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The Greening (and Warming) of Academia
More front-page WaPo. Surely, the war in Iraq is over!The environmental fervor sweeping college campuses has reached beyond the push to recycle plastics and offer organic food and is transforming the curriculum, permeating classrooms, academic majors and expensive new research institutes. The University of Maryland teaches 'green' real estate strategies for landscape architects. The University of Virginia's business graduate students recently created a way to generate power in rural Indian villages with discarded rice husks. And in a Catholic University architecture studio last week, students displayed ideas for homes made from discarded shipping containers. What was once a fringe interest, perhaps seemingly a fad, has become fully entrenched in academic life, university officials say, affecting not just how students live but what they learn and, as graduates, how they will change workplaces and neighborhoods. Concern about the environment has waxed and waned in the past few decades, said GWU President Steven Knapp. But with fears of climate change and high gas prices, 'the situation has become dire enough that people are focused on it,' Knapp said. 'Energy is costly enough that people are focused on it. We really think this time, it's here to stay.' Are not high gas prices good for global climate change? What's the matter? Hits in your pocketbook? For years, student activists have demanded environmentally friendly changes, prompting university officials to reevaluate how they heat classrooms, water campus greens and buy light bulbs. Frostburg State University in Western Maryland, for instance, has a wind-powered generating station. Johns Hopkins University is planning to build its own heat and power generator. For those who are skeptical about global warming and think that the current trend is often too alarmist, the changes carry risk. 'It discredits science,' said Richard Lindzen, a professor of meteorology at MIT. 'It's propaganda,' he added, with opposing viewpoints rarely explored. 'I think it's getting a little out of proportion, the emphasis on the environment,' said Donald J. Boudreaux, chairman of the economics department at George Mason University. He said people increasingly look at environmental issues almost as a religion, with unquestioning belief, rather than thinking critically about scientific evidence or economic issues. But many school officials say there's a growing consensus about climate change. 'Three or four years ago, I would hear that from people, that global warming's a fraud,' said Randall Ott, architecture dean at Catholic. 'I don't hear that at all now,' especially from students. In his view, he said, 'the evidence is overwhelming -- and very troubling. We at our university feel a certain ethical mission to be operative on this issue.' As opposed to critical thinking and diverse points of view. Posted by: Bobby in Illinois 2008-06-22 |
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