By Anna McCormally

Students in Earlham’s Environmental Colloquium were treated to the presence of award-winning writer Michael Pollan last Saturday, before he gave a sold-out appearance that had Goddard flooded with Earlham students and Richmond community members.

Pollan talked with the Environmental Colloquium, a one-credit class that looks at a different topic every semester. This semester the colloquium is doing an inventory of Earlham’s energy usage. On Saturday, Pollan spent 90 minutes with Assistant Professor of Education and Director of Wilderness Programs Jay Roberts and the colloquium’s students to answer any questions that they had for him.

“I thought the colloquium experience was pretty neat, to have time to ask him questions,” said junior environmental studies major Sarah Waddle, who is a member of the Environmental Colloquium and convener of Earlham’s Environmental Responsibility Committee (ERC). “It was cool to have him be right there and respond to what you asked.”

In the Environmental Colloquium, Pollan addressed many students’ questions about the green movement and sustainable agriculture.

Waddle, who has been working through ERC with Earlham’s food producer, Sodexo, to make progress in sustainability, asked Pollan at the Environmental Colloquium what changes he suggested Earlham work towards. Pollan recommended campaigns like “Meatless Mondays” and lobbying Sodexo to buy locally.

Waddle explained that ERC has been working with Sodexo and that progress is being made.

“My perception is that they’re very willing and open to other food options,” she said.

Waddle noted that Earlham is in the process of creating the position of “student sustainability manager” to work with Sodexo and Earlham to help enact sustainability initiatives in the cafeteria.

Pollan also answered a question about the green movement, which gave him a chance to expand on one of the foundations of his philosophy.

“To simply replace one kind of consumerism with another kind of consumerism is not going to solve the problem,” Pollan explained. “We need to learn to think of ourselves more as producers than consumers.”

He also called for society to “liberate itself from the sense of dependency on consumer culture.”

To Waddle, however, some of the lifestyle changes that Pollan called for in his speech later that evening seemed to be inaccessible to the less wealthy members of society.

“He himself seemed to be extremely affluent,” Waddle said, citing Pollan’s opportunity to attend a private liberal arts college and graduate school at Columbia as examples of privileges that the writer was lucky to have had. “It must be hard for him to reach out to people with different lifestyles.”

Much of what Pollan advocates involves nutritional choices and the connection between sustainable, healthy agriculture and nutritious food.

“Are people happy with fast-food culture?” Pollan asked rhetorically at the colloquium. He went on to answer his own question by painting a picture of people in the inner city lining up for hours to get government vouchers for fresh produce.

Still, Waddle wasn’t entirely satisfied with what Pollan had to say.

“He was quick to put down the food options available to our community,” Waddle said. “In his speech I felt that there was a lack of positivity about food options in Richmond.”

Waddle admitted that the conclusions Pollan drew about the quality of food available at local Richmond grocery stores was accurate, but felt that he did not elaborate enough on specific alternatives for Richmond consumers.

Sophomore Norah Doss, a resident of Environmental House disagreed with Waddle.

“I think he didn’t have the knowledge basis,” Doss said, defending Pollan, who has been an influence on her in the context of research about sustainable agriculture. “A lot of his speech wasn’t Richmond- or Earlhamspecific.”

Doss also felt that Pollan addressed the class divide that was noticed by Waddle. “He specifically addressed that in inner cities, the food he suggests is not available,” she said.

Doss compared Pollan favorably to Carol Adams, the feminist vegetarian who spoke at Earlham this past November, and whom Doss and Waddle both felt was more defensive and less willing to listen to criticism than Pollan.

“I think it’s really important that we bring speakers like Michael Pollan to Earlham, especially at a time like this, when I feel as though we’re on the cusp of big changes towards sustainability as a college,” Waddle said. “By choosing people like Michael Pollan, that’s one more statement by the college that that’s the kind of dialogue we support as an institution.”