In an audacious carbon-cutting initiative, The McGill Daily has announced it will “cease to exist as a thing” from next Monday. The move comes as new evidence from environmental campaigners shows that paper comes from trees and electricity from coal.
The editorial board of The Daily, which actually is published twice weekly, released a statement noting their sadness at having to bring an end to the paper’s over 100 -year existence, but affirmed that the environmental burden was too great to bear any longer.
“It is with great regret we announce that, from next Monday, The McGill Daily will cease all production,” the statement reads. “No more papers will be produced, the website server will be shut down, and our offices will be vacated. The environmental burden of a newspaper on the planet is too great for us to bear. In fact, it is a burden on our souls. On every one of our souls.”
The Daily editorial board, which is comprised of many extremely socially and environmentally aware people who teach people about oppression, has said it cannot give further comment to the press, because that would involve an “untenable” power hierarchy that would be “intolerably oppressive” to the world and its inhabitants. Readers are being advised to “go home and prepare to consider and think critically about criticism.”
According to former Daily editor and environmental eco-campaigner Erikkson Schmandrew-McMee, the editors of The Daily had been aware of the problem for some time before the decision to “stop everything” was finally made.
“The objective, tangible sphere of human existence is very detrimental to the environment, you know,” Schmandrew-McMee told The Twice-a-Weekly. “Given the costs associated with existing as an organization – building heating, computer power, human food power – and given the serious threat posed to all of humanity by overuse of dwindling fossil fuels and carbon-negative events such as Frosh, the edboard knew they could not in good faith continue to exist as a thing that exists.”
“I can’t speak for the entire board, but I think they would like to move into the more subjective, conceptual realm. It’s not that the paper will stop existing completely; it will still exist, but in people’s minds, as part of the unseen structures of power and knowledge in the world around us. The board’s aim is for their message to emerge from the hidden yet persistent systems of norms and repetitions that characterize our world.”
According to an editor who wishes to remain anonymous, some members of the edboard even offered to sacrifice themselves to save the world and stop oppression, but they were unsure if such an action would be permissible according to the Daily’s Statement of Principles (SOP).
“The situation is even more difficult considering the SOP now doesn’t actually exist,” the anonymous editor noted. “We’re trying to find the document within the hierarchical systems of repression in the University around us, but if I’m honest we end up trying to draft it in the mud using our fingers. But we’re not sure if that is a carbon-neutral endeavor.”
“To be honest, the paper hasn’t really been living in the real world for a long time,” Schmandrew-McMee admitted. “I just hope The Daily saves the world this time.”
Euan EK is a journalist with The Twice-a-Weekly and New York Times. It covered stories in places. It can be reached.