SUSTAINABILITY THINK TANK
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Thoreau said, “Let us first be as simple and well as Nature ourselves.” His words reflect and inform what I plan to write. Calvin (from Calvin and Hobbes) said, “When birds burp, it must taste like bugs.” His words - wise as they are - do not.

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Dear Green Magazine,

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Lee Lynd, Thayer School of Engineering

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I have been fortunate to have been friends with Kathy Fallon Lambert ‘90 for more than a decade. One of the things which have impressed me about Kathy is that she gets involved when she sees an important cause or issue - whether it be working as an undergrad to help raise energy conservation awareness on campus or lobbying for stricter water quality terms in hydroelectric dam licenses through her work with the Appalachian Mountain Club. Equally impressive to me, though, is that she uses her activism to bring people together, not deepen divisions.

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For several decades now, ecotourism has been touted as a means of stemming the loss of biodiversity around the world by replacing the economic growth achieved via extractive industries and subsistence activities with growth realized through low impact tourism. National governments, major international development agencies, multilateral lending banks, and transnational environmental organizations have all jumped aboard the ecotourism bandwagon by establishing programs that provide assistance to ecotourism projects. For entrepreneurs, ecotourism continues to offer one of the fastest growth areas for product development. Acknowledging this, the United Nations celebrated 2002 as the “International Year of Ecotourism” (IYE), with events that highlighted ecotourism’s contribution to Agenda 21, which seeks a balance between economic growth and natural resource conservation.

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On November 3, 2004, at II: 10 a.m., Senator John Kerry called President George Bush. Minutes after, word went out across news wires and the Internet: Kerry was conceding the election. This would not be another 2000; the presidency would not be left hanging for weeks and months of uncertainty.

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There is something about the state of Califomia that draws Easterners to visit and explore. It may be a combination of the sun and the relaxed attitude that gives people the itch to move West, or perhaps it is the prevailing sense of “wildness” and unknown. Whatever the case, I was drawn out West this past spring by the promise of a long Californian growing season. I had spent time working on an organic farm in the Adirondacks of New York state, and felt very accustomed to the ways ofthe Northeastern farmer. I was ready for a change in the relative ease and ensuing abundance of Western farming.

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In my humble opinion, Michael Pollan is not just a botanist, but also a philosopher, a sociologist, and a poet. As the blurb on the back of his book, The Botany of Desire, says, “In telling the stories of four familiar species [of plants], Pollan illustrates how the plants have evolved to satisfy humankind’s most basic yearnings. And just as we’ve benefited from these plants, we have also done well by them. So who is really domesticating whom?” Pollan offers a beautiful discussion about the co-evolution of human beings alongside the plants that we have ‘domesticated’. The way that a certain species of plant most likely ensures its survival is by being the most likely of them all to satiate our desires. The different chapters are titled according to the plants that he believes represents some integral part in our spectrum of human desires. The apple represents our desire for sweetness, the tulip for beauty, marijuana for intoxication, and the potato for control.

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Man kind takes pride in finding intelligent ways to overcome obstacles without realizing that the solutions are already available in nature. We have to turn to the living world; natural wisdom was shaped through millions of years of evolution, perfecting products and processes for specific functions. For ages, For ages, mankind neglected the lessons to be learned from nature .. Janine M. Benyus, graduate of Rutgers University with degrees in forestry and writing, articulates both current and future applications of natural solutions in her highly inspirational Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature.

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Upon entering my freshman year, I had grand intentions of following the pre-medical path. However, the appeal of a career in medicine (combined with the usual parental encouragement) couldn’t overturn my affinity for design, specifically in architecture. I struggled to validate architecture in the eyes of the other liberal arts (surely there must have been a good reason it wasn’t offered as a major), to see past my stereotype of the architect as design diva, and to place architecture in that wonderful melting pot of socially responsible and humanitarian careers in the company of medicine, law, and academia.

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Each year, American colleges and universities hand out design degrees by the thousands.

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It’s an exciting time for environmental sustainability at Dartmouth! Green buildings,sustainability in courses, a campus sustainability coordinator, and lots of student and faculty mterest in sustainability … all this represents a new era of increased interest and activity in many environmental aspects of life at Dartmouth. This in turn presages a profound increase in awareness of the integrated nature of human activity and the environment of which we are a part. This creates an opportunity for Dartmouth to transform practices in its region, and more broadly to influence the thinking of its graduates in ways that can transform the world.

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