Earth Day spotlights the environment

With the war in Iraq taking most of our attention these days, students, faculty and staff at the University want to remind everyone that it is particularly important now that we continue to pay attention to the environment.

Earth Day is April 22, and a week’s worth of events have been scheduled to mark the annual event.

On April 23, the Environmental Action Group (EAG) and Environmental Programs will host keynote speaker John Peterson Myers, senior adviser to the United Nations Foundation, who will speak on “Environmental Potholes on the Road to Progress.”

Myers’ talk will focus on the alteration of the environment and natural cycles by the proliferation of human activity worldwide. He will address the need to develop new rules for governance and commerce that incorporate these new realities.

His talk, at 8 p.m. April 23 in the Bowen-Thompson Student Union Theater is free. A reception will follow in 201A Union.

As part of the campus Earth Day celebration, a number of organizations will have tables in the Union Oval on Earth Day. EAG and the Environmental Health Program will have a table in the focusing on the Talloire Agreement, to which BGSU is a signatory.

This declaration provides the methods for universities to play a leading societal role in moving toward sustainable development

Signed by President Paul Olscamp in 1991, the declaration was made by presidents, rectors and vice chancellors of universities worldwide expressing concern about the “unprecedented scale and speed of environmental pollution and degradation, and the depletion of natural resources.”

By signing the declaration, the leaders agreed to: increase awareness of environmentally sustainable development (sustainable development is defined as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs); create an institutional culture of sustainability; educate for environmentally responsible citizenship; foster environmental literacy for all; practice institutional ecology; involve all stakeholders; collaborate for interdisciplinary approaches; enhance capacity of primary and secondary schools; broaden service and outreach nationally and maintain the movement.

Also that week, there will be a 5-K Run/Walk and 1-Mile Kids Fun Run on Saturday, April 26 at the Ice Arena, with registration beginning at 7:30 a.m. The run is sponsored by the Environmental Health Student Group and EAG. For more information, call Gary Silverman at 2-6062.

Last year Provost John Folkins convened a faculty committee to study environmental sustainability on campus. The group, which included Silverman and other faculty and staff, produced a report and has continued to meet with the goal of seeing its recommendations implemented. For more information on the report, go to www.bgsu.edu/departments/envh/greencampus.htm.