What is it?How Does It Fit Into

Higher Education?

Sustainability

System that maintains its own viability

Capable of being maintained at a steady level

Without exhausting natural resources or causing severe ecological damage

Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs

Brundtland Report 1987

Sustainable Actions Include All 3 Pillars

Temporal and Spatial Scope

Social contract with future generations

• Free Exchange of Goods or Services

• Predicated on buyers and sellers having sufficient info

• Efficient Exchange – All costs and benefits are internalized

• Social costs not included – Negative Externality

• Social benefits not included – Positive Externality

• Externalities can be internalized through Market Intervention

• Carbon Tax, Cap and Trade, Incentive Program

Economics of Sustainability

l Climate Change Tipping Point

Science – Keeling Curve

Environmental Concerns have shifted emphasis over the last 50 years.

Clear Air Act 1970 required regulation of “Criteria Pollutants”Particle pollutionGround-level ozoneCarbon monoxideSulfur oxidesNitrogen oxidesLead

2007 Supreme Court

Ruled the EPA would also regulate carbon dioxide emissions.

If it found the CO2 emissions endangered public health and welfare.

Climate Change Information

IPCC – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Naomi Oreskes - “How we know we're not wrong”

Colleges and Universities

Set Example - Green Campus Facilities and Operations Student engagement

Embed Sustainability concepts across the curriculum S Designated Courses Sustainability Program

Challenges to a sustainable future

Systems ThinkingAgent of Change

Transformitive Actions

http://serc.carleton.edu/sisl/begin_toolkit.html

http://heasc.aashe.org/content/heasc-resource-center

http://www.slideshare.net/MVLibrary/deb-rowe-presentation-inservice-08-presentation

Coursera.org