Video of this part of the lecture found here: http://youtu.be/4efyX2KmjE8
Transcript below:
Part
II: Sustainability Initiatives in Our Region
My proposal is that we create not just a Sustainability "Think Tank", but, as David Randle, who is on the adjunct faculty with the USF School of Global Sustainability, would call it, a Sustainability "Do-Tank".
Are there any
institutions in the New York area that are doing anything similar?
Besides the polytechnics (or even including the polytechnics) it is
hard to find any colleges or higher education locations that are
actively teaching non-specialized students how to understand the STEM
topics involved in actually building things like back-up power
systems, tri-fuel engine conversions, tri-fuel refrigeration
systems, treadle pumps, solar hot water systems, biogas systems,
photovoltaics, small wind generators, charge controllers and
inverters and other electronic component based systems, walter
filtration systems, open-source tools, environmental sensing
robotics, micro-hydro generators, composting systems, aquaponics and
hydroponic systems, healthy food production systems, modular low-cost
housing systems, fuel-cell stack creation, etc.
It
is hard to find any sustainability programs in the New York area that
go beyond encouraging liberal arts students to become verbally and
textually literate about sustainability; hard to find programs that
actually train their students to get involved in hands-on solutions
and innovations that can help create a sustainable or emergency
management infrastructure. There are more and more eco-degrees
appearing (see
http://www.greencareersguide.com/Eco-Degrees-Training-to-Enter-the-Green-Collar-Workforce.html)
but there seem to be gaps between the more esoteric Environmental
conservation degrees like those offered by Cornell University, the
Environmental Engineering Degrees offered at colleges with strong
math and science programs, and the “green collar job” training
programs offered by two year colleges.
Besides doing my own
research, I put out feelers to the 1000 + members of the social media
groups I'm involved with dedicated to sustainable development
technology. The most interesting response was from Warren Weisman,
the owner of a company called Hestia Home Biogas in Eugene Oregon.
Native to Alaska, and formerly in the military, he has been in the
sustainability business for decades. He wrote,
“Unfortunately,
most “sustainability” programs at US schools are dedicated
exclusively to “market-based solutions” such as solar panels,
hybrid cars and LEED building which at best are energy saving
technologies and at worst are pissing on a flat rock.”
The
discomfort
that Warren has with
the type of training available in most schools is echoed by
development workers overseas who are dismayed by the lack of
practical applied scientific knowledge that most Americans who want
to be involved in relief efforts seem to posses. It is also echoed
in the record of winning science fair and engineering awards from
around the world – according to the OECD the US ranks 25th in math
and 17th in science among 31 countries surveyed.
According
to
http://www.nationalmathandscience.org/solutions/challenges/staying-competitive
The competitive edge
of the US economy has eroded sharply over the last decade, according
to a new study by a non-partisan research group. The report found
that the U.S. ranked sixth among 40 countries and regions, based on
16 indicators of innovation and competitiveness. They included
venture capital investment, scientific research, spending on
research, and educational achievement.7 The prestigious World
Economic Forum ranks the U.S. as No. 48 in quality of math and
science education.”
We know this is a
crisis, but I believe that many schools have been going about
addressing it in the wrong way, by assuming that the path to learning
math and science is more math and science classes. It is my belief,
having been a science educator for decades, that the best way forward
is to focus on teaching problem solving in general and sustainability
technology training in specific and use math and science as tools to
create meaningful interventions for disaster prevention and relief.
As Warren pointed
out, merely teaching students about “market-based solutions” does
not strengthen the real scientific aptitude of our youth. At Mercy
we can do much better by teaching students how to create new
solutions and new markets. That would be a fairly unique approach for
a non-University and non-technical college.
I
attended meetings with the Santa Rosa Junior College in California
when they were beginning their “Green
Collar Job Training Programs” in 2009,
called “Sustainable
SRJC”
thanks to the Stimulus and Recovery Act; I also visited technical
and trade schools in Los Angeles that were moving in this direction,
with programs like “Boots
on the Roof:
Training for the Renewable Energy Industry”, but they often leave
out much of the theoretical and academic sides. Most programs, like
the 6 day Solar
Thermal Boot Camp
are short programs with a practical outcome (install a domesstic hot
water system) geared toward “contractors looking to add
solar-thermal systems to their existing career offerings.”
Again, this is all
focused on 'market-based' solutions, not on creating innovators.
The
school with a program most like the kind of Sustainability Center
that I envision for Mercy is MIT. I helped Amy Smith's famous
“Engineering
for Sustainability”
students via a video-conference when they built their biodigestor in
Nicaragua and co-presented with Jose
Gomez-Marquez
at Google this summer. They are training their students in exactly
the approach I've outlined for Mercy. But of course they are an
engineering school which has been teaching social entrepreneurship
for more than a decade, with students taking away top prizes in areas
like sustainable energy and medical robotics (see
http://www.industryweek.com/public-policy/medical-robotics-and-sustainable-energy-take-top-prizes-mit-competition
where students are reported to have developed ways to turn corn cobs
into concentrated cooking fuel and created a simple turbine made of
car parts and plumbing supplies).
Besides trade
schools, do we know of any hands on environmental technology programs
in a traditionally liberal arts school?
One of the big
problems is that we have created a society of narrow specialists and
lost much of the general practical knowledge for self-sufficiency.
Most of it is common sense, but a veil of anxiety epitomized by the
slogan “we are professionals, please do not try this at home”
keeps many people from attempting to learn how to construct and
implement even the simplest real-world applications of sustainable
technology.
Our education in
sustainability mostly relies on normative encouragement to “re-use
and recycle”, to try and consume less, to buy from 'green' vendors
etc. Sustainability education in much of America has become
consumer oriented and passive rather than pro-sumer based and active.
It is filled with discouraging admonitions aimed at getting students
to engage in “avoidance behavior” and which often results in
feelings of guilt and being trapped that can turn into hostility
toward environmental movements as the 'doom and gloom' message either
leads to paralysis or renewed patterns of wasteful consumption that
feel inevitable. .
But while many
programs in environmental science that talk about the dream of
sustainability have over-stressed the negative aspects of human
behavior, all over the world there are programs that act on
sustainability through workshops and classes that teach people how to
build and operate and install and maintain and invent or innovate
solutions to our problems. These active, hands on programs have
inevitably created tremendous feelings of optimism and engagement.
The fact is, and I say this as a practitioner with several decades in
the field, in slums and villages around the world, the answers are
not only simple to understand, but are simple to implement, at least
on home and community scales. As Buckminster Fuller famously said,
“
It
is now physically and metaphysically demonstrable that the chemical
elements resources of Earth already mined or in recirculation, plus
the knowledge we now have, are adequate to the support of all
humanity and can be feasibly redesign-employed [...] to support all
humanity at a higher standard
of
living than ever before enjoyed by any human...There is no energy
crisis, food crisis or environmental crisis. There is only a crisis
of ignorance.”.
The
Mercy Sustainability Center can address that crisis of ignorance and,
to paraphrase the old adage, not just give people a fish, but teach
them how to fish (and this at a time when many schools are simply
teaching people about fish in the abstract, without even showing them
what a fish really looks, feels, smells and tastes like.)
With the current
economic and environmental crises afflicting New York, the last thing
we want to see is New Yorkers experience the same deprivations and
losses that are so common in so-called “third world countries”.
The irony is that many developing regions are already putting
programs like the one we are describing here together to improve
their lives in the face of these grave challenges. The hope is that
we can learn from the resourcefulness and experiences of these areas,
like Barefoot College, and bring this education to our own shores so
we can continue our dream of liberty and justice for all.
Most
importantly, taking our cue from India and Israel, creating and
stocking and running such a center should not be very expensive.
It
does not rely on sophisticated machinery or equipment. The entire
point is for students to learn how to solve environmental problems
using available low cost materials, many of them found as trash. Only
in this way can students learn how to recover quickly in times of
disaster or how to help people in impoverished regions.
Hi-tech,
while exciting, doesn't have much of a place in such a center except
in so far as the students would be trained to retrofit the existing
buildings and operations on Mercy's campus with technologies that
could lead not only to the greening of the campus but to significant
financial savings that could be ploughed back into the center and the
school at large. Examples are replacement of inefficient lighting and
HVAC systems, insulation and windows, more efficient induction
motors, and all the other components of an LEED certification
retrofit. Students would learn this and not only help turn Mercy
into a green campus, but prepare for jobs in the water and energy and
waste management efficiency improvement industries.
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