The Badger Herald: News: Mayor, singer promote environmental policies

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Mayor, singer promote environmental policies

Eco-fair distributes free food, advice to concerned citizens

KATE BRENNER/Herald photo

Mayor Dave Cieslewicz and Guster’s Adam Gardner join in an eco-panel.

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By Kyle Mianulli
Wednesday, April 29, 2009 11:49 p.m.

3 Vote 0 Votes

The nationwide Campus Consciousness Tour, led by popular music group Guster, hit the University of Wisconsin Wednesday to raise awareness and initiate meaningful environmental reform.

The Wisconsin Student Public Interest Research Group’s Big Red Go Green campaign joined Guster’s lead singer Adam Gardner’s Reverb campaign and several other campus environmental groups on Library Mall for a campus “eco-fair,” where participants’ concern for the environment was rewarded with free food and raffle prizes.

One of the primary goals of the fair was to further a statewide postcard campaign to support global warming legislation, according to Matt Wessale, BRGG coordinator and UW junior.

Wessale later joined Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, Gardner and other panel members for an environmental forum that discussed the environmental futures of Wisconsin and the country at large.

In an effort to contextualize the environmental situation in Madison, Wessale said 80 percent of the city’s electricity comes from coal power. As coal is not native to Wisconsin, he said this means we are spending millions of dollars supporting other economies.

Jeff Plowman, panelist and executive director of the Sustainable Biodiesel Alliance, agreed, saying a drastic shift in energy models is an essential part of environmental reform in Madison and the rest of the country.

“We can’t continue with these large centralized models. We have to look at community-based models of energy production which help social, economic and environmental causes,” Plowman said.

Despite the overall optimistic tone of the forum, there was some disagreement between panel members over what the general strategy for environmental reform should be.

Panel member and We Conserve Program Director Faramarz Vakili said the primary goal should be getting people to care through education.

“We will conserve what we love, we love what we understand, and we understand what we are taught,” Vakili said.

Gardner similarly said he sees a troubling trend of apathy among students and citizens.

“I definitely see a disconnect between sustainability initiatives that are happening and students actually seeing them and getting involved,” Gardner said.

Cieslewicz said he was not as concerned about any alleged apathy and argued meaningful reform needs to be institutional.

“I think the most important thing we can do as a city is to change the way we think and institutionalize that change, both as a municipal government and as a community,” he said.

He added the way to achieve mass reform is make these changes ingrained so people do not have to be constantly conscious of their environmental choices, which can be accomplished by making sure smart environmental choices are easier for later generations.

Plowman agreed, saying meaningful environmental change must begin with a change in peoples’ beliefs

“It’s about thinking differently, getting away from this idea that we have some sort of right to cheap energy or a right to consume,” he said.

Even before this change in thought, the first step inevitably needs to be legislative, according to Wessale, which he said will solidify and encourage such transitions.

3 Comments | Leave a comment

Anonymous | April 30, 2009 9:05 AM | Reply
IP hash: 83527407

Wow…. real deep thinkers here! Indoctrinate. Legislate. Subjugate.
Where have we heard this manifesto before? Hmmmm….

If you want to use local WI materials to produce clean energy, there is an unused uranium mine up near Crandon WI filled with centuries worth of fissile material! You can have your yurt and heat it too! You can build new power plants that don’t emit CO2 (Bad CO2! Badd!)and produce Wisconsin energy from Wisconsin resources! You can export excess power from the zero emmision generating plants and sell fissile material to other power plant operators also! You can bring real jobs to an economically depressed area at the same time, a real Win - Win situation!

Wait a minute! That would be doing something constructive, meaningful, AND achievable in Wisconsin. We can’t have that in Wisconsin! Quick - Let’s all join hands and sing our Barbara Streisand Eco-Fair anthem and drown out those bad thoughts!

”..Where are the Clowns? There ought to be Clowns. Don’t bother, They’re here!”

We embraced the grain to E85 gasoline “sustainable biofuel” bandwagon in Wisconsin, these last 15 years. Nearly half of the corn to alcohol distilling operations in Wisconsin are going bankrupt this year, because it ISN’T sustainable. The net energy yield is low and so is the price of competing energy sources, making this heavily tax payer subsidized Ponzy scheme uneconomic by any measure. “Sustainable biodiesel” is just the next Ponzy scheme being queued up by the Eco-No-I-Misseds right now, to siphon another 15 years of your tax dollars in subsidies.

C’mon Sheeple! Wake up!

Anonymous | April 30, 2009 12:37 PM | Reply
IP hash: cace9009

Clearly the previous poster doesn’t understand the economics behind putting a nuclear power plant in, and how much more expensive it is than things like investing in energy efficiency, a smart grid, and wind power. Regardless of our disagreement it is pretty impressive all the things WISPIRG has done this year. I have been seeing them and Big Red Go Green doing shit all over campus. Aren’t they running the dorm energy competition too? color me impressed

Anonymous | May 1, 2009 3:23 PM | Reply
IP hash: c5096552

Clearly, the 9:05 poster has a both BS and MS degrees in Engineering. Clearly they have an in depth understanding of real world economics and recognize the BS of “smart grids” and the clear inefficiencies of wind power!

Regardless of our disagreements, it is clear that WISPIG and Big Red Slo Green are indeed speading an impressive load of shit all over the campus!

Have a Rainbow Day!