Two environmental wins touted for state and college

Wednesday, Dec. 9, 2009

A press conference at St. Mary's College of Maryland announced recently two environmental victories, one for the state and one for the college.

Environment Maryland, a Baltimore-based group, released a report stating that the state's greenhouse gas emissions dropped 6 percent between 2004 and 2007.

At the same Nov. 12 meeting, Sophomore Emily Saari, co-president of the Student Environmental Action Commission, said the student body's decision two years ago to voluntarily impose a fee to help offset the campus' climate impact shows that young people are demanding change and willing to work for it.

"Students here have had many victories in our campaigns," she said, and the college cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 80 percent, representing 12,000 metric tons of conserved carbon.

Shane Hall, an alumnus who is now the school's "sustainability fellow," said students are "not satisfied with the amount of war, the amount of poverty, the amount of disease and the living conditions around the world." Innovations at the college's Goodpaster Hall, a new science building certified for its environmentally friendly design by the U.S. Green Building Council, are intended to represent a waterless urinal, represent a new commitment to conservation.

David Kung, a math professor, rode a bicycle to campus despite the unrelenting chilly rain because he thought driving to the event would send the wrong message. At the same time, environmental accountability doesn't have to mean suffering, he said.

"It isn't an ideal day to walk around campus but I think it is an ideal day to talk about issues. … We can address this issue and still grow economically. This is not a zero sum game." The announcements at the press conference gave him hope for the future, he said.

Mike Sherling with Environment Maryland lauded the decline in emissions from the state as a whole.

"We can continue to drive the economy while driving down pollution," he said in an interview. The data in the report released by the group, titled "Too Much Pollution: state and national trends in global warming emissions from 1990 to 2007," was drawn from statistics released by the U.S. Department of Energy, he said.

After the speeches, Jim McGuire with the college's planning and facilities department gave visitors a tour of Goodpaster Hall, pointing out flooring made from wood ends from lumber mills and countertops made from recycled cement and glass.

Those on the tour crammed one at a time with McGuire into a narrow room featuring a gigantic, porous "energy recovery wheel" rotating more slowly than the eye can detect. The wheel was part of a system that recovers warm air from hoods in the building's chemistry labs, filters out the chemicals and circulates the air back through the building to heat it.

emitrano@somdnews.com