Is renewable energy enough for a sustainable campus?

My recent columns about sustainability have argued renewable energy and fiscal responsibility aren’t compatible in this economy.

This works to the advantage of IU’s Board of Trustees, who have cited fiscal responsibility as the reason they’re choosing not to invest in renewable energy.

I’ve been told advocates for renewable energy should make the case that investing in renewable energy is a way to create a healthy economy, good jobs and a sustainable future. But this doesn’t seem intellectually honest to me.

Using non-renewable sources of energy to power our campus is a problem, of course. Burning coal and natural gas for fuel is causing catastrophic climate change, and let’s not forget about the obvious problem that as non-renewable resources, they’ll someday run out. But there’s a larger problem that ought to catch our attention.

Providing cheap, renewable energy to our administration will only embolden it to continue its participation in an industrialized society and the alluring growth-based economy that supports it. It’s a society that’s destroyed 95 percent of our nation’s forests, driven 90 percent of the world’s large fish to extinction and is seeing its arable land turned into desert at over 30 times the natural rate due to the intensive agriculture necessary to feed the unnaturally large population it creates. Why do we think that giving this society renewable fuel is a good thing?

The most sensible response would be that switching to renewable energy will help reverse climate change, which is causing mayhem around the planet and looks like it will only get worse.

It’s true if we don’t reduce the amount of greenhouse gases we emit severely — and soon — we’ll all be living the nightmare farmers in the Midwest and citizens along the East Coast faced this year.

But there’s a problem with the logic of some environmentalists. If we’re fighting climate change because we want to ensure the survival of our species, shouldn’t we also fight for the health of the land we live on, the water around us and the other animals that share those resources with us?

Without the slightest prodding, most would say we should. But can they accept what’s entailed in maintaining the health of the land, water and animals?

To grapple with what sustainable living for humans really means, we have to look at life before the age of smart phones, before the age of electricity, even before the age of civilization. It means we have to imagine a campus outside of industrialized society.

It means we have to admit that renewable energy isn’t a step in the right direction. It’s a temporary fix meant to sustain a deadly society.

­— tydthomp@indiana.edu