By Ian Shelledy
Like it or not, creating an environmentally sustainable society will be the great challenge of this century. As a species, humanity's current lifestyle is unsustainable and dangerous not only to the environment but to our very survival.
Global climate change poses a host of cataclysmic problems. Sea level rise threatens to displace billions of people from their homes. Changing weather patterns will cause severe droughts and flooding that could cause widespread famine. Increasing temperatures will produce scorching heat waves and propel the spread of infectious diseases. Biodiversity loss threatens to undue the very foundations of the planet's ecological network, causing a mass extinction of species, possibly including humanity.
Other environmental problems, such as deforestation, pollution, invasive species, urban sprawl and unregulated agricultural practices, pose their own dangers. A crisis of this magnitude, pervasiveness and complexity has never occurred in all of human history, and good old resilient Mother Nature cannot plug the dam of environmental catastrophe forever.
That is why it is imperative that our generation be given the proper education and tools to deal with this impending crisis. There is hope and solutions to our environmental crisis, but they will become useless if we do not have the understanding or the dedication to grapple with these problematic yet solvable issues.
The University of Portland, as an institution that helps guide and shape responsible citizens, must do all that it can to give our generation the knowledge and fortitude to save the Earth and humanity from environmental meltdown.
The University's Environmental Policy states: "The University of Portland is committed to supporting policies and programs that will help bring about a healthy sustainable environment ... This means going beyond merely reacting to our fast developing understanding of environmental issues and actively cultivating environmental awareness and sensitivity in every part and every level of the University. Accordingly, we are committed to being an example for the community. "
The University must begin to seriously act upon its strong language. As students, and members of the generation that will begin to fully feel the effects of humanity's neglect of the environment, we must call on our professors and administrators to link environmental and sustainability issues into the University's core curriculum. Nearly every subject is related to these issues including: business, engineering, literature, history, political science, education, foreign languages, sociology and communication.
Environmental issues flow across all disciplines, and students should be able to view them from a variety of angles, as well an in depth through their own fields of study.
Most importantly, a required core course must be created which focuses on both the scientific aspects of environmental issues, and the practical personal and community-based action that can be taken to combat these problems. It would be a solution-based course teaching students how environmental problems occur, and what students can do personally as a citizen and consumer to reduce their own impact.
Along with teaching the scientific component, the course would teach students skill, such as how to construct their own compost pile, how to eat locally and responsibly, how to retrofit a home to make it more energy efficient, and how to get the best gas mileage out of a car. The course would also discuss national and local governmental environmental legislation, and its impact on national development.
The course could bring in members from the surrounding community who are working to combat the environmental crisis and give students an opportunity to become actively involved themselves. With its numerous environmental organizations, Portland is the perfect setting to conduct such a course.
The goal is to help students become informed and active citizens who can successfully help solve our crisis through whatever life path they choose to take.
As students, we must talk to faculty and staff about the importance of this issue and the need to educate everyone about the problems and the solutions of this inconvenient truth.
The student body is the lifeblood of a small institution like UP, which relies not on multi-million dollar endowments, but on our tuition dollars for it's funding. If enough of us call for the University to become an active leader in the fight against environmental catastrophe, the school must respond.
We are at a crossroad in human development. When considering our planetary actions, we can either choose the easy path of ambivalence, leading to quick gains but ultimately destruction, or we can institute sustainable changes now, that call for relatively small sacrifices, which would ultimately lead to enormous gains.
We are tomorrow's leaders. It's our future, and we must create our own path. An environmentally and sustainability oriented University curriculum would give us a giant leap forward in the right direction.
