Today’s Daily Tarheel details a report released by two UCLA professors emeritus in which they say that while some universities may try to be green, they use such an excessive amount of air travel for conferences and trips that they simply can’t be considered environmentally-friendly.
The Daily Tarheel noted that UNC’s current search for a replacement chancellor involves many such trips– all the candidates will fly to Chapel Hill to be interviewed. I found the reaction of the head of the chancellor search committee (and former Chair of the UNC Board of Trustees), Nelson Schwab, interesting. He said the chancellor search doesn’t necessarily have to be environmentally friendly because it’s so important to the university: “We’ve got to find the right candidate, and I’m not letting anything get in the way of that.”
I admit, a chancellor is important for UNC, and flights on airplanes are a fact of modern life.
However, isn’t this the same argument given by the business owner who doesn’t want environmental regulation? Isn’t the economy and a person’s business very important to him/her and the employees of that business?
Aren’t SUVs important to soccer moms who want to pick up all their kids and their friends? Isn’t it important that people be happy with their choice of car?
Isn’t the environment important to future generations?
In other words, everyone else in the world and at UNC must sacrifice everything that’s important to them for the good of the environment, but this chancellor search apparently goes above and beyond any other possible priority and simply must proceed without debating the consequences, come hell or high water.
The head of UNC’s Institute for the Environment, Douglas Crawford-Brown, agrees with me, noting that almost all environmental damage is done in the name of a good reason, so that can’t be an excuse, or everyone would have that excuse.
Tags: UNC, UNC-Chapel Hill, UNC Chancellor search, UNC Chancellor, environment, university impact on environment, UNC environment
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