State’s Greenest Gurus Converge on UCSB

California’s colleges and universities are going green at breakneck speeds and, though there’s plenty of support from administrators, faculty, and staff, the students are truly leading the way.

That was the oft-echoed sentiment this week at UCSB, which for the fourth time in just eight years hosted the UC/CSU/CCC Sustainability Conference, where more than 500 of the state’s brightest minds in higher education converge to show off their latest successes, discuss similar hurdles, and collaborate toward a more eco-friendly future. The four-day conference kicked off on Sunday with tours and finished Wednesday with workshops, but the bulk of the programming was Monday and Tuesday, with each day featuring keynote addresses at Campbell Hall as well as smaller presentations on 13 distinct “tracks,” ranging from the basics of water, waste, health, food, building, transportation, and energy to the more heady topics of social equity, research and curriculum, procurement, and institutionalizing sustainability.

Opening Talks

The sold-out conference, which was also webcast to more than 27 locations around the country, kicked off on Monday morning with a welcome from UCSB’s Ron Cortez and then some opening remarks by Bonnie Reiss, a longtime friend of Maria Shriver and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger who was the governor’s senior advisor for many years and is now a UC Regent. “Each of you are leaders in the modern environmental movement,” she told the crowd in Campbell Hall. Instrumental herself in passing California’s “landmark” bill on carbon cap & trade, Reiss said that ending reliance on fossil fuels was the era’s most important challenge. “What you’re doing right now will determine,” she said, “when they look back in 100 years, did we meet this challenge or didn’t we?” The optimist-by-nature said she believes “that this story will have a happy ending.”