With our class discussion on sustainability, I found myself wondering if there was a school of study that concerned itself solely with improving sustainability in our society. After some research, I happened upon this article which states that there are indeed schools that are training people to bring sustainability to their local communities.
I found the first paragraph of this article harkening, for it confirmed a suspicion I had in class. In the article, Andrew Pattison, a conservation biologist in upstate New York states, “I found that quote-unquote important people who were decision makers would read the reports I filed and then not follow them.” In class we discussed the “power” scientist may or may not have to illicit change. However, through our discussions, I found myself more and more convinced that policy makers were actually ignoring the information given to them by scientists, such as Andrew Pattison, in cases where the information is… inconvenient.
However, even though the article does start off bleak, the rest is quite hopeful. The author reminds us that though the problems we face are global, we have the power to effect change through what we do in the local. The author describes the growing number of schools, as of 2009, that offer courses and degrees in sustainability. The participants of these programs come from very different backgrounds and then take what they have learned and apply it to their trade in their communities. This gives me hope that, with a growing number of sustainability programs available, there will continue to be change on the local level that may translate into improvement on a global scale.
