West Virginia University students are staging ateach-inthis week to boost awareness of global warming.
Members of the WVU Sierra Student Coalition are among the thousands of students who will participate in Focus the Nation, a national campaign to call attention to the issue and promote solutions. Hundreds of schools are joining the effort.
To kick off the event, WVU will take part in a live, interactive webcast,The 2% Solutionto be broadcast at select college campusesat 8 p.m. Wednesday (Jan. 30) in the College of Business and Economics, Room 459.
The webcast, produced by the National Wildlife Federation, will feature Stanford University climate scientist Stephen Schneider, sustainability expert Hunter Lovins, green jobs pioneer Van Jones and youth climate leaders. It will focus on the need to decrease carbon emissions by 2 percent each year for the next 40 years to reach the goal scientists advocate of 80 percent reduction by 2050.
The webcast is free, and audiences can weigh in with cell phone voting, said James Kocton, Sierra Student Coalition faculty adviser and associate professor in the Division of Plant and Soil Sciences at WVU .
On Thursday (Jan. 31), the WVU Sierra Student Coalition will host a series of speakers from the University, musical acts and other activities from 9:45 a.m.-7 p.m. in the Mountainlair ballrooms. Ron Justice, Morgantown mayor and director of Student Organization Services; Steve Kite, Faculty Senate chair; and Joe Fisher, associate vice president of facilities and services, will offer welcome remarks.
In addition, faculty from the Davis College of Agriculture, Forestry and Consumer Sciences, Eberly College of Arts and Sciences and the Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center, as well as an expert from WVU Hospitals, will participate in panel discussions. Topics will include international policy, the discovery of global warming, global warming and health, and coal minings impact on community health.
Erica Sladky from the WVU Biodiesel Club is also scheduled to give a talk about student-driven solutions at the University at 6 p.m. Members of the campus group are chemical engineering students who are working on a project to turn used cooking oil from WVU Dining Services into biodiesel for vehicles.
Following the panel discussions, the Sierra Student Coalition will hold a student talent contest at 7 p.m. for anyone who wants to sing, dance or perform. The daylong event is free and open to the public. For a complete schedule of speakers and topics, go tohttp://www.wvussc.org/focusthenation/main.html.
Focus the Nation has the potential to drastically increase environmental awareness on campus and empower those already attuned,said Nate Askins, Focus the Nation program coordinator.Focus the Nation represents the work the Sierra Student Coalition is doing to encourage WVU to reduce emissions and is an important catalyst to later environmental preservation victories.
Kocton, whose expertise includes environmental impact assessment, said the goal of the campaign is to educate and energize students, faculty, staff and the general public about finding creative solutions to global warming.
Global warming is an issue that will define our generation,he said.West Virginia, in particular, needs to think of solutions that will protect the environment and the economy.
This is a unique event,Kocton added,and this will be the biggest event that WVU s Sierra Student Coalition has ever held. There are over 1,100 campuses across the country taking place in the day of awareness. We want to get as many people involved as possible.
No other generation has had to face a threat as significant as global warming, said Eban Goodstein, Focus the Nation founder and director and professor of economics at Lewis&Clark College in Oregon.
For additional information on the national initiative, visithttp://www.focusthenation.org/.
WVU s event is sponsored by the WVU Sierra Student Coalition, WVU Young Democrats, WVU Biodiesel Project, Muslim Student Association, Engineers Without Borders and the Society of Environmental Professionals. To learn more, go tohttp://www.wvussc.org/focusthenation/main.html.