Connect the dots

Every so often an issue raises the concern of the student body and changes the face of IU forever.

During my term as IUSA director of sustainability, I’ve witnessed students mobilizing as they never have before. I’ve seen them work together to cut their resource consumption during the IU Energy Challenge. I’ve been approached by numerous students and organizations looking for ways to cut our carbon footprint by extending recycling coverage on and off campus, enhancing public transportation and bringing more local foods into our dining halls.

I’ve been privileged to watch as our student body’s desire to be responsible environmental stewards has grown exponentially.

To those new to the sustainability movement at IU, it is just as evident that something incredible is happening here. Last week, I sat down with Bill Brown, who had just begun his tenure as the campus director of the Office of Sustainability. Almost immediately, he remarked to me how impressed he was by the expansion of new ideas here that seems to be increasing faster than the environmental concerns that confront us. He believes our enthusiasm is a source of hope that “innovation can proceed faster than degradation.”

The harsh reality of climate change is now confronting us head-on and will necessitate major adjustments from all of us to reduce our carbon footprint. On a national level, cap-and-trade mechanisms have begun to spring up, and billions of dollars from the economic stimulus package are helping to finance a national redefinition of the ways we produce and use energy. Here at IU, student groups have been remarkably effective in spreading environmental awareness throughout the Bloomington campus, and small-scale conservation projects and studies have generated energy and cost savings along with an invaluable grassroots awareness of the environmental issues we’re facing.

So how can we make our ideas a reality? Now that we have an Office of Sustainability, what’s next for our creative campus?

As Brown sees it, our situation is ideal for trying out new ideas, implementing pilot projects and remaining at the vanguard of innovation. His role on campus, he believes, will be “connecting the dots” between the efforts across campus and helping to solidify them in a manner that will be – in a word – sustainable, both fiscally and ecologically. In reducing our carbon footprint, he believes “we can make (IU) more fiscally sound as we make it environmentally sound, generating a huge net economic gain and a huge environmental gain.”

These dual aims, which might seem incompatible at first, are truthfully far from it. If we commit to being a sustainable campus and develop a comprehensive, long-term plan for doing so, seeking the funding resources that are available to us and prudently leveraging our operational savings, I am confident that our campus community can become a living laboratory for finding solutions that will work toward creating a sustainable world. Institutions of higher education such as ours are microcosms of broader society, with top-notch research happening daily on campus.

We’ve been studying, planning and hoping for years, and now it’s time for us to make our dreams a reality.