A Greener Eph: First Year Orientation
Williams College first years have no excuse not to think deeply about sustainability. They're getting a double dose. First, I jumped up on stage during the wellness talk to try and make a connection between physical wellness and the wellness of our mountain home. I told them that using CFLs is awesome and saves money. I hinted that drinking bottled water was silly because it tastes the same as tap water...you just have to pay for it. If they were brave, they could turn down their heat and find someone to cuddle with to stay warm on those long winter nights. The director of campus safety, our chaplain, our outing club director, our dean of the college and our fire-safety guy all proudly displayed a CUPPS cups and told them to use it.
Now, as 2/3rds of the class does a backpacking trip, they're going to get it again. The WOOLF leaders already teach the principles of Leave No Trace. LNT covers the range of ways hikers can harm the woods around them, from fires and trash to causing erosion and feeding animals. But, they will be asking their first years, are the visible traces the only ones we should be worried about? What about the traces that we can't see but are potentially even more harmful, such as greenhouse gas emissions? If we care so much about LNT on the trail, do we have some responsibility to reduce our 'trace' when we're not on the trail as well?
Its up to the WOOLF leaders now, but if I have any guesses, there will be a lot of deep and heated discussions up in those mountains.
2 comments:
Williams College is not an academic institution of indoctrination. Being liberally felt up with "ecosis" is unproductive. The use of "fear and faith" are not the challenges our student require.
Sustainability is an ideologically driven agenda and is not healthy. The desire of using educational institutions to systemically change beliefs and values by spreading "ecosis" within the cultural, religious, social, economic, and political structures of our nation is not what education was intended for.
Is "ecosis" politically neutral? Does it safeguard free thinking? Does it preserve individual freedom? Does it sustain our western cultural ethos?
"Sustainable development" is a euphemism for socialism and communism and is now being embraced in various pronouncements by the UN and is echoed in certain segments of the US government.
Czech President Vaclav Klaus stated that global warming has turned into a "religion" that replaced the ideology of communism and threatens to clip basic freedoms. He wrote the US Congress that adopting tough environmental policies to fight climate change would have destructive impact on national economies.
He said: "This ideology preaches earth and nature and under the slogans of their protection - similar to the old Marxists - wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central, now global, planning the whole world."
No government action can stop the world and nature from changing. Higher solar activity or the change of ocean currents are outside of human intervention.
It would be best that you sponsor Stewardship rather than LNT. Perhaps you environmentalists should go LNT.
Williams students will do just fine without you.
Yes, Education was not intended to change people's beliefs. It was intended to help one to develop their beliefs. I could go to a speech for or against abortion but that doesn't mean they are forcing their opinions upon me, no one is forcing these students to adopt or believe what is being said.
As for whether "ecosis" is politically neutral and preserves individual thinking. WHO CARES! Seeing as how freedom of choice has lead us to the environmental chrisis we are facing today, maybe it is time to change. I'm all for freedoms, but when your coices affect the health of the planet and my surroundings, maybe you shouldn't be given a choice in certain matters.
How you make the connection between "sustainable developments" and communism is beyond me. Sustainable developments are a way of ensuring long lasting prosperity with little or no outside inputs. It is a way of being self-sufficient not a way of ensuring everyone is exactly the same.
As for government intervention being unable to stop nature from changing I have to disagree. You are forgetting the U.S. efforts to reduce the emissions of CFCs that were creating a large hole in our ozone layer.
Perhaps maybe you're right though. Maybe we should all have the mentality that nothing we do will ever change the world so why bother. We can continue to buy our gas guzzling SUVs. As long as I can decide between a Hummer and an F150, who cares about the planet.
Try embracing change or new ideas. Because if we all thought like you, nothing would ever get accomplished. We would be all too certain that nothing we do will ever have any impact and that anything we try will most certainly fail. We should probly curl up in a corner, suck our thumbs and hold fondly to the ideas of freedom while the world slowly deteriorates around us.
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