In a joint lecture to approximately 25 students, faculty, and staff on March 7 at the Lincoln Center campus, Christiana Zenner, Ph.D., associate professor of theology, and Leslie Timoney, associate director of campus operations at the Lincoln Center campus, illustrated why there is much more to water than just H2O.

An Engineering Feat

Timoney, who spearheads the Lincoln Center campus efforts to meet the city of New York’s Water Challenge, explained how the city first began collecting water in a reservoir at what is now Bryant Park, and then, as the city grew, began expanding its water system into the Catskill Mountains region. The current system consists of a series of aqueducts, reservoirs, and tunnels that funnel drinking water from the Croton, Catskill, and Delaware watersheds toward the city, with one last stop in Mount Pleasant, where it runs through a facility that uses ultraviolet light to disinfect it.

“Amazingly enough, [the system is]125 miles long, and water gets to the city 95% by gravity. We’re only pumping 5%. It’s just an amazing engineering feat,” she said, noting that most cities spend three to four times more than New York because of pumping costs.

“So this is just a unique situation, and we’re lucky to have it.”

What also makes the water system unique, she said, is the fact that the New York state controls the watershed where New York City gets its water. When New York first began tapping water from the Delaware watershed, west of the Catskills, the state of New Jersey sued to stop it, because the water flowed into the river that divides New Jersey from Pennsylvania. The Supreme Court actually settled the dispute in a 1954 case that dictated how much water each state could claim.

The average New Yorker uses 120 gallons of that water a day, she said. Personal use, such as drinking, cooking, showering, and cleaning, accounts for 60 gallons a day, while the other 60 gallons is used for services, such as street cleaning and restaurant supplies. To help preserve that watershed, Timoney said Fordham has taken actions such as using new washing machines on campus that use significantly less water.

Water As a Right-To-Life Issue

Zenner, the author of Just Water: Water, Ethics, and Fresh Water Crises (Orbis, 2018), said she appreciated the nitty gritty details of Timoney’s presentation, such as the fact that the 14 water treatment plants that treat sewage are connected to both the city’s sewers and its storm drains. The latter fact should give us pause about letting dog waste, litter, or lawn chemicals end up in the gutter, and also get people thinking about the entire water cycle.

“When I give talks, one of the challenges that I often give is, ‘Let’s learn about your water supply. Let’s learn about how the fresh water is sourced, and how it’s treated, and how it interacts or doesn’t intact with other forms of treated water,’” she said.

She said the philosopher Ivan Illich had it right when he declared ‘I shall not reduce all waters to H2O.’

“One of the tricky things in speaking with water policy folks, and why we sometimes look at each other across the table like aliens when we have conversations, is that, for many water policy folks in the late 20th and now 21st century, their presumption has been that water is H2O, and it is an entity that is amenable to various forms of technological, engineering, and economic control,” she said.

“It has been treated as resource and a commodity, but it is also more than that.”

In fact, she said, the current global freshwater crisis has spurred many religious groups to turn to their traditions to ask whether they provide moral reasoning that can inform thinking about water as a justice issue, or as a sacred substance.

The Catholic Church addressed it most recently in 2015, when Pope Francis issued the encyclical Laudato Si’ but Zenner said the church had in fact been quietly but consistently raising access to clean, fresh water as an issue since 2000. Water, she said, is a locus for thinking about “the interaction of social and ecological justice, and the imperative of protecting the environment and providing livelihoods to the poor.”

“Fresh water is seen by the Vatican as a matter of dignity, justice, and respect for life. In fact, this language of water as a right to life issue can be found in a good number of Catholic documents. I stress that because particularly in a Catholic church in the United States, that is a not a standard association of right to life language. If I say right to life, you will likely say abortion, birth control, maybe euthanasia or the death penalty, but not necessarily access to clean, fresh water,” she said.

“So that’s a really important moral expansion to note.”

“We are pleased to be part of this effort to conserve a valuable resource,” said Marco A. Valera, vice president for facilities management at Fordham. “Although this NYC challenge is for the Lincoln Center campus, we will be taking similar steps at our Rose Hill campus.”

According to the DEP, universities can make a big dent in citywide water demand, as New York is home to more university students than any other city in the nation. The goal will be to reduce water consumption by at least 5 percent by 2020. Water use in residence halls, dining halls, and irrigation of green spaces are will all be targeted.

“The NYC Water Challenge is a fantastic opportunity for Fordham to reflect and reorient our urban water responsibility—to reflect on patterns of use and waste, and to reorient toward conscious water consumption on individual and institutional levels,” said Christiana Zenner, Ph.D., associate professor of theology, whose research examines water as a scarce resource and as a commodity. “The NYDEP’s vision is concrete, constructive, and creative.”

The challenge lasts two years, from August 1, 2018 through July 31, 2020. As a participant, Fordham will be provided with technical assistance from the city to complement an already robust sustainability program.

The discussion, which was held at the New York Ethical Culture Society, was led by Christiana Peppard, Ph.D., assistant professor of theology, science, and ethics, and Steven Stoll, Ph.D, professor of history. Students were required to read the encyclical over the summer, and share their thoughts on a university blog.

Peppard prefaced remarks on the document by noting its historical significance. Although the Catholic Church has long addressed environmental concerns, this was the first encyclical in which ecology is central, she said. According to the pope, ecology is a triad of important relationships: among human beings themselves, between human beings and God, and between humans and the planet that sustains them.

“There’s never been an encyclical that talks about these three sets of relationships as central to Catholic social teaching, even though Pope Francis draws so much on the established tradition of Catholic social teaching, and quite frankly, that’s exciting,” Peppard said.

She said that the FCLC students were animated by the issues of modern anthropocentrism, ecological debt, the technocratic paradigm, and the commodification of water, according to postings on the blog.

The encyclical genuinely aspires to address every person on the planet, regardless of their faith, she said.

“You don’t have to be Catholic . . . to read, think about, and reflect critically and constructively upon what Laudato Sí might be saying,” she said.

Peppard and Stoll opened up the floor to the students, who addressed the room through two microphones.

One student from Hong Kong bemoaned the fact that a vista that her parents could once see clearly had become choked with smog by the time she grew up. A student from Brooklyn cautioned against assumptions that the planet needs help from humans for its own survival, pointing out that the earth has thus far survived many species.

Students who self-identified as conservatives expressed hope that the church’s reframing of environmental issues would help them to bridge the partisan divide in this country. A student who hailed from Berkley, California, lamented that Laudato Sí contained few concrete proposals.

Stoll noted how Pope Francis explores the way we make things, and challenges us to think of the earth as a single human community instead of a set of nation states, commodities, or exchanges. If we did, he said, we’d reject the capitalistic notion that everything, including water, needs to be commoditized. This goes for the skies too.

“The atmosphere is not a commodity, and has not been commodified as such, but loading it with methane and carbon dioxide claims it as a necessary attribute to manufacturing,” Stoll said.

“Francis calls the atmosphere a ‘common good,’ giving no industry or corporation the right to reduce its capacity to sustain human life.”

Although the Pope’s Laudato Sí has attracted criticism from free-market advocates, Stoll said they miss the larger, more profound point that Francis makes of thinking as the world as one interconnected system; although sooty skies and urban abandonment have been vanquished in New York City, they are still very much issues in other places.

“The only truly outrageous notion we have about the world is that the present condition will continue indefinitely, that things will stay exactly the same. Imagining . . . a wider sense of well-being, and decoupling the earth from its commodity value, is an entirely new (view),” he said.

Listen to Peppard explain what it means to seek water justice means and why this issue impacts women in particular.

Fordham’s resident “water ethics” expert, Christiana Peppard, PhD, assistant professor of theology, science and ethics, shared the following thoughts on the situation:

**

Until recently, people in the U.S. have tended to think that “water crises” happen to other people in other parts of the world, that “water security” is an issue for global diplomacy more than our own faucets.

But now, the invisible is becoming visible with regard to United States water: across this vast country there are water problems, from California’s drought to the effects of agricultural runoff on Toledo’s drinking water. The public health disaster and environmental racism evident in Flint’s contaminated water supply has extended to Newark Schools. And now a USAToday piece reveals levels of lead far beyond the regulatory standard in more than 2,000 locations.

This is serious.

Lead contamination from old pipes and other forms of chemical leaching is a known issue to water infrastructure experts: Many municipalities take major steps to ensure that drinking water leaving their treatment plants meets federal standards.

Obviously, that failed in Flint. But apart from violations of municipal water supply (as in Flint), lead can enter water supply at points of entry to schools, homes, and other buildings. This is the case for many of the sites profiled by the USAToday team.

Given the deleterious impacts of lead on children’s brain development, and the negative health effects across the lifespan of lead and other undesirable compounds in water, what should you do?

There are six steps: (1) get your water tested, (2) learn about your municipal water quality and treatment, (3) consider an under-sink water filter, (4) regard bottled water as a stop-gap measure for public health emergencies, not a long-term solution, (5) learn about your watershed, and (6) figure out what you can contribute to developing consciousness about water ethics. Water is all of our responsibility, on many levels of scale.

Let me assure you that you don’t have to be a water expert to do any of this. Even if you’re terrified (and frankly, often I am too!), take a deep breath, and jump in—because in fact, simply by being connected to water sources, you are already immersed in these issues. And we can do better.

• Get Your Water Tested at Home

Get your water tested at the faucet(s) in your home. This will tell you about what is in the water that you drink and use for bathing and other domestic purposes. This is the data you will use in deciding what kinds of filtration and purification systems to choose (see #3). If you live in a building built in or before the 1950s, you must do this. But really, everyone should do this.

• Get Water Quality Data from your Municipality and/or Water Provider.

Get data about municipal water quality from your water provider. Compare this to the data about your household water (#1). This is how you will see what undesirables are entering your water through your own home pipes (beyond the municipal infrastructure).

In other words, data from your water provider gives you bigger-picture information that you can use. By comparing the municipal data to your own faucet data, you can see whether and how your home’s water quality differs from that of the local water provider. This will help you select a filtration or purification method (see #3).

And by paying attention to the water quality report from the water provider, you get a sense of the “terroir” of your water. (Yes, just like wine, water has a local and regional “terroir”—it takes the shape, taste, and influences of the land and environments through which it passes!*)

Finally, I recommend you get information about how your water provider treats that water before piping it to your house. There are many effective methods of water treatment at the municipal level (and some accessible books about treatment of water from past to present, like Water 4.0 by David Sedlak.

• Invest in a Water Filter that Connects to your Water Supply.

There are many types of water filters and filtration or purification systems. Many people recommend under-sink or whole-house water filters (the latter works better for people in freestanding residences, obviously, than in does for people living in apartments). The best systems take out heavy metals (mercury, lead) as well as organic compounds, agricultural products like herbicides and pesticides, and some pharmaceuticals.

The most powerful kind of water treatment is reverse osmosis (RO), which basically removes everything from the water (including minerals that make water taste good). Some products now offer RO filters that retain the minerals in tap water or even re-mineralize the water after it’s been filtered. (Reverse osmosis with re-mineralization, among other treatments, is what companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsi use to treat the tap water that becomes Dasani and Aquafina. In other words, they take everything out, then add proprietary mineral compounds back in to make the water taste better!)

Most counter-top filters do not filter out lead. If your water has lead problems and you’re not going to do an under-sink filter installation, please make sure you get one that filters lead (and mercury and arsenic and other undesirables).

• Bottled water is a stopgap measure; it is not a long-term solution.

The convenience of bottled water is undeniable. In cases of public health emergencies, it is ethically justifiable to use bottled water. So if you are freaking out about known levels of lead in your water, or you have to wait to get your water tested, then there is an argument for drinking bottled water in the very short-term because you are seeking wellness and avoiding a public health crisis. But bottled water is not a long-term solution. It is convenient; in public health crises it is important; but it is a bandage for an issue that needs a very different kind of treatment.

(I and other water experts have written elsewhere about bottled water as an ethical issue, especially in industrialized nations with the capacity to invest in and maintain reliable water infrastructure.)**

• Learn about your Watershed, and Figure Out Where to Jump in to Local Conversations about Water.

Water is constantly in motion, and while it is a universal human need, the “terroir” and sources of your water are particular to the place where you live. So learn about your watershed! And then, advocate for and get involved in making sure that many civic energies, public monies, and initiatives are oriented towards water infrastructure updates—not just repairs.

Our human bodies of water rely upon broader bodies of water. We can protect, maintain, and provide water in better and worse ways. It requires a bit of foresight, and a lot of persistence, to keep water in our sight lines. But isn’t that important, for something that undergirds all of our wellbeing and makes our lives possible?

• Delve into Water Ethics

How societies interact with water is a major ethical question, not just a political one. For example, what does it mean to distribute water ethically? What does it mean to be virtuous with regard to water? Who is entitled to water? Who should provide it? Is water best viewed as a gift of nature, an economic commodity, a human right? These topics are part of an emerging discourse on “water ethics.”

Trust me: You don’t have to be a water expert to engage in water ethics—you just have to be someone who breathes, cares, lives in a watershed. All of us can begin to think and act well about water. Let’s be those people, for ourselves and for others.

I invite you to join this conversation, by:

• watching “The Importance of a Water Ethic,” a video produced by the Center for Humans and Nature for World Water Day 2016.

• reading one book: Blue Revolution: Unmaking America’s Water Crisis, by Cynthia Barnett (http://www.beacon.org/Blue-Revolution-P945.aspx)

—

Christiana Z. Peppard, Ph.D. (@profpeppard) is the author of Just Water: Theology, Ethics, and the Global Water Crisis (2014) and an expert on water, ethics, and religion and science. She has written for and appeared in public media venues such as The New Republic, Public Radio International, The Washingon Post, TED-Ed, MSNBC, and CNN.com.

Several investigations have been launched and what exactly happened remains to be seen. In the meantime, Fordham’s Christiana Peppard, an assistant professor of theology, science, and ethics, the author of “Just Water: Theology, Ethics an the Global Water Crisis,” weighs in on the ethical implications of this crisis.

For more on Peppard, who also teaches in the environmental studies program at Fordham, watch this TedEd video about “Where We Get Our Fresh Water,” and this CNN piece she wrote on “The resource problem you probably haven’t heard about.”

On June 18, Pope Francis officially released his encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si (“Praised be You”). Members of Fordham’s theology faculty were quoted in several news sources, explaining what it is, its rarity and monumental importance, and what the ultimate message may mean for the world’s Christians and other religious groups.

Christiana Peppard, PhD, assistant professor of theology, science, and ethics: What you need to know about Pope Francis’s environmental encyclical, in the Washington Post.

Michael Peppard, PhD, assistant professor of theology: Pope Francis’s Earthquake in Commonweal Magazine.

Charles Camosy, PhD, associate professor of theology: Pope calls climate change a ‘moral imperative’: Will US Catholics listen?, in The Christian Science Monitor.

J. Patrick Hornbeck, II, associate professor of theology: The Church Challenges the State to Take Radical Action on Climate Change, at the blog TakePart.com.

Terrence Tilley, PhD, Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ, Professor of Catholic Theology: The Pope & Climate Change, on CBS News.

In addition, five members of Fordham’s faculty gave their pre-encyclical thoughts on the event a few days before the release:

Christiana Peppard:

Claudio Burgaleta, SJ, associate professor of religion, Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education:

C. Colt Anderson, PhD, dean of the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education:

“The encyclical is going to generate opposition, so Pope Francis going to have to frame it within a broader understanding of Catholic ecclesiology, the authority of the pope, and the nature of moral teaching itself… A lot of conservative Catholics are vocally opposed to the pope saying anything about the environment. Yet, the fact that the pope is discussing these issues is not new. For instance, John Paul II released the Common Declaration on Environmental Ethics in 2002, which was framed in terms of social justice teachings… [The difference was that] as long as Catholic conservatives in the United States saw themselves as supported by John Paul II and Benedict XVI, they could overlook statements about the environment and social justice and focus on their key issues—homosexuality, birth control, and so forth. Now, however, they are more willing to directly oppose the pope…I don’t think that the opposition to the pope on these matters within the church is very deep, but it is very organized and it tends to come from the wealthier component of church, so they have a disproportionate ability to be heard. The pope needs to try to win this component over. It’s not about winning or losing—it’s his pastoral duty. And that’s part of the reason why it’s so important that he frame these arguments using doctrinal language.”

Henry Schwalbenberg, PhD, professor of economics and director of the International Political Economy and Development programs:

“No matter which side of the climate change debate you are on, most of us can agree that environmental changes and natural disasters have an undue impact on the poor.  I remember a study some of my colleagues did in the Philippines on the effect of urbanization and unregulated car pollution on the cognitive ability of young children living in squatter’s areas along congested highways. My colleagues measured the level of lead poisoning as well as the serious cognitive damage that emissions had caused among the children.  Since that time, leaders have successfully worked to restrict lead emissions in the Philippines and have given these children a fighting chance for a better future.

“I am confident that Francis will encourage all of us to work on behalf of our poorer brothers and sisters who desperately need additional resources to confront environmental challenges. We Americans are doing this is through our various foreign aid programs … [In] the Philippines we are assisting local communities in building typhoon resistant housing, … and in poor arid areas of Latin America such as Northeast Brazil we are supporting efforts to develop reliable sources of potable water, [both]efforts to promote economic development that is ecologically sustainable and targeted to benefit the most vulnerable. In his encyclical, as well as his UN address in September, Francis will be encouraging us to do even more and to do it even better.”

Christine Firer Hinze, PhD, professor of Christian ethics and director of the Francis and Ann Curran Center for American Catholic Studies,

“In issuing this major teaching document, Pope Francis brings fundamental Catholic convictions about the dignity and flourishing of human beings and the rest of God’s creation into dialogue with the pressing social and global realities of our day. He relies on scripture, Catholic tradition, and the best scholarly and scientific knowledge available to us today, drawing on the work of the Vatican’s own distinguished panel of scientific advisors, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences—80 of the most distinguished scientists from around the world, including Nobel laureates. Earlier this year, the Academy of Sciences held an international gathering, “Climate Change and the Common Good,” whose final statement affirmed that “human-induced climate change is a scientific reality,” and that work to mitigate it, and especially its effects on the poor, is a “moral and religious imperative for humanity.”

Read an article about the Encyclical in Fordham magazine.

By Stevenson Swanson

One of the highlights of Pope Francis’ five-day visit to the Philippines in January was an open-air Mass in Tacloban, a city of more than 200,000 people that had been devastated by Typhoon Haiyan in November 2013. He told the crowd of several hundred thousand gathered at the airport that he came to Tacloban because he wanted to express his closeness to “our brothers and sisters who endured suffering, loss, and devastation.”

He did not talk about the environment or climate change, issues that are important to him and have been sources of much speculation since he announced they would be the subject of an encyclical—reserved for a pope’s most important teachings—later this year. Then again, he did not really need to mention them.

After all, his trip to the city had been moved up and shortened because of an approaching storm, and the Mass was held in a drenching downpour with high winds. Like everyone else there that day, the pope wore a poncho.

“The environment was front and center,” said Henry Schwalbenberg, PhD, director of Fordham’s master’s degree program in international political economy and development (IPED), who was there with some of his students. “He was trying to help people deal with the suffering in their lives that was caused by an environmental event—in the middle of a tropical storm.

“The organizers offered him the choice of saying Mass in a tent, but he refused the indoor option. I think the rain and the storm were right on for what he wanted.”

Slapping Nature in the Face

Weather is not the same thing as climate. Single weather events such as Typhoon Haiyan or Hurricane Sandy, which wreaked havoc on the U.S. East Coast in 2012, cannot definitively be attributed to climate change. But scientists who study climate patterns over longer periods of time predict that extreme weather will increase in the future as a consequence of the rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere. Climate-change skeptics still dispute that, but atmospheric greenhouse gases are undoubtedly rising. And the pope has made it clear who he thinks is responsible for the increase.

“Mostly, in great part, it is man who has slapped nature in the face,” he said in a press conference during his flight to the Philippines. “We have in a sense taken over nature.”

It is perhaps not surprising that the man who took the name Francis when he was elected pope—after Francis of Assisi, patron saint of the environment—would make environmental issues a priority of his papacy.

“He’s changed the tone of the conversation within the church and gotten the attention of people who might not have paid attention to this issue,” said Paolo Galizzi, a clinical professor at Fordham Law School who specializes in international environmental law and human rights.

But what in the pope’s background and training accounts for this dedication? And what can be expected when his encyclical is issued, probably in the early summer?

One place to look for the source of the pope’s dedication to environmental issues is in his training as a Jesuit, according to Chris Lowney, FCRH ’81, GSAS ’81, author of Pope Francis: Why He Leads the Way He Leads (Loyola Press, 2013). Lowney notes that one of the spiritual exercises that originated with Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order, is to “find God in all things.”

“I can easily see how the pope’s Jesuit formation reinforces the idea that we are stewards of God’s creation and that God is somehow present in all of creation,” said Lowney, a former Jesuit seminarian and investment banker who now chairs the board of Catholic Health Initiatives. “So, therefore, we have a duty to look after it responsibly.”

Christiana Peppard, PhD, assistant professor of theology, science, and ethics at Fordham, agrees that Francis’ devotion to nature has a theological basis, but it also has an ethical component based on who’s responsible for environmental problems—and who suffers most from the impact of those problems.

“Climate change, which is driven predominantly by highly developed states like the U.S., tends to disproportionately affect the poor,” said Peppard, author of Just Water: Theology, Ethics, and the Global Water Crisis (Orbis Books, 2014). “And they didn’t cause the problem in the first place.”

The Inequality of Climate Change

Although in recent years China has become the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide, the bulk of the greenhouse gases that have accumulated in the atmosphere were the product of the industrialized nations of Europe and, especially, America. Yet many of the countries that will be hit hardest by the effects of climate change are developing nations where large swaths of the population live in poorly built housing and the infrastructure to resist or respond to disasters is rudimentary at best.

“If you are living on a dollar a day or less, it’s very difficult to deal with everyday realities such as feeding your family, let alone things like flooding that’s caused by climate change,” said Galizzi.

Josh Kyller sees this challenge play out daily in his work as the emergency coordinator for Catholic Relief Services on the Philippine islands of Leyte and Samar, where he oversees a staff of about 300 people working to help residents rebuild their lives. He recites the grim statistics of Haiyan’s destructive power in the area: Thousands perished, and 10 million people were displaced.

The outpouring of international relief and Filipinos’ eagerness to rebuild has led to significant progress in the recovery, but Kyller and his staff are still helping 100,000 households in efforts to rebuild homes, provide clean water and proper sewage, and reduce exposure to future disasters.

“Tacloban is a kind of boom town,” said Kyller, a 2011 graduate of Fordham’s IPED program, who was with Schwalbenberg and his students at the pope’s Mass in January. “But there’s still a long road ahead.”

Concern for the poor and vulnerable has been a constant theme in Pope Francis’ life. But his positions are not that different from those of his immediate papal predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who wrote extensively about poverty and economic justice, according to Peppard, although Americans may not associate them as strongly with such issues because of the U.S. church’s focus on the pontiffs’ positions on reproduction and other social issues.

“Pope Francis’ teachings are not new. They’re being articulated anew by him,” she said. “But no one has written an encyclical focused on the environment. That is new.”

Schwalbenberg said that the pope is likely to link environmental degradation and economic justice in a way his predecessors did not. “I think Francis’ emphasis will be to wed the environment very tightly to a preferential treatment for the poor.”

As for the expertise that will underpin the encyclical, Francis is likely to draw on the information presented at a four-day workshop on sustainability issues that was held at the Vatican last May and brought together several dozen scientists, theologians, philosophers, and economists, including four Nobel laureates. He is expected to issue his encyclical in June or July because he wants to increase the odds that it will make an impact on the next round of international climate negotiations, which will take place in Paris in November.

The Pope’s Political Critics

Although the exact contents of the papal letter are not known, that has not stopped what Peppard calls preemptive criticism of the encyclical, prompted at least in part by the pope’s occasionally sharp remarks about what he has called “unfettered free-market capitalism.”

Last fall, for example, he addressed a global group of grassroots organizers, saying that an economic system centered only on money would “plunder nature” to sustain “frenetic” levels of consumption. “Climate change, the loss of biodiversity, deforestation are already showing their devastating effects … from which you, the humble, suffer the most.”

Taken as a whole, his critics say, Francis’ views amount to socialism at best, communism at worst. In their view, the free market, far from being the source of inequality, is the great engine that will pull the world’s poor out of misery.

“Pope Francis—and I say this as a Catholic—is a complete disaster when it comes to his public policy pronouncements,” Stephen Moore, chief economist of the Heritage Foundation, has written. “On the economy, and even more so on the environment, the pope has allied himself with the far left and has embraced an ideology that would make people poorer and less free.”

The encyclical and Francis’ addresses to the United Nations and U.S. Congress, both of which are set to take place in September, are unlikely to persuade conservative critics such as Moore or deeply entrenched climate-change skeptics such as Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who last February brandished a snowball in the Senate chamber to dramatize the cold winter in the nation’s capital, decrying what he called the “hysteria” about global warming.

“If the overwhelming science hasn’t been able to persuade you, I am not sure what else can happen to convince you that climate is a problem,” said Galizzi. “Having said that, the encyclical has the potential to reach people who don’t pay attention to these issues.”

Schwalbenberg agrees. He cites the example of a Connecticut businessman he knows, whom he describes as “a very devout Catholic” who’s not interested in the environment. “But because the pope is talking about it, he’s going to think about it.”

An Expansive View of Life

Theologically, the encyclical could also be a way to redefine what constitutes a “life” issue for the Catholic Church.

“It will be an opportunity to see that there’s more at stake in Catholic ethics in the 21st century than reproduction, abortion, and euthanasia,” Peppard said. “If the church is concerned about life, that need not be a selective lens.”

But what about results, such as a firm commitment by the nations of the world to reduce greenhouse emissions when they meet in Paris?

Given the complexities of getting so many countries, with their varying national interests, to agree on anything, the odds may not be in Francis’ favor. On the other hand, he is a singular figure, the leader of a worldwide institution with 1.2 billion members but no national interests to defend, no reelection campaign to wage.

“He has won great credibility by his example of humility and his reputation as a truth-teller who speaks plainly. So few politicians nowadays can speak with that same credibility,” said Lowney. “He would seem as well-positioned as anyone to win a hearing for the issue of how we steward the Earth.”

—Stevenson Swanson is a freelance journalist who has written about religion, the United Nations, and the environment, among other topics.

If ecology and public awareness pique your interest, put two climate-change-relevant books from Fordham faculty on your Earth Day list:

Shoshana Enelow, Ph.D., assistant professor of English, recently co-published Research Theatre, Climate Change, and the Ecocide Project(Palgrave/MacMillan, 2014) with Una Chaudhuri, Ph.D., professor of English and drama at NYU. The book deals with both theories, critiques, and practice of making art in an era when the Earth is undergoing massive changes in climate. Enelow’s play, Carla and Lewis, is part of the book.

“Climate change is extremely hard to conceptualize, largely because of its enormous scale, both geophysically and temporally,” she says. “As one of the characters says in the play, ‘Climate change is enormous, it’s tiny, it’s impossible, it’s happening—all the way up and all the way down.’ We wanted to experiment with different ways of making climate change seen, heard, and felt in the theater.

“The characters of Carla and Lewis came out of our explorations of what we called ‘ecological character’: characters not driven by psychology or sociology (as modern drama’s characters often are) but by evolutionary imperatives like adaptation, co-evolution, species life, etc.

Christiana Peppard, Ph.D., assistant professor of theology, has published Just Water: Theology, Ethics, and the Global Water Crisis(Orbis, 2014), in which theology, hydrology, ecology, economics, religion, science, and history all come together.

The book is the first of two tomes that Peppard has penned on water (the second, Valuing Water in the Anthropocene, is still in the works), and it’s geared toward educated nonspecialists and scholars alike.

For Peppard, the issue of water scarcity has personal resonance. She was born in California’s Central Valley, grew up in Colorado, and earned a bachelor’s in human biology from Stanford University. Places like the Central Valley are ground zero in the fight over fresh water, as the rise of large-scale hydraulic technologies such as dams, diversion canals and irrigation, and powerful groundwater pumps, have made agriculture the biggest consumptive use of fresh water worldwide.

Underground aquifers, such as the Ogalalla Aquifer in the middle of the country, are being permanently depleted.

“Tapping this water is like mining a valuable resource because, once it’s consumed, the sources do not replenish on any humanly meaningful timescale,” she says.
“Some cities like Beijing and Mexico City, not to mention parts of California’s Central Valley, are quite literally sinking as the groundwater beneath them disappears.”

Peppard delves into the major issues related to present worldwide consumption of potable water—from climate change and new extractive technologies to the ways the burden of water procurement is higher on women.

She also explores the relation between theology and ethics and shows how fresh water is an apt substance to frame the discussion.

— Janet Sassi and Patrick Verel 

The University’s more active Twitter users spring from the communication and media studies department, though faculty in other disciplines are delving in as well.

All regular faculty users interviewed have one thing in common: they warily tested the waters before finding their comfort zone.

To a non-digital native, Twitter can seem like an unwieldy, hungry beast, or worse, a massive party where you can’t find your friends. Interviews with six professors demonstrate how they manage to both find friends and feed the beast.

Paul Levinson, Ph.D., professor of communication and media studies 

@paullev 

With more than 6,300 followers, Levinson tops the heap in terms of audience. It’s not surprising, considering that Levinson wrote New, New Media (Pierson, 2009, 2013). The Chronicle of Higher Educationhas named him one of “Twitter’s Top Ten High Fliers.” As a direct disciple of the late media ecology theorist Neil Postman, who taught at NYU, Levinson approaches the medium with an anthropologist’s eye.

“As John Dewey said, you learn by doing. You get to know things best when you’re inside them, and that’s a crucial point. The best way to learn Twitter is to take time to learn it and not take advice from someone else. Twitter makes it easy for any voice to be heard, and a university has a lot of voices. In the past, the only way that things got out to the public was if some gatekeeper passed approval, like an editor or producer.  This was a system intended to keep out low-quality work, but often it kept out high-quality. Twitter is a very good corrective to that. It makes me think of the line from Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard: ‘Full many a flower is born to blush unseen.’ I’m concerned about these flowers wasting their time in the desert. Twitter allows them to be seen.”

Lance Strate, Ph.D., professor of communication and media studies

@lancestrate

Strate got onto Twitter in the very early days. Another disciple of Postman, Strate’s Twitter circle includes scholars and practitioners of media ecology. Though he uses the medium proficiently for specific interests, he remains acutely aware of Twitter’s pitfalls.

“From a critical point of view, Twitter raises a lot of questions. What is the point of this medium? What is it doing? What is it undoing? I see it as abbreviated telegraphic discourse. Electronic media in general undermines the concept and practice of literacy as we’ve known it. It discourages engagement in long, measured discourse and deep reading, and it’s not about following a train of coherent thought. It often trivializes what you’re dealing with. And while it’s common to hear complaints about the ‘What-I-had-for-lunch’ tweets, more importantly, Twitter turns political discourse into slogans, quips, and sound bites. We lose the capacity for careful reasoning and clear thought. That naturally leads to more conflict-oriented communication. So, how do you evaluate that? We evaluate a tweet by how clever and economical it is, how many people it goes out to, and how often it gets re-tweeted. None of that speaks to how well it informs us, educates us, or uplifts us. You know something’s wrong when every television show has a ‘like us on Facebook’ and a ‘follow us on Twitter.’

Beth Knobel, Ph.D., assistant professor of communication and media studies

@bethknobel

Knobel spent nearly 14 years as a journalist reporting on Russia, nine of those years with CBS News (@cbsnews). She still comments as an expert in Russian affairs and tweets about it frequently, as well as on the ever-shifting media landscape. Her Twitter followers are influential experts in their fields.

“As a professor of communications it’s important to practice what I preach. Rather than mouthing off I try to use Twitter to add something to the debate going on in the profession. People appreciate it the most when it’s used to spread valuable information and not just self-promotion. I have specialized interests, but I try to tweet things that are interesting to a general public. I tweet what I know so that I’m comfortable as to my decision to add to a discussion or start one, rather than just to say what’son my mind. For news,Twitter is a double-edged sword. On one hand it encourages people to learn more if they desire by linking to articles, but I have students who follow the New York Times (@nytimes) and they think they’re informed. Unless you take that extra step you don’t get more than 140 characters. While it’s great for spreading headlines, Twitter takes action to get real knowledge.”

Christiana Peppard, Ph.D., assistant professor of theology

@profpeppard

Peppard uses Twitter as a way to expand on her niche area of research: environmental ethics with a specialization in water. She is a relative newcomer to the medium and sees it as another facet of being a public intellectual.

“I was encouraged to join Twitter about a year ago. It’s been a process of discernment, because initially I wasn’t sure if I wanted my voice out there. Recently, I realized that it’s a way for me to connect with other folks who are analyzing or aggregating information about water ethics and science. I find the 140 characters facilitate an economy of language, even like a form of poetry. I like to have a baseline of scheduled tweets (from TweetDeck). Sometimes I send out nice, interesting quotes that aren’t necessarily linked to any particular news hook. For example, when I was reading the Origin of the Species and The Descent of Man, I set up a series of ‘Daily Darwin’ quotes that were funny, suggestive, and sometimes absurd. People seem to like that. One of the things I continue to explore is how to render my Twitter voice both personal (reflective of how I proceed in the world) and professional. And that’s where the humor comes in. It humanizes my professional work.”

Robert Blechman, Ph.D., adjunct professor of communication and media studies

@rkblechman @rkbs_twitstery @twistery

Blechman stands out among tweeters beyond Fordham’s gates in that he has done the seemingly impossible: he wrote an entire novel on Twitter. As a media ecology theorist, he believes that the establishment often reacts to a new medium with trepidation. His response was to explore the Twitter medium through a familiar form, the mystery novel.

“I started writing [my novel]in Twitter as a literary experiment, which I believe was the first real-time attempt at Twitter fiction. There were some efforts to publish pre-written pieces in 140 character chunks and, of course, many Japanese cellphone novels. Though I usually posted the novel tweets in real time at 9 a.m. and 9 p.m., seven days a week, I sometimes scheduled my tweets via a Twitter automation service, SocialOomph, to update the story when I couldn’t be at a computer. At times I’d reach out to [my followers]through my main character. For example, if my detective faced a difficult puzzle or was trapped by an adversary, he’d use his Twitter feed to solicit suggestions, asking ‘How do I get out of this?’  I’m now tweeting a sequel three times daily at @Twitsery.” 

Mike Plugh, GSAS ’08, lecturer in communication and media studies

@mikeplugh

Plugh teaches digital media and cyberculture. He tweets about the media, culture, and sports—especially his frustration with the Knicks.  

“I came to Fordham because it is the unofficial home of media ecology. I only say that because we probably have the largest collection of former Neil Postman (@postmanquote) students under one roof. Then of course there’s the affiliation of the late [communication theorist]Marshall McLuhan (@marshallmcluhan). The way we try to think about any emerging tech like Twitter is how it fits into the existing culture and how does it change democracy and institutions? This is something very special about Fordham (@fordhamnotes).” 

All regular faculty users interviewed have one thing in common: they warily tested the waters before finding their comfort zone.

To a non-digital native, Twitter can seem like an unwieldy, hungry beast, or worse, a massive party where you can’t find your friends. Interviews with six professors demonstrate how they manage to both find friends and feed the beast.

Paul Levinson, Ph.D., professor of communication and media studies
@paullev

With more than 6,300 followers, Levinson tops the heap in terms of audience. It’s not surprising, considering that Levinson wrote New, New Media (Pierson, 2009, 2013). The Chronicle of Higher Educationhas named him one of “Twitter’s Top Ten High Fliers.” As a direct disciple of the latemedia ecology theorist Neil Postman, who taught at NYU, Levinson approaches the medium with an anthropologist’s eye.

“As John Dewey said, you learn by doing. You get to know things best when you’re inside them, and that’s a crucial point. The best way to learn Twitter is to take time to learn it and not take advice from someone else. Twitter makes it easy for any voice to be heard, and a university has a lot of voices. In the past, the only way that things got out to the public was if some gatekeeper passed approval, like an editor or producer.  This was a system intended to keep out low-quality work, but often it kept out high-quality. Twitter is a very good corrective to that. It makes me think of the line from Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard: ‘Full many a flower is born to blush unseen.’ I’m concerned about these flowers wasting their time in the desert. Twitter allows them to be seen.”

Lance Strate, Ph.D., professor of communication and media studies

@lancestrate

Strate got onto Twitter in the very early days. Another disciple of Postman, Strate’s Twitter circle includes scholars and practitioners of media ecology. Though he uses the medium proficiently for specific interests, he remains acutely aware of Twitter’s pitfalls.

“From a critical point of view, Twitter raises a lot of questions. What is the point of this medium? What is it doing? What is it undoing? I see it as abbreviated telegraphic discourse. Electronic media in general undermines the concept and practice of literacy as we’ve known it. It discourages engagement in long, measured discourse and deep reading, and it’s not about following a train of coherent thought. It often trivializes what you’re dealing with. And while it’s common to hear complaints about the ‘What-I-had-for-lunch’ tweets, more importantly, Twitter turns political discourse into slogans, quips, and sound bites. We lose the capacity for careful reasoning and clear thought. That naturally leads to more conflict-oriented communication. So, how do you evaluate that? We evaluate a tweet by how clever and economical it is, how many people it goes out to, and how often it gets re-tweeted. None of that speaks to how well it informs us, educates us, or uplifts us. You know something’s wrong when every television show has a ‘like us on Facebook’ and a ‘follow us on Twitter.’

Beth Knobel, Ph.D., assistant professor of communication and media studies
@bethknobel

Knobel spent nearly 14 years as a journalist reporting on Russia, nine of those years with CBS News (@cbsnews). She still comments as an expert in Russian affairs and tweets about it frequently, as well as on the ever-shifting media landscape. Her Twitter followers are influential experts in their fields.

“As a professor of communications it’s important to practice what I preach. Rather than mouthing off I try to use Twitter to add something to the debate going on in the profession. People appreciate it the most when it’s used to spread valuable information and not just self-promotion. I have specialized interests, but I try to tweet things that are interesting to a general public. I tweet what I know so that I’m comfortable as to my decision to add to a discussion or start one, rather than just to say what’son my mind. For news,Twitter is a double-edged sword. On one hand it encourages people to learn more if they desire by linking to articles, but I have students who follow the New York Times (@nytimes) and they think they’re informed. Unless you take that extra step you don’t get more than 140 characters. While it’s great for spreading headlines, Twitter takes action to get real knowledge.”

Christiana Peppard, Ph.D., assistant professor of theology
@profpeppard

Peppard uses Twitter as a way to expand on her niche area of research: environmental ethics with a specialization in water. She is a relative newcomer to the medium and sees it as another facet of being a public intellectual.

“I was encouraged to join Twitter about a year ago. It’s been a process of discernment, because initially I wasn’t sure if I wanted my voice out there. Recently, I realized that it’s a way for me to connect with other folks who are analyzing or aggregating information about water ethics and science. I find the 140 characters facilitate an economy of language, even like a form of poetry. I like to have a baseline of scheduled tweets (from TweetDeck). Sometimes I send out nice, interesting quotes that aren’t necessarily linked to any particular news hook. For example, when I was reading the Origin of the Species and The Descent of Man, I set up a series of ‘Daily Darwin’ quotes that were funny, suggestive, and sometimes absurd. People seem to like that. One of the things I continue to explore is how to render my Twitter voice both personal (reflective of how I proceed in the world) and professional. And that’s where the humor comes in. It humanizes my professional work.”

Robert Blechman, Ph.D., adjunct professor of communication and media studies
@rkblechman @rkbs_twitstery @twistery

Blechman stands out among tweeters beyond Fordham’s gates in that he has done the seemingly impossible: he wrote an entire novel on Twitter. As a media ecology theorist, he believes that the establishment often reacts to a new medium with trepidation. His response was to explore the Twitter medium through a familiar form, the mystery novel.

“I started writing [my novel]in Twitter as a literary experiment, which I believe was the first real-time attempt at Twitter fiction. There were some efforts to publish pre-written pieces in 140 character chunks and, of course, many Japanese cellphone novels. Though I usually posted the novel tweets in real time at 9 a.m. and 9 p.m., seven days a week, I sometimes scheduled my tweets via a Twitter automation service, SocialOomph, to update the story when I couldn’t be at a computer. At times I’d reach out to [my followers]through my main character. For example, if my detective faced a difficult puzzle or was trapped by an adversary, he’d use his Twitter feed to solicit suggestions, asking ‘How do I get out of this?’  I’m now tweeting a sequel three times daily at @Twitsery.”

Mike Plugh, GSAS ’08, lecturer in communication and media studies
@mikeplugh

Plugh teaches digital media and cyberculture. He tweets about the media, culture, and sports—especially his frustration with the Knicks.

“I came to Fordham because it is the unofficial home of media ecology. I only say that because we probably have the largest collection of former Neil Postman (@postmanquote) students under one roof. Then of course there’s the affiliation of the late [communication theorist]Marshall McLuhan (@marshallmcluhan). The way we try to think about any emerging tech like Twitter is how it fits into the existing culture and how does it change democracy and institutions? This is something very special about Fordham (@fordhamnotes).”