I took Environmental Studies 101 during my first college semester 20 years ago with Dick Andrus, a professor who has just marked 36 years of teaching at Binghamton University. I thought it’d be good to check back with him and see what he’s talking about in that class now.
Q. What are your new Envi 101 students like? They coming to the class more ‘eco-savvy’ than my class did?
Andrus at work: still planting seeds of wisdom after thirty-six years.Vic LamoreuxA. I don’t think so. They don’t seem to connect much with environmental issues. They’ve done a lot of computer gaming and television watching but very little camping and almost no hunting. And probably less than 1% have eaten roadkill! Though I do have one student who catches and eats squirrels at his apartment in Binghamton.
Q. Used to be that you ended the last lecture with, ‘Well, that’s where we’re at: so either work to be part of the solution, or eat drink and be merry.’ How do you end it now?
A. My message is now more of ‘Good luck dealing with what is coming.’ I leave them with something between Bill McKibben and Derrick Jensen. From McKibben it’s how to get the best out of a less resource-rich world and with Jensen it’s we don’t have a choice but work to fix things.
Q. In 1989 you were critiquing corn ethanol, talking about climate change, and sustainable agriculture. What are you talking about now that’s similarly ahead of the curve?
A. It’s getting harder to get ahead of the curve without crashing going around it. But my corn ethanol critique is getting stronger, more along the lines of it being the stupidest idea for mankind but a great idea for ADM and Cargill. I do a lot these days on food and what our eating habits do to us, our environment, and other people. I have also become quite critical about the “no-meat solution,” by trying to teach students that farming without animals (for dairy products and meat) is ridiculously unsustainable in our region. I also try and teach them “more power” is a bad solution and that power corrupts one’s relationship to the environment, a la Jensen and Draffan’s Strangely Like War critique of forestry.
Q. Years before I got there, you and some others persuaded the university to not build dorms in an adjacent woodland, which then became its enormous Nature Preserve. It’s now recognized as a jewel of the campus, a great ‘lab’ for ecological teaching and research with its mixed hardwoods, wetlands, and clearings, and also its trail complex makes for popular recreation. How rare is this asset relative to other colleges?
A. With several purchases since you were here, we now have about 700 acres of undeveloped land as part of the campus. From the results of an independent study a few years ago we now know that this is the biggest, and probably most diverse, such [campus] preserve in the U.S., and it is used all the time by countless students and locals. As a result of a very generous endowment, we even have a Steward of the Natural Areas who does field trips, habitat management, trail upkeep, invasive species removal, and even teaches a natural history course.
Q. What have some of your students gone on to do that you’re happy about?
A. How about becoming Mayor of Binghamton? Matt Ryan was an Environmental Studies major. He’s been very supportive of environmental initiatives like shade trees and community gardens—a huge change for the city. Then there are the organic farmers—several have stayed local and their farms have become destinations for the [Ecological Agriculture class] field trips that they once took themselves!
Q. Still biking to campus every day?
A. Not much. I’ve fallen into the habit of driving my little pickup truck, which I use to scavenge lumber, firewood, compost material, etc., on my way to and from school.
Q. What new environmental courses are you offering now?
A. I’m teaching my third round of Environmental Literature, in which many of the books are by writers who regularly appear in Orion magazine. I do a mix of fiction and non-fiction, and I think some of the fiction offers a better take on our situation than non-fiction. I especially like World Made by Hand by James Kunstler, The Memory of Old Jack by Wendell Berry, Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut, and Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide. Oh, and anything by Barbara Kingsolver!
Q. If you had unlimited time and resources, what’s one course you’d like to offer? Cryptozoology, maybe?
A. Plant psychology! And what’s so funny about cryptozoology? Actually I’d like to have the time to teach mosses again but I don’t see that happening. Just too many higher priorities. I’ll be happy if I can just hang onto Envi Lit.
Q. You’ve been taking students to Costa Rica for the lab portion of your tropical forest ecology class for about 20 years now. How are the studies and restoration efforts on that degraded piece of former grazing land going?
The restoration project is called the Tropical Forestry Initiative and every July I take about 15 students there for a month, where we learn tropical ecology and do real conservation work planting trees and erosion control plants. We’ve gotten more & more involvement from the locals; our original plantings are quite large trees now, and the wildlife is moving back in. We’re expanding our interest a bit into more sustainable food production and have several thriving and tasty tilapia populations.
We plant mixed stands of native species (Wes Jackson’s approach of using nature as a model) that includes legumes, some faster growing trees, some with more valuable wood, some better near streams, some slow growing. And we’re now working on mixing in fruit trees as an added incentive to the locals (who might want income and food) and to gringos (who are attracted to the idea of trees that attract birds, monkeys, etc.).
Q. What’s your prognosis for the ‘environment’ and for humans? Think we can figure out a way to have both?
A. That’s a huge question. We’ve spent a long time and tremendous amounts of energy digging the hole we’re in and we still haven’t stopped digging! The climate question trumps all, of course, as we still have only a dim idea of how that will play out. After teaching for 36 years that we need to do something serious to prevent a major disaster, and then seeing us do little except the same thing, it’s hard to be a real optimist. I have almost no sense of how it will play out.
U.N. climate chief raises the temperature with racy novel
EPA capitulates on ethanol, hearts clean coal
The jobs are in the trees
Comments
View as Flat
Erik Hoffner Posted 9:04 am
01 Dec 2009
Erik
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 11:23 am
01 Dec 2009
It would be a good recurring topic. Different writers here on Grist interviewing teachers that helped inspire their green careers.
I sure would like to hear more about his farming prescriptions and contrast, compare, and discuss (argue?) them. My plan stresses biodigestion of waste biomass for organic fertilizer and renewable grid backup energy. And all the tricks that organic farmers use now, like cover crops, crop rotation, pest repellent plants, mulching, and the usual organic fertilizer application, watering, soil testing and so forth all sent through a laptop to plugin battery powered robots charged on solar/wind power.
Pinpoint organic fertilizer/water injection in conjunction with soil testing at mass prodution speed 24/7 would surely exceed the productivity level of any kind of chemical ag.
These robots could also do the mixed planting of native plants that he is using with machine efficiency and mass production, but still program in a natural random planting pattern. I run/ski/snowshoe by 1930s CCC era monocrop tree farms everyday here in northern Wis, it's fascinating to see how natural randomness is taking over.
Ask the prof if he has heard of any projects to use robotics and/or sod farm techniques in biodiversity restoration. Suppressing weeds and planting native species is a multi-year, world-restored-by-hand, piece work effort now. Not nearly fast enough or on a large enough scale.
I'm kind of thinking his affection for "World Made By Hand" sets him in opposition to hi-tech of the robotic kind, then again, Vonnegut might have loved this vision of agriculture? Check out R Brautigan's story envisioning wildlife and computerts living in peaceful harmony. Acid flashback or visionary dream? Hehehey.
Where's a link to that Brautigan story now? Was it contained here, "In Watermelon Sugar"? Not sure, but the world made of "watermelon sugar" is fascinating.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Watermelon_Sugar
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 11:39 am
01 Dec 2009
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
by Richard Brautigan
I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.
I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.
I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.
Permalink
Erik Hoffner Posted 8:38 am
02 Dec 2009
Wish I'd asked him his thoughts on biofuel from switchgrass, as in this new study supporting its efficacy for making fuel:
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2009/12/switchgrass-produces-biomass-efficiently?cmpid=WNL-Wednesday-December2-2009
My guess is that he'd view it much like corn ethanol, which in 1989 he called 'a plan for mining the soil to exhaustion.' But perhaps his view on this kind of biofuel is more nuanced. Missed opportunity.
Erik
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 9:29 am
02 Dec 2009
Yep, one would hope that cellulosic ethanol wouldn't fool him.
I think biodiversity restoration might win over some "World Made By Hand" admirers to renewable powered robotic organic ag. Maybe wealthy patrons would support natural prairie restoration on their own land with garden interplanting.
A random planted garden in amongst natural prairie, where when the garden is harvested the prairie takes over again, no weeds, soil fetility and sequestration right along with organic food production. That might show the possibilities and get real capital behind a re-evolution of ag.
The Vonnegut connection is fascinating, I would like to audit that class! "Cat's Cradle" is really the ultimate eco-warning.
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 9:46 am
02 Dec 2009
A harvestor could be followed by a solar heater that activates seeds like fire normally does. But I would prefer the biomass be turned into biogas to back up a renewable grid and organic fertilizer to add back to the soil.
Gas guzzling biomass is a fatally flawed soil devestating, GHG releasing plan, especially using chemical ag. Those same prairies with wind machines charging electric vehicles would actually replace oil. There isn't enough biomass on this planet to keep on guzzling gas as usual.
Permalink
GYEcitizen Posted 12:58 pm
02 Dec 2009
http://vimeo.com/7551230
Permalink
atreyger Posted 1:37 pm
02 Dec 2009
Go Dick!
Awesome to see my old professor on here.
When are they going to let some hunters in the nature preserve? I know of about 30 deer that would like to be some steak.
Permalink
Winclemo Posted 12:30 am
03 Dec 2009
Permalink
Melissajoy Posted 7:02 pm
03 Dec 2009
Permalink
Scott G Posted 7:12 pm
03 Dec 2009
I had a similarly influential prof... would be interested to hear his response to a couple of these q's.
Scott
Permalink
bailsout Posted 11:28 pm
03 Dec 2009
Permalink
Winclemo Posted 12:08 am
04 Dec 2009
Permalink