
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

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

George Payne with Mary Evelyn Tucker, a world renown deep ecologist and religious scholar at Yale
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 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
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

Serenity Garden at Finger Lakes Community College
see Can Philosophy be Taught Online? One Professor’s Stance and Stand

Worker’s Rights Rally at The University of Rochester

Worker’s Right Rally at The University of Rochester

Nonviolence and sustainability workshop at the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence at the University of Rochester
see Douglass and Wilson students flocking to Non-Violent Clubs supported by the Gandhi Institute

SUNY Brockport students volunteering at the Lower Falls

Young woman at the Break Free From Fossil Fuels Rally in Rochester
see Rochester leaves its footprint on La Marche Globale and Musician Turned Climate Justice Activist Inspires Mothers Everywhere to Join the Front Lines
Sustainability is no longer about doing less harm. It’s about doing more good. — Jochen Zeitz
see Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge: One of the best kept secrets of Western New York

Sign at Syracuse University sit- in strike

Syracuse University sit in strike