Wrap-up: Smart and Sustainable Campuses Conference

It's been an exhausting two days, and I mean that in the best way. It's the exhaustion you get from doing good work: critical thought, difficult questions, solvent solutions. After making the rounds of sessions, plenaries and discussions, I want to go straight to bed and wake up tomorrow full of plots to bring this issue more into the foreground. Because the more attention sustainability gets, the closer we get to answers to questions like these:

How can we surpass LEED to make our buildings and our homes more efficient, conscious, and livable? LEED is a great start, but there's more that can be done, and perhaps colleges can use their resources to experiment.

How can campuses work around existing codes and energy requirements to create enough clean, usable energy? How can a set of "cherry-picked" options (ex, using wind and solar at different times of day according to peak, or perhaps using waste gray water in a steam turbine system) best integrate with each other? How do we store this energy?

How can supporting agencies like AASHE, NWF and SCUP produce strong resources that help universities move towards a climate-friendly built environment? How do we rate and rank schools? How do we prioritize?

How should institutions calculate the cost of food? Not just price, but total life-cycle elements that include the growing process and habitat impact, transport, preparation and waste? Do local foods come out ahead at the end of the day? Is organic a feasible solution to feed the world? How does meat consumption affect greenhouse gas emissions?

Finally, how do we express that the sustainability movement is, at its core, not about gloom and sacrifice? How do we convince the naysayers and the afraid that we have no intentions of living in yurts, peeking out at the destruction of the world? Rather, we are working towards a future of clean air, clean food and water, secure homes, universal access to education, and democratic, renewable sources of energy. Fundamentally, sustainability is about improving our quality of life, not destroying it in the name of penance for our eco-sins. Of course the adjustment period will be difficult, and we will probably lose a few things, but in the long-term we are about winning, not just for us, but for the planet.

Ambitious? Certainly. Difficult? Astronomically so. Hopelessly idealistic? Yeah, probably. But if I've gotten anything from this conference, it's an increased sense of possibility. Our environment is changing, and so will we, for the better. Campuses are at the forefront of this movement, and I'd like to thank everyone who made this event possible, including SCUP, who graciously invited me to live-blog. Tipping my hat to Edward Murrow, I say Good Night, and Good Luck.