Eban

Here’s a sample of the kind of responses we’ve received
____

To the organizers of Focus the Nation:

I just wanted to congratulate all of you who worked so long and hard to put together the Focus the Nation event. I must say that in the 25 years I have been at Cal Poly, this was the most impressive, relevant, important, professional, and well coordinated student run event I have ever seen on our campus. You are all to be congratulated for an amazing job – the energy and passion you brought to the event was truly inspiring. Thank you for advancing the message of sustainability to our faculty, staff, students, community, and political leaders. And thank you for the opportunity to participate and share some of the things going on within Facility Services. Kudos!

Thanks,
Dennis
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I want, personally, to pass on some of this gratitude to you.

The first time I encountered you was in the elevator in the motel across the street from ASU November 2006. It was late at night and you were pulling your suitcase. No words were exchanged but I got a sense of being in presence of a furious intensity that made me both curious and uncomfortable. When I heard you introduce Focus the Nation at the AASHE conference the next day, I got it. That suitcase was carrying a time bomb of an idea. Of all the enlightening and inspiring material shared at the conference and the energy it stirred up, yours was the only outlet, the only immediate action item. At the organizing meeting you called afterwards, I had mixed feelings. I wished that you had offered more to rely on: financial backing, a staff, a sense of irresistible power like David Orr or Ray Anderson’s, but instead it was only a perfect name, a practical idea, and an agonized personal urgency that said you were going to give all you had to make it happen. The rest was up to us. From the small-scale experiences I’ve had of starting things up and getting people going, I recognized that this was what it takes.

Over the intervening months, my confidence in the progress of the project lagged, but my sense that it was the right thing to do didnt falter. After returning from Las Vegas with our Cal Poly delegation, the sense that it was up to us was even stronger. Regardless of what happened nationally, we were going to make it happen at Cal Poly. We presented the idea first to a group of faculty who said yes, came to a few meetings and drifted off. At the same time Chad and Matt, the two students who were in Las Vegas, decided to take more initiative. They invited their friends and took over calling and planning meetings. They got it: this is about action, not deliberation. The claim that to me seemed a bit overblown–“the largest teach-in in American history”–became their warcry. They were going to add a job fair, poetry slam, rockband, carshow, art exhibit, expensive dinner for decision makers, zero waste organic lunch, landscape installation. I offered some practical suggestions of who, how, and where, got early necessary arrangements out of the way, and urged the necessity for organizing strategy and program design. As a last resort we opted for sticking as close as possible to the exact models that you had devised. As we followed them in succeeding months, my appreciation steadily grew. At a certain point, I realized that you had this figured out to a T from day one.

In late Fall 2007, the national organization started looking more substantial, despite the absence of any serious media presence. But the idea that we could get a significant number of political figures involved seemed a pipe dream, let alone have any influence over the presidential primaries. Though our congresswoman Lois Capps was amenable, and so were local officials, where were the big endorsements? By the time they started flooding in, after the New Year, we neither expected nor needed them. But the unexpected flurry of national support toward the end must have been incubating for a long time, and I suspected that behind the scenes you’d been making it happen all along. That surge elevated the last stages of organizing to a level of joyful confidence that I never dreamed of when we first started.

Where this will go next remains to be seen. But I now have an easy confidence that you will lead it there.

The second day of rain. The gift from heaven prayed for in need. Wet. Cold. Dark.

My aunt Hannelore died Monday in Sao Paulo. She was 86, my mother’s half sister. We met in person only during the visit Jan and I made to Brazil ten years ago. But we talked regularly on the phone, and corresponded at length by letter and email. She was a born writer with a great mind. They wouldn’t let her become a doctor in the 1930’s. She married an older man who took a mistress and left her nothing in his will. She always loved him. “In her home when she was going to upstairs, her hart stooped and she died quietly,” wrote my cousin Marcelo.

On Friday we attended Maggie’s funeral. Saturday was Don’s memorial celebration in Lund. Sunday a fiftieth wedding anniversary celebration outside Solvang, where I sat next to a woman I went to elementary school with. We didn’t say it, but looked at each other marveling at the ravages of time.

I’m feeling overwhelmed by the demands of teaching, the impending climax of Focus the Nation next week, the huge expansion of the Sierra Club’s chapter’s commitments to lawsuits and fundraisers. I cant do justice to any of the specific obligations they incur, let alone to the doom-laden mission to do something about the threat of Global Warming which lurks behind all of them.

I wake up with grim determination to get through the day and I plow through the piled on tasks longing simply for the moment to sink into the pillow at night. Maggie, Don, Hannelore, enjoy your rest.

I regret binding myself with duties that generate unrelenting anxiety, that pull me away from the innocent vitality and the fresh bodies of my four grandchildren, and of the other kids at Ian’s school I was able to play with in the autumn. I long for more of the retreat at Knoll House and regret leasing it out to Tristen and his family for another year or two.

I read Thoreau to prepare for today’s class.

There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still. There was never yet such a storm but it was Æolian music(1) to a healthy and innocent ear. Nothing can rightly compel a simple and brave man to a vulgar sadness. While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me. The gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in the house today is not drear and melancholy, but good for me too.

I want to take this therapy with a walk outside or with reading my own ecologs, but instead I have to scurry to get on with the jobs at hand. I know that the movement through isolation and sadness leads to connectedness and joy, and that the more room given to grief, the grander the reward:

I have never felt lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a sense of solitude, but once, and that was a few weeks after I came to the woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the near neighborhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life. To be alone was something unpleasant. But I was at the same time conscious of a slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery. In the midst of a gentle rain while these thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and in every sound and sight around my house, an infinite and unaccountable friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignificant, and I have never thought of them since. Every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me. I was so distinctly made aware of the presence of something kindred to me, even in scenes which we are accustomed to call wild and dreary, and also that the nearest of blood to me and humanest was not a person nor a villager, that I thought no place could ever be strange to me again.

Another mixture of Henry’s truth and lies. One hour only he says he felt lonesome. But I sense that he grappled with that “insanity” every day, rain or shine. And that he knew the struggle was what produced the exaltation that made the common companionships of life pale to inadequacy. Every gorgeous item in the catalogue of solitary joys that follows is drawn with ink of ashes and tears.

Today is the memorial gathering in the Gazebo for Don Worthen.

Yesterday we attended the funeral of Maggie Ballesteros, Teresa Fisher’s sister in Paso Robles. She helped take care of Ian between one and three years old while Teresa worked. We saw her frequently during that period and got quite close.

She died of colon cancer, the same disease afflicting Teresa and her brother Art. Teresa urged us to come to the ceremony and sit in the front rows with the family.

It took place in the St. Rose Catholic Church, a large building with a huge crucifix and a realistic statue of crucified Jesus above the altar. First came a viewing of the body–bewigged and coated with a rainbow of different colored makeup. Then a two hour rosary and mass in both Spanish and English. Ian stayed with us for the first hour, drawing a picture of Maggie with wings, and saying he missed her. The sallow priest officiated in a low drone.
We got lost on the way to the cemetery and stopped at Starbucks for directions and espressos.

Back on track, we drove through a beautiful wrought iron gate marked 1892 down into a little hollow where a crowd stood by the open grave surrounded by the flat monuments of the family plot and half a dozen ancient Valley Oaks, leafless and silver trunked, casting dramatic shadows in the low January light. Art, who was put under hospice care the day after Maggie died, was brought to the graveside in a wheelchair. An eight-man mariachi band played mournful elegies while the children ran up and down the grassy hillside above the hollow or sat in groups on the flat gravestones. After one long Spanish song by an elder of the family, the huge casket was lowered into the ground, and adults and children lined up to drop handfuls of dirt brought from the old family ranch on top of it.

As the air got chillier, people got back into their cars, returned to the St. Rose Church, and met in the bright gymnasium for what turned into an amazing party. Here are few pictures.

It took more time than conceiving a baby, but planting a new crop of snow peas was finished in the half hour between our Sunday morning walk with the dog and taking great grandma out to lunch at the Sushi bar. Now there’s less than a half hour to write about it, between completing Monday morning’s preparation and leaving for class.

I yanked the decrepit old cherry tomato plants out of the raised bed and salvaged the remaining fruits to explode in my mouth while spading the damp compressed soil. I’d planned simply to insert the peas in the ground without disturbing the soil structure but it was too hard for my forefinger to penetrate. Digging revealed that roots, probably from the adjoining Toyon or Hollyleaf Cherry, had invaded the bed from below and were converting it into a dense fibrous tissue. With the shovel I was able to turn the soil and pull out most of them. I used a hand cultivator to smooth the surface and picked out several dozen stones that somehow had floated to the surface. Then in a corner of the bed, I poked a circle of ten holes and dropped one hard quarter inch sphere into each. I made six more such circles to fill the space of the bed. At the center of each I stuck one of the ten foot bamboo stalks I’d been reusing for years to grow peas and beans and tomatos. I pulled the tops of the bamboo stalks together like tipi poles and tied them up with a short length of soft cotton string that I’d cut off one of them with kitchen scissors. I patted the soil smooth over the seeds with the flat of my hands. Seventy seeds, sixty climbing vines, twenty sweet and crunchy pea pods each, by the end of March, when it will be time to replant tomatoes.

4:45 p.m. close to sunset, sound of hoofs galloping behind the dome where thirty people sit quiet, the light and warmth of a day between storms waning.

A single birdcall highlighted against the silence protected in this hollow between Caballo peak and Cuesta ridge. Poly Mountain rises to the south, Rockslide Ridge to the north. A wispy cloud above the summit of the peak begins to luminsce below higher dark gray clouds, then drops below the ridge line. A small stream meanders through the middle of the structure, separating the rickety stage from the new concrete amphitheatre seats. Poly Mountain’s north flank now burnished with dark gold light from the invisible sunset. Muscles tensed from a day of preparation, teaching and hiking up the slippery canyon trail slowly relax as the weight of the body settles on the cool cushion of stone.

Jan, Steven,

About 8 trees blew down near your house in the last storm. The good news is that none of them damaged anything, & that they don’t need immediate attention. They don’t need Zenia or an expensive faller to clear them out. And the final good news is that there are now more poles for Joe.

We went up today and cleared the tree tops from the driveway. And I took the limbs off the downed tree near the shed but did not buck it up cause I don’t know the lengths Joe wants.

The house looks fine. Towagh, Kemi, & Aya plan to come up on Dec 20th.
In other news there was a great potluck at the Lund School yesterday.

Peter

blowdown pictures

Hello Mike

Thanks for the thoughtful and detailed response to my question. I hope that it can serve to further some University-wide discussion of what I believe is the most consequential issue regarding Global Warming that Cal Poly faces right now.

That is, whether or not President Baker should the Presidents Climate Commitment:

http://www.presidentsclimatecommitment.org/html/commitment.php.

The primary author of that document, Anthony Cortese, visited the campus for several days this month, delivering a public lecture, meeting with several local Sustainability groups, and conferring privately with the President and Vice Presidents.

On several occasions Cortese stated that his mission was not so much to convince President Baker to join the 434 College and University Presidents nationwide in signing on as to promote public deliberation about this issue among all members of the University Community.

Whether or not we sign on to the specific terms of this Commitment, what Cortese asked was that the University move now, decisively and dramatically, to address the climate crisis and the need for leadership toward sustainability. Only the President of the University can direct such a move, but all the rest of us should be made aware of his options and reasons for action or inaction.

First of all, what is the actual commitment? It has three provisions:

1. Initiate the development of a comprehensive plan to achieve climate neutrality as soon as possible.
2. Initiate two or more of the following tangible actions to reduce greenhouse gases while the more comprehensive plan is being developed. [Cal Poly has already complied with this]
3. Make the action plan, inventory, and periodic progress reports publicly available.

One of Cortese’s main concerns was that objections to signing were not necessarily to the actual terms of the commitment.

The first objection you state is that true carbon neutrality cannot be achieved without our buying unaffordable and dubious carbon offsets.

There is considerable controversy in the environmental community as to whether buying offsets or sequestering carbon are meaningful ways of reducing GHG emissions. Thus, when the PCC requires us to set a schedule for reaching neutrality, when we don’t know if/how that can be achieved, the exercise is not entirely intellectually honest.

I think that was Yale’s position on the PCC: although they have set a goal to be “the greenest university in the world” (and have made some very noteworthy progress in this regard, including being on the forefront of GHG reductions), the president did not want to sign the actual PCC statement because he didn’t know how/if neutrality could really be achieved.

Thus, if the PCC is largely symbolic with regard to neutrality, then I’d prefer we were more upfront in saying that neutrality is a goal to be strived for, rather than saying we will set a schedule that hasn’t a realistic basis.

The commitment’s “Solutions” page states that “In general, buying carbon offsets to achieve climate neutrality should only be done as a last resort.”

The commitment is to achieving carbon neutrality “as soon as possible.” This gives the institution flexibility to set realistic targets and make adjustments as it tries to meet them. However this flexibility doesn’t mean that the commitment is mere lip-service, since it does require a plan, an inventory, and periodic reporting that demands an explanation for failure to make progress.

To me this is a sensible approach given the urgency of the situation. In the last few years, as documented in your well-crafted reports, Cal Poly has made what could be interpreted as impressive progress. However, that progress is not measured against any standard, and thereby gives no indication of how we really are doing compared either to other institutions or to targets defined by the demands of reducing emissions at a rate determined by scientific consensus to be necessary and feasible.

Yale’s objection may carry weight since they have instituted alternative targets and metrics for tracking progress toward an ambitious and clearly stated set of climate goals.

http://www.yale.edu/sustainability/YaleClimateInitiative.pdf

But no such initiative has materialized at Cal Poly. Our 2004 signing of the Talloires Declaration, positive though it has been in raising the profile and legitimacy of Education for Sustainability, has produced no measureable institutional targets and timetables for change, nor any discernible shifts in financing priorities to make such change possible.

Carbon neutrality may seem an unrealistic goal given many people’s present-day mindset, but as the consequences of global warming become more evident, that perception is changing. Our own governor, in signing a law passed by the state legislature stated:

“Using market-based incentives, we will reduce carbon emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020. That’s a 25 percent reduction. And by 2050, we will reduce emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels. We simply must do everything in our power to slow down global warming before it’s too late.”

By signing and fulfilling the Presidents Climate Commitment, Cal Poly would contribute its momentum to the initiatives of higher education nationwide as well as of the state of California.

Your next objection questions the appropriateness of Cal Poly’s taking the lead in moving our whole society toward climate neutrality:

My other concerns are secondary. First, as a public institution that will likely require public funding to achieve neutrality, the question should be raised: is this the most cost-effective use of public monies for reducing carbon emissions? Are we sure that bringing the public university sector to neutrality will achieve more benefits to the climate than using equal public monies in other sectors? Again, it’s the question of symbolism versus realistic solutions to a crisis. If we think we must act drastically now, we should direct our resources to those places that have the greatest results, fastest.

434 Presidents have agreed that Universities are appropriate institutions to lead the way, including the Chancellor of the University of California. Others, who haven’t signed the Presidents Climate Agreement like the President of Yale, also have taken steps in funding programs that are not merely symbolic but substantive. Universities house the next generation, which will be more affected by climate change than the present one and which will carry out the kinds of innovations and transformations that need to be developed now. In addition, Universities are also large institutions with correspondingly large environmental footprints.

Your next objection concerns possible abuses the Presidents Climate Commitment.

there is a potential problem with the need to earn a “gold star” versus really helping the environment. For example, at the UC/CSU/CCC sustainability conference last summer, a speaker suggested that the most important action UCI had taken to reduce GHG emissions was to build significant on-campus housing. More than one person remarked, however, that by bringing the housing on campus, the university would now have a bigger carbon “footprint” to “neutralize”…so wouldn’t it be better to not build the housing on campus so that campus neutrality would be easier? This goes back to my critique that by focusing on the university, we may lose sight of the truly global nature of the climate problem and that sometimes the best environmental answer may not be the one that gets a particular campus to neutrality.

This seems to be a problem of the accuracy of the metrics used in implementing the agreement. But as I understand it, each university that signs determines its own standards of measurement. Such technical problems are more likely to be solved if we become stakeholders in the process than if we use them as a reason to back off.

The example you mention illustrates some of the complexities involved in earning gold stars. In our biannual sustainability report, a good deal of credit is claimed for the construction of on-campus housing, despite the fact that Poly Canyon Village is adding two huge parking structures for the use of residents, which will encourage the increased use of automobile transportation on campus and in the local area.

Your last objection is based on a broader reason to discourage signing of the President’s Climate Agreement:

I am personally concerned by certain perspectives that suggest that the scientific inquiry regarding the causes and effects of climate change is “closed.” We always try to act on the best available science, but we should not close off intellectual/scientific debate or research. Scientists, academics and humans generally have certainly barked up wrong trees before. I have my father’s school text on environmental science from the late ’40’s. It notes that the greatest scientific breakthroughs to benefit humanity so far in the 20th century were 1) antibiotics (ok) and 2) DDT … because of how it eliminated malaria from many parts of the world. Hmmm. (I’ve read that limited use of DDT is again garnering favor in parts of the developing world for just that reason.)

I concede that skepticism about the reality of global warming or about humanity’s role in causing it or beliefs that there is nothing we can do about it undermine the immense resolve required to take responsibility for combating it. The science supporting the claim that we must act now to avoid future catastrophe is highly technical and the conclusion is not intuitively obvious. And in some cases, as you state, widely held scientific conclusions have been proven wrong.

But the risks of not acting on what has emerged as strong scientific consensus are today greater than those attendant upon waiting for more certainty. Two days ago, Science Daily reported

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has challenged the world’s policymakers to start devising a comprehensive deal for tackling climate change at next month’s summit in Bali, Indonesia, after a United Nations report released Nov. 17 found that global warming is unequivocal and could cause irreversible damage to the planet.

Finally then it comes down to whom to believe. At this point even the present administration in Washington acknowledges human causality for climate change, though it fails to do anything about it. This is why state and local governments, businesses, and other institutions of civil society are taking on the task. Education is at the forefront of these. The signatories of the Presidents’ Climate Agreement constitute a credible authority unreasonable for our President not to believe.

In addition to addressing the reservations you state, I’d like to mention a few of the positive benefits to be realized by our making the President’s Climate Commitment.

1. It provides a specific action program and timetable to guide the University in enacting provisions of the Talloires Declaration to which we already are signatory. Included is the creation of “institutional structures to guide the development and implementation of the plan.”

2. It provides an extensive “implementation guide” and a network of communication among other Universities participating in the program.

3. It provides access to funding sources”private, foundation and government”that can offset startup costs for implementing the plan

4. It provides a concrete statement of a shared mission that can

¢ engage all members of the university community
¢ heighten motivation of current students to succeed, especially in scientific and technical fields
¢ attract the most talented of prospective students who have realized that their future depends on dealing with the problem of climate change
¢ make graduates more competitive in a job market that demands the skills and inventiveness that arise out of accepting this challenge.

In conclusion, I’d like to reiterate what Anthony Cortese reported about the response on campuses at which Presidents signed the commitment. He said it has changed the level of conversation, it has raised the excitement, it has made it easier to discover ways to include sustainability in all curricular activities with incentives rather than requirements. As to why they made the decision to sign, the most frequent reply of the Presidents was “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

I’d been planning for several weeks to lead Ian’s school–24 kids from kindergarten to grade 6–on a hike up nearby Poly Mountain. I could begin in the classroom with a slide show of pictures I’d taken from my roof of last June’s fire on the mountain, and then we could make our way into the burn area to see the damage and the beginnings of regeneration. On the way it would be fun to check out the secret tree house on the hillside that was miraculously saved from the flames.

I’d noticed that the design on the large pirate flag hanging from a high branch next to the treehouse kept cropping up everywhere from pickup trucks to clothing.

Exploiting this new fad with a long story might distract the kids from the difficulty of negotiating the steep game trails leading up the slope. Maybe something about Captain Hook.

Then I remembered Ian’s talk of the Pirates of the Carribean movies and their hero, Jack Sparrow. That name was appealing enough to overcome my aversion to anything associated with Disneyland. I rented the movie of Part 1 and found myself enjoying its preposterous plot devices and prolific film and literary allusions. My pirate tale could bring Jack Sparrow to this improbable place.

Making up stories is as hard for me as remembering them, so I knew I had to do some preparation. A few days before the scheduled hike, I wrote it out in outline, and while swimming and doing housework worked on memorizing it. (more…)

(see Yom Kippur 2006, 2005, 2003)

My commitment to fasting and spiritual retreat shrank this year. I slept in my bed instead of camping out, drank coffee and practised connubial rites in the morning, and planned to go to Ian’s soccer game and then kayaking with a friend in the afternoon.

At 8:30 a.m. the delayed impulse struck and I decided not to eat or drink any more till dinner and to go on a hike by myself. There was also a pragmatic motive–to check out the route for the excursion I’d planned to take the Manzanita School kids up Poly Mountain to see the effects of last June’s wildfire.

The walk began with fanfare: a long predicted rainstorm arrived as a few morning sprinkles and grand skyscapes. There was enough moisture to make the rock hard clay soil congeal on my boots and to revive the strong smell of burnt vegetation.

When I reached the top of the mountain, the sky was full of variety and motion.

A subtle rainbow precipitated across the face of Bishop’s Peak below me, one end on the playing field where the marching band was striking up, the other on the bare soil exposed by the fire right beside me.

A few drops sparkled on the leaflets that sprouted from the base of a burnt manzanita stem hungry for moisture to maintain its precarious new growth.

The previous night, after the Coastal Cleanup party at Ecoslo organized by Jan, I watched Bill Moyers’ Journal. It was about Rachel Carson, devoted mostly to the performance of a play written and acted by Kaiulani Lee. She created the sense of glory and tragedy that Carson felt during her last years, when Silent Spring was published, villified by the chemical industry and generating the first environmental legislation in America. Carson hated to leave the peaceful Maine cottage where she spent the summers with her adopted son exploring forests and beaches. Now she had to return to the fray in Washington. And yet there she was drawn, by the excitement and by her sense of destiny. The moment of departure was framed by tragic knowledge: that even if her crusade against indiscriminate use of poisons succeeded, Earth’s natural systems remained imperiled. And she was dying of cancer.

The dramatization caught my mood. After four weeks in B.C., it was wrenching to leave Knoll House and the Zunoquad Kayak trip to the Broughton Archipelago and come back to the struggles here. All that time with no phone or email, a respite from continual reminders of global climate change and human persistence in suicidal folly. But return has drawn me into the heat of battle. I gave a talk on Thursday to the Student Services Conference urging them to demand that Cal Poly sign the Presidents’ Climate Agreement and get serious about its commitment to Sustainabiity. I picketed the Fall Conference of faculty and administrators with homemade signs:

Vice President, Provost and Dean
It’s time to make this campus Green

Students, staff and faculty
Want more Sustainability

Without more changes at the top
Sustainability will flop

President Baker,
Take the lead,
Green Cal Poly
With word and deed

President Baker
You’re the one
Green Cal Poly
Get it done

To be out front
The time has passed
We wont be first
Let’s not be last

Your Presidential legacy?
Green Poly University.

I distributed this leaflet:

From the funder of a major grant for a sustainability program at Cal Poly recently not renewed:

“However, the university’s decision to provide no university funding for the continued development of the program causes us to question the commitment of the university to sustainability ¦ .

In considering requests for financial support, ¦. Foundation (as well as most of our foundation partners) requires evidence that the university is willing to re-program its financial resources and commit its intellectual resources to sustainability. Thus the foundation is most interested in, and responsive to, inspired leadership and expertise when it is combined with the political will to dedicate the university to the development of sustainable systems.

¦ We make this decision to decline the current application with great regret.”

Yom Kippur is for reflection and atonement. This year I didnt even perform my morning meditation. I’ve ceased saying “I’m sorry for not doing enough” since rejoining the good fight. I can feel some guilt for neglecting my deceased parents, an obligation revived by having to explain the cremation remains we found last week on the Felsman Loop trail to Ian, and by the sermon of the Chumash elder, Mr. Cantu, that preceded my talk to Student Services. He said care for the future must stem from reverence for the past.

The sky cleared and the sun warmed my back.

I felt gnawing in my stomach and fast-fatigue. I lay back on the bed of dirt, and chanted and dozed. An hour later, I descended the mountain in time for the soccer game: sharks vs. sharks.

Dusty cancelled on the kayaking but Jan decided to come. We watched the sky together.

I’m writing to express appreciation for your responsive reactions to my somewhat confrontational challenge at yesterday’s Fall Conference.   Your willingness to acknowledge the need for Cal Poly to do more to promote Sustainability gives me hope that this year will mark a significant step forward in that direction.

My gesture grew out of frustration with the pace of institutional engagement.  Over the past few years, growing numbers of students, faculty and staff have been increasing their commitment to greening the University.  But the magnitude and gravity of the task we face–one you clearly articulated in your remarks yesterday–requires more leadership and resources from the top of the University hierarchy.

I believe this can be accomplished by creating an Office of Sustainability coordinating the efforts of all the divisions that report to you. Sustainability is, among other things, about unifying the University.  I believe that this Office should be headed by a young and yet experienced Sustainability Manager with both academic and organizational credentials.   I believe that Cal Poly has the capacity to attract such an extraordinary individual.  I believe that funding sources outside of our existing ones can be found by our Advancement officers to finance such an office. I believe that this position will become self-supporting within a reasonable amount of time, following the precedent of Harvard and the University of British Columbia among others.

Ralph Wolff’s keynote presentation about the “inconvenient truth” of student performance nationwide and locally and about pressures we face to measure and improve it had no explicit connection with Sustainability, but I believe there is one.  I don’t think being “competitive in world markets” or making lots of money will produce the motivation to work hard and succeed in school that the statistics say is lacking.  I think rather that students need to feel effective in taking on the real threats that face them and their future families.  Primary among them are depletion of natural resources and degradation of natural systems, the climate being most urgent at the present moment.

I come to this conclusion from my own experience as a student many years ago and from my experience as a teacher since then.  For some evidence of the way that being engaged with the issues of Sustainability in the class can measureably improve student skill development and performance, I’d like to refer you to two collections of essays written for the basic writing freshman GE classes I’ve taught over the last couple of years while on FERP. Before the classes started, these randomly selected students had no idea of the course theme.

http://cla.calpoly.edu/~smarx/courses/145/paper6/index.htm
http://cla.calpoly.edu/~smarx/courses/134/webpapers/134papers05.html

Thank you for all that you have done for this wonderful institution in the past.  I look forward to continuing interaction.

Sincerely,

Steven Marx