January's Green Teach-In
by Lori Urbin & Paul De Angelis

Have this fall's record high temperatures and rising gas prices finally brought a sense of urgency to society's need to deal with the ongoing climate change, locally as well as globally? If so, a weeklong program of events being held at Bard College at the end of January as part of a national Teach-In should provide a fruitful forum for both discussion and environmental activism.

Should we be burning corn or eating it? Do we have plenty of time to act before global warming becomes irreversible, or is it already too late? How has society mobilized to address similarly daunting challenges in the past? Is there money to be made on these challenges? What does God think about all this? This is a sampling of the topics to be addressed during Bard's edition of Focus the Nation, a nationwide effort being coordinated simultaneously at approximately a thousand institutions of learning across the country which will bring together academics and community leaders to explore climate change from a wide variety of perspectives.

Bard's Focus the Nation is part of a national effort to create a serious, sustained and truly national discussion about clean energy solutions. Bard College events will begin Monday January 28th and include a sustainability fair, vehicle demonstrations, film screenings, and student art displays. All week, students will be given the opportunity to vote on the National Student Agenda on Climate Change.

Running parallel to the Bard events is a Wednesday night January 30 webcast live from the Earth Day Network entitled The 2% Solution. The web-cast is to be hosted at a site in Red Hook by Neighborhood Earth Watch a local citizen action group dedicated to dealing with the challenges posed by climate change. It is designed to provide an avenue for schools, churches, synagogues and civic organizations to participate in the Focus the Nation discussion — and to weigh in using interactive voting technology.

The week culminates in a Teach-In on Friday February 1st. The day will begin with panel discussions that will be broadly interdisciplinary, drawing faculty from virtually every department. Bard President Leon Botstein will address the group in the afternoon on the topic "The Heroic Climate Challenge Facing Today's Youth."

The final program will be a roundtable with students engaging elected officials in a discussion of potential solutions. New York's top four elected officials were invited to the event via a green torch relay — a bicycle race involving students from four area colleges hosting teach-ins: Bard, Vassar, Skidmore, and the College of New Rochelle. The bicycle course ran from Poughkeepsie to the Capitol steps in Albany; carbon emissions were zero. As of mid-November, no responses had yet been received from Governor Spitzer, US Senators Schumer and Clinton, and US Representative Kirsten Gillibrand... and other department heads or state representatives are expected if these officials cannot come. The national board of Focus the Nation, which includes former U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Gary Hart, deliberately timed the nationwide Teach-In so that it occurs right before the biggest presidential primary elections. The results of campus events, including the weeklong voting, will be reported back to the organizers of Focus the Nation, who in turn will combine results from all participating schools. The ultimate goal: to use this collective voice to create a sea change in national priorities.

Most of the Focus the Nation events are open to the public and community involvement is encouraged. For more information check the website focusthenation.org. To pre-register email ftn@bard.edu.