Sustainability Report

NAS had a quite a sustainability week; most notably, we got word that Stanford was voting on a proposal to make sustainability education a requirement for graduation. We wrote to the Committee on Undergraduate Standards and Policy ("Letter to Stanford Committee: Vote Against Mandatory Sustainability Ed"), explaining that sustainability is a contested ideology, and  urging the members to stand back and give this proposal a truly critical examination. We will give a report when we learn the results of the Friday vote. A major NAS publication is our Encyclopedia of Sustainability in Higher Education. We have posted an updated 3rd edition, with new entries on key figures, groups, and legislation guiding the movement. We welcome suggestions for new entries and corrections of any inaccurate information. Click here to view the encyclopedia on the NAS.org website or click here to download the encyclopedia in PDF format (with extra photos). We observed that Stony Brook University has announced that, due to budget constraints, it will close its sustainability campus in Southampton, NY ("To Sustain Stony Brook, Sustainability Campus Will Close"). Sustainability, higher education’s current trendiest idea, has taken some hits in the last six months with Climategate, the Copenhagen flop, and global warming scientists’ admissions that they lack evidence for their claims. Would Stony Brook have considered shutting down Southampton before all this happened? Is the campus sustainability movement losing its momentum? A year ago Steven Hayward discerned a growing “green fatigue” setting in with the public. But in academia, budget cutting so far has carefully tiptoed around sustainability programs (see Chronicle article “Even During Hiring Freezes, Many Colleges Stick with Sustainability Plans”). The rationale was that sustainability was both a money-saver and a planet-saver; thus it would be one of the last to go during even the most ruthless recessional slashing of other programs. Stony Brook’s decision, while it won’t cut the sustainability program altogether (at least not yet), may be a sign that the stronghold is crumbling. This could be the beginning of the end of sustainability’s diplomatic immunity on college campuses. Also of note, the UN's Earth Charter, endorsed by many U.S. colleges and universities, has its own 200-pound "ark" for transportation ("Ark of Hope for the Earth Charter"), and participants at an upcoming meeting in Vancouver will look for ways to shrink the economy in the name of sustainability ("De-Growth Conference").