Editorial Conversations: Sustainability
Question: What should Lehigh do to become more sustainable?
Sustainability. It sounds good, doesn’t it? And it’s a win-win, too… or so they say. After all, what could be wrong with using less – waste not want not, and of course, we save money, which is good, right?
Give me a break. The single largest fallacy held by a mass of people in unison, aside from balloon boy, is the notion of environmental sustainability. Anyone who participates in the green movement at this moment, and believes that they are making any sort of difference because the university doesn’t turn a blind ear to their thoughts is deluded and ignorant.
This “movement” is a purely aesthetic concoction, bent on economic sustainability more so than environmental. And rightly so! Lehigh is competing (as staffer David Gritz, ’12 so acutely noted previously) with schools for research dollars, undergraduate (read: cash flow) students, and quality names for pie-in-the-sky academic movements that produce graduates who gross enough income to “sustain” the continued existence of this institution.
LEAG, STEPS, and Green Action are poster projects. And while I can’t deny that valuable biological and physical research will likely arise from the STEPS initiative, the new facility shares something in common with its grandfather, Iacocca Hall: both will transition into expensive architectural obsolescence. Back in ’59 when architectural powerhouse Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, conceived Iacocca it too featured innovative environmentally friendly notions like the reflecting pool, which was piped with condenser coils to exchange heat from the air conditioning system.
The problem was, this seemingly elegant system was both inefficient and costly to maintain. In 1986, when Lehigh acquired Iacocca (then called the Homer Research Labs) from the Bethlehem Steel Corp, one of the first things VP of Facilities Planning Anthony Corallo did was decouple the reflecting pool and install modern condensers, leaving an 8-foot deep, 1.5-million gallon pool full of rusty pipes. Sadly, even water-feature-friendly Lehigh couldn’t save the fountain (an insurance hazard), and in 2006 when the Alumni Memorial Parking Garage was constructed, much of the backfill from the excavation ended up in the fountain, filling it in and sealing its fate.
Sound familiar? STEPS is supposedly festooned with special “energy-saving” features like wind generators, electromechanical louvers to control natural light glare, and the famous grass roof (where no one can toss a Frisbee). I’d put money on it that in 25 years, when I come back for my class’s reunion, that roof will be leaking, the generators will be a giant ornament, and the louvers will have long-since been disabled due to scarcity of parts and repair talent.
It’s not an outright bad thing to care about the environment so much that you’d buy fair-trade products (which ironically carry a heavier carbon footprint than run-of-the-mill produce and coffee), compost in your back yard, sell your car, and bitch & moan to all of those who pass by (on Open House day, no less, Green Action!) with a half-hearted protest expressing your arrogant distaste for the university’s reluctance to capitulate to your every whim and will.
However, know that you have become a PR tool for the university to use in marketing its campus to other students who think they have found their cause. Know that the “no tray” policy was a cost-saver for Sodexo/ Wood Dining (hence why they didn’t eliminate it in the a-la-carte Upper UC café), and that neither Dining Services, nor the University truly deeply cares about your cause.
This movement, much like actual real global climate change (a natural, cyclic occurrence) happens in cycles. In the 1970s, so-called “global cooling” and an abundance of yuppies with disposable income created the first green movement; this is no different. Many so-called “green” products and ideas are less than such– like washing glasses rather than using disposable paper cups. I will never pay some sketch “fund” to “offset” my carbon, I do not support cap and trade (read: anti-capitalist) bills, and I am not so naïve as to think that this university, nee, the thinking, air-breathing public gives a damn about sustainability.
To Discuss this issue, please see all three of our editor’s viewpoints, and comment here.
