Allegheny Prof: 'Easy Green' Won't Do

Ask somebody to describe their favorite teacher and you likely won't hear a story about a warm and fuzzy personality. The teachers who resonate most are usually tough, and clear-eyed. That should mean a wide audience for Michael Maniates, a professor of political science and environmental science at Allegheny College.

Maniates took to the op-ed pages of The Washington Post just before Thanksgiving to say that all our warm and fuzzy solutions to global warming aren't going to be enough. "Obsessing over recycling and installing a few special light bulbs won't cut it," he wrote. "We need to be looking at fundamental change in our energy, transportation and agricultural systems rather than technological tweaking on the margins, and this means changes and costs that our current and would-be leaders seem afraid to discuss. Which is a pity, since Americans are at their best when they're struggling together, and sometimes with one another, toward difficult goals."

It's a good message, and one that should probably be nailed to a few doors just like Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses to the Schlosskirche in Wittenberg.

Maniates hails from an institution that has been committed to clear-eyed thinking about the environment. Its president for the last decade, Richard J. Cook, once studied remediation efforts at the infamously polluted Love Canal in upstate New York. The environmentalism that Cook has instilled at Allegheny--in the classroom and around the campus--is likely to persist long after he leaves the western Pennsylvania college next spring: Earlier this month, Allegheny was named one of the 11 pilot colleges and universities in the Clinton Foundation's Climate Initiative to green higher ed's campuses.