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| The Greening (and Warming) of Academia |
| 2008-06-22 |
| 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 |
| #9 KOMMERSANT > NORTH OF RUSSIA TO SUFFER FROM GLOBAL WARMING. By 2030, effects could be "CATASTROPHIC", wid 1/4 of Housing stock + geologic instabilities [e.g. airports = food deliveries], detrimental increases in METHANE release/emissions, + pervasive signific area floods due to MELTING PERMAFROST??? |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2008-06-22 21:43 |
| #8 GEORGE WILL > The GREEN LEFT = RADICAL ENVIROS have not only supplanted the PRO-BIG GOVT POLITICAL LEFTS in America since 9-11, BUT ARE NOW WAGING = BEGUN ALL-OUT WAR TO FORCE AND ENTRENCH TOTALITARIAN REGULATORY GOVT + ENVIRONMENTALISM IN AMERICA, INCLUD PRO-GOVT PRO-MARXIST INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTALISM??? |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2008-06-22 21:38 |
| #7 Jeebus! Back in the 70's when I was an Architectural student at Auburn University we could, with a few extra courses, get a degree in Architecture AND Environmental Design. Yall other staes just now catchin' up? |
| Posted by: Deacon Blues 2008-06-22 19:40 |
| #6 The University of Virginia's business graduate students recently created a way to generate power in rural Indian villages with discarded rice husks. (Gasp) Carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, ALGore will shit, buy his carbon credits NOW. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2008-06-22 16:45 |
| #5 ESU is safe. They have the name, alumni and IP office to stay around a long time. Endowed Private University (EPU) is also safe. Unendowed Private College (UPC) is in trouble. They used to be able to serve the regional elites. But with the common app, their applicant pool has fallen in quality. And now the EPUs have started |
| Posted by: Unoth Grundy6217 2008-06-22 13:16 |
| #4 Many of the students who go to enormous public universities are there to get a paying career and get out, and those many don't bother taking the silly courses, Anonymoose. All those hard-headed engineers who marry equally hard-headed nurses, reality-rooted accountants who marry elementary school teachers, business majors who co-op at local businesses, which then hire them as soon as they get degrees... All of whom calculated that the extra investment required by fancy private universities would not pay out in higher pay at the other end. I was the only one I knew at the ESU I went to who didn't have a practical and lucrative career plan, as opposed to my friends who went to name private schools and assumed that would be enough to make them desirable when they graduated. As for the fools taking all those X Studies courses, at least their parents are paying less to rot their brains than they would at a more expensive private school. Surely, Anonymoose, you aren't contending that the small to mid-size private universities don't have more than enough such courses and degrees to side track the vulnerable? |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-06-22 12:46 |
| #3 Some private universities, Moose. Consider some of the 'elite' private schools and you'll see why I qualify your statement. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2008-06-22 12:16 |
| #2 I strongly suspect that the salad days of Enormous State University are drawing to a close. Mostly because they have created a paradigm for themselves of endless growth with profligate spending. Though they pride themselves in liberal education, the truth of the matter is that the vast majority of their students are wasting their time. They are not getting information specific to their eventual career, but they are getting a huge amount of crap education. Which impoverishes them for years when they should be making the money they need to raise a family. This means that most of these universities are not just parasitical, but impart toxins to their hosts in exchange. Private universities are much more in tune with student needs, and will eventually replace the ESUs with more realistic instruction. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2008-06-22 11:50 |
| #1 It does no harm for the academicians to bend the occasional neuron toward efficiency and cost savings... especially if it ends up saving the support staff work, or keeps undergraduate tuition from rising quite so much. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-06-22 11:26 |