately felt by populations that wouldn’t surprise any of us, poor, indigenous, people of color. Help us understand what we’re learning about the social implications of environmental change.

Salma Monani: I think this speaks so well to this notion of how, when we try to talk about climate change, we have to understand that old additive, it is connected to everything else. And to help us students and to help people in general understand that as we might think of it as a stealth of what humanist Rob Nixon has called, "Slow violence." It is a violence that compounds violence that have existed before, or inequities that have existed before. And when Sarah, when you asked me that question, Bob, about does media have an impact? And Sarah was talking about how our students seem very, very interested. Part of that has to do is because we’re talking more about these interrelations in our media.

Salma Monani: So this past summer for example, with the sort of attention that we’re getting to notions of systemic racism, that attention is coupled often, especially for the younger generation, with that connection to the environment and how systemic racism is tied to environmental pollution or places where you have lack of access to all the amenities that you want for a healthy environment. And so the media is reporting on that, and the students are getting that message. And so we’re starting to see that there is more interest, especially amongst the younger generation in paying attention to climate change. So I think that goes back to that larger question of how do we bring these together so we don’t see them as separate, but we see them as issues that are completely entwined.

President Bob Iuliano: Had you seen signs, either of you, that the political leadership, the people who were really driving policy on this, do increasingly see them as intertwined, or are they still viewed as separated considerations?

Salma Monani: Do think it depends on the politician, but it was just on March 29th it was interesting for me as someone who studies, particularly environmental justice issues, to see our current federal government has an environmental justice advisory committee, which has many members on it. I’m happy to say some people that I know myself who are the forefront of thinking of these issues of entwined relations. Some of our politicians are paying attention, and as we know, some are not. And the question is, how do we as citizens, how do I students as citizens get our politicians to start paying attention to us and the things that we’re saying? So I think that’s a place where we can sort of think about how we’re getting our students to think carefully about these issues, and then talk to their politicians.

President Bob Iuliano: As you both know, from the work that you’re doing in other parts of your lives in the college, this is very much at the center of the strategic plan as well. That is, how do we equip our students with the ability, not only to see a problem, not only to conceive of a solution, but then to figure out how do I actually advance the solution in a concrete way? And that includes, how do I engage with elected officials? How do I build coalitions? How do I myself lead people into the field of debate in ways that’s going to be productive. So, all of this speaks to the importance of the work that you both are involved with in the strategic planning process.

President Bob Iuliano: So Sarah, maybe this is to you, and I recognize it’s a little bit technical, but obviously we want to reduce our carbon footprint if we can. But we as a species often look for other ways to solve problems. There’s got to be a simpler way, let’s use technology to solve the problem. Is there a technological solution that’s out there that’s going to solve this problem other than discipline, reduce carbon footprints and the like?

Sarah Principato: That’s a great question. And I wish I knew the specific answer to it. A lot of ideas have been thrown out. Carbon sequestration in a variety of ways is one thing people are thinking about a lot, like how to get the carbon or greenhouse gas emissions out of the atmosphere or prevent them from going into the atmosphere in the first place is a very large area of research. There’s also ideas that are very controversial about putting things into the atmosphere to try to act like a volcano erupted and block sunlight. And that you have to think of all the other impacts on the earth system if you were to do something of that magnitude.

Sarah Principato: So I always tell the students, "There’s an opportunity for you to come up with a solution," because, and actually I believe there is a prize that Elon Musk is offering. If someone can come up with it, I forget, it was announced a few weeks ago to some of these problems that we’re having. I mean, I think renewable energy will be a huge piece of the solution and all kinds of things we can do. I could list the minor things, but we need something major in order to get our emissions to really decrease.

President Bob Iuliano: I’m going to make the case for basic science research and all of this, not something we do a ton of here, but we do, but it’s important because we don’t know where solutions lie. And just to understanding the mechanics of how the world works will perhaps offer us the opportunity to find those innovations that are going to make a difference.

Salma Monani: I mean, I think what’s so wonderful about our liberal arts college is that we don’t think about it solely as a technical solution. That those technical solutions come with all the other sort of things that we think about in terms of how we live the good life. And a lot of that has to do with how we make community and how we converse with each other and how we think long-term, and not just of the immediate. And I think those are things that we have to remember, that there is no easy magic bullet of technical fix if we don’t have these other things. Sorry, I got on my soap box there, but-

President Bob Iuliano: No, and I’m going to join you on it if I can, and that is the notion of community matters enormously here. And I think the last year has demonstrated the importance of community in at least two dimensions, no doubt more than that. One is how much we value being together, but also the importance of looking out for one another. That a retreat to individualism wasn’t going to solve COVID-19 at the of the day. COVID-19 was going to get solved because people acted in collective ways, wearing masks, doing the acts of self-sacrifice that improve the wellbeing of the whole, and not just of the individual. And it’s something that we take seriously here, this notion of community and supporting one another, working one another.

President Bob Iuliano: And it’s one of the things that I’ve come to really admire about this place in the two years that I’ve been here. So no, I joined you on the soap box there, Salma, and emphatically agree with you.

President Bob Iuliano: So Earth Day is upon us, and President Biden is going to be convening world leaders, and he’s expected to unveil a plan that he reports is going to be aggressive in fighting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. If you guys could be in that room and you could whisper into his ear, what would you want him to do? What’s the one thing you’d be most excited if the United States adopted or did to address this issue? Sarah, we’ll start with you.

Sarah Principato: I was chatting with Salma about this earlier actually, because my opinion might differ. I think we should be bold. We should set ambitious goals, but Salma reminded me we have to make sure they’re achievable goals, because we really have to reduce our emissions by a lot in order to meet the Paris climate Agreement. So I, then thinking about it more, we have to find ways to incentivize and make people want to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. And what could we do? And so I think a lot of times when there is a cost savings, you get people to do things more, so more fuel efficient vehicles. I mean, that’s one piece of the puzzle, like having ... So then you save money on gas. So maybe people don’t care about fuel efficient vehicles, but they could save money on gas. And so adding up all these sort of smaller things, I’m really hoping that the U.S. can take a leadership role in climate change as we have done in the past. That is one of my goals.

Sarah Principato: So I don’t know if it’s too optimistic to say, be bold and make these ... But we don’t want to make promises we can’t keep either, that’s another problem. And if there was some way to have these solutions become more permanent and not just change with every administration, that would be good, so.

President Bob Iuliano: Salma, what do you think?

Salma Monani: I agree with Sarah. I actually do think that we do need to make changes, but being the humanist is that we have to make those changes in ways that are very cognizant of them being long-term. And how do we keep thinking about these in long-term ways? So I tend to go with the, we can think short term, we can think one administration, but we really can’t. If we want to solve the issue, we really can’t. And we don’t want a situation where there’s another administration that comes in and says, "Nope, sorry, we don’t buy into any of this." So we need to keep having those conversations on the ground. And we need to be able to do the sort of long haul work that I think liberal arts colleges are really good at doing is sort of helping people navigate the world in ways that go back to what you were saying, Bob is what is this community?

Salma Monani: And I think the messages that too, as you were mentioning COVID you said, "We make self-sacrifices." And I think the language that we use, the notion of sacrifice is something that environmentalist’s have been pushed back against a lot, that we don’t want to make sacrifices. And so thinking of how we think of these, not just the sacrifices, but as potentials, that we’re working for a world that could be a just and better and more healthy world. I think it’s harder to argue against the positives than it is against negatives.

President Bob Iuliano: That’s completely fair, a point well taken. And it’s also a good way to end this conversation. It’s an optimistic note. It’s something for us to strive towards collectively. So I can see why our students are thrilled to be part of the environmental studies department, having the benefit of learning from the two of you, the obvious passion and enthusiasm that you bring to this. I regret that this will be a continuing conversation, but I’d love to say that this is solved, but it’s not going to get solved today. It’s not going to get solved tomorrow. But the work that we do here, I think offers the promise of solutions and people who are going to help contribute to that because of the work that you all do as well. So thank you both very much for joining me today.

Salma Monani: Thank you.

Sarah Principato: Thank you.

Salma Monani: I think as students, when our alums give back to us, that to me is what gives me so much happiness, that I do see that work continuing. And they come back with such amazing ways in which they’ve taken this education out there. So yeah, I feel like we must be doing something someday right over here.

President Bob Iuliano: I always look forward to both talking to our students and talking to our alums and seeing how their time here has helped really shape their future in profound ways. Thank you both very much.

Sarah Principato: Thank you.

President Bob Iuliano: Let me conclude with a Slice of Life from Gettysburg College. Every spring brings the welcome winter thaw, and never has that been more welcome than this spring as we pass the one-year mark of the global pandemic that has disrupted so many aspects of our lives. On campus, the warmer weather and extraordinary work of our students has brought about an equally welcomed development. The ability to engage in many of the traditions that matter to our students and help reinforce what it means to be a Gettysbugian. For students who weren’t able to celebrate several Thanksgiving in the fall, we’re bringing it back in April. A longstanding favorite is the International Food Fair. And that too is making its return.

President Bob Iuliano: Recognizing how much these traditions matter to all of our students, we’re also going to make sure there are opportunities for our students studying remotely to celebrate these traditions as well. We are perhaps most excited about our ability to host an in-person commencement for our seniors this May. COVID-19 has been challenging for everyone, and my heart goes out to our seniors who’ve had their final three semesters on campus as disrupted as they’ve been. This class deserves to have the completion of their collegiate career celebrated with all due pomp and circumstances, and that’s what we intend to do. We’ll be live streaming the ceremony on May 17th. Join in and help us send the Class of ’21 off in style.

President Bob Iuliano: Thanks for listening. If you’ve enjoyed this conversation and want to be notified of future episodes, please subscribe to Conversations Beneath the Cupola by visiting gettysburg.edu or wherever you get your podcasts. If you have a topic or suggestion for a future podcast, please email news@gettysburg.edu. Thank you, and until next time.