Sustainability in Kentucky

I n the end, sustainability entails much more than merely talking the talk.  Activists encountered this message time and again at the Campus Community Partnerships for Sustainability Conference in Berea, Kentucky, from April 21 to 23.  In fact, with academics, organizers, and do-it-yourselfers from around the country in attendance, it proved impossible to theorize about a green lifestyle without making hands-on connections to landscape and community. 

The setting for the weekend afforded an inspiring backdrop. Since the founding of its Sustainability and Environmental Studies (SENS) program in 1999, conference host Berea College has been steadily building an international reputation as one of the greenest campuses this side of the Atlantic.  Just down the quad from the conference, its eco-village, living machine, greenhouses, and permaculture plot hummed away in their usual, ecologically avant-garde way. 

But the rest of us have a lot of work to do yet. On Friday night, keynote speaker Pat Murphy, executive director of the Yellow Springs, Ohio-based Community Solution, juxtaposed an historical overview of U.S. energy policy with a dire warning about the health of our global climate.  Ultimately, his statistics point toward a central question facing Americans. “The final result [of all these forces] is going to be a very low energy way of living,” he says. “We are going to get there violently or we can get there peacefully.” 

But even a peaceful route requires forethought and cooperation.  “I’m going to talk on the hope side of the equation,” announced Michael Shuman on the following Earth Day morning. His talk offered hopeful strategies for crafting a vibrant, locally-owned America. Shuman, an attorney and economist from St. Lawrence County, New York, had just authored a book, Going Local , in which he studies how small business owners are taking back control from large corporations like Wal-Mart. 

Participants then split up into workshops to brainstorm possibilities and acknowledge roadblocks to sustainability. Joshua Bills, co-coordinator of the Kentucky Solar Partnership, outlined practical options for powering homes and buildings with solar power. While solar may be growing exponentially as an alternative technology, he cautioned, that shouldn’t be the only kind of solution we consider. Others, like Justin Maxson, president of the Berea-based Mountain Association for Community Economic development, proposed a more sustainably minded state level economic policy: “We need an economic vision that incorporates local economies and regional development models,” he suggests. In working toward that vision, Kentucky should invest in local processing capabilities and foster a spirit of local entrepreneurship, rather than offer tax incentives to multinational corporations. 

Noelle Melchizedek, co-coordinator of Humboldt State University’s Center for Appropriate Technology in northern California, explained in her workshop that sustainable college housing should be the credo for anyone who embraces small-scale green technologies— collegiate or otherwise. Along with students from Warren Wilson College in North Carolina, the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, Middlebury College, Vermont, and conference host Berea, she described her campus “ecohouse” and the efforts underway to create a more civically engaged, energy-conscious student body. Some of those dwellings are nothing short of the future of architecture, with composting toilets, organic gardens, and solar arrays, they cut energy costs exponentially while spreading the word that sustainability doesn’t necessarily have to end on your dormitory steps.