Winter 2008
Thomas Jefferson's identities as statesman, author, architect and founder of our Republic and our University lead many to overlook his lifetime preoccupation with the environment as a naturalist, botanist, horticulturist and incessantly inquisitive student of nature. In 1790, he wrote to his daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph, "There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me."
Jefferson's interests assert themselves in our consciousness cyclically as now one and then another becomes important in our time. Few of these reassertions have been more important than our fairly recent discovery that his commitment to understanding and preserving the natural environment has to do with sustaining life itself on our planet. The contemporary environment today is in every measurable way more seriously damaged than its predecessor was in Jefferson's time. Manifestations have changed. The London gloom described by 19th-century writers has evolved to smog and emissions that threaten the protective elemental shell within which the earth's atmosphere supports life. Problems that once belonged only to large cities now belong to everyone because environmental damage recognizes no political or geographic boundaries. The accelerating degradation of air and water supplies, global warming and the loss of sustainable space and conditions for agriculture are in our time global issues—similar to Jefferson's concerns, but now everyone's problem. Teaching and practicing sustainability, therefore, now permeates every academic program and essentially every discipline.
In recent years, the University has worked to reduce hostile impacts on the environment and to conserve energy. Over the past decade, we have reduced water consumption by about 100 million gallons a year, despite growth. We have upgraded more than four million square feet of our facilities with energy-efficient lighting systems, resulting in significant energy savings and reduction of greenhouse gases. We now recycle more than 40 percent of our trash. Biodiesel now fuels the University's bus fleet, and we pay the City of Charlottesville to allow all faculty, staff and students to ride city buses for free. Dining Services now seeks out and purchases locally grown produce, and the supply is growing because of this effort. Responding to a proposal from students, the dining halls have gone "tray-less" to conserve water and energy. The Rector and Visitors have visibly supported these sustainability efforts: the Board has endorsed Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for major building renovations and for new construction such as the South Lawn Project.
This concern for sustainability extends to teaching and research. Faculty members and students from Architecture, Engineering, Commerce, and the College and Graduate School design and build ecological and affordable modular housing in the ecoMOD project—recently named as a finalist in the 2009 World Habitat Awards Program. Students and faculty members developed the Learning Barge, a floating field station powered by solar and wind energy used to promote environmental education on the Elizabeth River near Norfolk. Another faculty-student team is working to restore seagrasses critical to the ecosystem of the Chesapeake Bay and Virginia's Eastern Shore.
We support this work and celebrate these accomplishments. Yet we recognize that this task is only beginning. To make sustainability a core consideration in all decisions on how we occupy the land, we have teams to monitor compliance with policy. These groups monitor sustainability planning in new and remodeled or recycled buildings, direct consolidation of energy and utility initiatives (energy, water conservation, storm water stewardship and recycling), and manage a sustainability outreach program to teach what we do and how we do it. A new Grounds Plan defines policy principles for sustainability and effective land-use practices. It appears at www.virginia.edu/architectoffice/masterplan.html. And a new presidential committee advises me and others on the quality, diligence and progress of our sustainability programs. To follow this work, visit www.virginia.edu/sustainability.
These points of progress noted, controversy exists also. As student activists have from time to time pressed endowments to sell certain securities and buy others for political or social reasons and labor groups buy shares in public companies whose board composition and policies they want to influence, some activist groups have plans to influence endowments. Generally, they advocate portfolio divestment of shares in companies they consider anti-environmental. Others, backed by brokers who sell "green" stocks or futures, want endowments to buy stocks that they like and promote. A few, perhaps less knowledgeable about investment strategies, want endowments to disclose proprietary information on investment managers and private equity holdings and even to appoint student monitoring committees to judge which stocks are green and which are not. UVIMCO has not agreed to these demands, and in my view cannot. Consequently, we receive high marks on actions that I see as important and valid ways to build sustainability into the curriculum and into our physical actions, and from some activist groups, low marks on measures that reward investment actions that we, along with most major endowments, do not accept as appropriate and lawful. Within the scope of its duty to optimize investment returns, UVIMCO is currently invested in funds that make renewable energy and clean technology investments. At least in current circumstances, that strikes me as the appropriate posture for UVIMCO.
As we continue to teach and practice sustainability, we do so with the sobering knowledge that we are probably a generation late recognizing the seriousness of the threats to our environment. We have some catching up to do, and we must work together to get the job done. In a 1785 letter to James Madison, Mr. Jefferson wrote, "The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour and live on." Like our founder, the members of our University community see the natural environment as our shared treasure, and we share a commitment to sustaining and preserving it for our time and for future generations.
John T. Casteen III