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Home > News & Events > CLA Today Archive > Summer 2004 : Saving the Environment

Saving the environment, one researcher at a time

“I truly believe that we in this generation must come to terms with nature, and I think we're challenged as … never … before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves.”

Rachel Carson, "The Silent Spring of Rachel Carson,” CBS, April 3, 1963

Tens of thousands of books are published every year, but very few change the world.

One of those few was Silent Spring, written in 1962 by Rachel Carson, a science writer with a poetic gift and an undergraduate degree from a liberal arts college. With its eloquent prose and powerful imagery, Carson's meticulously researched book painted a vivid picture of what would happen to our planet if we continued indiscriminately to poison the environment with chemical pesticides.

Silent Spring aroused public concern and awareness about the environment; it set in motion a social movement that swept the world, transformed public opinion, and led to new laws and government agencies; it created new fields of research and teaching; it prompted healthy skepticism about uncritical faith in technological progress.

Four decades later, the urgent and fundamental truth of Silent Spring is still recognized: our natural resources are finite and our ecosystems are fragile.

The good news is that liberal arts graduates are still changing the world. And in Minnesota, one of the nation's richest field laboratories for environmental research, CLA's faculty scholars are leading conversations about how we might preserve and protect the natural environment that sustains us economically, culturally, and spiritually.

Our fragile earth

Both within and beyond the University, there is lively debate about the causes and consequences of environmental degradation, the extent of the problem, and the respective roles that governments, corporations, and individuals should play in finding solutions. What is not debatable is that the problems are complex and profound.

Our nation is precariously dependent on (and a voracious user of) the world's diminishing and highly contested supplies of natural resources, many of which lie beyond our national boundaries. As world population growth and new technologies create greater and greater demand for the earth's precious resources, those resources are being stretched, and stressed, beyond their capacity to sustain this planet's diverse life forms.

The perils are well documented—from shrinking freshwater supplies to global warming, energy shortages, escalating destruction of natural habitats, and vanishing species, not to mention the implications for world economic and political stability.

Public research universities such as the University of Minnesota have a responsibility to lead the free and impartial search for an understanding of these problems and their solutions. In the face of what many scientists and scholars believe is an impending global crisis, the President's Interdisciplinary Initiative on Environment and Renewable Energy is harnessing the intellectual energies of our remarkable faculty across colleges and disciplines to advance understanding of and find innovative solutions to some of the world's most urgent problems.

Research at the core of liberal education

Research on the environment has been a core project of CLA for a very long time—since long before the "environmental movement" began alerting the general public to the perils of pollution and profligate consumption of natural resources.

If you think of environmental research, you may envision khaki-clad scientists slogging through wetlands in hip boots or white-coated lab technicians conducting microbial and chemical analyses. Look beyond that image, and you'll find CLA researchers wearing many different hats as they work with scientists and engineers to address critical environmental issues.

Recognizing that what's at stake is nothing less than the future of our planet, CLA faculty take their responsibility very seriously. If they're not measuring the ozone layer, conducting chemical analyses of lake water, or mapping the DNA strings of mutant frogs, they're studying attitudes and behavior, rethinking urban livability issues, interpreting data, communicating research findings, scrutinizing public policy and corporate practice, and evaluating accountability.

CLA researchers in the field … across fields

As you will see in this issue of CLA Today, CLA faculty researchers bring multiple perspectives and complex interdisciplinary understanding of human societies to their study of environmental issues. They are working hand in hand with researchers in fields from chemistry and biology to public health to reverse the accelerating pace of environmental degradation.

Social scientists and historians are studying human and wildlife habitats and interpreting climate, air and water quality, and population data to assess the long-term impacts of deforestation, industrial waste disposal, agricultural practices, transportation systems, and market forces. They are investigating ways to balance political and economic with environmental interests so that industries, people, and ecosystems alike will benefit.

Scholars in the arts and humanities are studying how language shapes our understanding of environmental issues, and they are articulating the role of the arts and literature in shaping public opinion and human behavior. Philosophers and psychologists are looking at human motivations and behavior and at the environmental consequences of the choices we make about everything from what we eat and what we wear to where and how we live, how we travel, and how we vote.

Whenever and wherever environmental issues are examined and aired—whether the subject is alternative energy sources, transportation systems, global climate change, species or habitat preservation, ethical business practices, consumer behavior, urban design, or responsible stewardship of natural resources—CLA's extraordinary faculty are very much at the table.

And so are our students. CLA has built environmental studies broadly into the curriculum and has led in making environmental understanding a critical component (one of the "designated themes") of a University of Minnesota education. Students across CLA disciplines are actively engaged in discussions of global environmental issues and in the search for solutions.

Investing in our future

Of course all of this research comes with a fairly hefty price tag. And not unlike competition for the world's resources, competition for support is fierce. More and more, we have been forced to look to tuition and private gifts for funding.

Many public officials and ordinary citizens recognize the long-term costs to our world of not investing now in the University. If these concerns catch on, as they must, perhaps a new movement will begin—a movement to save our planet that begins with increased public funding for our great public research university.

I hope that as we face another year of budget cuts, you will think about how you can help us continue our leadership role in research and teaching on the environment and other issues of surpassing global importance.

Steven J. Rosenstone
CLA Dean and McKnight Presidential Leadership Chair