Universities and Global Warming
University of
Kentucky activist calls for emissions reduction
For nearly half my life, I have taught writing at the University of Kentucky. The work is demanding and rewarding, and I have never really wanted any other job.
Like many Kentuckians, my allegiance to UK began with my father's love, and consequently my own, of UK basketball. But now I feel a stronger allegiance to my students who struggle to express themselves amidst the din of commercial noise, and I feel a stronger need to enact the mission of a land grant university -- to better the lives of people around the state.
These days when I walk to school, I pass a huge mound of coal piled beside the physical plant, out of most people's sight. Sometimes I teach in the building next to that coal-burning plant, and sometimes I point out to my students -- say on a nice day when they ask to hold class outdoors -- that the air outside that building routinely tests as the worst in Lexington.
One doesn't like to think that the inviting, bucolic campus one sees in recruiting brochures is also the source of asthma, respiratory infections, smog, lung disease and the imminent global climate crisis. And I personally don't like to think that the mound of coal next to the physical plant was harvested by mountaintop removal, the brutal strip mining method that is quickly decimating Eastern Kentucky. But both are true.
Walking around UK's campus at night, one sees empty buildings radiating light. In the office tower where I work, we are given mandatory instruction not to turn off our computers, ever. Many buildings, including most of the classroom buildings, have no recycling bins. And these are simply the obvious examples of a costly and ineffective energy policy.
Not radical enough
There has been much talk of late about how left-wing radicals are taking over public universities. But the truth is, we instructors and administrators have not been nearly radical enough -- that is to say, not conservative enough -- to educate our students and ourselves to live and think in ways that will promote health and sustainability and will stave off environmental catastrophes.
UK president Lee Todd has set for UK the laudable goal of becoming a Top 20 public university. According to a recent New York Times article, the University of Florida has already achieved that status through aggressive recruiting of students and faculty, along with smaller class sizes. And I believe another indicator of Florida's success is the vision of its president, Bernie Machen, to be the most environmentally efficient campus in the country by 2015.
Manchen has pledged to follow the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards for all new campus construction, to buy the most efficient appliances on the market, and to supply 15 percent of U of F's electricity from renewable energy. This last move is especially good news for Eastern Kentucky where, thanks to the mountaintop removal practices of Tampa Energy (TECO), many valley communities have had to endure mudslides, intense flooding, cracked foundations and respiratory problems due to air that is filled with coal dust.
Now Manchen has challenged other universities to sign by June a document called the "Climate Commitment." The overall goal of the "Climate Commitment" is for each school to achieve climate neutrality -- emit no greenhouse gasses -- as soon as possible. It states: "We believe colleges and universities must exercise leadership in their communities and throughout society by modeling ways to minimize global warming emissions, and by providing the knowledge and the educated graduates to achieve climate neutrality."
Specifically, the "Climate Commitment" asks university presidents to complete an inventory of all greenhouse gas emissions on their campus, to develop and institutional action plant to become climate neutral, and to initiate tangible steps such as buying Energy Star appliances, following the U.S. Green Building Council's codes for campus construction and purchasing more renewable energy. Finally, presidents are asked to make public periodical progress reports.
As a member of the UK community, I urge President Todd to sign the "Climate Commitment," and as a Kentuckian, I urge all of the state's university presidents to do the same. A university with an innovative plan to invest in alternative energies will encourage first-class researchers to join its faculty, and it will create better jobs and healthier lives throughout the state, especially in the coalfields.
But I also urge Dr. Todd, Dr. James Ramsey at the University of Louisville, and the other presidents to go one step further. The burning of coal is only half of the problem in Kentucky. The ravages of extraction are the other half. Therefore, it is a moral imperative that UK, along with all state universities, refuse to buy coal that has been mined by mountaintop removal.
With the unfortunate exceptions of a few high-placed politicians, it is beyond doubt that the Earth is heating up dramatically. The college presidents who drafted the "Climate Commitment" are absolutely right that universities -- especially flagship and land-grant universities -- must become models for social change that addresses the climate crisis with boldness and vision.
Few social institutions bear as much responsibility to the future as a university, and now our responsibility is to quickly transform an unsustainable fossil-fuel economy into one that will actually see us through the 21st Century and beyond. This requires more than new technology; it requires knowledge that is grounded in wisdom, humility, ethics and reverence. It requires, in short, a new way of thinking and a new university.
Erik Reece is the author of Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness. He is a writer-in-residence at the University of Kentucky.
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