Around the Dell abillion
and countingting n
In 1960, about the time most college- age students’ parents were youngsters, there were only 3 billion people on the planet; now there are more than double that — 7 billion. That milestone marks a good time
— during LC’s continuation of the Year of Sustainability — to explore whether the Earth can sustain so many people. Population is the theme for this year’s Senior Sympo- sium. (See Dr. Dave Freier’s Faculty Forum on page 34.) Dr. Don Werner, LC professor
of psychology, kicked off the weekly lectures with “Overpopulation: the self-destructive aspect of human nature.” Senior Symposium is Dr. Werner’s favorite class, he says, because it allows students and fac- ulty to explore topics they wouldn’t be able to otherwise. He said he has learned much in recent years, including:
• mercury levels in fish make it dangerous to eat in significant quantities;
• the Ogallala aquifer, which lies under out nation’s breadbasket, is drying up;
• deforestation and mountaintop removal are hastening climate change.
“The Earth functions as a system
of balances, and human population upsets those balances,” Dr. Werner said. Starvation and disease once kept the human population in check, but the industrial revolution changed that as it allowed people to produce food on a grand scale. Although Thomas Malthus and
Paul Ehrlich’s predictions about col- lapse have not occurred, Dr. Werner said, it’s not that they were wrong; it’s just that their timing was off. Americans account for only 5 per- cent of the world’s population, yet we
Eco-Village launched
A. Boyd Claytor III given by his widow, Sakina Claytor, and sculpted by Richard Pumphrey ’74, pro- fessor of art. The Eco-Village is
being designed to develop and test a variety of sustainable practices and build- ing types, as well as
With eight shovelfuls of dirt, the groundbreaking for an Eco-Village at the Claytor Nature Study Center be- came official in October. It was fol- lowed by the dedication of a bust of
PHOTO BY JOHN MCCORMICK
provide short-term housing for stu- dents and guests at Claytor Nature Study Center. “This village will allow more exten- sive study and exploration of this 470-
acre nature study center,” said Presi- dent Kenneth Garren, who credited Steve Bright, vice president for busi- ness and finance, and the environ- mental science faculty with moving the project forward. Charles Chandler, a former member of the LC Board of Trustees, was the first donor to the Eco-Village project. The first bunkhouse will have a
capacity of twelve and at least one building will be compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act. Ground-mounted solar panels are planned to take one or two of the structures completely off the grid. One of the cabins will use a Struc-
tured Insulated Panel System by SIPS of America. Jimmy Farlow, president of the Danville, Virginia-based firm, is partnering with LC to build a cabin. The panels are made by sandwiching a core of rigid foam plastic insulation between two structural skins of ori- ented strand board (OSB). The raw materials for the panels are made re- gionally, with the foam and OSB made within a seventy-five-mile ra- dius of Danville. Wood used in the construction will all come from Vir- ginia. “When we can learn to live with Mother Nature and not cause any havoc, then we can reap the bounties,” Farlow said.
Spring 2012 LC MAGAZINE 3
Bus ridership soars
GLTCLT consume 30 percent of its resources.
“If all people in the world had a lifestyle comparable to ours, it would probably take three to six Earths to sustain us,” Dr. Werner said. As humans consume more of
everything — open land, forests, seafood, oil, coal, minerals — the Earth is stressed with consequences such as global warming. While 98 percent of climate scientists know that climate change is occurring, only 50 percent of Americans believe in global warming. Why? “People al- ways act in their own self-interest,” Dr. Werner said. “As a psychologist I can say that
humans are fundamentally not ra- tional,” he said. “We’re willing to sacrifice others for ourselves.” The business model of growth —
produce more so consumers will buy more — is not sustainable. “To sup- port all of us, we’re having to destroy the natural environment,” he said. Dr. Werner said we must educate
people to have fewer children and perhaps hand out birth control as we hand out food. There must be a cultural shift in the way we are doing business.
Ridership on the Greater Lynch- burg Transit Co. (GLTC) buses has climbed 56 percent from last year when the College started offering free rides to students, fac- ulty, and staff with a valid college ID. Members of the LC
community boarded the buses 6,801 times between Aug. 1 and Dec. 1, 2011, compared with 4,358 boardings during the same period in 2010, according to GLTC data. Ridership spiked in
August through Octo- ber with an average of 800 additional board- ings each month. Octo- ber saw the most traffic with 2,124 boardings. The free ridership
program is aimed at re- ducing the carbon footprint of the cam- pus community. During the 2010 academic year, members of the LC community boarded GLTC buses more than 10,000 times.
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