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For some time now, I’ve been uncomfortable with the term “global warming". Not that it’s in any way inaccurate, just that the term “warming” doesn’t sound particularly threatening. At least, not around here. After all, my grandfather used to say that we got two seasons — July and winter. “Warming” can sound a lot like a good thing.

But the alternative was “climate change". Not quite so positive — on the face of it — as “warming", but pretty neutral. Unless I take the Panglossian position that everything is for the best in this the best of all possible climates, the idea of “change” seems to admit of as many positive possibilities as negative ones. (And as for the status quo being the best of all possible climates, please refer to my grandfather, op cit.) Still not particularly threatening.

This week, I stumbled upon a reference to a thinker I respect referring to the problem as “global destabilization". Sounds kind of like the earth’s axis is getting all wobbly, no? Threatening, for sure. But so extreme, so hard to envision, as not to be useful. (Whether the earth’s axis has shifted in the past is irrelevant. The image is so extreme as to invoke incredulity. Not one of my favorite reactions.)

Still, I’m thinking that a combination of the above might just fit. “Climate destabilization” seems pretty close. “Global climate destabilization” might be over-threatening, but does drive home the idea that international cooperation is an absolute requirement.

Anybody got a better formulation?

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A recent article by Bryan Walsh in Time Magazine reports the National Wildlife Federation’s conclusion that, while campus operations have gotten considerably greener since the turn of the century, the sustainability content of the curriculum hasn’t increased one iota. (Check out the original NWF report here.)

Walsh’s abbreviated analysis of why this isn’t happening cites the amount of effort required to create new curricula and the inherent difficulty in determining the quality of the result. Creating (or rehabbing) campus buildings is presumed to be both easier and more readily testable, hence quicker.

But the fact that sustainability is inherently an inter- (indeed, trans-) disciplinary subject gets only tangential mention. The article states that “[t]he NWF report notes that few universities offer interdisciplinary programs for environmental studies — a key failure, because the environment touches on everything from politics to the economy to straight science.” What Walsh doesn’t point out is that creating interdisciplinary programs on any topic is a steeply uphill battle for most institutions, which are inherently and explicitly organized around the concept of disciplinarity. I’ve said it before, and I’ll doubtless say it again — our current paradigm of academic disciplines is both a result and a key facilitator of the larger societal paradigm which got us into this mess. We wished for economic growth and more efficient use of capital to the exclusion of all other considerations; we got what we wished for. (If we keep teaching what we’ve been teaching, they’re going to keep learning what they’ve been learning.)

Meanwhile, an additional contributor to the lack of curricular change, at least at Greenback U, lies in faculty sensitivities around the concept of “academic freedom.” Kind of like the apocryphal old coot who was so ornery that when he fell off a bridge and drowned his body floated upstream, some of our faculty are bound and determined that no (academic or other) administration is going to tell them what to teach in their classes. I don’t know whether it’s sheer cussedness or fear of appearing weak, but I sometimes get the impression that we’d get faster change by suggesting, requesting, or downright insisting that certain of our faculty members NOT cover sustainability issues in their classrooms!

Not to say that curricular change isn’t going to happen, but (like so many other “impossible” tasks), it’s going to take a long time.

Or am I just not yet fully recovered from my recent bout of cynicism?

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It’s easy to get wrapped around the details. And being a campus sustainability analyst/auditor/planner/provocateur means dealing with a lot of details, many of which don’t come out quite the way I’d hoped.

So, it’s nice to be able to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. (Often a good idea, unless you’re working on a scaffold.)

One such panorama was recently published in the Philadelphia Inquirer. It’s specific to Pennsylvania, of course, but it’s easily generalized. A bit of fluff, a fair amount of substance. On the whole, kind of pleasant to look at.

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OK, so it’s badly written, and the key section (at least from my perspective) is entirely ungrammatical, but McPaper recently published an important article about “thinking green". It seems like the American Psychological Association has determined that (1) being outside can make us happy, (2) being made to feel guilty can drive us into denial, and (3) we’re even more likely to go into denial if an “authority” says it’s OK to do so. The outside/happiness correlation aside, it reminds me of nothing so much as a TV commercial which insists that my “stubborn belly fat” really isn’t my fault.

But, cynicism aside (I get to be cynical — my kids are going back to their respective campuses this week, and they didn’t accomplish half of what they were supposed to do over the summer), it is an important article, because it puts before the public at large the whole question of why, and how, we react to what we think we know about climate change. And it explicitly points out the damage that’s done by the US media’s continued insistence on presenting a “balanced” view of this “controversy", with “authorities” on each side presenting information in roughly equal quantities.

For starts, there is no controversy. The National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, the Royal Society, and every other significant association of the scientifically literate all come down on the same side — climate change is real, people are causing it, and if we don’t reverse course, the results won’t be pretty. That being the case, the media’s “one from column A, one from column B” approach is anything but balanced. The fact that there can be two possible answers to a question doesn’t make them equally true, or equally valid, or equally meaningful. Some folks may still believe that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree and couldn’t lie about it, but it takes a heavy thumb on the scale to make that perspective as weighty as legitimate history.

The good news is that the single largest source of disinformation — the biggest funding stream for global warming contrarians — appears to be drying up. ExxonMobil has agreed to stop funding the “climate denial industry". Maybe it’s because of a sudden change of heart, maybe it’s because the Rockefeller family was threatening to call for a change of management — no matter. The supply of disinformative “authorities” should begin to decrease, just as it finally did in the previous tobacco/cancer “controversy". (No, that’s not a fatuous correlation. Several of the same groups who lobbied in favor of cigarette combustion have been lobbying in favor of fossil fuel combustion. For an example, check out the Heartland Institute. Their stand on climate change is on their home page, but be sure also to check out their “Smoker’s Lounge” section.)

Most academics are good at research, but not so good at propaganda. On the other hand, APA president (and Yale psychology professor) Alan Kazdin proclaims, “We know how to change behavior and attitudes. That is what we do.” Normally, I’d like to think that a neutral presentation of the evidence, with no intentional spin one way or the other, would suffice. Given the disinformation campaign that’s been mounted (and financed) over the last fifteen years, however, I guess I can be thankful for any effort to “change behavior and attitudes” to bring them more in line with scientific consensus.

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When I think about information, I usually think about it at rest. Kind of like, when I think about water, the image of a lake or an ocean pops into mind before the image of a river. Maybe that’s largely a function of where I’ve lived, but it’s also about how many of us on the wonky side learn and think — combining and recombining bits of data from various sources, trying to form a comprehensive understanding. “Information", then, is the material of which a stable (if only temporarily) understanding is formed.

But information at rest is incapable of inducing change. Change requires communication — information in motion. And the topic of information in motion was raised last week, by a set of news articles about an experiment in quantum physics conducted by the University of Geneva.

You can read a quick intro to the experiment here, or the full paper (published in Nature) here. What caught my attention was the conclusion that, between entangled quanta, the speed of communication (if not truly instantaneous — that’s hard to measure) is at least 10,000 times the speed of light.

Now, I don’t have to deal much with phenomena that take place at the speed of light, much less 10,000 times that fast. At Greenback, most of the initiatives and projects I’m pushing move more at a glacial pace (although, admittedly, that’s not as slow as it used to be). Being a private institution, we’re not in the habit of responding quickly to executive mandates like the budget cuts which are affecting an unfortunate number of state university systems. Instead, our campus is used to treating “mandate", especially when it comes from Greenback’s Office of the President, as only slightly stronger than “suggestion". After all, Greenback was here before this president arrived, and Greenback will be here after this president has departed. The ostensible concerns of the Lynne Cheneys and Margaret Spellingses of the world aside, universities (Greenback included) are inherently conservative (albeit paleo-conservative) social institutions.

Which isn’t to say that universities, and indeed higher education as a whole, don’t change. They do, but it takes time. Putting a new face on an existing small college, as Bill Durden has successfully done at Dickinson or Tony Marx at Amherst, can be done fairly quickly given exceptional leadership. But large universities move far slower, and changing the internal value scheme of a super-stable institution takes quite a while. The transformational leaders of the past (e.g., Andrew Dickson White at Cornell, James Bryant Conant at Harvard, Robert Maynard Hutchins at Chicago, Clark Kerr at California) all had tenures of at least 15 years. And even that span of time was insufficient — the changes these folks introduced continued to ripple through their institutions for years (and through higher education for decades) after their respective departures.

The bad news, then, is that light dawns slowly within Greenback and other universities (that is, of course, when it dawns at all). The potentially good news is that the unit of change is no longer the individual university; increasingly, it’s higher education as a whole. New sustainability organizations (like AASHE) arrive with explicit agendas and gain traction in a matter of only a few years. Older groups (like SCUP) already have some traction, and are applying it as their agendas expand into areas relating to sustainability. With luck and perseverance, administrators like me can use information about what other schools are doing to stimulate the competitive juices of our own institutions. As our opposite numbers on other campuses do likewise, the overall effect can be a ratcheting up of sustainability levels and expectations in general.

Figuratively, then, the “speed of dark” on campus probably hasn’t changed one iota. But, given the leverage provided by communication amongst like-minded agents provocateurs, the speed of light may — in effect — be increasing as the quanta which we call “universities” become more entangled.

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OK, so it’s not technically a secret. But, if your college or university is located in (or even somewhat near) the northeast quadrant of the USA, it could be the best higher education sustainability conference you’ve never heard of.

The Northeast Campus Sustainability Consortium puts on a two-day conference every October. This year’s conference is at Princeton, on October 27-28. (The schedule for both days is pretty full, so you might want to travel on the 26th and/or the 29th.)

NECSC is a true grass-roots organization, without so much as its own website. There’s a steering committee, and the host school puts up some web pages each year, but without Google the whole thing would be difficult to find. Still, it’s as good a “we’re all in this together, so let’s put our heads together, share information, and help each other keep from doing anything stupid” function as I’ve ever seen on any subject. Again, take “northeast” figuratively — last year, there was an attendee from Idaho!

Grass-roots conferences are kind of like church dinners down south. (I haven’t always lived in the northeast.) Good folks, good food, nothing fancy, but everything just like it should be. No muss, no fuss, just useful information. And if you really want to know what’s going on in town, sit with the old folks.

Anyways, check it out. And post a comment to tell folks about any similar get-together in your neck of the woods!

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Higher education is all about information — parsing it, passing judgment on it, and passing it on.

Sustainability work is largely about keeping up with information — with a problem complex enough to encompass the atmosphere, the biosphere, and the socio-sphere, new knowledge emerges daily and anyone’s understanding is always incomplete.

If you have to combine the two (as any university sustainability administrator must), a high tolerance for complexity is critical. Unfortunately, this same tolerance for complexity can lead us to over-think and over-explain.

That’s why it’s always a joy to come upon a simple yet comprehensive discussion of any aspect of the sustainability puzzle. Bill McKibben recently came out with just such a discussion, relating to how market mechanisms can be brought into play to cause economic activity to become more sustainable.

Now, Bill’s explanation isn’t as simplistic as some devotees of the Chicago School would like (’the Market will decide, the Market will provide, blessed be the name of the Market’), but it’s still pretty straightforward. His main point is that the information any market cares most about is conveyed as pricing signals, and economic markets up to the present have been operating in the absence of climatic pricing information. Following this course of thought, the only thing wrong with current market mechanisms is that they haven’t had access to enough data.

Of course, the data, which is to say the prices, take form by making greenhouse gas emissions expensive. Since there’s been no charge for climatic pollution in the past, some folks (more on this in a later installment) believe there should never be a cost to pollute in the future. They intentionally frame the issue around politically loaded terms like “increased taxes” and “economic burden".

What McKibben’s approach does is to reframe the issue in terms of access to information. Taxes might be easy to argue against, but access to information is a lot harder to condemn. It’s tough to come out in favor of ignorance — particularly in an election year.

So, anyways, take a look at the article. It’s part of a larger discussion in the May/June issue of Mother Jones. (As always with themed issues, the contributions are of uneven quality. I think McKibben’s discussion is one of the better pieces, but you may disagree.)

And, much to my delight, Bill has titled his contribution with a tribute to my institution! For that, I want to thank him personally.

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Part of my job at Greenback U is to go around to other departments on campus and update them on the University’s latest sustainability efforts. A portion of any update is often context setting — sharing with folks why what we’re doing improves sustainability, and pointing out some of the steps other universities have taken or new technologies now or soon to be available. Sure, we have a website, and send out an electronic newsletter, but there’s nothing like face-to-face communication when you’re trying to help people form an impression or an understanding.

Most of these updates go to administrative or auxiliary departments, since these are the people with the biggest involvement in how campus runs (certainly at a logistical level). Sometimes I meet with the academic administrators in a particular school or college within Greenback, but only rarely with groups of faculty. (Most of my interaction with faculty is one-on-one, and that only when the particular professor has expressed an explicit interest in sustainability — am I missing an opportunity here?)

Anyways, I’m always on the lookout for a video or other non-chalk-talk way of getting the information out there. In the past, I’ve found videos mostly on a catch-as-catch-can basis — putting a few likely search terms into Google and seeing what turns up, or visiting various sites related to specific sustainabilty initiatives or offerings and checking out the links they offer.

However, I think I’ve found a mother lode. (Maybe the mother lode — who knows?) It’s called GreenEnergyTV.com. Truth be told, it’s not YouTube. In all likelihood, that’s a good thing. Much of what’s on YouTube strikes me as ... well, as not worth watching (let’s be gentle).

GreenEnergyTV.com hosts only videos with specific sustainable energy themes (as I write this, the lead item is about auto makers testing hydrogen-powered cars). Categories (for ease of reference and location) include solar, wind, fuels, green building, biomass, geothermal, wave/tidal energy, and a lot more.

I’ve already stumbled upon two or three videos that I think will serve as good offerings in campus sustainability update meetings. Two would make good subject intros, and one is substantial enough to actually be the major portion of the update, all by itself.

I’m also thinking that Greenback’s campus sustainability website might well include a link to the “video of the week". Clearly, we’ll want to get permission before we post any given link, but I sincerely doubt the GreenEnergyTV folks will object if we drive a little web traffic their way.

Anyways, check it out. Good information, frequent updates, and absolutely no Paris Hilton, pointless posturing or postmodern teenage angst. Guaranteed.

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Living on a farm, I don’t travel all that much. The place doesn’t take care of itself, and the schedule of chores isn’t real flexible — certainly not to the extent of a day or more. Still, my duties at Greenback do take me on the road (at least figuratively) from time to time. More often, these days, that “road” has rails.

With the price of gas being what it is (who would have thought $3.90 would seem cheap?), virtue and value are both spelled “AMTRAK". Thus, whenever practicable, I ride the train. Sometimes (most of the time) it takes longer than driving, but then I can get stuff done on the train that I probably shouldn’t do (like reading) while I’m at the wheel. Generally it takes longer than flying, but it doesn’t seem much longer, because the seats are wider and farther apart, and the luggage racks are less crowded. Also, there’s no need to go through Checkpoint Charlie just to get to Secaucus.

Like most business travelers, I make my arrangements online. I have to get Amtrak tickets at their site, but for hotels and (when necessary) car rental or plane tickets I use Travelocity or Expedia. Recently, though, I learned not to go to either of those services directly.

A short detour ...

One of my favorite non-profits is Engineers Without Borders. Using mostly student (and other volunteer) labor, they implement civil and other engineering projects in developing countries at little or no cost to the recipients. Their projects save lives, improve lives, and are heavily imbued with the concept that sustainability is tied to locality and efficiency. If you want to learn to solve problems without throwing massive quantities of electricity at them, there’s nothing like the near-complete absence of electricity to open your mind to other alternatives. Constraints can be liberating, at least in terms of thinking.

Anyways, EWB sends students oversees to do good work. Of course, most of the time, that means flying them there. Flying causes lots of GHG emissions. Not a good thing. So, EWB tries to offset those emissions. But offsetting costs money, and EWB is a grassroots non-profit with limited funds available. Happily, I can help.

Rather than going to Travelocity (or Expedia, or Hotels.com, or Priceline, or ...) directly, I go to www.GreenTravelPartners.com/ewb.htm . I then click through to the travel service I want to use, and everything’s just like normal. Everything except the cashflow. Travelocity (for example) takes a small fee on every trip booked through their service. If I go to Travelocity directly, they keep that fee as income. If I go to GreenTravelPartners, however, half of the fee goes to EWB, who use the income to purchase offsets for their own travel emissions.

So, traveling by train allows me to contribute to both economic and ecological sustainability. When that’s not practical, arranging my travel through GreenTravelPartners contributes to both social and ecological sustainability. Neither of them perfect solutions, but both far better than not.

The perfect solution? Actually, that would be staying home in the first place. But that’s just me.

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Thursday morning, on my way in to campus, I was listening to NPR. One of the items was an interview with consultant Howard Davidowitz, about the current state of the retail industry. No real surprises — automobile and restaurant sales are down, off-price sales are strong, Wal-Mart is doing just fine, thank you. What struck my ear was Davidowitz’s closing comment that the US standard of living was headed south for several years, at least. He said that like it was a bad thing.

Not that I like real poverty better than anybody else. Been there, done that, prefer the alternative. But “standard of living", certainly as referenced by Davidowitz, isn’t about how well you live. It’s about how much you spend. And spending more doesn’t correlate with living better — at least, not in developed nations. A good cursory analysis in the Christian Science Monitor explains this well. For more insight, the data is available from the World Values Survey site. (The survey is based at UMichigan.)

Two data points: Denmark is about #10 in GNP/capita, but #1 in happiness. The USA is #1 in GNP/capita, yet only #16 in happiness. An absence of money can make us sad, but its presence doesn’t make us happy. US consumer psychology (notice how you never hear about “US citizens” and more? it’s always “US consumers".) is totally screwed up (thanks, Madison Avenue!). The CSMonitor article looks into this in more detail.

Another, complementary, survey was published by Leicester U in the UK. According to its data, Denmark is still first, but the USA slips to #23. An item in the San Jose Mercury News gives some perspective. Community planner Dan Burden writes about how Denmark achieved its top ranking — increasing the walkability of its towns and cities. Burden’s thrust is that Silicon Valley communities should focus on walkability, but the same thing definitely applies to campuses, as well. And increasing walkability decreases carbon footprints.

See, your mother wants you to be happier. She also wants to keep you around for a while longer. Luckily, the two objectives harmonize well.

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