Speaker addresses ecological issues SMC
By MELANIE BECKER
News Writer
The Saint Mary's biology department, with a grant from the Center for Intercultural Women's Leadership, sponsored Professor Donald Huisingh of the University of Tennessee to speak Wednesday. During the fall of 2001, Susan Duff, visiting professor to the Biology Department, along with several Saint Mary's seniors attended a conference of Huisingh's in Mexico. Duff and the students felt that bringing Huisingh to campus would be relevant to specific campus issues, particularly to create a better recycling program on campus and in response to Karen Ristau, dean of faculty, signing the Earth Charter on behalf of the College last year.
"I hope that his visit starts a dialogue on sustainable development across the curriculum among the faculty and students, and that also the administration at Saint Mary's will begin to think about building sustainable buildings as it moves forward in its building plans," Duff said.
Huisingh holds a bachelor of science, with specialization in genetics, biology and chemistry from the University in Minnesota. Also, he received a doctorate in biochemistry and plant pathology from the University of Wisconsin. Over the last 44 years of his study Huisingh has been commissioned by 96 countries to act as a scientific advisor. Huisingh's latest work, "The Environmental Pressure Indices: Factors to Consider in Designing and Utilizing them so that EU societies Make Progress Toward Sustainability" (2001), was commissioned by the Environmental Department of the European Union.
Huisingh's presentation, "Sustainable Development, Poverty and the World Environment," focused on the connections between poverty, terrorism, overpopulation, globalization, the greenhouse effect, water scarcity and ozone thinning.
His main concern is to try to save the environment through a global mission, which entails finding social equality and taking on responsibility.
"The president of Monterrey University has set a goal to be carbon dioxide neutral by 2020. What has your president done?" Huisingh asked.
According to Huisingh, the number of people, the unit per consumption of a person, the unit of degradation for production and the environmental impact of production contribute to an individual nation's effect on the environment.
The amount of resources and the level of exploitation of other nations have created a large inequality between nations, which Huisingh attributes to the hostility to the United States.
Huisingh said, "If all six billion people on the earth used the consumption of an average U.S. citizen we would need the resources of three earths.'"
According to Huisingh, 20 percent of the world's population is surviving on less than $1 per day. One hundred-eighty countries with 800 million people have insecure and unreliable sources of food.
He said that there are 166 million children malnourished, if we invest 5 percent of current public investments made by developing countries we could reduce the number of malnourished children to 90 million by 2015.
What is needed corresponds to the amount of money spent in one week of global military expenditures.
Huisingh's proposal to reach sustainable development is to find a balance between social equity, economic prosperity and ecological integrity. His suggestions to go about this solution is to consider the connection between society and nature, find ways to do more with fewer resources, understand what is sufficient and work on developing a hydrogen energy system in the United States.
"A lot of changes need to be made. We need people that are educationally curious and want to make [lifestyle] changes. We must accelerate the transition to hydrogen energy," Huisingh said.
All News Stories for Thursday, February 6, 2003
