A new amendment to the 2009 energy bill is designed to fund job training at community colleges in renewable and alternative energy fields.

This amendment, sponsored by Senator Wyden (D-Ore.) would authorize $500 million ($100 million per year for five years) to ensure that workers are ready to create, install and maintain wind, solar, biomass and geothermal projects. Once passed, the bill authorizes the Department of Energy to fund programs at 1,200 American community colleges, with half of the funds going towards schools who already have strong programs in place. 

A letter sent on Monday by National Wildlife Federation to Senators Bingaman and Murkowski, Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, supported the inclusion of provisions for community colleges and stated, "This amendment would establish a community college-based training and education program for sustainable and alternative energy technologies such as wind energy technicians, energy auditors, geothermal energy technicians, and energy efficient construction."

Organizations such as NWF and the American Association of Community Colleges also point out that this amended bill supports education and training for workers in sustainable agriculture and farming. Recent articles in ClimateEdu and the Chronicle of Higher Education have explored the issue of teaching sustainable agriculture, but focused on liberal arts schools like Warren Wilson College and the University of Montana. Community colleges have largely stayed out of the farming arena (Central Carolina Community College being one of a few notable exceptions), but may soon be able to take advantage of federal funds for such projects.

However, such a day is still far off. The New York Times reports that the bill is still in early drafting stages, and due to the inclusion of mandatory limits on carbon emissions through a cap-and-trade market, lacks Republican support.

In the space of an hour, Vandana Shiva, physicist and agricultural activist, managed to connect the oil and human labor inputs required by modern agriculture, the nutritional deficit of monocrops, the dangers of species loss, the moisture depletion of agro-chemically treated fields, the imbalance of grain that goes to factory farms rather than human mouths, obesity and diabetes, US grain subsidies, biofuels, the 160,000 annual suicides of Indian farmers who are finding the monocrop seeds they purchased won't grow, and the mass exodus of families from heritage land. The coherent case that emerged at the end was simple: "We must get people back on the land."

One of several sustainable food experts that have earned attention in recent years, Shiva is in good company. Michael Pollan, Frances Moore Lappe, and even Jane Goodall have spent years studying the American industrial food systems and come to similar conclusions.

While agricultural yields increased dramatically in the mid-1900's, the soil depletion that has resulted makes farmers even more dependent on intensive chemical fertilizer and water inputs. Not only is this problematic for the farmers who are increasingly sensitive to drought and price fluctuation, but fertilizers based on fossil fuels could very soon become impossible to obtain, if declining oil predictions are correct. The answer, says Shiva, is biodiversity. "The delicacy that small-scale farming requires, is the delicacy that encourages biodiversity. And biodiversity makes for healthier food.”

As she spoke, Shiva compared universities—and their status within their communities—to the recent election, making the case that just as President-elect Obama will use his advisors to find solutions to the problems facing the nation, "every campus should make its own transition team for food beyond oil. We can create a food system beyond toxics. Beyond genocide."

In fact, she claimed, food is not only an agricultural issue, but integral to national security and peace. "For me, food is about peace. Peace with nature, peace between communities, and peace with our own bodies. Because we are at war with our bodies now, and food has become ammunition."

She went on to say that universities and colleges, who made major strides in the research that based our current agricultural system on fossil-fuel based fertilizers, have a large share of the responsibility for finding a solution."Campuses have a lot of eaters, and a lot of influence in their community. Wouldn't it be exciting if biology classes planted their own biodiversity plots? Why shouldn't edible schoolyards be on every campus?"

Given the intricacies of the global food system, it's no small demand. Shiva’s final comparison drew a laugh from the audience: “Those guys fiddling with the derivatives that put your economy into this state are like me, they juggle numbers. But wouldn’t it be amazing if they were juggling numbers that would make a better system for us?”

Podcast Interview with Vandana

Vandana Shiva: Why Shouldn't Edible Schoolyards Be On Every Campus?

We are recapping AASHE: Sustainability on Campus and Beyond as it happens. If you were at the sessions we're covering, weigh in with your comments below. Or see others' blogs, photos and Twitter updates on the AASHE live page.

One of our Chill Out! competition winners, the University of Missouri, has accomplished the admiral task of reducing their energy use by 19% per square foot since 1990, while still expanding the campus space by 60%. While this means that energy usage has still risen in the past 18 years (from 2.04 million MMBTUs to 2.66 million MMBTUs), the university estimates that its $14 million investments have returned about $28 million, providing more funds that can be funneled towards further improvements.

A recent article in the Columbia Tribune details many of the strategies they used to save energy, including high-efficiency building standards, adding biomass (corn cobs and waste wood chips) to the campus coal-fired power plant, installing motion sensors to control heating and lighting, and replacing windows.

Although the article simply skimmed over this quote from Jay Hasheider, energy management specialist at Columbia Water and Light, I want to emphasize it: "It’s very hard to achieve those reductions. It’s not just one thing; you have to work on several different fronts to get the overall building consumption down, and it gets harder and harder." Hasheider goes on to explain that as time passes, the investment needed tends to rise, because you've already taken advantage of low-hanging fruit.

Plus, as many universities are finding, once you've achieved the "quick wins" from efficiency upgrades, you run into a whole new set of problems, like the fact that your college might take the money you've saved in energy costs and give it to other departments, rather than keeping it in a revolving fund for further improvements or renewable energy purchases. Campus expansion is also a factor, as at MU. The university's total energy consumption has risen with its population, even as it becomes more efficient.

I've heard a number of different solutions to this problem, ranging from capping enrollment to purchasing carbon offsets, none of which is any kind of perfect or long-term solution. What is your college doing? Are you still on the easy and (relatively) inexpensive improvements? Or are you, like Mizzou, reaching the point where your carbon footprint is getting harder to downsize?

Check out what Appalachian State is doing to close the biodiesel loop!  They use food waste, solar panels and even naturally filter and use the waste water.  Check it out! 

Do you have a project at your campus?  Make a video and enter it into Chill Out to win cool prizes for your project! 

Go to www.nwf.org/chillout to enter.

Deadline: March 1, 2007

"Sea-bed plan to store carbon", a recent BBC News article, details the theory that storing carbon dioxide under the sea could help to reduce global warming and will probably pose no threat to marine life. Like this one, there are many solid solutions being used to slow global warming: purchasing renewable energy, using biodiesel in vehicles, installing energy efficient lighting, switching to geothermal power, etc. And U.S. colleges and universities have taken the lead.

At Bemidji State University an NWF Campus Ecology Fellow gained the support of the student body and encouraged the administration to purchase wind energy, Cape Cod Community College has installed a 1.5 kilowatt wind turbine, and Mount Wachusett Community College is heated primarily by a biomass plant which has helped the college cut its electricity use by more than 23 percent in the past two years.

Photo Credit: University of Southern Maine, Sarah Ferriter, 2004 Biodiesel Demonstration Week