The White Mesa Uranium Mill leaching radioactive waste near the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. The bustling streets of Bangladesh and the quaint, rural villages on the outskirts both deluged with pollution. A health clinic in Milwaukee inundated with patients whose conditions are exacerbated by the intense heat of climate change.
These are the three fraught, complicated, yet rich places that the winners of the Office of Sustainability’s annual writing competition take us. The winning essays, all written by students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, highlight the diversity of our campus in geography and thought while underscoring pressing issues encapsulated by this year’s theme: climate realities.
Applicants were invited to expand on this theme by exploring their distinctive, place-based experiences of global climate change, which might include the repeated 100-year storms in the Midwest, intensifying coastal flooding on the eastern seaboard, or record-shattering heat in many countries across the world. Applicants were also encouraged to investigate possible interventions into our often-pessimistic climate reality; reflect on their personal perspectives on climate change before and after coming to UW-Madison; or explore what it means to exist among a myriad of experiences and beliefs, which might manifest as optimism for change, defeatism, indifference, or denial.
The Office of Sustainability received a record number of submissions this year—over 70 essays, doubling last year’s numbers. This meant that the review team not only had the challenging task of picking winners for three $500 awards, but also the honor of learning about the tapestry of climate-related experiences across the UW–Madison campus. Essays were situated on almost every continent, spanned several American states, and were notably interdisciplinary, highlighting the variety of fields needed to address the global climate problem.
In the first* of the winning essays, Lily Smogor, a first-year undergraduate student double-majoring in environmental studies and political science, explores what she calls an “ecological disaster waiting to happen”: the White Mesa Uranium Mill in Utah. The site is just one mile from the Bears Ears National Monument, land sacred to the Diné, Ute, Hopi, and Zuni Nations. As Smogor wrote in a summary of the piece, “Uranium powder wafts off trucks passing through reservations. Radioactive waste seeps through pits never meant to hold such a material, threatening the precious aquifers beneath.”
Originally from Illinois, Smogor learned about the environmental justice implications of the mill from UW-Madison’s elder-in-residence, Sunny Dooley, a Diné (Navajo) storyteller from the “Four Corners” region of the southwest. Each semester, the American Indian & Indigenous Studies Elder-in-Residence program hosts an Indigenous elder on campus for a week for an educational exchange. Invigorated by Dooley’s talk referencing the mill in November, Smogor said she went home and wrote her writing awards submission that day.
“The consequences of nuclear expansion are borne unfairly by the Indigenous communities nearby, and rates of cancer and kidney disease continue to climb because of the contamination in the water. This is the climate reality faced by those in the desert,” she wrote in a summary requested by the O.S. “The American Dream was buried in Southern Utah.”
Traveling to another side of the world, senior, Maisha Islam, poignantly reflects on the differences between Bangladesh and the United States to explore how privilege shapes our approach to environmental challenges. Sharing her story of visiting Dhaka and her grandmother’s rural village during the summer of 2022, she vibrantly brings both locations to life while using them as vessels to explore her journey of realizing that, as she writes in her essay, “in places where survival is a daily fight, environmental concerns often take a backseat to more immediate needs.” Nevertheless, Islam’s writing brings us to the front seat of compounding challenges in Bangladesh, from litter and hazy smog to skyrocketing food prices and children who must work to meet their families’ needs.
“A sustainable future requires empathy and solutions that account for the social and economic realities each community faces while addressing their specific needs,” said Islam, who is earning a degree in biology and life science communication. “This can allow sustainability to be accessible to all.”
Our final essay brings us back to Wisconsin. In “Where Health and Heat Meet,” Veronica Goveas, a senior majoring in biology, reflects on her experience interning at a health clinic in Milwaukee during one of the hottest summers on record. The Wisconsin native grew up in a village where “heat was mild and fleeting.” That’s since changed, as Wisconsin’s bouts of extreme heat intensify the urban heat island effect in Milwaukee.
In her essay, Goveas discusses encounters with patients (whose names she changed for confidentiality) such as Carl, who suffers from heat-stressed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and Anna, whose asthmatic child is at risk due to rising temperatures. Goveas’s vivid writing makes the reader feel like they’re in the clinic with her, watching heat take its toll on Carl, a construction worker, as well as Anna’s laboriously breathing child.
In addition to highlighting the urgent need for healthcare systems to adapt to climate change, Goveas illuminates a more uncomfortable climate reality: denial from loved ones. In her essay, she discusses her mother’s skepticism. “We’ve always had hot summers,” Goveas writes her mom saying. “People are just more sensitive now.”
“That’s the hard part about climate change: it splits our worlds, leaving some people on the front lines while others stay insulated in places where it’s still ‘fine,’” she writes. “But how much longer would ‘fine’ last?”
We invite you to read the three essays here and consider how climate realities have manifested in the place you call home, places where you were a guest, and the place you are now. Previous years’ winners are also featured on this page.
*Please note that the order in which these essays are presented does not designate a first, second, or third place. They are all equal winners.
By: Miquéla Thornton