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Jeff Davidson | Phoenix Staff

This shirt was worn by those fasting on campus.

BY MINH-DUYEN NGUYEN

In print | Published December 3, 2009

On Nov. 17, Camille Robertson ’13 began a 48-hour fast. She was the first person on campus to fast and, like others here and around the world, is participating in conjunction with the Climate Justice Fast group to advocate for a strong world response to global warming at the Dec. 7 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. The conference will be the largest international gathering to be held around any issue.

Students in Earthlust, one of the college’s environmental activist groups, are organizing a “rolling fast.” Each day, participating students hand off the responsibility of fasting to other students. The goal is to have at least one student fasting every day until Dec. 8. Earthlust will have a group fast on Dec. 9.

Earthlust is also planning on having a collection at the end of the fast. Plans for the collection are tenuous but all students, whether they are participating in the fast or not, are welcome.

Students at Williams College originally invited Earthlust and Swarthmore College to participate in the rolling fast in connection with the international group Climate Justice Fast and other college campuses across the nation. Earthlust currently has around 35 people committed to the fast including students, faculty and students’ families.

“We have been doing our best to inform the entire campus,” Robertson said. “All of the fasters have been encouraged to tell their parents, tell their relatives, tell their friends at home, tell their environmental groups from their high schools, and really just get the word out as much as they can.”

Many students who expressed interest in raising awareness for the Copenhagen Conference but prefer not to fast or are unable to due to dietary reasons are participating in alternative ways, such as giving up meat. A roster of fasting students can be found on the Earthlust website. Fasting students can donate their extra meals to CityTeam Ministries in Chester.

The Climate Justice Fast is an international organization consisting of activists from over 22 countries fasting for the time leading up to the Copenhagen conference. Climate Justice Fast is calling for delegates at the Copenhagen conference to give $160 billion to help developing countries create more sustainable businesses and to commit to keeping the carbon dioxide concentration below the safe level of 350 parts per million.

Earthlust member Zein Nakhoda ’12 said, however, that while Earthlust is fasting in solidarity with the Climate Justice Fast, it doesn’t necessarily support all of Climate Justice’s political agendas.

“Earthlust is not making a political legislative [recommendation] as a group because we understand that the talks in Copenhagen and solutions to the climate crisis are so complicated and need a diverse dialogue happening that we’re letting people assign their own values, judgments and opinions to the debate,” Nakhoda said.

Hannah Jones ’12, another Earthlust member, spoke about the importance of the symbolic action of the fast.

“For the fasters in Copenhagen, it is about demonstrating how dedicated the countries involved in the talks need to be to combating climate change,” Jones said. “I also see it as symbolic of the changes we need to make in our consumption habits if we are to achieve any sort of climate justice. While legislation is essential, individuals need to be conscious of how their consumption choices affect climate change.”

In addition to fasting in support of the Climate Justice Fasters, Earthlust is reaching out to schools in the Key Coalition, a network of environmental groups from different campuses in Pennsylvania that came out of the Powershift Pennsylvania Conference. The Powershift Pennsylvania Conference brought Pennsylvanian schools together on International Day of Climate action on Oct. 24.

In talking about his goals for the fast, Nakhoda pointed to the success of other environmental groups such as the Energy Action Coalition. Earthlust is currently hoping to get in contact with the coalition. The organization ran a campaign called “It’s Game Time Obama” that encouraged over 53,000 actions of people contacting Obama on the environmental issue. Nakhoda maintains that the work of the Energy Action Coalition and its allies encouraged Obama to attend the Copenhagen talks and host a webcast to address climate change issues with youth climate leaders.

Furthermore Nakhoda hopes that the fast will encourage people to think about how their individual actions can affect climate change.

“The fast is just a really simple way for students at Swarthmore can do a simple action and get people keyed in,” Nakhoda said. “It is a vehicle of discussion. It is not an end in itself, it is a vehicle for discussion.”

However, Obama also announced that he will only ask for 3 percent reductions below 1990 levels. This reduction will not be enough to decrease atmospheric carbon dioxide below 350 ppm. Nakhoda explained that this is more reason to act.

“Some of it is bleak,” Nakhoda said. “Because he is failing to be the leader that we need him to be, it’s more reason why we need to be talking and having discussions about ways we can get there.”

Robertson believes that since she was the first faster not many people knew about the cause at the time.
According to Robertson, she spoke to over 100 people during her two days.

“Being able to just talk to people, walking around campus with a flag sticking out of my backpack was a great place to start discussions,” Robertson. “For me it was such a great experience for me to be able to talk about something I feel strongly about and really stressing the urgency of climate change and global warming and just addressing the problem that a lot of people don’t perceive as urgent.”

The fast has already spread across campuses, to the families of Swarthmore students and internationally to Swatties abroad in Copenhagen.

“This is just one way to tie into all of the actions that are happening and be in solidarity with the other hundreds of thousands of activists who are doing their own initiatives to raise awareness about Copenhagen,” Nakhoda said.

Vice President of College and Community Relations Maurice Eldridge ’61, who wrote an email informing students about the fast, speculated on the potential for the fast.

“It’s hard to measure in advance the effects of something like this, particularly as something more symbolic,” Eldridge said. “You have to wait and see. Over the course of my life I have seen symbolic actions become very powerful. Perhaps this will too.”

Students who would like to participate in the fast should email Earthlust at swatearthlust@gmail.com.

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