CLIMATE: Students plan demonstrations to promote
campus awareness
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Greenwire
In the wee hours before Missouri State University students make their way to class
Thursday, a hulking dump truck will stop at the heart of the school's Springfield
campus to display its load -- 7 tons of coal.
Springfield's municipal utility and power companies throughout the country burn this
comparatively cheap and plentiful fossil fuel to light and heat millions of homes,
offices, classrooms and dorms. Those same power plants also emit tons of carbon dioxide
and other heat-trapping gases every day, warming the planet's atmosphere and causing
climate chaos, many scientists say.
So Lindsey Berger, a Missouri State junior and co-founder of Students for a Sustainable
Future, has big plans for the truck. She will help display coal-packed drums in front
of the student union to depict how much of the stuff it takes to power an incandescent
light bulb, plasma television and other energy-hungry devices. Placards will offer
passersby advice about how to shrink their carbon footprints.
"We want to demonstrate the basic demands for power in our everyday lives," explained
the 21-year-old math and science major. "Very few people have seen coal other than
what's in their barbecue pit."
All day Thursday, Missouri State and more than 1,100 other colleges and universities
will host teach-ins and other activities to promote awareness about climate change. The
Portland, Ore.-based nonprofit Focus the Nation is the ideological force behind the
higher-ed efforts, as well as a series of associated contests and webcasts with
actors, politicians and scientists. Thousands of high schoolers are also expected to
tune in and turn on.
"We are really standing at a critical moment in human history," said Focus the Nation's
founder Eban Goodstein, a professor of economics at Lewis and Clark College in
Portland. "Our best and brightest youth should be thinking about this now; they have a
heroic task ahead."
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in a report last
year that greenhouse gas emission reductions of 50 percent to 85 percent will be needed
across the globe during the next several decades to keep mean temperatures from rising
more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit. Staying below that threshold, the scientists believe,
would avert some of the most dramatic changes in sea-level rise, precipitation and
coastland loss.
'What Would MacGyver Do?'
Alexander Wait, an associate professor of biology and ecology at Missouri State, said
he will host a lecture Thursday for non-major biology students, titled "Birds, Bees,
Beer and Other Reasons to Care About Climate Change." The gist of it? A warming planet
will affect all sorts of animals and plants -- even the barley used to make beer.
Other Missouri State sessions will cover topics as diverse as marketing a sustainable
living and religious perspectives on climate change. There is even a panel about
renewable energy solutions, titled "What Would MacGyver Do?"
"We think we are in the Ivory Tower," Wait said, "but if students don't get information
about climate change here, where are they going to get it? Television?"
It is the responsibility of faculty across all disciplines to discuss climate change in
their classrooms, Wait said. But he hopes Thursday's dump-truck demonstration and
lectures will spur creative solutions -- not just disdain for coal power.
"We're a coal community, after all," Wait conceded.
Campus politics
Goodstein is urging students to engage their local, state and federal lawmakers at
"Green Democracy" roundtables, following the day of teach-ins.
Reps. Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.) and Robert Inglis (R-S.C.) are among Capitol Hill
lawmakers who plan to participate in the nonpartisan roundtables. Student are expected
to generate their own questions, Goodstein said.
McNerney, a wind engineer, plans to participate in a roundtable at Diablo Valley
College's Pleasant Hill campus, about 27 miles northwest of San Francisco, a spokesman
said. Inglis, meanwhile, will participate in a roundtable at the University of South
Carolina Upstate, in Spartanburg.
New groups focus on warming policy
A new generation of nonprofits and various alliances and coalitions has emerged in the
climate policy arena.
This week's Focus the Nation events are the brainchild of Lewis and Clark professor
Eban Goodstein and a group of fellow educators and students. Another organizer who had
a hand in promoting Focus the Nation is Middlebury College professor Bill McKibben, who
along with some of his students put on the Step It Up and Power Shift events in
November that drew thousands of college students to the Washington, D.C., area to push
for 80 percent emissions cuts by 2050, a moratorium on the building of coal-fired power
plants and the creation of 5 million "green jobs" by 2015. Goodstein, in turn, spoke
at Power Shift.
These are the same goals espoused by the educational nonprofit 1Sky, founded by
McKibben and others, which also has a 501(c)(4) devoted to lobbying. The lobbying side
of the operation "isn't too active yet," according to Betsy Taylor, president of 1Sky's
board of directors.
As a measure of the groups' success, last year's energy bill included $125 million for
the green jobs initiative, which was originally proposed by the Ella Baker Center for
Human Rights. In last week's Democratic presidential debate, both Sen. Hillary Rodham
Clinton (N.Y.) and former Sen. John Edwards (N.C.) said they wanted to create jobs in
the renewable energy field, while Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) endorsed Focus the Nation
last week in South Carolina. Van Jones, founder of the Baker center, is involved in
1Sky and will be speaking tomorrow in Focus the Nation's webcast.
Some, like Middlebury professor Jon Isham, are connected to several movements. Isham is
an adviser to 1Sky, Focus the Nation, former Vice President Al Gore's Climate Project
and the new Presidential Climate Action Project, which in recent weeks has issued
policy recommendations for the incoming president that include reducing emissions by
90 percent by 2050 and funding tropical reforestation.
Although these groups were founded by college professors and their students, they have
garnered the support of the usual environmental suspects -- Environmental Defense,
Greenpeace, Natural Resources Defense Council, National Wildlife Federation and others.
They also have corporate and faith-based sponsors, including Clif Bar, Stonyfield
Farms, Nike, Hillel and Interfaith Power & Light. And they've managed to attract
some big names in the policy arena, such as former NASA Administrator Richard Truly and
former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration head D. James Baker.
Taylor said the tangled mass of climate nonprofits shows an evolution in grass-roots
activism. The rallying power of the Internet has further amplified the effect -- 1Sky
was founded just eight months ago. For Taylor, running 1Sky has been "kind of like
being an Olympic runner while you're still tying your shoes."
"There's a bubbling up at the grassroots," she said. "Especially young people, but also
in the faith sector, business sector, and increasingly health and international human
rights sectors. Groups are coming to us and saying, 'Let's go.'"
There is room for both bottom-up and top-down activism, she said. Gore's Alliance for
Climate Protection "is doing something we can't do -- it's raised a significant amount
of money to do an extremely sophisticated campaign. We're trying to reach people who
already know there's a problem, who already want to act, but aren't satisfied with
actions they've been asked to take."
"I do think there is tremendous momentum within the Beltway ... and then there's also a
new kind of leadership coming from local people," she said.
The next step, McKibben said, is engaging the electorate to support U.S. participation
in international emissions-reduction efforts.
"I think the movement is growing strong enough to get decent legislation out of
Congress next year," he said in an e-mail. "So far the movement hasn't focused on what
comes next -- the need for a global grassroots effort to get a strong international
agreement. I think that's what comes next."
-- Debra Kahn
The University of Oklahoma will host a roundtable Thursday in Norman about global
warming impacts and solutions. Participants will include Norman Mayor Cindy Rosenthal
and state Secretary of the Environment Miles Tolbert.
Deborah Dalton, who is coordinating OU's Focus the Nation events, said none of the
state's congressional delegation was invited to participate in the roundtable -- not
even Sen. James Inhofe (R), the influential ranking member of the Senate's Environment
and Public Works Committee.
"There's really no point to that; [Inhofe's] not going to change his mind," explained
Dalton, who directs OU's interdisiplinary perspectives on the environment program.
Indeed, Inhofe said he is dubious about the concept of "nonpartisan" roundtables on
climate change policy -- a highly charged topic in Washington.
"I certainly hope -- but don't expect -- this global warming teach-in provides a fair
and balanced look at the issue," Inhofe told Greenwire.
"I hope students are provided the facts that economic impacts of so-called solutions
offered by global warming alarmists will raise the price of gas at the pump, raise
electricity costs in their homes and cost American jobs -- all for no climate gain,"
Inhofe added. " ... Claims of a 'concensus' on man-made global warming are growing
less and less credible every day as more and more scientists speak out against climate
hysteria."
Some faculty at the University of Colorado debate whether hosting Focus the Nation
events constitutes merely educating the student body or advocating a specific political
agenda.
CU Chancellor G.P. "Bud" Peterson is expected to kick off Focus the Nation events
Thursday at the Boulder campus' Old Main Chapel with a speech about efforts to reduce
carbon emissions throughout the campus and state, according to a university news
release.
CU faculty are slated to host subsequent classroom discussions about climate science,
policy and impacts. Lectures include "Global Evidence for Climate Change" and "Global
Warming -- Separating Science from Politics."
CU environmental studies professor Roger Pielke Jr., who has testified before Congress
about climate chance science and policy, said such topics typically come up in his
classes, anyway. But he questioned whether it is appropriate for the public university
to devote a full day to Focus the Nation events across several disciplines.
"The people organizing Focus the Nation are pretty implicit that this is political
advocacy," Pielke told Greenwire. "This was intentionally set up to run before Super
Tuesday [Feb. 5]."
The chancellor himself clouded the issue earlier this month when he e-mailed faculty
and staff members a reminder of CU guidelines that prohibit university employees from
engaging in any activity during work hours that urges electors to vote for or against
any campaign issues, Pielke wrote on his blog for the school's Center for Science and
Technology Policy Research.
As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, Focus the Nation cannot lobby Congress directly to pass
specific legislation. Instead, the organization is asking students and other users of
its Web site to select five climate priorities for federal action. Virtual voters may
choose from among 10 options: invest in clean energy; create green jobs; prohibit new
coal power plants without carbon capture and sequestration technology; cap pollution;
design carbon-neutral buildings; boost incentives for biofuels; conserve
carbon-swallowing forests; tax greenhouse gas emissions; invest in energy efficiency;
and adopt California's auto emissions standards nationally.
Goodstein said Focus the Nation next month will hand congressional lawmakers a "climate
agenda" based on the virtual vote.
"Personally, I hope we see major climate legislation in 2009 that embodies many of
these 10 options," Goodstein added.
Pielke called Focus the Nation's list a "fairly limited" set of options.
Robert Hall, energy program manager for CU's Environmental Center, which is
cosponsoring his campus' Focus the Nation events, told Greenwire yesterday that he
hadn't seen the chancellor's memorandum. Nonetheless, he said his goal is to educate
students about climate change.
OU's Dalton, who plans to hand students printed lists of the 10 policy options, also
rejected the argument that Focus the Nation events are bald political advocacy.
"Focus the Nation is about nonpartisan solutions to global warming," Dalton said. "It's
about educating students, not advocating particular legislation."
What would Ed Norton do?
Several Focus the Nation-affiliated events tomorrow will call for more specific action
to mitigate climate change.
Actor Edward Norton will join U.N. climatologist Stephen Schneider and others in a live
webcast, titled "The 2 Percent Solution," at 8 p.m. EST. The speakers will contend that
developed countries must reduce their carbon emissions 2 percent annually during the
next 40 years to mitigate the most severe impacts of climate change.
Earlier in the day, the green-design advocacy group Architecture 2030 will host a
webcast, called "Face It." Architecture 2030 founder Ed Mazria, a Santa Fe, N.M.-based
architect, said the 30-minute program will call for a two-pronged approach to
mitigating climate change: All new or remodeled buildings should be carbon-neutral by
2030, and no more coal-fired power plants should be built in the meantime.
"Coal power plants are the supply side, and green buildings are the demand side,"
Mazria said.
The webcast will conclude with the announcement of graphic-design and video
competitions for students age 18 and older.
For now, Mazria is coy about the specifics of the "Reverberate" competitions, which
offer $20,000 in total prize money. He will say only that the competition themes have
to do with the webcast.
His advice? Tune in.