Photo by Yvette Chen OC'16A.G. Miller is Professor of Religion at Oberlin College. He has lived in Oberlin with his wife Brenda Grier Miller since 1991. In 2001, he and several other Oberlin community members started the Oberlin House of the Lord Fellowship, part of the House of Lord Pentecostal churches.

Q: What word or image would you use to describe Oberlin?

I have been thinking about my eating habits since I went visit my brother in Colorado, who has recently adopted a strict Vegan diet. Not only does he not eat any animal products, he abstains from eating any type of processed food. This adjusted nutritional lifestyle seems like a very difficult task. I???m not sure if I have the willpower to currently take such a drastic step in my own life. His new nutritional lifestyle made me reflect on my daily food choices. How does the food I eat affect me, and furthermore, how does it affect the environment? I never took time to think about how my food choices affect the environment. An Introduction to Ecology course at Lorain County Community College recently opened my eyes to my narrow scope of my food choices.  It also offered me a fresh perspective and challenged me to begin looking at my food and the environment through a broader lens. During my Ecology course is when I first heard the term flexitarian. It means someone who is a vegetarian and allows meat in his or her diet on occasion. I started thinking about the different food choices that I can make that can positively affect the environment without going to the extreme.

This idea of becoming a flexitarian is appealing to me, because even though I care about the environment and my own health, I am not ready to take such drastic steps in my life to become a full-fledged vegetarian. Instead, I want to push myself to make better food choices rather than feel guilty about eating meat or processed foods on occasion. I believe that eating a completely vegetarian diet is hard and can be costly. With the adoption of a flexitarian lifestyle, I can make changes while also bending the rules to suit my personal tastes. Also, I have a young son that loves his macaroni and cheese and I would not feel right restricting his food choices. However, he will still be affected by this lifestyle change because grocery shopping as a flexitarian will directly affect what I put on the dinner table. He will unknowingly reap the benefits of our newfound nutritional lifestyle.

John Memmott is a semi-retired teacher who spent many years in the Oberlin public schools. He???s also a long-time sea-kayaker and avid photographer. Recently, he???s gotten involved with getting the Environmental Dashboard system set up in Prospect Elementary. 

Technology to display video has come a long way since its start in the 1800???s. From analog to digital, VHS to BluRay, and even as you look at your computer, how we receive information (and entertainment) via a screen has changed drastically in order to make a more informed society. But are we informed about the right things in all the right places? While information about the world continues to grow and become more easily accessible, how about what???s happening in Tappan Square this weekend? Or what is my favorite local business doing on the sustainability front? How is the electricity and water I use daily moving through the City of Oberlin? With the launch of the new Environmental Dashboard at Prospect Elementary School and the Oberlin Public Library, this information will be more accessible and relevant to Oberlinians than ever.

For the last few months, members of the Oberlin Project Community Engagement Team have been engaged in Community Conversations, chances for Oberlin residents to meet together and discuss what they would like to see for the future of Oberlin. These Community Conversations were held from October through early February, and involved over 120 members of the Oberlin community from a wide diversity of backgrounds. Conversations covered topics such as improving our downtown, creating opportunities for youth and seniors, and expanding city recycling. Many Oberlin residents expressed a commitment to working harder on sustainability; one participant commented on an evaluation form, ???I can dig in my heels a little deeper. I am part of the solution.???

The Oberlin Project is a joint effort of the City of Oberlin, Oberlin College, and other local partners to improve the sustainability, resilience, and prosperity of our community. It supports the goals of the City and College to create a climate-positive community by 2050.

Steve Hammond has been Co-Pastor of Peace Community Church in Oberlin for 33 years, along with his wife Mary. Steve and Mary are both Protestant Chaplain Affiliates for the Oberlin College Office of Religious and Spiritual Life. Steve was the youngest of 18 children in his family. He enjoys running and hanging out with his grandchildren.

Linda Arbogast is Executive Director of Oberlin Community Services. She lives in Brownhelm Township with her husband, Bo, and their three children on an organic blueberry farm. Both Linda and her husband were Peace Corps volunteers in Sri Lanka.

"I think I've figured out the carbon problem," says my seven-year-old son. It's Monday morning, early, and I'm still half asleep. He stands next to my bed, already dressed and dancing with excitement.

Rewind a day or so. He and I lay on our backs in the mid-afternoon sunlight, staring up at the sky, wearing t-shirts in mid-November in northeast Ohio. It is almost 70 degrees. "Isn't this great?" he says.

My fianc??, Sharon Pearson, introduced me to the world of sustainability. Much of my life I had some knowledge of recycling and energy saving practices: however, I did not realize the full impact I had in making my community a better place, both now and for generations in the future.

Upon arriving to Ohio from North Carolina, my recycling efforts began quite simply, with saving aluminum cans and taking them to a recycling center for money.  With further knowledge and education, I began recycling at home by sorting metals and plastics labeled as recyclable for trash day, using a recycling bag as a separator. This bag was placed next to the trashcan as a reminder to consider recycling over throwing our waste away. After a short period of time, we were filling up the recycling container much faster than the ???regular??? refuse container.  In fact, we do not place the refuse container out on the curb but every few weeks.

We've warmed the Earth by more than 0.8??C, with that much more likely on the way. A 2??C increase by 2050 is likely with absolutely no assurance that we can stop it there. Even in the early stages of climate destabilization we're now witnessing weather extremes that were not supposed to occur until mid-century or later.

There's more. Since CO2 remains in the atmosphere for a long time, we have committed posterity to centuries of rising temperatures, rising sea levels flooding coastal cities, ecological chaos, and collateral effects including famine, violence, political and economic turmoil, and psychological trauma. This is emphatically not an argument for doing nothing. On the contrary, the stark reality ahead is the best reason we have to act with the kind of urgency and creativity that we once showed in World War II and in the creation of the Marshall Plan. The picture is clear: If we humans want to hang around for a while we will have to quickly "disinvent fire" or else we'll fry. The big numbers that govern climate and Earth systems don't give a damn about Capitalism, the Dow Jones, or the American Dream. They work with no remorse whatsoever.