Help students develop responsibility for planet, UB prof urges

By ELLEN GOLDBAUM
News Services Editor

"What we tell our students about our present behavior, its consequences and future prospects if it continues, amounts to a lot of bad news," Paul H. Reitan said at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America held Oct. 28 in Denver, Colo.

"It may lead to hopelessness and desperation or denial. We have to help our students get beyond this point, to go beyond science to fundamental philosophical questions of values and of what humans are capable of being."

He presented his paper, "Human Interactions with Earth Systems: Part of a Holistic Education About a Sustainable Human Society on Earth," at a GSA symposium on "Interdisciplinary Strategies for Teaching About Earth as a System."

Reitan, who teaches a course at UB called "Global Environmental Science," said instructors need to take an "ecophilosophical" approach by adopting behaviors that are consistent with holistic ethics, such as an acceptance that humans live in an integrated, complex system.

Only when people know what is re quired-the science-and adopt an ethical system that causes them to want to act accordingly-the philosophy-can sustainable behavior occur," said Reitan.

"When students learn that they live in such a system, in which the animate and inanimate parts of the Earth influence one another, then their concerns extend beyond themselves to the larger community," he continued.

Reitan said that once equipped with this kind of worldview, students will no longer feel that they are making a sacrifice when they do the "right" thing for the environment.

"This is the worldview that we have to bring to our students if humans are to be long-term participants in the life of planet Earth, and if there is to be a sustainable future for us," he said.

Reitan noted that in his course and others like it, certain facts about the extent of degradation that has resulted from human activity cannot be avoided. They include statistics, such as:

· Humans now use more than 50 percent of the available surface water runoff from rain and snow

· In the past 40 years, nearly one third of the world's arable land has been lost to erosion

· Humans now appropriate for their own use more than 40 percent of global plant growth.

He noted that the best scientific guidance available has revealed that unless major changes are made in the way we live, there will be serious worldwide collapse of human social systems within the next century.