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Thursday night in the MSC flag room, members of Focus The Nation speak to the community about ways to clean up College Stations' emissions through several different programs. Focus The Nation is an organization that specializes in spreading awareness of the threat of global warming.

Community focuses on energy efficiency

Panel discusses increasing awareness

By: Daniel Divine

Posted: 2/5/08

Many positive and necessary steps have been taken in the realms of environmental awareness, climate change, sustainability and energy efficiency in the College Station community. Thursday local leaders came together at Focus the Nation to discuss the changes made and those that still need to be made in the area.

Graduate student Kelly Tackitt moderated the discussion between panel members and the audience. Panel members included business owners, city council members, professors and a student leader. The panel discussed a variety of topics under the umbrella of environmental crisis and weighed in opinions, personal experiences, institutional initiatives and the general direction that needs to be taken in the years ahead. After the panel answered the prepared questions, the audience was given a chance to ask questions.

When Tackitt asked of the panel what their organizations were doing to reduce the community's fossil fuel emissions, increase sustainability and educate the community about climate change, a variety of perspectives emerged.

Chairwoman of Student Government Association's Environmental Issues Committee Amanda Grosgebauer responded to this question by outlining her organization's priority of education.

"[EIC focuses] on programs which enhance environmental education and awareness, projects which reduce the community's overall impact on the environment and sound environmental legislation on and off campus," said the senior creative writing and American studies major.

Stella Woodward, a leader in College Station's Cool Cities Campaign, said the campaign was "an initiative that is helping cities all over the world to pledge to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases."

Woodward said College Station Mayor Ben White signed the Cool City Initiative, planning to review the policies in place and find a means of reducing the city's fossil fuel emissions. "The ultimate goal [of College Station Cool Cities] is to reduce the greenhouse gas level to seven percent below the 1990 level in this community."

George Rogers, professor of landscape architecture and urban planning, said he is excited to see the change in the city. "There is a long way to go, but I am thrilled."

Rogers said his lifestyle reflects energy efficiency in a simple home with windows oriented to the south to reflect the sun in the summer and solar panels to absorb the sun in the winter.

"Fifteen percent of College Station's energy by 2014 will be wind power," said John Crompton, professor of recreation parks and tourism and a member of the College Station City Council. "The biggest amount in Texas for this size of city."

Crompton said College Station made positive moves to hybrid vehicle fleets, a 50,000 tree planting program by the utility department, the creation of hike and bike lanes around the city and a new tree preservation ordinance that will stop the clear cutting of trees for developments.

"This ordinance will be in place within six weeks," Crompton said.

Tackitt asked: "What more should be done to make our community more energy efficient?"

Grosgebauer said daily lifestyle choices were the greatest importance.

Grosgebauer said eating less meat is an easy way to make our community more energy efficient because "the energy put into its process is far greater than even driving your car."

Hugh Stern, local business owner of Sterns' Construction, which specializes in green buildings, and founder of Brazos Progressives, suggested ways to improve mass transit in the community including combing the University's transit with the Brazos transit system. Stern's biggest concern is stopping sprawled development.

"The local culture is indiscriminately pro-business, but citizens are trying to protect the quality of life," Sterns said. "If we want to change our community, then we need to realize that it is a quality of life issue."

Deputy Manager of the City of College Station Terry Childers said the tree ordinance that will end clear cutting and the creation of new hike and bike lanes was important. He said people need to vote to insure that these initiatives are successful.

Jerry Wagner, a member of the steering committee for the Brazos Valley Environmental Action Network, said the proliferation of environmental awareness in the media, workplace and faith community was necessary while fully expressing the implications on a personal and community level. He said personal and political changes must happen.

Wagner was critical of initiatives that focus on one geographical area or state, using California as an example.

"California intends to have fuel standards, but just for California," Wagner said. Continuing the critique, Wagner called national politics "bipartisan inaction" that has gone on for two decades and needs to end.

Rogers began his with a statement of paradigm change: "The first thing is to break the habit of having bounded rational thought."

Rogers said nuclear power was a good example with deaths in the mines, deaths from surrounding water supplies and accounting for the reported lack of problems as a myopic account of not looking at the extraction or waste management of nuclear materials.

Insight from the audience's reaction to these statements came from graduate student in nuclear engineering, Megan Pritchard.

Pritchard said that since the 1970s, there have been zero deaths from the nuclear energy industry, as compared to about 6,000 deaths every year caused by the coal industry. She said there have also been no transportation accidents with nuclear waste.