Let me start by saying that I'm tremendously conflicted on this subject. Probably the first lessons I taught my children when they were old enough to watch TV were that (1) commercials lie, and (2) lots of kids' shows are just half-hour commercials. Pure selling is not something I'm good at, or that I enjoy, or that I can respect in anything but the most cynical manner.

At the same time, explaining (as opposed to selling) sustainability doesn't seem to be working too well at a societal level. I'd love to believe that the majority of my fellow citizens would respond appropriately to a factual description of the need for sustainable behaviors, but . . . come to think of it . . . I haven't heard the term "American citizen" too much lately. What I continually hear about is the "American consumer". To citizens, you can explain. Consumers (almost by definition) need to be sold. And, while those of us committed to sustainability have been explaining our little hearts out, fossil fuel proponents have been selling the ground right out from under us. According to recent polling data, they're succeeding. So, with considerable reluctance, I'm becoming convinced that we've got to work smarter.

As it happens, I've also recently become more aware of an organization called ecoAmerica. I mean, I've been peripherally aware of them for a couple of years; they're one of the three organizations (with AASHE and Second Nature) that put together the Presidents Climate Commitment. But I never really knew what they did. Turns out, they operate where sustainability meets marketing. They've been ahead of me (and probably a lot of other people) for a couple of years or more.

It's my review of ecoAmerica's materials that started me thinking seriously about slogans. Slogans that sell stuff are bad, because they do their work by convincing folks that material goods are going to improve their lives in significant if intangible ways. But slogans which are designed specifically to sell intangibles -- ideas -- might not be objectionable on the same level. At least, not if they work.

Two of ecoAmerica's recent projects definitely got my attention. The first is a climate communications research study titled "Climate and Energy Truths: Making the Necessary Connection." It's a must-read (and far shorter than that German report!). I'm still absorbing its message, and figuring out how to put it to use here at Greenback.

The second project that intrigues me is the American Climate Values Survey -- a psychographic research study aimed at understanding how Americans think about climate, what core social values shape their conclusions, and how we can best deliver our message of sustainability. Most exciting, the authors have designed and tested some sustainability messages that outperform (in terms of selling, convincing, converting, reshaping, whatever you want to call it) the core message of the fossil fuel proponents. With apologies to ecoAmerica and SRI Business Intelligence (who conducted the survey for them), the draft message I've cobbled together goes something like this:

The best way to bring jobs and prosperity back to this country is also the best way to end our dependence on foreign oil and protect the Earth we leave our children: to build things in America again, starting with wind turbines, solar panels, and energy-efficient products that say “Made in America.”

We need our leaders – elected officials, researchers, educators – to partner with business to develop innovative energy technologies that will recharge our economy and create millions of jobs.

We shouldn’t be losing ground in the world economy, building up massive trade deficits to pay for foreign oil.

It’s time that we commit ourselves as a nation to developing clean, safe energy from the sun, wind and other natural sources that will create millions of jobs and rebuild our manufacturing base.

The USA has led every technological revolution of the last two centuries – electricity, railroads, the telephone, automobiles, television, computers – and there’s no reason we can’t lead this one.

It’s time to harness the greatest source of power we have in this country: American ingenuity.

I don't know that it's going to work. I don't even know, for sure, that I'm on the right track. I just know that what I (we) have been doing for the past few years hasn't been working well enough and -- according to at least some results -- seems to be working even less well in recent times. I'm hoping that a reframing of the sustainability issue will help us to get through to students, parents, administrators, faculty, and the general public.

Who knows? Maybe we can even make it into a TV commercial.

The arguments that sustainability advocates have been making, which aren't working well enough, have been largely fact-based. (That's what often happens when you start out with empirical data.) But sales pitches based solely on fact went out almost a century ago. To get our point across these days, we need a spiel that evokes myth and emotion. To sell a political program in America, we need to resonate with the myth of American exceptionalism. To that end, some possible ideas for bumper stickers/slogans:

Strength through Sustainability.

Economic Leadership for the 21st Century.

Rebuild Technological Infrastructure at Home First.

Energy for America, from America, in America.

Inventing the Future One More Time.

Bigger, Better, and Built Right Here.

Power Without Pollution.

Sustainability Lasts Forever.

OK, so they need work. They're first drafts. Editorial suggestions?

And now, for something completely different . . .

Ironically, this just in on the Green Schools listserv (co-curricular life competency development meets the good kind of job training/vocational skills workshop -- remember the inclusion of "build a wall" in Heinlein's list):

Warren Wilson College is hosting BUILDINSULATE, December 4th to 6th, for colleges and universities who are interested in starting a community-based weatherization programs. Most expenses will be covered. Contact Phillip Gibson, 828.771.3781 or pgibson@warren-wilson.edu for more information.

>

Warren Wilson College, Swannanoa, NC
October 24, 2009

> Contact: Phillip Gibson, (828) 771 3781

>

> Through a significant grant from Progress Energy, the Environmental Leadership Center of Warren Wilson College's INSULATE! program will conduct a BuildINSULATE! workshop Dec. 4 - 6 to teach others how to create an INSULATE! program in their own community. BuildINSULATE! is a hands-on training for community groups, especially faith congregations and student groups, to learn the skills and knowledge needed for establishing a residential weatherization program in their community. Funding provided by Progress Energy will allow Warren Wilson College to reimburse participants for travel and lodging. Lodging is being provided on campus at Warren Wilson College.

Now in its second year, the INSULATE! program has assisted over 25 low-income households in western North Carolina to lower energy consumption, carbon emissions and utility bills by up to 30% per home.

Within the last year, Project Energize has contributed to meeting the huge demand for weatherization services. The 12-member crew, working with community action agencies and with faith and environmental organizations, expects to weatherize 300 homes before July 2010.

"BuildINSULATE! is an opportunity for other organizations to learn from our experiences and to determine how to assemble and implement a program that will mobilize others to reduce carbon emissions and improve lives," said Phillip Gibson, director of community outreach at the Environmental Leadership Center of Warren Wilson College.

The weekend workshop is designed to give participants an overview of building science and to assist in the development of a successful program. Through seminars with building science professionals, hands-on weatherization training, and a structured planning and program implementation workshop, participants will be prepared to form and lead weatherization assistance programs in their own communities.

Speakers include experienced builders from western North Carolina.

Weatherization assistance is gaining momentum in the region and across the nation. Community action agencies nationwide have received $6.2 billion from the Obama administration to provide weatherization service to low-income homes. Join us in reducing carbon emissions one home at a time.

For more information about INSULATE! and the BuildINSULATE! weekend workshop, please visit www.insulatenc.com

<http://www.insulatenc.com>.

Please pass on and encourage students to register for BuildINSULATE!

We are seeking participants from academic institutions as well as communities of faith. It is a great opportunity, especially because lodging and transportation reimbursement are included. Registration is available online at

> www.insulatenc.com.

>

> Ian, Nina & Phillip

> The INSULATE! Crew

--

Margo N.Flood

Executive Director, Environmental Leadership Center Chief Sustainability Official Warren Wilson College

828.771.2002

mflood@warren-wilson.edu

CPO 6323

P.O. Box 9000

Asheville, NC 28815-9000

A commenter on a previous post accused me (on what evidence, I can't discern) of wanting to turn all of higher education into "job training and vocational skills workshops." Would only that I did -- I could have saved all that money I spent sending three kids through private liberal arts colleges (albeit with the help of generous financial aid).

Truth be told, I do consider a well-rounded liberal arts education the best preparation for the kind of jobs my kids are likely to want. Each of them may, in the fullness of time, go on to get one or another advanced degree which -- call it vocational or professional, it doesn't really matter -- will be designed specifically towards a single area of economic or cultural endeavor. But before they head down that road, they need to learn how to navigate, to plan, to think and to question. Questioning is probably the most important of the four.

One of the most interesting (in the sense of "may you live in interesting times") elements of doing sustainability work on campus is that you get to (have to) work with people of varying mindsets. Perhaps these discrete perspectives were developed at an early age; perhaps they were set in place by job training and vocational skills workshops. By the time I get to deal with them and their hosts, it doesn't really matter. What does matter is that each mindset carries with it a different set of values and expectations, a different (often implicit) pay-off algorithm.

The simplest to deal with (and sometimes, surprisingly, the most supportive of sustainability initiatives) are the business/facilities management staff. A lot of the heavy lifting of emissions reduction is currently being done on the facilities side, and the get-it-done attitude Greenback's facilities departments have generally shown is refreshing. Sure, the bottom-line orientation of some managers can be annoying at times but, on the whole, these folks take a pragmatic approach to the problem of the moment. They're generally experienced enough to know more than one way to do any job and, thus, the suggestion that there might be some better way yet to be discovered or tried (particularly when the operative definition of "better" has explicitly changed) doesn't seem to threaten them.

Staff who report to the Dean of Students are also, generally, easy to get along with. They seem well prepared to do their jobs, whether it's supporting students who need it or facilitating co-curricular education in competency at life. On occasion, I run into one who's a little too much into "rescue mode", a little too eager to coddle kids who could benefit from a little reality-based feedback. But the pattern seems to be that those folks are the newbies -- well-intentioned but inexperienced. Their sense of borders seems to get better as they age (or maybe it's just that the ones who don't develop a sense of borders tend to burn out and leave).

Faculty are a far more mixed bag. Some, I know I don't understand in terms of what makes them tick. Others, it's pretty obvious: sometimes, a combination of intellectual curiosity and a pride of authorship; other times, a true love of teaching. But I've also seem faculty members who (to the extent I can figure it out) seem to be driven primarily by a need for acclaim coupled with a disinclination to do real work. These (and they're relatively few) seem bent on being 'best friends forever' with the current cohort of students, as they were with the one just past, and as they will no doubt be with the one next to come.

Why do I pay attention to what makes folks tick? My job is (in large part) to instill change in their behavior. Since I can't force behavioral change, I need to incent it (or cause the system to incent it). That means, I need to know what each group would recognize/react to as an incentive. When enough behavior changes, the campus culture begins to shift. And Greenback's campus culture (while definitely shifting) still has quite a ways to go.

So unlike the facilities managers who, left to their own devices, would define "desirable change" as anything that helps them attain the traditional result at a decreased cost -- unlike the student affairs folks whose professional focus is on creating desirable changes one student at a time -- unlike the faculty, many of whom seem to resist change and others who measure it only within the bounds of their discipline (and I know I'm leaving out a lot of folks there), it's part of my job actively to look for change opportunities. I need to be constantly questioning, constantly skeptical. Greenback's like an aircraft carrier -- it doesn't change direction quickly nor without constant pressure. Probably, from time to time, the stress and frustration of applying that pressure spills over onto these pages. But when things eventually work out, it can be immensely satisfying.

And that's a satisfaction level I couldn't achieve were it not for my undergraduate education at a four-year liberal arts college. Vocational skills workshops are for specialists.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

-Robert A. Heinlein

It's getting cold at night around Backboro. The stock tanks have a quarter inch of hard ice on them in the morning. The feed buckets get kicked farther into the pastures because their rolling resistance, like that of the ground itself, has been decreased. It's time to put the snow fences up and the tank heaters in. Time to double-check the fencing so that (with luck) no repairs will be needed through the winter. Time to raise the gates up a notch higher to clear the anticipated snowpack. Time to tarp the woodpile, which has been seasoning since spring. Time to dig and cover the kitchen garden, put up the storm windows, drain the exposed supply lines, mount the snow blade on the tractor.

There are a hundred things that need to get done around a farm at this time of year. Some of them (like making sure each animal is carrying good weight into the winter) started months ago. Others can't really be addressed until the last cutting of hay or corn is in. Most of these are things that you learn by doing, and you've been doing all your life, and you know why if anyone asks, but no one does so you don't generally think about the reason. Most of these are things that you do because that's how a well-run farm operates. Many of them are things that they don't teach in ag school.

I was chatting with a colleague a while back, and expressing my concern that family farms around here are dying just at the time when I'd like to see (and momentum is starting to build behind) more localized food production. We have a number of "farmer's markets" in and around Backboro, but probably half of the produce sold there (and maybe more than half, this year) is commercial product from California, or Mexico, or Chile. Local farmland's getting sold off for residential lots or consolidated under corporate ownership; farm kids are going to school to learn marketing, or computer technology, or retail management.

What concerns me is that low-emission farming is labor-intensive farming. As a result, the economies of corporate-sized scale pretty much disappear. Local food production, low-emission food production, could well be the salvation of the family farm -- at least, in the north-eastern USA. But you can't save the family farm when there aren't any more family farms to save, and you can't have family farms without family farmers, and while family farmers don't have to be born, that's the easiest way to go. If you're going to train someone to be a family farmer, the trainer better be someone who grew up farming. Even then, it takes a while (several years for niche herb and vegetable production, longer for truck farmers, longer still for stock farmers). And we're running out of folks qualified to be trainers. Not to put too fine a point on it, they're dieing off. And State Land-grant U isn't in the business of filling that need.

I heard once that if you wanted to build a new Gothic cathedral today, you couldn't do it. The story was that there just aren't any stonecutters with the right skillset any more. I can't swear to the truth of it, but it wouldn't surprise me. After all, family farms hit their hay-day (sorry!) a lot more recently that Gothic cathedrals did. And, absent the necessary attention, they crumble to dust a lot faster.

I wasn't listening to music on the way to Greenback this morning, but I should have been. I should have been listening to Tanglefoot's tale of "When Dad and Uncle Archie Lost the Farm" (lyrics here, about two-thirds of the way down the page). It tells of what happens when a long-time-successful small operation gets seduced by the prospect of easy money through financial leverage. Kind of like Wall Street, but on a much more human scale.

The reason I should have been listening to that particular song is that it would have captured the (il)logic of a conversation I was having with a couple of faculty members. As part of an on-campus debate centering on a proposal to cut operating costs, these professors (goaded on by their students, but I don't blame the students) were pontificating (a privilege I usually try to reserve to myself) about how much they would be inconvenienced, how much their scholarly productivity would be reduced, how any change from the status quo would be a disservice to students and a threat to the institution's reputation, and how unfair it was to cut costs given the (sector-typical) magnitude of Greenback's tuition charges.

What got me involved was the attempt by one professor (I believe that (s)he teaches some subject in the humanities) who insisted that the proposal (which involves sharing use of an existing facility some miles from campus) would increase Greenback's greenhouse gas emissions and harm our ability to achieve carbon neutrality. The alternative proposed was to build a new, dedicated facility on campus, thereby eliminating the need for all those automotive emissions.

Clearly, this humanities prof had absolutely no concept of the relative scale of emissions from public transportation (no single-occupant vehicle travel would have been required) vs. those from operating an additional building in the northeast USA. Even without considering the massive one-time emissions involved in the construction process, the energy required to heat and light a large enclosed space would far exceed the amount needed to move people and objects back and forth in an orderly manner. Not to mention the cost savings (on the order of 60-70%).

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. I'm sure that I'm at least as ignorant on a wide range of humanities-related topics as this professor was on the subject of GHG emissions. What absolutely dumbfounded me, though, was the prof's blithe assurances that a new building wouldn't cost all that much (it would), and that Greenback has plenty of money (it doesn't).

Like any other university (or well-run family farm), Greenback has a lot of assets and a considerable net worth, but the vast majority of those assets are tremendously illiquid. To access the value in its (real-estate-laden) portfolio, the university would have had to borrow. Borrowing can be a good strategy when it makes possible an investment which will more than repay the principal and interest, but borrowing just so you can do something inefficient (both financially and in terms of energy utilization/GHG emissions) is never a good idea.

Perhaps I should have recommended that Tanglefoot song to the professor. It would probably have been more age-appropriate than the Journey tune that seemed to have been going through his/her head -- "any way you want it, that's the way you need it, any way you want it." And besides, acoustic music is always more energy-efficient than any iteration of "wall of sound".

During the academic year at Greenback, campus buildings alternate between "occupied" and "unoccupied" status. Our energy management system is programmed with the schedule of when we expect people to arrive at each building, takes steps to bring temperatures up to a reasonable level and the lighting on, and does the reverse at the end of the day. Building access is controlled by the same means, with doors locking and unlocking automatically. Of course, when we expect people to show up and -- especially -- when we expect them to depart varies by type of building and, among academic buildings, widely by program of study. (Art and architecture majors are notorious for pulling all-nighters in academic buildings, biology students often need round-the-clock access to their labs, that sort of thing.)

Recently, I was in a discussion with a couple of faculty members around this topic. The building at issue was an academic one, but not used by art, or architecture, or any of our traditional candle-at-both-ends departments. Still, one professor insisted that the building be kept in "occupied" status as late as possible, for reasons that weren't initially evident to me.

Turns out, he was defending the right of his students to procrastinate. At least, that's what I understood from what he said -- he didn't actually use the "p" word. But he did say that some of his students might need to write a paper or other assignment the night before it was due, and they might need a quiet place to work, and there was a particular study lounge in that building that he liked, or some of them liked, or somebody liked, so we needed to keep the heat on and the doors open. Anyways, that was his point (and he thought he had one).

So it got me wondering -- when did faculty start taking it upon themselves to defend student mediocrity? Do they really think that any paper, written in one draft the night (probably late the night) before it's due represents that student's best work? On the off chance that the student's high school teachers didn't deliver the "plan ahead, fool!" message clearly enough, doesn't it then fall to the professors to do the dirty deed? And even if teaching that particular life skill is too much to ask, should any responsible faculty member actively be paving the path to bad behavior?

I've just got to say -- I don't know what this older generation (and it was an older professor) is coming to.

I'm currently reading Dorothy Ross's book The Origins of American Social Science. Truth be told, I've just started reading it, so I'm not yet sure whether it's any good as a whole, but one sentence in the first chapter smacked me upside the head, big time.

That introductory chapter (as so many others) undertakes to place the subject matter into context. Ross calls it "the discovery of modernity", and touches on European intellectual and philosophical responses to -- among other things -- the French Revolution. The concept of history emerges, bringing with it the idea of progress. And it's during her discussion of the general adoption, and resultant impact, of the ideas of history and progress that Ross writes:

In a still Christian culture, progress could compensate for the intolerable imperfections of the world.

OK, so it's hardly a clarion call to arms. Shakespeare would never have envied its quotability. Sondheim might be able to set it to music, but Rodgers or Gershwin would have had trouble. Still, it stopped me in my tracks (which is to say, in my chair). Let me try to explain why.

First, there's the presentation of the myth of progress (and, to my mind, "progress" clearly has major mythic elements to it) as a successor to religious mythology around which a society could organize its emotional life.

Second, there's the connection of this succession -- during the first half of the nineteenth century, largely in Europe -- to the development of a scientific perspective. Ross goes on to speak of scientists who "propounded the laws of nature as 'rules through which divine governance flowed,' thus fusing the scientific view of law as observed regularities in nature with the older religious concept of natural law as the agency by which God governed the natural world." Somehow, I immediately thought of the Yale Report of 1828.

And third, I was struck by the fact that a large portion of society -- not limited to the USA, but perhaps more prominent here -- is still working its way through that transition two centuries later, is as likely to take a step back as one forward, and is certainly not ready for the next (call it "existentialist") logical step. That existentialist step is what our communication efforts to date have insisted that society take.

So, perhaps as evidence that when the student is ready the teacher will appear, I quickly formed a notion of (1) why this country, for all its good points, maintains an insistence on threatening the ecology on which higher forms of life entirely depend, and (2) what educational institutions need to do to counter that insistence.

We need to construct a convincing model of sustainability as the next step in progress. We need the model to make such obvious sense that educators in virtually all disciplines find it informative. And we need to communicate that model widely, consistently, continually, and comprehensively to our students, our neighbors, and the world as a whole.

Yes, many of us in the sustainability field are driven by "the intolerable imperfections of the world" in which we find ourselves -- the threat that we perceive to our planet and our progeny, the malformed mechanisms by which society determines its direction, the empirical evidence faced off with assertive ignorance and irresponsibility. But focusing on those imperfections and pointing out their idiocy hasn't been working well enough. Whatever progress can be made by that approach has already, for practical purposes, been achieved. We need a different focus going forward. We need a different focus so that we can go forward. The myth of 'progress' has proven strength and can easily be adopted in our efforts.

We need a strong myth at the center of the sustainability movement. We need to heed the advice of Salman Rushdie, that "sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than facts." There are many ways in which a sustainable society can be shown to be progress -- a step in the right direction, an improvement on the imperfections around us. As educational institutions, we need to construct that picture, we need to show it to all and sundry, and then we need to sell the hell out of it.

Just between you, me and the bedpost, the education system sells myths all the time. We don't call it that; in our more honest moments we call it "cultural reproduction", but still . . .

We can do this. We need to do this. There's now enough backing in the economy and the political sphere that the risks are manageable, and are probably exceeded by the development (read "funding") opportunities. As institutions, we're better positioned to do this than just about anybody else. And it can only enhance our public image (offsetting the worldly imperfection of rising tuition rates).

If you believe Ban Ki Moon, the UN climate summit next month in Copenhagen will be a failure by any rational standard. Oh, he and other politicians will find a way to put a positive spin on things and thereby create the opportunity to declare a limited success. INo doubt, their speech-writers are already drafting a framework for self-congratulatory pronouncements which disguise their irony behind a smile and a statement about how much work there remains to do.

If you believe Angela Merkel (who's not only an international political leader, but also has a doctorate in quantum chemistry), we can't afford for Copenhagen to fail.

If you believe James Hansen, or the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or the Union of Concerned Scientists, or the National Academy of Sciences, or the Royal Society, or the WBGU, or the Science Council of Japan, or the Israeli Presidential Conference, or just about any scientific body of substance, it may already be too late. And if it's not too late now, the window of opportunity is rapidly closing.

So, what's a self-respecting educator (or educational administrator) or student (or parent of students) to do? How can we encourage or embarrass the "leader of the free world" into actually leading the free world in a positive direction?

There is an answer. Or at least a potential answer. Or at least the hope of an answer.

Remember "hope"? Remember that it's audacious? Remember who told us those things? Maybe it's time to remind that individual of why he was elected. Maybe it's time to stop hiding behind the specter of China, and India, and Harry Reid.

At least, that's what a group of folks -- including raging radicals like Advertising Week, AOL, Business Week, Clear Channel, Coca-Cola, Cosmopolitan, Discovery Channel, Getty, Google, the International Herald Tribune, National Geographic, Newsweek, Ogilvy, SAP, Scientific American, Seventeen, the Economist, the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal are saying.

Combining the campaign theme of Hope with the conference site of Copenhagen, these organizations and more have put together a global petition on the web and asked people around the world to sign it during the month leading up to the UN climate conference.

www.hopenhagen.org

Sign it. Spread the word. Put it on your campus website. Chalk it on your sidewalks. Paint it on that big rock on the quad -- you know, the one that's typically covered in a variety of Greek letters. Soap it on the windows of the dining hall. Flash it on the JumboTron during half-time. And organize a series of events during the run-up to the conference.

We need to convey the unmistakable message that failure is not acceptable. Because, truth be told, failure is not survivable. At least, not for long.

Well, maybe not free beer where you are right now, but I do promise free beer to anyone who shows up at Greenback and asks to collect.

More to the point, "free beer!" is a phrase that's proven effective on campus for getting people's attention. What I'd like to draw your attention to is the single best reframing of an issue in the WBGU report. (This is the last post on that report, I promise. But it's in many ways the most important, so read on. And let me know if you get thirsty.)

What the report's authors have done, in an information-dense 7.5 pages, is to describe a transition plan for decoupling developed and developing economies around the world from fossil fuel while stimulating economic growth (even by traditional measures). Rebirthing economies is what all of us in the sustainability business (in higher ed or elsewhere) should be talking about at every opportunity. Rebirthing/decoupling the economy is a major step towards solving a whole raft of problems, so there's something here for everybody. It's win, win, win (unless, perhaps, you're a senior executive of an oil or coal company).

Want to . . .

Shrink the size of the Federal government? Decouple the economy from fossil fuels.

Balance the national budget? Decouple the economy from fossil fuels.

Pay down the national debt? Decouple the economy.

Restore our balance of trade? Decouple the economy.

Reduce our risk of terrorism? Decouple the economy.

Stop sending troops into harm's way? Decouple the economy.

Bring peace to the Middle East? Decouple the economy.

Create more high-tech jobs at home? Decouple the economy.

More manufacturing jobs? More skilled service jobs? Decouple the economy.

Bolster the strength of the US dollar? Decouple.

Reduce air pollution? Decouple.

Protect clean water? Decouple.

Rehabilitate our blighted cities? Decouple.

Revitalize family farming? Decouple.

Build better suburbs? Decouple.

Stimulate research funding for higher ed? Decouple.

Reduce emissions of greenhouse gases? (Thought we weren't going to get there, didn't you?) Decouple.

Look, it might not be a necessary step on the road to curing cancer (although you never know), but I can make a decent logical case that decoupling the economy from dependence on fossil fuels is a key step toward achieving any of the above list of goals. And, without backing off on the climate change debate at all, we need to be talking about all (or at least many) of these goals. To all of our students, regardless of academic discipline. And to anyone else who will listen.

By broadening the discussion from just climate change (which sounds kind of techno-nerdy and so is readily deflected in political conversations), we can recruit fiscal conservatives, economic developers, community advocates, pragmatists, "realists", America Firsters, pretty much anybody and everybody to the side of the angels.

And given the tepid leadership coming out of the nation's capitol, our better angels can use all the allies we can recruit for them.

Want to trigger a rebound in the stock-market? Decouple the economy from fossil fuels.