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.