Preparing our Students for a Sustainable Future: Barriers and Opportunities
Shasta College
Sustainability Conference, April 17 Scott G. McNall Executive Director, Institute for Sustainable Development California State University, Chico
What are the challenges we face? Thomas L. Friedman, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution---and How it Can Renew America, identifies five problems of the Energy-Climate Era: • • • • • Climate change. Petro-dictatorships (Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela). Constraints on energy and natural resource supply and demand. Loss of biodiversity. Energy Poverty.
Lester R. Brown, Plan B 3.0. argues that civilization itself is at a tipping point and that we must solve four problems, now. • • • • Stabilize the climate. Stabilize population. Eradicate poverty. Restore the earth’s ecosystems.
Brown goes on to note that a state’s stability is related to its ability to manage solutions to these problems. Using the Failed States Index (Fund for Peace and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), he notes that high rates of population growth, poverty, and destruction of their ecosystems characterizes such failed states as Sudan, Iraq, Somalia, Zimbabwe, Chad, Ivory Coast, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, Guinea, Central African Republic, Haiti, Pakistan, North Korea, etc. A social order cannot prosper under such circumstances. Glenn Adelson and his colleagues in their exceptional edited collection, Environment: An Interdisciplinary Anthology, wonder why, given the nature of the problems facing us, we are not acting with more urgency.
“If [we knew} an asteroid hurtling toward Earth would. . . strike this planet in forty years, raise sea levels permanently between six to sixteen feet, force up to one-quarter of all species into extinction, inaugurate plagues and disease, inundate parts of some nations, drown populated islands whole, render coasts uninhabitable, intensify hurricanes, typhoons, and tornadoes into record-breaking storms, cause frequent floods and landslides, and kill millions of people, then every government would work furiously too discover how that asteroid might be diverted or destroyed.” James Gustave Speth, The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability, makes similar points about the need for urgency. “Half the world’s tropical and temperate forests are now gone. The rate of deforestation in the tropics continues at about an acre a second. About half of the wetlands and a third of the mangroves are gone. An estimated 90 percent of the large predator fish are gone, and 75 percent of marine fisheries are now overfished or fished to capacity. Twenty percent of the corals are gone, and another 20 percent severely threatened. Species are disappearing at rates about a thousand times faster than normal. The planet has not seen such a spasm of extinction in sixty-five million years, since the dinosaurs disappeared. Over half of the land in drier regions suffers from some degree of deterioration and desertification. Persistent toxic chemicals can now be found by the dozens in essentially each and every one of us.” To this list I would add that the world is running out of fresh water. Depending on which estimate you use, the total amount of available fresh water on the planet is either 1% or 2.5%. We may be the blue planet, but most of the water is salt water and most of the world’s fresh water is in North America. What has caused the problems related to rapid climate change? The simple answer is: We have a world economy characterized by a belief system that has supported unchecked economic growth, and an economic system that needs growth for profit. One problem with a global economy is that it “escapes” the bonds of any government and it means, in the case of the environment, that the true costs of production (poor air quality, degraded ecosystems, polluted water, etc.) are not accounted for by the market. A global cap and trade system is one step toward accounting for all costs and toward restoring a market economy. We know what we have done, but what is less clear is the kind of future we are creating and the kind of future we could create. In their well know work, Natural Capitalism, Paul Hawken, Amory and Hunter Lovins propose four basic strategies for a new economy:
• • • •
Manage our supply chains from “cradle to grave,” to increase efficiencies and reduce waste and pollution. (Oil is too valuable to waste as fuel for cars.) Redesign industrial systems that mimic biological ones so that even the concept of waste is progressively eliminated. Create economies based on the provision of services, rather than the purchase of goods. Reverse worldwide resource deterioration and declines in ecosystem services through new investments that will generate natural capital.
Lester L. Brown has his ideas about what we can do to restore the environment, to change our consumption patterns, and to create more just and secure societies. I want to elaborate on them, because ideas like his are offered with increasing frequency. • We must stabilize population growth, primarily through education of women. The other way to stabilize population is to eradicate poverty, because there is an inverse relationship between number of births and income. We must restore earth’s ecosystems by: o Decreasing the use of forests for fuel and cooking food. o Creating marine reserves, so that fisheries can be restored. o Using trees to sequester carbon. o Creating a restoration budget for the earth. We must eat lower on the food chain and consume products that are sustainable. We must design cities for people, which means pursing smart growth, pedestrian and bike-friendly cities, etc. We must improve energy efficiency by: o Banning monofilament bulbs. o Building to LEED standards for both municipal and private homes. o Restructuring our transportation systems. We must turn to renewable energy, and most specifically, we must stop burning coal. The current percentages for electricity generation, by source of fuel, are: o Coal 49%. o Natural gas 20% o Nuclear 20% o Hydro 7.3% o Renewables 3.5% o Oil 1.1% We must create a “green” economy by changing our system of taxes and subsidies.
•
• • •
•
•
o Create a cap and trade system that taxes carbon at about $240 a ton. (This may seem expensive but for purposes of comparison a gas tax of $4.40, as they have in Europe, would be equivalent to $1815 a ton.) o Pay the real cost of consuming natural resources; all of those costs that have been externalized to this point. (For example, the real cost of a package of cigarettes is $10.47, as calculated by the Center for Disease Control.) • We must stop funding wars and start funding a green economy.
It would not be difficult to take exception to one or more of these solutions. One could, for instance, make a strong argument for a “cap and dividend” system, as opposed to a cap and trade system. In a cap and dividend system, (Peter Barnes, 2009) the money does not go back to the government, it goes to citizens as a means of reducing their cost of consumption. But at the end of the day we must address the kind of problems identified at the beginning of this presentation. And, to put hard numbers to one dimension, we must reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050, and that must take into account new population growth, new levels of productivity, new homes, and new communities. President Obama laid out many of his energy goals during his campaign, and both because of, and in spite of, the current economic crises, is moving forward. Some of the key initiatives follow: • • • • There will be an investment of $150 billion over ten years to spur private efforts to build a clean energy future. There is stimulus money available for home energy conservation. There is an effort to remake Detroit to build pull-in hybrid cars that can get up to 150 miles per gallon, by 2015. We will need to generate 10 percent of electricity from renewable sources by 2012 and 25% by 2025.
California leads the nation in terms of its efforts to reduce carbon emissions, as required by AB 32 and SB 375, as well as in research and investments in the “green” economy. Many people are “bullish” on this new economy. Jerome Ringo, president of the Apollo Alliance, sees opportunity: “High fuel prices? Scale up cellulosic ethanol plants. Soaring electricity rates? Retrofit older buildings and construct new ones that are more energy-efficient. Melting glaciers? Replace conventional coal-fired plants with alternative technologies.”
The Apollo Alliance has estimated that a $300 billion investment over 10 years would produce 3.3 million green-collar jobs. Certainly there are solutions to the challenges faced by rapid climate change, and some are fascinating to contemplate. Many cities are making substantial strides to lower their emissions 80% by 2050. Chicago plans to retrofit 9,000 high-rise buildings and factories to achieve energy savings; retrofit 400,000 homes; refurbish 21 coal-burning power plants; expand the number of green roofs to 6,000; extend city bike lanes from 120 to 500 miles; expand bus and train service; and replace all municipal vehicles with energyefficient ones. But, here is the challenge facing those sitting in this room tonight: What do we do? If we understand the range of problems facing us as a nation, or as a community, or just a private homeowner, they are considerable. No one problem can be solved without understanding its connection to other problems. It is imperative to understand the complex relationship between the environment, the economy, and the society. Too often we have failed to recognize the interconnectedness of things. We can’t, for example, argue that we should not cut down trees without finding a solution to the loss of jobs and wealth in rural communities that depend on the logging industry, which can be, and often is, a sustainable industry. We must all work together to find solutions. Community colleges are well situated to play a critical role in addressing the combination of social, economic, and environmental challenges we face. In Going Green: The Vital Role of Community Colleges in Building a Sustainable Future and a Green Work Force (aed.org; ncwe.org) the authors note that community colleges must address climate change and promote sustainability. The jobs for which community colleges need to prepare workers span such sectors as renewable energy, buildings and construction (energy efficiency), transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, and forestry. Using the United Nations Environment definition a “green job” is understood to be one that contributes to preservation or restoration of the environment and includes: • • • • Helping to protect ecosystems and biodiversity; Reducing energy, materials, and water consumption, through high-efficiency strategies; De-carbonizing the economy; and, Minimizing or avoiding production of waste and pollution.
An optimistic assessment (American Solar Energy Society) is that by 2030, “green” jobs will account for 1 in 4 of all jobs. (In 2006, there were 3,700 direct jobs and 8,500 direct and indirect jobs.) These are good, well-paying jobs. The report also identified six action steps that community college leaders need to take to build a sustainable footprint in addition to training and retraining America’s work force.
1. Serve as the catalyst in your community or region for educating diverse audiences about environmental stewardship, sustainable development, and the green workforce. 2. Reduce your institution’s carbon footprint. 3. Make sustainability a defining feature of campus culture and a guiding principle for management, planning, resource allocation, programming, research, and professional development. 4. Pursue strategic partnerships with businesses, industry associations, governments, and other community colleges and universities, K-12 education and workforce investment systems, nonprofit organizations, unions, and other key stakeholders. Use these partnerships to update and redesign curricula, create new degrees and certifications . . .and develop new pathways to employment and advancement in green high-demand, high growth industries. 5. Join forces with leading green community colleges or existing regional/national collaborative groups to avoid reinventing the wheel and to consolidate efforts. 6. Tell your story on campus, in the community, and in the media. (Let me return in a moment to the matter of telling stories, and which stories to tell.) To this list I would add another category: 7. Align your budget with your values and priorities. These seem like straight-forward solutions to the problem of climate change and the need to focus on work-force development. However, I think we are facing a greater challenge and that challenge is the one to change people’s values, attitudes, and understanding of what a just society is, what a good society is, and what one generation owes to the next. Universities and colleges have had a traditional, if sometimes neglected, role to help students pose and answer for themselves questions about what a just society is, what the role of a citizen is, and what equality means. As we face questions about the future of the planet, we must intentionally introduce students to these issues and questions. Colleges and universities must educate for sustainability. John Muir once said, “When one tugs at a single thing in nature he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” Societies, economies, and the environment are similarly connected and cannot be understood in isolation from one another. Our students must come to understand that sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own.
David Orr, Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect has argued that the purpose of education is multifold: 1. Students must be taught that they are part of, not apart from, the natural world. 2. The purpose of education is mastery of the person, not the material. 3. Knowledge carries with it the responsibility to see that it is well used in the world. 4. We do not know something until we understand the effects of this knowledge on real people and their communities. 5. Colleges and universities and faculty and staff must model the forms of integrity, care, and thoughtfulness they wish to see in students. Orr’s student would graduate from college with a basic comprehension of, among other things: • • • • • • • The laws of thermodynamics. The basic principles of ecology. Carrying capacity. Limits of technology. Sustainable agriculture and forestry. Steady-state economics. Environmental ethics.
Each of us could add to this list, but any single person might rightly wonder how they could teach all of these things simultaneously. The answer is that they should not. What they need to do is to teach systems thinking. Orr’s concern, and it is one that I share, is that the curricula of most colleges and universities is fragmented: courses don’t connect to or relate to one another; departmental specialization often obscures the fact that there are solutions and questions to be found in other disciplines; we do not help students to learn how to create or live in a democratic society. The answer to a fragmented curriculum is to connect different courses, disciplines, and options to the larger issue of sustainability, for it is the problem humans on earth must solve. The good news for the individual instructor is that it does not mean that you have to be an expert in all dimensions of sustainability (the environment, the economy, the larger social order); it means that you need to connect your field (economics, sociology, English, physics, political science, agriculture, history, art) to one of the dimensions of sustainability and to make it clear to the students you are doing so. If we all did this, the effect would be to create a “new” degree that added value to existing degrees. I do not mean to imply that we should not teach content. It is imperative that we do and it is imperative that we each learn some basic facts about the environment, and how the
three spheres of sustainability relate. We not only need to create active and engaged citizens, we need to graduate students who are scientifically literate. We should know answers to such questions as: • If you are in a check-out line and the clerk asks you whether you want paper or plastic, which is the environmentally wise choice? (Paper bags take 4X as much energy to produce a plastic bag, which is made from natural gas, not oil.) What constitutes the bulk of most landfills? o Diapers. o Paper. o Tin and aluminum cans. o Wood from construction projects. o Yard and agricultural waste.
•
The knowledge question is one we are accustomed to working on. But, as noted earlier, the big challenge is a values challenge. Sustainability is not about recycling cans and bottles; it is about recycling our values. It is about building community.
One of the questions I sometimes ask students, and others: In what kind of a world do you want to live? The answers I hear relate to wanting a safe community; one where there are good jobs; one where friends and my family are close at hand; one where the air is clean; health is good; and people are rewarded for hard work. They often want the kind of world they think their grandparents and great grandparents grew up in. Going back is not an option. But the path forward is not always clear. We have a cottage industry of post-Apocalyptic-fiction and disaster stories. What we need, though, are stories of hope. Colleges and universities have a great opportunity to help shape a new vision of what America can be. We need in colleges and universities (and in our community discussions) to focus on solutions. We need to imagine and create actively the kind of societies in which we wish to live. Doing nothing is not an option. Some writers, chief among them, Paul Hawken, have talked about the deep seeds of transformation that are present in our society. They see, in our many environmental, and social justice, and human rights groups a great convergence. Those who have heard Paul Hawken speak will have watched the scrolling of the names of countless organizations all focused on some dimension of change. The argument is offered that because there are all of these movements, something good will happen. The history of social movements, however, does not suggest that this is the case. The reality is that different organizations compete for people’s time, attention, and resources. What is needed is a coherent message of change and a willingness to work together.
The German poet, Rilke, suggested that human beings move in the direction of the images they hold in their head. There is strong, empirical, evidence for what we call the Pygmalion effect (Couprider). A focus on what is positive and what one can do is itself transformational. This means we need to be mindful of our vision and be able to articulate what that vision is. We need to tell people want we want; not just what we do not want. We need to learn other people’s stories and we need to learn to tell our own stories. We need to listen; we need to act. We need, then, both stories and organizations that work toward the creation of a sustainable future. What can you do? 1. As a student leader? A sustainability fee to fund student sustainability projects? 2. As a faculty member? Link your course to one of the dimensions (economy, society, and environment) of sustainability? Create a sustainability “thread” for your general education courses? 3. As an administrator? Speak with one voice about the importance of sustainability? Make it a distinguishing feature of Shasta College? 4. As a staff member? Connect your work and your projects (energy, water, waste, reuse, recycling) to a dimension of sustainability. 5. As a community member? Focus on changing inputs (wealth) for the local community? Explore opportunities in “green” business? Identify a problem related to sustainability and work with others to solve the problem?