Rebooting the Future

Earth Day and the Fossil Fuel Regime

Peter — Fri, 03 May 2013 04:57:23 GMT

I wrote the following short commentary for the March-April 2013 issue of the TCCPI Newsletter:

With Earth Day weekend fast approaching, the calendar is filling up with all kinds of events to mark the observance: conferences, lectures, summits, fairs, and film screenings. Spring is late in coming to the Finger Lakes this year but, if we're lucky, the weather forecast might hold up and the warmer temperatures will continue and maybe, just maybe we'll even get some sunshine in time for the celebrations.

It's no little irony that at the same time we recommit to becoming better stewards of our life support system otherwise known as "the environment," we are faced with the dilemma of how to respond to the news that Cayuga Power Plant is seeking to shift from coal to natural gas. While many are touting natural gas as a cleaner burning alternative to coal, recent reports coming out of Cornell University and elsewhere suggest that the methane emissions released during the life cycle of natural gas production and distribution, not just combustion, make it as dirty or perhaps even dirtier than coal.

So what to do? Cayuga Power Plant supplies over 300 megawatts of electricity to the grid and is not easily replaced. It also is a key source of property taxes for both the town of Lansing and Tompkins County. Shutting it down would have a major impact on the area's economy.

There is no easy answer and there will be huge trade offs regardless of what course we take. If nothing else, the Cayuga Power Plant stands as a stark reminder of just how deeply embedded we are in the fossil fuel regime and just how difficult it will be extricate ourselves from it.

The debate over how to move forward has the potential to be a crucial teachable moment in the life of our community, reminding us that there are always consequences to our decisions, whether conscious or unconscious, intentional or unintentional. Perhaps one of the best ways we can observe this year's Earth Day is to recognize there are no easy answers, only complexities and challenges that we must confront and work our way through.

Renewable Energy, Fossil Fuels, and Government Subsidies: The Real Story

Peter — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 07:12:53 GMT

This is a revised and expanded version of a commentary first published in the October-November 2012 issue of the TCCPI Newsletter.

If there's one thing that gets under my skin fast, it's somebody who should know better spouting something along these lines: "Renewable energy is too dependent on government subsidies and can't compete on its own with fossil fuels. The government should stop trying to pick winners and losers." I just had a run-in the other day with someone who said almost exactly these words. The conversation did not go well.

What drives me crazy is not the notion that government subsidies are a bad idea, it's that many people believe oil, coal, and natural gas companies stand on their own without any government help. It's the same kind of deep rooted mythology that leads folks to insist that there is a "free market" in health care.

How does this kind of misinformation persist in the face of study after study that shows the fossil fuel industry receives far more support from the government than wind or solar? It's simple: people believe what they want to believe no matter how much evidence to the contrary is piled up right in front of them.

That doesn't mean that we shouldn't at least try to get our facts straight, though. So here we go.

According to a 2010 Environmental Law Institute report, the U.S. government provided $72 billion between 2002 and 2008 to the fossil fuel industry. About $54 billion of that total took the form of permanent tax credits for oil, coal, and natural gas producers. During that same period, the renewable energy industry received only $29 billion, most of it also in the form of federal tax credits. The difference is that none of the renewable energy tax credits are permanent.

And that's just the beginning of how the scales are tipped in favor of oil, coal, and natural gas. As David Roberts writes in Grist, "Comparisons of direct subsidies capture only the tip of a giant iceberg - most of fossil fuels' big advantages are invisible, beneath the surface, and entirely taken for granted." Even a quick glance at the indirect subsidies makes clear how uneven the playing field is. External costs such as the public health toll paid for air and water pollution and the national security price of maintaining our addiction to oil amount to trillions of dollars.

Then there are the costs of climate change as superstorms such as Sandy become more frequent and violent. The New York Times pegs the damage from Sandy at $82 billion. That's just about the total cost of the renewable energy and fossil fuel federal subsidies from 2002 to 2008. And let's not forget the enormous sunk costs of an infrastructure built on the assumption of cheap fossil energy: highways, suburbs, airports, and the like.

In Roberts's words, shifting "from fossil fuels to renewable energy is not like going from Coke to Pepsi; it is to build a new world." Not even Nate Silver, as good as he is, can tell us how long this new world will take to build and whether we will get far enough along in time to stave off runaway climate change.

But one thing we should be clear about: it's long past the time to get started, and a national energy policy geared towards this future is an essential first step. China has just announced that it will be implementing a carbon tax to begin weaning its economy off of fossil fuels. Australia, India, Japan, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, and Sweden have already put one in place. When will the U.S. finally get on board with the only real chance we have to avoid catastrophic climate disruption?

Climate Change and the Divestment Movement

Peter — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 22:47:32 GMT

Thanks to the efforts of Bill McKibben's "Do the Math Tour," the Responsible Endowments Coalition, and others, the push for divestment on the part of universities and colleges from the fossil fuel industry, and the redirection of those investments into socially responsible and environmentally sustainable businesses, including those in the local community, is gaining traction throughout the country.

Trustees who oversee college and university endowments investments that total about $400 billion

in the U.S. need to be held accountable for the damage their oil, gas, and coal investments are inflicting on the rest of society. How can any higher education institution consider itself sustainable when it has committed millions of dollars to the very activities that its own scientists have found to be the leading contributors to climate destabilization?

Already, two higher education institutions, Hampshire College and Unity College, have decided to pull their investments out from fossil fuel companies. Students at Middleburgy College, Harvard University, Cornell University, Ithaca College, the Claremont Colleges, and dozens of other institutions are mounting significant efforts.

We all know that a clear, predictable, and fair national energy policy encouraging investment in energy efficiency and renewable energy is the key to any real, viable solution to avoiding runaway climate change. If this is the case, then why does the overwhelming bulk of our federal tax dollars go to subsidizing the oil, coal, and gas industries and not clean energy? Why are the tax credits that support the fossil fuel industry permanent and unchallengeable? Why are the tax credits that support renewable energy temporary and constantly up for grabs?

The answer to these questions is obvious: the fossil fuel regime in this country has a stranglehold on political power unmatched in the rest of the industrialized world. This is the reason why the U.S. is the only developed nation whose conservative political party engages in mass climate change denialism.

If colleges and universities want to take a leadership role on the issues of sustainability and climate protection, how can they do so effectively without supporting a more sensible energy policy, one that will help us avoid climate catastrophe? How can they advocate for a more sensible energy policy if they don't put their money where their mouth is? In other words, until higher education demonstrates that it's willing to directly invest its own considerable financial resources in an alternative clean energy regime, its credibility in calling for a new energy policy will be open to attack.

I have two main sources of hope. First, it will be the students, not sustainability officers, presidents, or trustees, who drive the real change. It's their future and they know how deeply at risk it is. They also are becoming increasingly aware of how deeply the colleges and universities they attend are involved in propping up the fossil fuel regime, and they are organizing to do something about it. "Our complicity in sources of violence and environmental destruction has on-the-ground implications every day," Middlebury students recently declared. "Heavy investment in the fossil fuel giants of our world has implications for climate change, human health, and the environment that reach far beyond Middlebury."

My other main source of hope, oddly enough, is the market. Regardless of which political party is in power, for example, it will only be a matter of time before solar reaches grid parity, the point at which electricity generated by solar is as cheap as or cheaper than electricity generated by fossil fuel or nuclear power. In fact, General Electric -- yes, that's right, General Electric -- claims that due to falling PV prices and increasing efficiency this point could be reached in the U.S. in as little as five years. And that's without any subsidies whatsoever or, for that matter, any leadership from higher ed.

Wouldn't it be a lot better for the long term credibility and relevance of colleges and universities to get on the right side of history and exercise their influence to help accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy and stave off runaway climate change? We all know the next five years are critical, and the faster we move towards a more efficient, greener energy regime, the better off we all will be. Why shouldn't higher education make achieving this new order its top priority?

Slavery, Freedom, and the American Story

Peter — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 21:00:46 GMT

I wrote this piece about racial justice and the meaning of the Fourth of July nearly 20 years ago for the Baltimore Sun, when I was a history professor at Goucher College. The original article can be found here. In many ways, the roots of our difficulties regarding the creation of a sustainable society go back to the nation's founding belief that people could be treated as commodities to be bought and sold, a belief that reinforced the notion that the biosphere could be dealt with in the same way.

One of the little-known facts about the Civil War is that Mount Vernon -- the home of George Washington -- was declared neutral ground during the four-year ordeal. The significance of this act is worth pondering as we once again celebrate the official birthday of the country that Washington helped found.

That the North and South, in the midst of a wrenching and bloody civil war, could agree that Mount Vernon should be considered sacred suggests the power of Washington's image as the father of our country. Despite the deep-seated differences that divided Northerners and Southerners and drove them to war, they concurred that the purity of the Revolutionary tradition should be protected at least to this extent.

Of course, the tradition itself was not all that pure. Not only was Mount Vernon the residence of our country's first president; it was also a plantation on which several hundred slaves lived and died. As much as any one place, it embodied the ambiguity and complexity of the circumstances that gave birth to the United States and that fueled its economic and geographic expansion. When the Civil War broke out, the land that saw itself as a shining beacon of liberty was also the largest slave-holding country in the world.

Whether or not we want to admit it, it is the historical fate of Americans to live in a society where slavery and freedom developed hand in hand. Indeed, it can be argued that the enslavement of African-Americans made possible the freedom of whites, and that whites had before them the massive numbers of blacks in bondage to remind them of the precious character of their liberty.

Part of what made the Civil War such a profound upheaval was that during the conflict slavery and freedom finally became disentangled. Not that Northerners set out at the beginning to end slavery once and for all. The primary goal for the North was always the preservation of the Union. As Abraham Lincoln proclaimed in 1861, "The central idea pervading this struggle is the necessity . . . of proving that popular government is not an absurdity. We must settle this question now, whether, in a free government, the minority have the right to break up the government whenever they choose."

In the course of attempting to restore the Union, however, it became clear to the North that the destruction of slavery was a military necessity. Furthermore, slaves themselves -- by escaping to Union lines whenever the opportunity presented itself -- put enormous pressure on the federal government to make emancipation a war aim.

One of the great tragedies of the Civil War was that Americans approached the problem of slavery in a way that evaded the larger issue of race relations. Slavery was only one aspect of this broader question, but most whites in both the North and the South refused to deal with race, preferring to keep the controversy confined within the narrow channels of the peculiar institution.

Before the war, rather than addressing slavery directly and arguing about the moral legitimacy of the institution where it actually existed, Northerners and Southerners engaged in an abstract debate about slavery where it wasn't: in the western territories. During the war, the need to avoid alienating the border states and sending them into the arms of the Confederacy constrained discussion about emancipation and African-American rights. Then, when the war was over, the tension between the contradictory goals of national reconciliation and freedom for blacks made it nearly impossible to confront the question of racial discrimination.

Instead, the issue of race was put on the back burner in an effort to patch up differences between the North and South and to put the United States back on the road to economic development and prosperity. The emancipation of slaves, the granting of citizenship to blacks, and the bestowal of voting rights on African-American males solved the existing problems in the eyes of the country.

Blacks, then, were left to fend for themselves without any sustained attempt to raze the social structure of the South and replace it with a new one. As a result, the pre-war system of race relations was largely intact.

This is not to say that the Civil War failed to transform the country. As Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James McPherson points out, before 1861 "United States" was a plural noun: "The United States are south of Canada and north of Mexico." Following the defeat of the Confederacy in 1865, "United States" became a singular noun. The legacy of the Civil War, in other words, went beyond the preservation of the Union to the creation of a nation. From this perspective, although George Washington may have been the father of the country, Abraham Lincoln was the founder of the nation.

Despite all the changes set in motion by the Civil War, we still have not completed the most urgent task before us: the establishment of equitable race relations. Until we recognize that freedom without justice is an empty promise, the troubling and equivocal symbolism of Mount Vernon will never be put behind us and the full potential of the American Revolution will never be realized.

The time is fast approaching when it will be too late to do anything. As we gather with friends and family on the Fourth of July, we should remember that the date marks the retreat of the Confederate forces from Gettysburg as well as the Declaration of Independence. We could hardly find a more meaningful way to observe both events than to renew our commitment to racial justice in America and bring about the "new birth of freedom" envisioned by Lincoln in 1863 as he surveyed the blood-soaked battlefield at Gettysburg.

Dealing with Opponents to Climate Action

Peter — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 02:42:44 GMT

I was asked by the editor of Climate Access earlier this week to share my thoughts about "the main lesson you’ve learned from trying to deal with opponents of action on climate?" Here's my full response, which was edited down a bit:

Trying to discuss the need for climate action with those who oppose taking such steps makes clear to me that nothing I say or do is going to change their minds. In my role as coordinator of the Tompkins County Climate Protection Initiative (TCCPI), I've found that the best way to engage such folks is to stay focused on the need for improving energy efficiency and reducing energy consumption, building a more resilient local food system, and creating healthier neighborhoods.

As a recent Yale University study shows, a high degree of science literacy does not necessarily mean that a person will support the notion that climate change is a serious issue; instead, cultural values play the biggest role in determining how individuals feel about climate change. Once they've made up their mind, trying to change their opinion is a nearly impossible task.

This doesn't mean giving up on the effort to educate the general public. We provide lots of opportunity on our web site (www.tccpi.org), for instance, to learn about what climate change means, why it is so urgent to take action, and the specific impact it will have on our state (New York). We also provide a significant list of resources relating to climate change, climate protection agreements, and climate action plans. But these do not make up the core of our main strategy.

Instead, we emphasize ways in which the transition to a cleaner, more efficient energy economy can promote a more sustainable economy and society. We highlight success stories in the community that make such efforts more personal and other similar efforts taking place in upstate New York. Our electronic newsletter as well as our web site seek to get the word out about this work.

Perhaps the biggest accomplishment so far is to launch what will be the first community-owned wind farm in New York, Black Oak Wind Farm, a 20 MW project located just outside of Ithaca. We just successfully concluded our seed capital round, raising $1.2 million from about 76 individuals, and will be moving to the next stage of getting this project off the ground. We've been getting some great national press (see here, for example), but more important is the tremendous support we've been receiving from the community.

It's this kind of effort, one that provides local investors a great opportunity to get involved in the clean energy economy, creates local jobs, produces competitively priced renewable energy, and by the way, helps to reduce the region's carbon footprint, that TCCPI is trying to promote. And as president of Black Oak, I'm following the proverbial advice about putting my money where my mouth is.

Going Down with the Ship?

Peter — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 19:35:25 GMT

I wrote the following short piece for the April-May 2012 issue of the TCCPI Newsletter:

One hundred years ago this spring the Titanic went down in the North Atlantic, taking the lives of over 1,500 people. Leaving Southampton on April 10, it set out on its maiden voyage celebrated as one of the most technologically advanced ships built to date. Sixteen watertight compartments and remotely activated doors, among other safety features, made it unsinkable, or so the engineers said. The speed with which the Titanic met its end shocked the world, and the event became an enduring symbol of technological hubris.

This same hubris can be seen in our own time as we plunge forward heedless of the damage industrial society inflicts on the biosphere that supports our very lives. The explosive growth of fossil fuel consumption that made possible such marvels as the Titantic has placed an unprecedented burden on our global climate system, pushing it to the brink of disaster. As Peter Hess writes, both the sinking of the Titanic and the accelerating threat of runaway climate change "are the result of a collision between human over-confidence and the implacable forces of nature."

If nothing else, the story of the Titanic should warn us that climate change is more than a physical problem to be solved by technology. It is, in Malcolm Bull's words,"an ethical problem that necessarily requires moral solutions." The real question is not so much whether we have the ability to slow down the rate of global warming but whether we have the capacity to expand our moral imagination so that we can grasp the importance of doing so.

Leadership by Example: Campus-Community Collaboration on Climate Protection

Peter — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 04:27:54 GMT

I wrote the following for the October 2011 issue of The ACUPCC Implementer and thought I should also share it here:

Embedded in the American College & University Presidents' Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) is the notion of leadership by example. By committing their institutions to the goal of carbon neutrality, the presidents who are signatories to the ACUPCC underscore the critical role of higher education in meeting the challenge of climate change and building a more sustainable future.

Universities and colleges in the United States have historically been crucibles of social change and laboratories for new ideas and creative solutions to some of society’s toughest problems. In this sense, the ACUPCC is part of a long tradition in our country. What is new, however, is the scale of the problem and the threat it poses to human civilization. Simply providing a model of sustainability will not suffice this time around. Campuses can only truly become sustainable if the communities around them are sustainable. In this sense, implicit in the ACUPCC is the commitment to not only dramatically reduce the carbon footprint of the university or college, but also collaborate with the larger community in doing so.

The Tompkins County Climate Protection Initiative (TCCPI) seeks to demonstrate what this kind of collaboration looks like and the impact it can have on a region’s economic and environmental health. With a population of about 100,000, Tompkins County includes three ACUPCC signatories: Cornell University, Ithaca College, and Tompkins Cortland Community College. These three institutions also happen to be among the top employers in the county. At the same time, the city of Ithaca, the town of Ithaca, and the county government have made formal commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with the latter calling for a decrease in emissions of 80 percent by 2050 and establishing an interim goal of 20 percent by 2020.

TCCPI seeks to leverage these climate action commitments to mobilize a countywide energy efficiency effort and accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy. The coalition, launched in June 2008, currently consists of local leaders from more than forty organizations, institutions, and businesses in the county organized into five sectors: business/financial, education, local government, nonprofit, and youth. Each of these sectors has selected a representative to the steering committee, which tracks the progress of the coalition’s projects and sets the agenda for the monthly meetings of the whole group.

Among the projects currently underway is an effort to explore the feasibility of a combined heating and power plant shared by Cayuga Medical Center and its next door neighbor, the Museum of the Earth. Working with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County, TCCPI has also helped to support the establishment of the Tompkins County Energy Corps, which is made up of students from Cornell and Ithaca College who carry out informational energy audits for homeowners, share information with them about state and federal incentives, and encourage concrete steps to improve the energy performance of their residences. Other projects involve the implementation of a $375,000 EPA Climate Showcase Community grant secured by the Tompkins County Planning Office and EcoVillage at Ithaca, both TCCPI members, and the rollout this fall of a countywide campaign to raise awareness about the importance of energy savings.

Perhaps the most ambitious effort undertaken by TCCPI is its current attempt to shape the economic development agenda not just of Tompkins County but the seven other counties in the region that make up what is known as “the Southern Tier.” In particular, TCCPI has called for the implementation throughout the region of large-scale commercial energy efficiency and renewable energy projects totaling $100 million.

This past summer New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a sweeping new initiative that has created a remarkable opportunity for the Southern Tier to think strategically about major investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy. The governor has established ten regional councils that have until November 14 to submit proposals for a share of a $1 billion fund established on behalf of a coordinated economic development strategy. Each of the councils is co-chaired by an academic and business leader. Governor Cuomo has appointed David Skorton, president of Cornell University, and Tom Tranter, president and CEO of Corning Enterprises, to head up the Southern Tier group.

The economic development funding has been put together from multiple agencies in the form of grants and tax incentives. The ability to leverage a small portion of this money to develop potential sites for energy upgrades, carry out the feasibility studies, and issue the RFPs would make it possible to secure the necessary private capital. These sites would primarily involve airports, school systems, college and university campuses, hospitals, and local government buildings, but could also include commercial and industrial buildings. TCCPI has proposed deploying $1 million in state support for a revolving fund to help attract up to $100 million in private capital. By aggregating the commercial energy efficiency and renewable energy projects and coordinating the effort, an attractive investment portfolio would be created, hundreds of jobs created, administrative costs substantially reduced, and significant energy savings realized.

The key, then, is scale. Such a far reaching initiative would require a collaborative platform similar to TCCPI for deploying clean energy technologies across government, commercial, industrial, and educational organizations for maximum impact on economic growth and environmental health. It remains to be seen whether Governor Cuomo will approve such an approach. But the energy working group of the Southern Tier Regional Economic Development Council has endorsed the TCCPI proposal and it has a good chance of being included in the overall package submitted to Cuomo on November 14.

The bottom line? TCCPI clearly represents the next logical stage in the process initiated by the ACUPCC. With its emphasis on campuses and communities partnering to engage climate and energy issues, the TCCPI model provides a framework for multisector collaboration that holds out hope of a brighter future for all, demonstrating that job creation, energy security, and responsible stewardship of the environment are not mutually exclusive.

Creating New Spaces for Connecting in New Ways

Peter — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 03:46:34 GMT

I contributed the following post to Second Nature's blog recently. It was part of a series by Second Nature staff on why we work in the field of sustainability. Thanks to Georges Dyer for the gentle prodding!

“The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas,” John Maynard Keynes has observed, “but in escaping from the old ones.” Nowhere is the truth of this observation clearer than in our continued adherence to an economy based on fossil fuels. As more than one study has determined, we have the means at our disposal to move into a clean energy world in which the power of the wind, sun, water, tides, and other renewable sources is tapped and runaway climate change is averted. The latest of these studies comes from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which earlier this month released a report surveying the already existing technologies that, in combination, could make this happen. The critical missing components are the necessary policies that would drive change in this direction and the political will to implement them.

I get up every day and do the work that I do because I want to help create the public pressure and culture of collaboration that will make these changes occur. I get up every day and do the work that I do because I believe each one of us has the responsibility to be a subject in history and not just an object of history. I get up every day and do the work that I do because there is no silver bullet, no magic wand, that can make the immense problems confronting us go away. The only thing that will work is to escape from the old myths of independence and self-reliance and embrace the truths of interdependence and mutuality.

Understanding these truths and harnessing the power of the network is at the heart of what makes Second Nature so effective. The American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) and Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) are both products of this approach to change. They are collaborative efforts to create the conditions for the emergence of a new paradigm, one that involves a shift from the mechanistic, atomistic solutions of the industrial age to the organic, interconnected web of the digital age. They are part of the largest social movement in all human history, what Paul Hawken calls “the blessed unrest.”

The overturning of the old paradigm will only happen if we intentionally and strategically create what Gibrán Rivera refers to as “the spaces for connection.” Collaboration, inclusivity, and mutual respect make it possible for us to move upstream, where the real solutions are. As Rivera puts it, “By re-inventing the ways in which we come together we begin to live in the world we are trying to build.” Second Nature, together with the generous support of the Park Foundation, have provided me with the invaluable space not only for connection but also experimentation, the opportunity to reinvent myself as a social entrepreneur and explore new models of partnership and change such as the Tompkins County Climate Protection Initiative (TCCPI). And for that I will always be grateful.

Keeping the Social in Sustainability

Peter — Mon, 09 May 2011 23:31:00 GMT

Once again I've been asked to serve as an "outside expert" for an online course on "Integrating Sustainability into Training and Curriculum." And once again I've been asked a terrific question by one of the students in the class; in this case, he serves as the sustainability coordinator for a community college in the Upper Midwest.

The question goes like this:

Most equate sustainability with the environmental realm and often fail to make the connection that sustainabiility is multifaceted. A recent teaching cohort in sustainability that I organized this
academic year was made up of liberal arts and technical faculty, representing a wonderful diversity of disciplines, yet the conversations always seemed to revert back to the environmental realm. Economics and sustainability was understood by most, but that darned old social dimension just seemed out of reach. There is a mind-set that is hard to crack. What advice can you give that can help me better facilitate such groups in the future?

In many ways, this question gets at the fundamental challenge for the sustainability movement. How do we make sure that the social dimension of sustainability is kept at the center of the conversation and its connection with the environmental dimension made clear?

I have two approaches to suggest, one theoretical and the other practical. The more theoretical approach involves understanding the role of diversity in both the ecosystem and social/cultural system. Few people would dispute the notion that biodiversity is a central condition for the health of the ecosystem. In fact, it is widely understood that greater biodiversity means greater health. This is why the sixth and latest mass extinction, predicted by E.O. Wilson in The Future of Life to eliminate half of the existing species by 2100 at the current rate, is such a cause for concern.

Just as diversity is vital to the health of the ecosystem, so it plays a central part in the health of our social system. Given the impact of human beings on both biodiversity and climate change, it is clear that unless we pay attention to the social and cultural well being of humans we will not succeed in meeting the environmental challenges that threaten our very survival; the two are inextricably linked.

Why is diversity crucial to social and cultural well being? Let me offer one example that I think helps to illuminate the connection between diversity in the biological and social spheres. Obviously, creativity and innovation are required if we are to come up with effective solutions to the issues of biodiversity, climate change, and the transition to a low carbon economy. The famous and overused Einstein quotation about how the problems we face will never be solved by the same thinking that first created the problems is relevant here.

The most recent research, as outlined in Steven Johnson's Where Good Ideas Come From, underscores the extent to which innovation is best fostered in a dynamic social web rather than in intellectual isolation. Those "eureka moments" of the lone genius are few and far between. The most fertile environments for sparking creativity, as Johnson suggests, are those in which diverse and even divergent perspectives come together and interact. In short, the more diverse the social system and the greater the degree of engagement the more likely it is that we will develop the necessary solutions to the immense challenges we face in the 21st century. It's a pretty good bet that the same old elites in the same old silos (read higher education as we know it) that created the environmental crisis of our time will not come up with the answers we need.

What about the more concrete suggestion for making sure in talking about sustainability we don't lose track of the social dimension, especially the issues of equity and justice? I can sum this up in one word: food. If there is one thing that brings together the environmental and social better than any other, this is it. Food makes real the connection in a way that more abstract concepts of biodiversity and climate change simply don't and can't. Everybody relates to food because it is a vital part of everyone's day to day life and there are very few people who do not derive significant pleasure from eating food. Even more important, there are few more widely agreed upon measures of equity and justice in society than access to high quality, healthy, and affordable food.

A thoughtful discussion of how the food movement can revitalize environmentalism can be found in a recent column in Time by Bryan Walsh, the magazine's environmental reporter. Walsh rightly argues that the food movement has the potential not only to change the way we eat and farm but also "the way we work and relate to one another." It is the social and political diversity of the food movement and its decentralized character that makes it so powerful. The food movement has taken root and spread rapidly from Berkeley to the Bronx and from Wal-Mart to Whole Earth. In other words, its structure mimics that of a healthy and vibrant biosphere.

More than any other issue, food has the greatest potential to connect the social and the environmental in ways that can engage the most fervent social justice advocates, on the one hand. and most passionate environmentalists, on the other, and help them see what they have in common. We need to make sure that not only are our gardens properly tended but that everyone has a seat at the table. Could you pass the guacamole, please?

Cornell Names TCCPI 2011 Partner in Sustainability

Peter — Thu, 05 May 2011 07:27:00 GMT

Since 2008, thanks to the generosity of the Park Foundation, I've been working on building the Tompkins County Climate Protection Initiative (TCCPI) coalition. As coordinator, I've had the opportunity to work with a terrific group of visionary leaders from Ithaca and Tompkins County to help our community significantly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy. Cornell University, a signatory of the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment (ACUPCC), has been a crucial player in the formation of this coalition. It was thus very exciting for TCCPI to receive the 2011 Partner in Sustainability Award from Cornell last Friday.

Here's the Ithaca Journal article on this announcement:

The Tompkins County Climate Protection Initiative was awarded the second annual Partners in Sustainability Award on Friday.

The award, presented by the Cornell University President's Sustainable Campus Committee, recognized the initiative for its ongoing partnership in regional carbon reduction strategies, according to a statement released by Cornell.

Among the achievements of the group are the creation of peer-to-peer mentoring, development of a regional strategy for achieving reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and the development of financing mechanisms for homeowners and businesses to achieve greenhouse gas reduction targets.

In the statement, Cornell sustainability manager Daniel Roth said, "By recognizing groups that partner with higher education institutions to advance sustainability, we build on the successes of research and teaching, and acknowledge that we must also bring together practitioners and leaders throughout the world in support of new policies and practices."

The award is given each year to one or more recipients who have made significant contributions to the sustainable development of New York and the Cornell campus through collaboration with the university, according to the statement.

Award winners are evaluated on research, regional stewardship, education and public engagement.

This award is a wonderful recognition of the good work carried out by the coalition and a reminder of how much work remains to be done.

Envisioning a Low-Carbon Future

Peter — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 01:18:00 GMT

I was invited recently to contribute an article to the Tompkins Weekly Signs of Sustainability series, organized by Sustainable Tompkins. It appeared in the February 28, 2011 issue. Here it is (with hyperlinks added):

Listening to the rhetoric of oil, coal and gas company executives such as the Koch brothers, you would think they were champions of limited government and the free market. In fact, however, the fossil fuel industry is one of the most subsidized businesses in the U.S. and its burgeoning profits would shrink dramatically without federal support. According to the Environmental Law Institute, the U.S. government provided the industry with $72 billion between 2002 and 2008. About $54 billion of that total was permanent tax credits for oil, coal and natural gas producers. In contrast, during that same period, the renewable energy industry received $29 billion, most of it also in the form of federal tax credits. The difference is that none of these tax credits is permanent.

On top of these enormous subsidies for oil, coal and gas, there are staggering external costs incurred as a result of our dependence on fossil fuels. These include the expense of defending strategic oil interests in the Middle East and elsewhere, the damage to air quality and our health and the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on the climate. Then there is the looming crisis of peak oil and our growing competitive disadvantage as other countries such as China rush to embrace clean energy technologies. Taking all of these factors into account, it’s hard not to believe that relying solely on fossil fuel energy is foolhardy.

The Pentagon knows this. At a recent White House summit on clean energy, I spoke with several Army officers from Fort Carson in Colorado and it was clear they were hard at work making the transition to renewables and energy efficiency. No one had to remind them of the tremendous sacrifice in lives and dollars sustained in military operations as a result of our dependence on foreign oil. And no one had to convince them that climate change was a rising national security risk; they had their own hard data about the impact of global warming on political and economic stability around the world.

In light of these developments, it makes perfect sense that President Obama is seeking to eliminate the billions in taxpayer dollars that the government gives to oil and gas companies. As he put it in a speech at Penn State earlier this month, “It’s time to stop subsidizing yesterday’s energy; it’s time to invest in tomorrow’s.” The redirected dollars would go toward the development of wind, solar and geothermal power, energy efficiency technology and building upgrades.

In his Penn State remarks Obama called on Americans to take up the challenge of energy innovation. The Tompkins County Climate Protection Initiative (TCCPI) has been doing just that since June 2008. A coalition of community leaders from the business, financial, nonprofit, local government and education sectors, TCCPI has brought together many of the key organizations and institutions in Tompkins County to explore ways we can build a low carbon future and achieve the county’s target of an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

In particular, TCCPI has worked closely with Cornell Cooperative Extension, Tompkins County, to launch the Tompkins Energy Conservation Corps (TECC), consisting primarily of students from Cornell, Ithaca College and TC3. Pursuing an innovative approach to the social marketing of residential energy retrofits, Energy Corps members carry out energy assessments on the homes of Tompkins County leaders to underscore the importance of energy conservation and its impact on the local economy. In addition, TECC conducts outreach efforts through community blower-door workshops, youth activities, employer brown bag lunch events and an evolving marketing campaign.

It is efforts like these in countless communities across the U.S. that will make it possible for us to reengage as citizens in a democratic society and take our country in a different direction, one that steps back from the brink of ecological disaster and moves towards a world in which the balance between the natural world and human civilization is restored and a more just and equitable future for our children and grandchildren is made possible. In the end, it will be people, not technology, who make the difference.

Building a Culture of Sustainability at an Online University

Peter — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 06:18:00 GMT

I'm serving as an outside "expert" this semester in a course on "Integrating Sustainability into Training and Curriculum," addressing student questions related to their reading of Boldly Sustainable. One of the questions posed was particularly challenging: how can people who work and study at higher education institutions that offer mostly online courses help promote sustainability on their campuses?

"We do all want to see these changes, but it never seems to be as cut and dried as many of these best case scenarios offer," the student wrote. "I know there are more people I can bring to the cause ... but with 8 campuses spread between two states and the ethos (we have a big online program), it’s hard to get anyone together."

I thought it might be useful to post my response here:

Wow, Laura, talk about going right to the core of the problem! First, let me assure you that you are not alone in facing this particular challenge. Every campus deals with this issue, even those commonly viewed as "the green elite" schools such as Middlebury or Brown. In your case, though, the challenge is complicated by the fact that your institution is defined in large part by its extensive use of web-based learning and multiple campuses across two states, which means that there is a more dispersed student and faculty community than you would find in a more traditional institution.

The trick is to find a way to turn this seeming liability into an advantage. One possible way to do this would be to leverage the creative potential of social media to engage students and faculty in a conversation about sustainability and climate change, and promote actual behavior change on the part of individuals. If you haven't already done so, establishing a Facebook page for greening the campuses is an obvious first move; getting a Twitter conversation going is also another obvious step you can take. But how do you generate interest in using these tools?

The most important thing in any social marketing effort -- which is what we're talking about here -- is to get people to make an early incremental commitment. If you ask folks for too much upfront, you're likely to scare them off. From this perspective, getting people to "follow" you on Twitter and "like" you on Facebook could be seen as one of the ways that you can get people to make their first incremental commitment. But you need to follow up with something more substantial quickly or you will lose momentum.

Given the dispersed nature of your community, it might make sense to get people to commit as individuals to changing some aspect of their personal lifestyle and in this way build a more tangible community of shared purpose. You could use David Gershon's Low Carbon Diet to suggest a range of actions that people could take and how much each action would reduce that individual's carbon footprint. But you need to provide a way for people to make these commitments public so that they can hold each other accountable and a way to measure the results. Both of these (accountability and the ability to measure progress) are important principles of social change theory.

I recommend that you take a look at the Interfaith Power and Light initiative, which puts together a really interesting model for doing something along these lines using the web. Take a look, in particular, at its Cool Congregations project and 10% Challenge. I think these ideas could be pretty easily translate from congregations to student and faculty teams. You might organize along department or degree lines and pit them against each other (business on one campus versus business on the other campuses, for example) in a contest to see who could lose the most weight on the low carbon diet.

In addition, to fuel the competition, you could organize a contest around each participating team making a short (2-3 minutes) video about sustainability and/or climate change using a cell phone or small video camcorder like a Flip (but nothing more sophisticated or expensive because then people won't be competing on a level playing field) and having a panel of judges (fair and balanced, you decide!) to select a winning team. You could even have winners for different categories; comedy, drama, action, and musical, for instance. During the contest you could get participants to post the videos on the web and let people know about them through Facebook and Twitter. Instead of a formal panel of judges, using the web, you could have people vote for their favorites. Or you could do both: "the people's choice" award and the judges' award. You might be able to get the administration to put up a small amount of money that the winning teams could commit to some climate or sustainability action on campus (a student organic garden, the showing of a relevant movie, or more bike racks, for example).

The ultimate goal of these activities is to build a network of committed activists that you can then leverage for more direct collective action on the campuses such as a student vote to mandate fees for sustainability work in the university. Even a small annual fee of $10-15 can add up very quickly to a substantial sum of money that can then be used towards increasing the sustainability of the campuses. You might even be able to raise enough money this way to hire a sustainability coordinator!

Remember that you don't need everyone on board to carry the day. The kinds of activities suggested above allow you to attract and engage the early adopters, who can then reach out to a larger number of people on campus to build what is known in social change theory as "the early majority." In many cases, the early adopters and early majority can be enough together to tip the balance in the right direction. Of course, there will always be "the laggards," the folks who will never change their behavior or consciousness. Don't waste your energy or time knocking yourself out to get this group on board -- to put it bluntly, you don't need them.

It sounds as if there have been a number of truly significant changes in university operations and that what you are seeking is to go beyond that to shift people's behavior and consciousness. I think perhaps something like I'm suggesting above will help. At least I hope so!

Good luck! Your commitment and passion is inspiring and gives me hope for our future.

Does anyone else have suggestions for Laura? Anything you've tried at a web-based university or other learning organization that has worked?

Towards Interdependence Day

Peter — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 23:04:34 GMT

I received the following a few days ago from Brian Malarkey, a friend and colleague of mine at Kirksey, a green architecture firm in Houston. He and John Kirksey are trying to raise awareness about the connection between the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster and climate change. I thought it was worth sharing on the Fourth of July:

Happy Independence Day!

Ponder this while you savor the anniversary of the American Revolution.

As we approach July Fourth, the 72nd day of the BP oil spill, the USGS’s Flow Rate Technical Group estimates that the flow of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico has averaged 500,000 gallons per day or roughly 1500 tons of carbon per day.

As tragic as this event is, it does not compare to the 86,000,000 tons of carbon per day we introduce into the earth’s atmosphere through our use of fossil fuels and deforestation. In other words, each day we voluntarily release carbon comparable to 57,000 times the amount leaking into the gulf on a daily basis.

Did you know… Of the carbon that we add to the atmosphere each day, roughly 90% of it will remain, active on our earth 500 years from now.

Did you know… There are three major carbon sinks (repositories) on the earth; the oceans are the largest, followed by the land (rocks), and lastly the tropical forest. The world’s oceans are reaching full saturation and are taking up less and less carbon while becoming highly acidic. This combination is having a significantly negative impact on marine life. The tropical forests sequester about 1 billion tons of carbon per year while simultaneously deforestation is contributing about 2 billion tons of new carbon each year.

Did you know… The US spends about $1 billion per day on imported oil and petroleum products, many of these products coming from governments with strong anti-American sentiments.

Did you know… The fossil fuel industry spends roughly $1.5 billion each year with lobbyists in Washington to influence our energy policies (does not include political contributions).

Did you know… Contrary to the speculation that volcanoes represent a large source of carbon, scientists calculated that there was an actual reduction in the total carbon output during the Iceland volcanic eruption last month, due primarily to the grounding of an extensive number of airline flights coming into and out of Europe.

Did you know… 2010 is unfolding as the hottest year on record since reliable instrumental temperatures records began in the late 1800s. The first decade of the 21st Century is already the the hottest decade on record.

Did you know…Coal produces 2100 lbs of carbon per Mwhr of energy, while natural gas produces 950 lbs of carbon per Mwhr, or only 45% the carbon of coal.

Is it time for another American Revolution; a technical revolution? Can we envision another Independence Day in our future?

Think about it.

There's certainly a lot here to ponder. We seem to be reaching some kind of turning point in the country's understanding of the high environmental price we pay for fossil fuel and the importance of developing clean energy alternatives.We may not be at the turning point, but we are approaching it.

I would go beyond the above argument, though. No doubt technological innovation will be a major component of any effort to build a more sustainable future. But we also need a cultural revolution, a completely different way of understanding the relationship between human society and the natural world. We need to figure out that we don't stand apart from the natural world but instead are enmeshed in it and that our very lives depend on the health of this relationship.

What would this culture look like? I think it would look a lot like EcoVillage at Ithaca (EVI), where I'm privileged to serve on the board. A 176-acre co-housing community and nonprofit educational organization just outside of Ithaca, NY, EcoVillage has been up and running for over twenty years now and has emerged as one of the most advanced sustainable communities in the world.

Thanks to the visionary leadership of its executive director, Liz Walker, EVI is now undertaking a third neighborhood, called "TREE." This latest neighborhood will feature 30 affordable and accessible energy efficient homes and apartments that will have a near zero carbon footprint. They will be designed to allow its occupants to "age in place," thus contributing to the richness of the EVI community by making it easier for folks to stay as they grow older.

How much demand is there for this kind of housing? Well, if EVI is any guide, it's significant. TREE has filled all 30 units before even breaking ground and there is a waiting list.

"EcoVillage is far more than just a residential community," observed Walker in a recent interview. "It's a whole concept, an experiment in sustainable living and holistic agriculture. Part of our mission is to demonstrate a new way of living, to increase biodiversity. We focus on the conservation of open space using organic farming, and we had one of the first CSAs (community-supported agriculture organizations) in the country."

So, yes, clean technology is part of the answer. But just as important, perhaps even more so, is the fostering of communities like EVI. We need more than a "technical revolution." We need, as Liz Walker puts it, a whole "new way of lviing." That's what a real Independence Day would look like: something we might call "Interdependence Day."

The Digital Cathedral in the Age of Democratic Sustainability

Peter — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 00:35:00 GMT

This is the first part of an article that just appeared in Issue #25, Spring/Summer 2010 of Terrain.org: The Journal of the Built & Natural Environments. I've been working on this article in one form or another for about four years, so I'm excited about finally finishing it and getting it published.

How can the digital revolution and the new social media it has spawned nurture the development of democratic sustainability? By democratic sustainability I mean a social and political process that engages citizens as active agents of social change in the complex task of balancing economic prosperity, effective environmental stewardship, and social justice. As Paul Hawken notes in Blessed Unrest, the democratic sustainability movement has emerged “from the bottom up,” becoming “the largest social movement in all of human history.” It “grows and spreads in every city and country,” writes Hawken, “and involves virtually every tribe, culture, language, and religion, from Mongolians to Uzbeks to Tamils.”

Moving toward democratic sustainability has less to do with technology than a massive change in human consciousness, one that encourages systems thinking and transforms the relations of people to each other and to natural world. Nonetheless, tools are necessary to facilitate this task, and the rise of the Internet and digital technology has provided us with new and potent means to do so. As Hawken observes, “There have always been networks of powerful people, but until recently it has never been possible for the entire world to be connected.” Even as we acknowledge the “other side” of the Internet—its potential to splinter thought and concentration, take time away from reflection, and exacerbate a growing nature-deficit-disorder among youth—its unprecedented ability to construct global movements beckons.

Community is the essential concept underpinning sustainability. Whether an ecosystem or social system, the dynamics of interconnectedness and interdependence are what make growth and health possible. In medieval society, the cathedral embodied this understanding of what was known at the time as the “Great Chain of Being.” An awe-inspiring structure, the cathedral by its physical presence affirmed the vertical hierarchy that held medieval society together, and its construction gave individuals in the community a clear and compelling sense of their place in the world and the links that bound them to each other. “Building a cathedral,” says Robert Scott in The Gothic Enterprise: A Guide to Understanding the Medieval Cathedral, “entailed an ongoing, difficult, yet energizing form of collective enterprise in which people could take enormous pride and around which they could rally a community.”

Cornell Moves Beyond Coal

Peter — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 22:13:41 GMT

I recently contributed this post to the Second Nature blog "Campus Green Builder":

Not all green buildings on campus come with lots of windows and sunlight. I recently attended the grand opening of Cornell University's new Combined Heat and Power Plant. Given the quality of the conversation about climate change in the U.S. these days, it’s easy to get discouraged and cynical. But I came away from this particular event feeling like Cornell had taken a real step forward. The new plant will allow Cornell to stop using coal in 18 months and will reduce the university’s carbon footprint by 28 percent. Getting off coal power and hooking up to an interstate natural gas pipeline that runs close by the campus will also save 100,000 gallons a year of diesel fuel used to deliver the coal by truck from West Virginia mines. Now that’s green by anyone’s standards.

Especially impressive was President David Skorton’s strong expression of support for the ACUPCC at the opening. "When I signed the President's Commitment," he said, "I did not know how we would get to climate neutrality, but I did have faith in our collective ability as a university to educate and discover our way through, and today is an example of finding a piece of the larger puzzle. Although we are celebrating today, we have a long hill yet to climb."

After the remarks and a press conference, I took a tour of the new 15,000-square-foot facility located next to the old coal-fired central heating plant. It was hard to miss the two giant turbines fired by natural gas that drive the electric generators. As was explained to us over the din of the turbines, very little goes to waste; heat from the turbines makes steam that runs another generator and that steam is piped throughout the campus for heating. In fact, so little energy is wasted that solar collectors had to be installed to provide heat and hot water for the new offices and locker rooms attached to the facility!

When thinking about Cornell's switch from coal to natural gas, here's something to keep in mind: only one-third of the energy in coal actually gets used to generate electricity. The rest goes up the smokestack along with much greater carbon emissions than natural gas. Thanks to mountaintop removal, more than 470 mountains in four Appalachian states (West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee) have been destroyed to date providing coal for power plants such as the one that Cornell is shutting down (see "How Do You Kill a Mountain?"). Given the inefficiency of coal, that means only about 156 of those mountains went into producing electricity. The other 314 mountains were not only destroyed, they were a complete waste. Cornell's new power plant will be running at something like 85% efficiency and natural gas emits far less carbon than coal. The obvious conclusion: natural gas may be "bad," but it's dramatically less bad than coal.

No wonder the Sierra Club will be holding Cornell up as a model as it seeks to get other universities and colleges to close down their coal-fired power plants (see Campuses Beyond Coal). One down and (about) fifty-nine to go!

The Big Idea

Peter — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 19:50:00 GMT

With the Copenhagen talks approaching, it's hard not to wonder why more people aren't engaged in the effort to prevent runaway climate change. Even as President Obama pledges 17% emissions cuts going into these crucial negotiations, new polls show that as many as 30% of Americans don't believe in global warming. Obviously, something's not working here.

Unless we move from trying to scare people into action by apocalyptic predictions of the coming climate disaster and focus on the hope and opportunity that can be generated by moving to a new energy economy, we're not going to be able to move forward at the pace necessary to have a meaningful impact. Climate and Energy Truths: Our Common Future, a study issued earlier this year by EcoAmerica, underscores the importance of grasping this insight. Carrying out focus groups and online and phone surveys, the study tested a range of conceputal frameworks and messages for speaking with the American public about energy and climate change. It's worth reading in its entirety, but here's the report's bottom line: it's far easier to engage people "around the energy debate than the climate change debate."

There is a similar need to shift the framework in higher education when it comes to sustainability. As Andrea Putman and I note in our editorial "A New Era in Higher Education?" (in the October issue of Sustainability: The Journal of Record), the most forward looking corporations understand the need to make sustainability a strategic imperative and are gaining significant ground on their competitors during the current recession. As I've noted previously, in the words of the recent Aberdeen Group report "The ROI of Sustainability," “Far from being a philanthropic ‘nice to have’ [sustainability is a] ‘must have’ strategy for long-term, business viability and success.”

What's the lesson here for higher education leaders? Too many of them are looking at sustainability in terms of what their institutions could do to promote it ("the right thing to do") and not enough are asking, how can sustainability help us become more strategic and perform more effectively ("the smart thing to do")? The big idea that they need to wrap their heads around is that sustainability as a driver can make their institutions smarter, more reslient, and less costly to operate. Perhaps reading the EcoAmerica report would help them better share this perspective with their institutions' stakeholders and move them forward to the new energy future that beckons.

Why "Boldly Sustainable"?

Peter — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:26:00 GMT

For Blog Action Day - Climate Change, a brief excerpt from Boldly Sustainable: Hope and Opportunity for Higher Education in the Age of Climate Change (NACUBO, 2009), which I co-authored with Andrea Putman, my colleague at Second Nature:

Designing a sustainable world is not simply a technocratic exercise. It is as much a cultural and ethical project as a scientific and engineering endeavor. It requires imagination, versatility, and creativity, a willingness to live our lives differently. Only if we come to comprehend that, as the ecologist and theologian Thomas Berry observes, “the universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects,” will we achieve a level of awareness sufficient to produce viable solutions. We must understand that we are woven inextricably into the fabric of life and do not stand apart from it, exercising dominion over the world around us. The “environment” is not something that exists separate from human beings but rather is what makes human life possible...

How do we want to be remembered: as leaders who understood the need to address upstream the pressing issues of our age and acted with courage and foresight, or as people whose primary goals were short-term advantage and gain and who cared for little else besides self advancement? The present moment is unlike any other in terms of what is at stake. As Berry writes, it is a moment that calls on us to transform our exploitation of the earth into a relationship that is “mutually beneficial.” And, as luck would have it, the moment is brief. Unless we act now to preserve and enhance the life, beauty, and diversity of the planet for future generations, we will become, in Berry’s words, “impoverished in all that makes us human.” The question is no longer why we should address climate destabilization, and in some cases, it is not even how. The question has become how fast and effectively we can move forward. In short, to what extent are we willing to be? ...

Given global threats such as the growing disruption of the climate, staggering levels of poverty in the developing world, and the looming peak oil crisis, it is remarkable how insular much of the higher education establishment is. Amid the day-to-day tasks of measuring learning outcomes, recruiting students, cultivating donors, balancing the budget, applying for grants, and keeping controversy to a minimum, surprisingly little time or energy is spent on how to address the truly serious problems that promise to upend the lives of the next generations. “One could make the case that our universities are actually mired in the Stone Age,” notes Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University. “Our universities remain highly static, resistant to change, unwilling to evolve in pace with real time.” Just as our prehistoric ancestors went about busting up rocks, we view the world as something to break down and take apart rather than to understand holistically and live in harmony with. In Crow's words, we seek to “heat it, beat it, melt it, smash it, burn it and blow it up.”

It is time for a new set of priorities that move us from “the Stone Age to the Sustainability Age.” How can it make sense for universities and colleges to keep doing what they do when they have contributed in large part to the current predicament? In light of how we got where we are, shouldn’t higher education leaders rethink the way that teaching, research, and learning take place and how they operate their facilities? More people, both inside and outside academia, are asking these questions. Now, more than ever, we need to keep in mind Eric Hoffer’s acerbic observation that “in times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”

Although colleges and universities may be inherently conservative, they must respond to the dramatically altered circumstances or run the risk of becoming irrelevant. Sustainability, as Peter Senge puts it, is “the necessary revolution.” The high stakes involved in meeting the challenges of sustainability and climate change mean that effective leadership, strategic thinking, and implementation in higher education are more imperative than ever. They demand a shift from maintaining the status quo to bringing about transformation. “Boldly sustainable” is not just a battle cry. It is a powerful strategy for higher education to achieve renewal, reformation, and relevance in the 21st century. It is an opportunity for colleges and universities to avoid the fate of collapsing under the weight of their own self-absorption, isolation, and obtuseness,to avoid becoming the intellectual equivalent of Easter Island.

Crossing the Bar: Eulogy for My Father

Peter — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:24:00 GMT

My Dad, perhaps more than anyone, taught me how to think long term and why it was important, and he passed on his lifelong love of the outdoors to my brothers and me. He also taught us the importance of family and, by example, what it meant to be entrepreneurial. I delivered this eulogy at his memorial service in Suffield, CT -- where we grew up -- on September 28, 2009:

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea.

But such a tide as moving seems asleep
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home!

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For though from out our bourn of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.

Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1889

My Dad loved life and he loved his family and friends. He was also independent, proud, and stubborn, and he was very, very smart. Anyone who underestimated Dad made a big mistake. He was naturally curious about the world, kept an open mind, and was always ready to embrace new experiences. He had an amazing amount of energy and once he set his mind on something, you could be sure he would accomplish it. And good luck if you couldn’t keep up with him.

Just six weeks ago, Dad drove up to Maine to celebrate my brother George’s birthday. George offered to come down and get him, and his business partner and close friend Phil Shuman offered to drive him up. Dad was not in good health, but he insisted that the only way he was going to Maine was if he could get there on his own. So he set off in his trusty BMW, with Chilli his loyal cocker spaniel at his side, heading north. It took him something like seven hours to get there, he said later, in part because he wasn’t feeling well and in part because Chilli had important business to conduct on the way.

The drive back to Suffield a few days later was altogether different. Perhaps revved up by the birthday celebration and time with his family, he set his cruise control at 78 mph and got home in four and a half hours. To this day we’re not really sure who was actually driving that car, and I’m not sure Dad ever really knew either.Two things we do know for sure, however: first, there were no bathroom breaks for poor old Chilli; and second, Dad had done it his way once again.

Just a few days later, Dad was in the hospital fighting for his life. He was in tremendous pain, suffering from an infection of his esophagus and unable to swallow any food. Even then he did not lose his sense of humor. For a few days he shared the room with an elderly gentleman who was suffering from dementia and would call out from time to time, reliving some incident from his past. At one point, suddenly sitting upright, he shouted, "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Dad couldn’t resist and responded in as loud a voice as he could muster, "Giddy up, giddy up!" Even as I was trying hard to stifle my laughter, I thought what a perfect expression of my father’s personality this moment captured. Throughout his life, people had told him to slow down, trim his sails, don’t dream so big, and he would have none of it. Instead, with a "giddy up" or two, he would simply forge ahead.

One of the great truths is that we die the way we live. The courage and determination that Dad displayed in the last days of his life was simply an extension of how he had always lived. At 18 years old, he rescued a couple who had fallen through the ice. Afterwards he said nothing about the incident to his mother, who scolded him for coming home soaking wet on such a cold day.

Only when the husband and wife, grateful that Dad had saved their lives, went to the local newspaper did the story become public. "At no time during the proceedings did he show any indications of losing his head or becoming excited," the couple told the reporter. "‘Just hang on; don’t get flustered; I’ll get you out,’ he kept repeating reassuringly to them.’"

Dad was just as stoic and courageous during his last few years when he fought for his own life. Diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma just two days before my stepmother Ruth passed away, he never gave up. Although the loss of Ruth crushed him, he kept moving forward.

As his longtime friend Neil Smit told me in a recent phone conversation, "George was a hard plower." Neil was referring to Dad’s approach to skiing, which he gave up only a couple of years ago, but he was also talking about his approach to life. "Enduring the battle with his body as it began to fail, he continued to live his life," our son Jesse wrote after Dad died. "He did not throw the towel in and he fought for all his days."

One of my favorite quotes comes from John Shedd’s Salt from My Attic: "A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for." If anybody ever embodied this spirit, my Dad did. Not that he went looking for trouble recklessly. After all, he was an accountant. But he was always eager to embark on a new adventure. That was why he loved sailing and why some of his happiest days were on his boat Freedom, cruising along the East Coast from Maine to Florida.

Dad’s love of adventure was not confined to the water. He had always wanted to go skydiving, so for his 75th birthday Ruth arranged for lessons and a jump at the Vero Beach airport in Florida, where he was stationed during with the Navy during World War II. I remember like it was yesterday the excitement in his voice when he called afterwards, still standing out on the airfield. "I did it!" he exclaimed. Included in Ruth’s birthday present was a video of the jump, capturing the exuberant expression on his face as he descended.To this day, whenever I watch the video, I laugh until I have tears running down my cheeks because the soundtrack is Steppenwolf’s "Born to be Wild." Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper had nothing on my Dad.

Some of my best days with my father were when I visited him and Ruth at their place on the ocean in Vero Beach, just south of Sebastian Inlet. It was a magical place on the narrowest part of the barrier island, and only a few hundred yards separated the Atlantic from the Indian River. I would go in the spring, just as baseball was getting underway, and we would head over to Dodgertown on the mainland to watch the exhibition games, eat a hot dog, and have a beer. Afterwards we would stop at a bait shop, pick up some live shrimp and go fishing off the dock back at the lagoon, watching the sun set across the water.

What I realized during this time with my father was that, late in his life, he had learned to live in the moment. This was not necessarily an easy achievement for him, because as Neil says, Dad was a "hard plower." Patience was not one of his greatest strengths and he was always looking ahead. But it was different in Florida. He and Ruth had discovered a place where the land, sea, and sky all came together in one glorious symphony, and it made their hearts sing. Both the past and future drifted away on the tide, leaving only the moment in which they lived.

Loss, although intense, brings great clarity. During the last five weeks as I spent each day with Dad, rooting for the Red Sox, doing crossword puzzles, talking, and sitting with him while he slept, I slowly came to grips with the reality that his life would soon end. In those moments, I realized what I most admired about my father: his integrity. By integrity, I don’t mean just strong ethics, important as they are, but also a consistency between inner core values and outer behavior that creates a sense of wholeness and resilience.

Although Dad kept up to date on a lot of things, he was old fashioned in his belief that hard work, family, and education were the keys to a good life. And you couldn’t spend a day with him without understanding that he lived these beliefs, they weren’t just empty words. As John Adams once observed, "There are two types of education. One should teach us how to make a living, and the other how to live." My father’s life was a testament to the wisdom of Adams’s insight.

So Dad has crossed the bar and put out to sea on his last great adventure. He will be sorely missed. But, as my father’s cousin Giorgio wrote from Italy when Ruth passed away, "We don’t ask you, Lord, why do you carry her away now, but we say thank you, Lord, because you gave her to us for many, special years." The same is true of Dad: he was a gift we will hold in our hearts forever. The flood may bear him far, but we rejoice knowing that he will finally meet his Pilot face to face. May he rest in peace.

Sustainability Means More Than Green

Peter — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 05:07:00 GMT

Be sure to take a look at this recent article and video published by the Mc Kinsey Quarterly: "When Sustainability Means More than ‘Green’." The article is adapted from Adam Werback’s new book, Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto, in which he urges businesses to turn to sustainability in order to gain long-term profitability and transparency. Werback, of course, is the former president of the Sierra Club and current corporate consultant helping to guide Wal-Mart's wide-ranging sustainability initiative.

"To endure in a changeable world with more limits on resources and less credit," writes Werbach, "companies must develop and execute a strategy for sustainability." This is very similar to the argument that my co-author Andrea Putman and I make in our new book Boldly Sustainable: Hope and Opportunity for Higher Education in the Age of Climate Change regarding colleges and universities. In our case, we contend that the institutions that successfully implement sustainability measures across their campuses will make the necessary organizational and pedagogical changes that will allow them not only to survive but thrive in the 21st century.

In Werbach's words, "Every crisis is an opportunity. The crisis we face now is our chance—your chance—to build a strategy for sustainability into the core of your company and your life. Such a strategy is a necessity, not an idealistic illusion." Read his article and watch the interview with him here.

Sustainability as a Strategic Imperative

Peter — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 20:37:00 GMT

Boldly Sustainable got a nice mention in Wednesday's issue of Inside Higher Ed. In "Getting to Green," the sustainability blog for IHE, G. Rendell writes that my co-author Andrea Putman and I "not only describe how colleges and universities can save money by reducing their environmental footprints, they explain how a profound commitment to sustainability is the basis for defining higher ed's 21st century market sector."

It's always a happy moment when a reader grasps the larger implications of one's work. As I've written in this space previously, sustainability is a strategic imperative for colleges and universities. In the words of Cornell President David Skorton, "sustainability is no longer an elective." (See New York Times, June 13, 2007). Those leaders who understand this new reality and act on it will be the ones whose institutions are most likely to survive the current upheaval in higher education.

Why do I say this? Some recent data, which came out after the book went to press, underscores the extent to which corporations that have made a deep commitment to sustainability are financially better off than those that have not. In a report released this past February, "Green Winners: The Performance of Sustainability," A.T. Kearney noted that in 16 out of 18 industries, companies with a strong sustainability commitment were “the clear leaders in the financial markets" and they outperformed industry averages by 15% in the second half of 2008. Among the common characteristics of these leading companies were the following:

Focus on long-term strategy, not just short-term gains
Strong corporate governance
Sound risk-management practices
History of investment in innovations

An even more recent study by the Aberdeen Group found that sustainability initiatives cut overall costs in over 200 companies by 6 to 10%; at the same time, customer retention rates increased 16%.

These are by any measure impressive results and deserve close consideration. Higher education, and the economy in general, are not just experiencing a conventional downturn right now; they are undergoing a major paradigm shift in which the old rules will no longer apply and the new way of doing business will have to take into account the previously overlooked value of ecoservices that are under unprecedented stress.

As Jhana Senxian and Cindy Jutras, the authors of the Aberdeen Group's "The ROI of Sustainability," contend, "far from being a philanthropic 'nice to have,’" sustainability is a "'must have' strategy for long-term, business viability and success."