Learning for the Long Haul: The Campus Sustainability Movement Grows

from Nazareth College’s first “Mini Chautauqua” opens a new conversation on an old theme: nurturing planet Earth

from Rethreading the Web: Catherine Keller and the Theology of Entangled Difference: A Report from the Hickey Center’s Annual Sacred Texts and Human Contexts Conference at Nazareth College by George Payne

George Payne is the founder of Gandhi Earth Keepers International and teaches philosophy at Finger Lakes Community College.

In both capacities, George works with local students and attends sustainability workshops and conferences. Today George reviews just some examples of the positive initiatives he has seen on college campuses in the last year and a half of his travels

Nazareth College also is actively engaged in sustainability education.

Last year at Nazareth, George and I attended a “Mini Chautauqua” convening members from various faith communities to discuss how traditional practices provide a spiritual basis reminding us why we are responsible for nurturing the planet.

from Many different paths to restoration” at Nazareth College’s Symposium on Nature and Environment in World Religions

This summer Nazareth’s Sacred Texts and Human Contexts Conference elaborated on how world religions have viewed nature and the environment.

George provided an overview of Catherine Keller’s keynote address; while I looked at how lawyer and university teacher Rick Reibstein has devoted his career to environmental protection.

See more photographs and narrative from George on the Sacred Texts and Human Contexts Conference

Learning for the Long Haul: The Campus Sustainability Movement Grows

Sustainability has more than one meaning. For some it means recycling and reusing. It’s no more complex than that. For some it means living a holistic lifestyle where one’s values are lined up with their consumer habits. And for others it means keeping our planet habitable for future generations. One thing is clear: there is a movement growing on college and university campuses to make sustainability a house hold term which influences every sector of daily life. From the University of Rochester to Finger Lakes Community College, the area’s institutions of higher learning are becoming not just more aware of their carbon footprint, but willing to take the lead in helping educate the public about what needs to be done to protect our only home.

Photography by George Payne

Hobart William & Smith Colleges Sustainability students attend Naomi Klein talk at Finger Lakes Community College

Naomi Klein at Finger Lakes Community College

Climate change is destroying our path to sustainability. Ours is a world of looming challenges and increasingly limited resources. Sustainable development offers the best chance to adjust our course. — Ban Ki-moon

see Rochester leaves its footprint on La Marche Globale and Musician Turned Climate Justice Activist Inspires Mothers Everywhere to Join the Front Lines

Bust of George Bernard Shaw at Niagara University. GBS was a vegetarian, environmentalist, and early pioneer of social justice based consumerism.

SUNY Brockport students cleaning up the Seth Green Trail along the Genesee River

see A World Heritage Site in our Backyard: preserving and profiting from the history, culture, and ecology of the Lower Falls Gorge

Sustainability presentation at St. John Fisher College (George Payne on left)

The first rule of sustainability is to align with natural forces, or at least not try to defy them. — Paul Hawken

see You may soon be living in New York State’s first EcoDistrict

George Payne delivering Annual Francis Day Address at Iona College

Statue of Mary at Iona College

see On the Thomas Merton Room and the 100th Anniversary of his birth

Keynote speaker at the Annual World on Your Plate Conference at Daemen College

Seeds at the World on Your Plate Conference

I came to all the realizations about sustainability and biodiversity because I fell in love with the way food tastes. That was it. And because I was looking for that taste I feel at the doorsteps of the organic, local, sustainable farmers, dairy people and fisherman. — Alice Waters

see A gathering of students, educators, urban farmers and social entrepreneurs at the Bay Street Community Garden

see From Zimbabwe to Tokyo at the Brighton Farmers Market

George Payne with Delores Huerta at Christian Brothers University in Memphis, TN.

see Living the Native American way of being at Haudenosaunee Days at the RMSC

Keegan Kuhn, director of Cowspiracy after a presentation at RIT

img_20160421_172135539-1

see Rochester leaves its footprint on La Marche Globale and Musician Turned Climate Justice Activist Inspires Mothers Everywhere to Join the Front Lines

After all, sustainability means running the global environment – Earth Inc. – like a corporation: with depreciation, amortization and maintenance accounts. In other words, keeping the asset whole, rather than undermining your natural capital. — Maurice Strong