CSUMB Teach-in Hypes Sustainability: Daylong CSUMB Symposium Touts Sustainability
By Laith Agha, The Monterey County Herald, Calif.
Feb. 1–Students and faculty at CSU-Monterey Bay spent a day exploring how to make changes for a lifetime during Thursday’s teach-in, a seven-hour series of presentations urging a head-on response to global warming.
CSUMB is one of about 1,500 universities, junior colleges and high schools that participated in the nationwide initiative, Focus the Nation, a project of the environmental advocacy group Green House Network. The idea originated with Eben Goodstein, a professor of economics at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore.
“It’s the biggest teach-in in history,” said Dan Fernandez, chairman of CSUMB’s science and environmental policy department and co-organizer of university’s participation in the event. “It’s increasing awareness of what we’re doing to the environment, and providing education and potential ways we can mitigate that.”
At the campus’s University Center — where the presentations and discussion panels went uninterrupted from 9 a.m. until after 4 p.m. — speakers addressed what changes can be made on all levels, from the altruistic individual to the multinational corporation responding to the economic market.
Brad Barbeau, a business consultant who lectures for the university’s business school, discussed the influence climate change has on business practices of companies such as Wal-Mart and Nike.
“Yeah, this is the Nike that does the sweatshops in Southeast Asia,” Barbeau said. “But in the United States, their goal is to be carbon
neutral by 2011.”
While Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest retailer, often throws its weight around in harmful ways, Barbeau said, it is using its power to force manufacturers to alter their practices to be more environmentally responsible. Laundry detergent makers, for instance, had to reduce their packaging in order to sell their products in Wal-Mart, he said.
Lecturer Susan Morse followed Barbeau with a presentation on the “triple bottom line,” which expands the traditional definition of financial performance to account for environmental and social performance.
The student body mostly listened and asked questions, but some of its members took a pro-active role in the day.
A “green” dorm room was set up in the University Center to demonstrate “all the different things people can do in their own homes that make a difference in the environment,” said Chanel Hason, a 19-year-old sophomore at CSUMB. “People are surprised what little changes they can do to make a big difference.”
A computer, which sat on a desk made of sustainably grown wood, was plugged into a Smart Strip, a power strip that cuts off power to the computer monitor and the printer when it detects the computer has been turned off.
Organic, fair-trade tea and sustainably grown food sat on the shelves. Organic sheets covered the bed. A composting bin — designed to contain the odor — sat in the corner, waiting for compostable paper and coffee grounds to be tossed in with earthworms.
“You’ll have the best soil around,” Hason said.
The teach-in illuminated an environmental philosophy that is relevant to people on all levels at CSUMB, from freshmen to the university’s president, Dianne Harrison, who has pledged the university will become carbon neutral by signing the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment.
During his 20 minutes at the teach-in’s podium, Bob Brown, CSUMB’s facilities director and climate committee chairman, described efforts to reduce the campus’s environmental impact and to turn out sustainably functioning students.
The university is taking an inventory of its greenhouse gas emissions, including those created by commuting students and all travel associated with running the institution, Brown said.
The university’s new library is being built to achieve a silver rating for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design from the U.S. Green Building Council, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit coalition of building industry leaders. According to the council’s Web site, the LEED rating system “is designed to promote design and construction practices that increase profitability while reducing the negative environmental impacts of buildings.”
Brown added that the university’s food services offer only organic foods, and lighting throughout the campus is being upgraded to maximize energy efficiency.
Along with illustrating the development of a sustainable campus, Brown emphasized the importance of integrating sustainability into the educational experience.
“How do we integrate (sustainability) throughout the entire curriculum?” Brown said. “How do we get it so every student leaves here a sustainable person?”
Laith Agha can be reached at 646-4358 or lagha@montereyherald.com.
To see a variety of responses to global warming, see www.focusthenation.org.
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