THERE ARE TWO great passions in Emma Fisher’s life – running, and caring for the planet. During the 2014 cross country season, as she flew to races around the country, Fisher felt those passions at odds.
Air travel – with its greenhouse gas emissions --- has a disproportionally large impact on climate change. And, each year, intercollegiate teams travel countless miles in the air without considering the impact they are making. In 2015, Stanford’s 36 teams made 14,462 flights – equivalent to 252 trips around the world – and produced 2,640 metrics tons of carbon dioxide. Removing that impact would require the planting of 700,000 trees.
“I had this little personal crisis,” said Fisher, a junior majoring in earth systems at Stanford. “In class, we’re learning about the horrible things we’re doing to the environment and the consequences. Running is a big part of my life and I didn’t like that I was contributing to that.
“Running is my way of experiencing the world. It makes me happy. It makes me who I am. I guess that’s why I was so upset when I felt that conflict with the things I really care about.”
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AT FIRST, FISHER felt helpless, but eventually created an idea, sought help from environmental groups on campus, and proposed an idea to Stanford Athletics that would reduce the carbon footprint created by the miles of team travel.
The result is a carbon offset program in which money is donated to environmental causes to
neutralize the damage done by greenhouse gasses from airplanes for each mile Stanford teams travel during a calendar year. Investing in carbon offsets is a common practice among organizations and individuals seeking to reduce their carbon footprint from unavoidable greenhouse gas-emitting activities, such as travel.
Fisher’s group, Stanford Carbon Offsets to Reduce Emissions (SCORE), is supporting a landfill gas capture project in Billings, Montana, that will harness methane – typically released unabated into the atmosphere from landfills -- and use it for energy, which in turn reduces the need to drill for natural gas.
Through the help of Ashley Hammerbacher of the Stanford Students Environmental Consulting Group, SCORE was able to connect with an outside company, 3 Degrees, and work together to find a project that was the best fit.
Stanford Athletics allowed travel records to be used and offered its full support for SCORE, which is student-run as a joint initiative of two student groups, the Cardinal Council and Students for a Sustainable Stanford. SCORE includes synchronized swimmer Elle Billman, distance runner Steven Fahy, rower Becca Triplett, and former lightweight rower Victoria White among others.
“We try to support student-generated initiatives,” deputy athletics director Patrick Dunkley said. “We have a lot of travel in the program. So, the idea of supporting a student initiative that promotes environmental sustainability, and has a direct impact in offsetting the carbon footprint of the athletic department, seemed like a win-win.”
Fisher liked to promote the idea that Stanford is now “the first collegiate athletic program to fly carbon-free.” However, she has since learned that the athletics departments at Colorado and Florida also have been carbon neutral.
“I'm super excited about this because it shows there is already precedent for serious climate action in athletics, and I think Stanford is in a great position to continue building momentum for this movement,” she said.
Stanford Athletics certainly believes in the cause, but it was Fisher’s influence that was the key to the project, Dunkley said.
“Sometimes, people have a seed of an idea, but haven’t fleshed it out,” Dunkley said. “But Emma took the initiative in getting this going. It was well-thought, it was broadbased, and it involved other student-athletes.
“They were really smart about it strategically and tactically and had done their research. It was almost like a business proposal and that made it easier to evaluate, because there was a direct correlation between what they were trying to do and what the athletic department feels is important.”
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FISHER CAN TRACE the origins of her interest in the environment to a book she read as an elementary school student in Elmhurst, Illinois, a Chicago suburb – “My Life with the Chimpanzees,” by Jane Goodall.
The book traces the early years of Goodall and how an English girl who loved animals became one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century.
“I was really inspired by her being the first woman in that field of science,” Fisher said. “She was a research biologist who shook things up and now is a huge environmental advocate. She was the inspiration throughout my whole childhood. That made me an environmentalist.”
Fisher arrived at Stanford as one of the top runners in Illinois and part of coach Chris Miltenberg’s first recruiting class. She redshirted as a freshman, but blossomed as a sophomore, earning All-West Region cross country honors and running No. 2 for the Cardinal as it placed 14th at the 2014 NCAA Cross Country Championships. Injuries prevented her from racing during her first two track seasons.
However, this year as a junior, she ran a lifetime best 16:20.97 for the 5,000 meters at the Stanford Twilight meet and is among an impressive group of six Stanford women who have run 16:20 or faster this season – two more than any other team in the country. She will race this weekend at the Pac-12 Championships in Seattle.
Through Students for a Sustainable Stanford, she learned the concept of environmental justice, about how those who bear the burden of environmental mistakes are usually marginalized societies who rarely cause the problems in the first place.
“Honestly, climate change really scares me,” Fisher said. “It’s easy not to think long-term because it’s so abstract and doesn’t have much relevance in our day to day life. But it’s going to be those in some poor developing country,who don’t have the technology to bring water in, who will be impacted the most.
“Climate change affects everybody and it’s one issue we can target and make things better across the board – global hunger, infectious disease, air quality, water quality. We’re right in the middle of a global crisis right now, but it’s in slow-motion, so no one’s really doing anything about it.”
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IN THE SUMMER after her freshman year, Fisher was among 14 students to visit Yasuni National Park in Ecuador, through the Bing Overseas Seminar Program. The trip was titled, “The Evolution of Life in the Neo-Tropical Forest of Ecuador.”
The trip was ostensibly to compare the ecology of two different rain forests in the region, in the Amazon and the Andes cloud forest. Instead, the program unintentionally opened the students’ eyes to the way oil was impacting the region. She returned to Illinois with an awareness of climate change denial in her community and how polarizing the subject can be. Even in friend and family gatherings, “everybody knows what I’m studying and a lot of people just won’t ask about it. But those conversations are important. It’s important to understand that this is a human issue rather than an environmental one.”
For a while, Fisher wasn’t sure if she should give up running or her environmental activism. She admitted having difficulty striking a balance and was unhappy. She felt she couldn’t do both. But after talking to friends on the team and those involved in sustainability, Fisher was convinced by friends in both groups how important it was to continue on both paths. She realized that many of her teammates also cared about climate change, and that friends on the environmental side were fans too.
“But now it all fits together really well,” Fisher said. “I’m so excited about this SCORE project because it brings everything full circle. It ties it all together.”
The project is off the ground and embraced by Stanford Athletics. The next step is to find a reliable funding source and a leadership model that will allow it to perpetuate itself long after Fisher graduates.
Meanwhile, Fisher is finally at peace -- her passions can complement each other rather than conflict.
“I realize I don’t have to make tradeoffs,” she said. “These are things I really care about and I don’t think I would be doing well in either if I didn’t have that balance. A big part of why I love running so much is because it’s one of the most human things you can do. It’s natural. It makes me feel alive. Running is a way to experience life.
“I guess I’m a life-lover. That’s why I want to protect it.”
Learn more at sss.stanford.edu/score.