Just a year and a half ago (5.28.06), “The Wesleyan Connection” (our on-line newsletter) posted an article entitled “Saving Energy All Summer Long.” “Wesleyan is pulling the plug on high energy usage,” it said, going on to note our “preventive conservation measures,” especially those relating to “CoGen.” When Mr. Roth says (and I make reference here to earlier blogs) that we’ve “started to become a much greener, more sustainable campus,” I hope he’s speaking in part about this, if only to ensure some continuity of discourse. “The CoGen equipment,” the article tells us, “which was approved in May [2006], takes 18 months to install, and it will be active in January 2008.” Well, will it or won’t it? And what on earth is it? (It’s a system that uses “a single fuel source, such as natural gas, to simultaneously generate both electricity and heat” and will save us–at least by the May ‘06 estimate–half a million dollars a year in energy costs.) Now, a blog isn’t a policy statement or a budget report or a report to the Trustees (neither is “The Wesleyan Connection”), but even in informal jottings I’d like to think that what we trumpeted one year echoes through the next. The “Saving Energy” article further reported that Peter Saye, associate director of utilities management in Physical Plant, estimated that “one percent of all energy consumption campus-wide is used by”–guess what?–”coffee machines.” (Read more in the archived article.)

So what about our coffee machines?–And this is sort of what’s behind my good grief up above. Have we figured out and implemented a plan to control the pesky little things? Who knows? What I do know is that in January 2007–six months after the article about saving energy all summer long–we weren’t doing a very good job of saving energy all winter long. My wife and I, on a new year’s walk through campus, found the Chapel, Theater,the Pavilion linking them, and all of East College flooded with warmth, the thermostats evidently clocking along at a time when no one–no students, tour guoups, cleaning crews, no one–was around. (We did see one student in East College moving his stuff out–perhaps in anticipation of a semester abroad?)

What do we learn, how do we learn it? How do we ever figure things out? These questions enrich many academic exchanges both in and out of our classrooms. But really, will “adaptive change” be anything other than a catch-phrase. It’s certainly more than that to Gary Yohe, but he has us at a disadvantage. He actually has to keep it in his vocabulary, extending its meaning every single day. I still want to know about little things like coffee machines–much, I imagine, as a scientist or economist would. I’m neither. But still–.

I would suggest that Wesleyan seriously consider creating a formal think-tank that, on a regular basis, brings together top scientists, economists, anthropologists, sociologists and others from the humanities and business community to encourage a free exchange of ideas and facilitate approaches to dealing more effectively with the potentially catastrophic environmental problems engendered by climate change. Such an endeavor would help boost the image and prestige of the University and buttress its traditional image as an institution for social activism.