Cultural Politics of Sustainability at UC Santa Cruz

Funded by the UCSC Sustainability Office, this two-quarter-long project comprises a series of UCSC interdisciplinary symposia and workshops dedicated to the topic of sustainability. Organized in relation to the research and practice of the Arts-based Center for Creative Ecology, the series intends to bring to campus speakers representing expertise in diverse areas of sustainability studies, and with them organize discussions with interdisciplinary members of UC faculty and graduate and undergraduate students on the history, meaning, and conflictual elements of sustainability. The project will also focus on critical discussion of UCSC’s Campus Sustainability Plan, including knowledge-sharing and assessment of its meaning, goals, and progress to date.

Fossil Free UC Nov Rally

Sustainabilities at UC Santa Cruz: A Critical Overview

Workshop, May 12, 2016

This May 12 workshop forms part of a critical investigation into what sustainability means at UCSC, what the 2013-16 Campus Sustainability Plan has accomplished to date, and where it will go from here. Supported by a 2015 grant from the Sustainability Office, the workshop is part of the SO’s education and awareness initiative, which, in this case conducted via the Center for Creative Ecologies, offers the opportunity to take stock of sustainability discourse and practice at UCSC to date. With Miriam Greenberg, Ronnie Lipschutz, Elida Erickson, and representatives from Students for Fossil Free UC, the aim is to address sustainability at UCSC–including its variable meanings, achievements, conflicts, and problems–from each speaker’s point of view.

The workshop is prompted by the following questions: How is sustainability defined at UCSC, or might be defined otherwise? Is sustainability largely a matter of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and carbon footprints on campus—and if so, what progress has been made? Or, is such a techno-engineering and economistic framework (including fossil fuel divestment campaigns) inadequate in addressing the ways sustainability inevitably connects to social and class conflicts mediated by such manifold factors as public and private transportation, housing costs, tuition fees, and more broadly structures of inequality found in advanced capitalism? Is UCSC’s a “sustainability of affluence,” and if so, what would be a “sustainability of justice”? How does sustainability, as an operative term and policy marker, connect to social and racial diversity and inequality, and what are the stakes and struggles around that intersection? Do we need to register many “sustainabilities” beyond what is otherwise an impossibly monolithic and conservative term, and finally is it adequate in any form (e.g. ecological sustainability)? What, in other words, should be “sustained,” what “transformed”?

While these questions clearly surpass the ability of a single workshop to address the breadth and depth of issues contained therein, we hope to create the context of dialogue around whatever pressing issues participants wish to bring to the table, which will help us gain insight into our present situation vis-à-vis sustainability at UCSC.

Video recordings:

T.J. Demos: Introduction

Fossil Free UC was formed in 2012 out of California Student Sustainability Coalition’s End Coal campaign, and ever since has called on the UC to divest from the top 200 fossil fuel companies with the largest carbon reserves. As a student-based advocacy group, we call on the University of California to immediately freeze any new investment in the 200 coal, oil, and natural gas companies with the largest carbon reserves, and to divest both directly owned and commingled funds in these companies within five years. Claire Watts is a second year Computer Science major and faculty outreach organizer with Fossil Free UCSC. Cormac Martinez del Rio is an organizer with Fossil Free UC, a trainer with the Student Sierra Coalition, and has worked with the Center for Creative Ecologies at UCSC.

Miriam Greenberg is Associate Professor of Sociology and director of the multi-campus Critical Sustainabilities project, which explores the multiple, competing, historically-rooted discourses of sustainability in Northern California. The project finds that differing approaches to sustainability emphasize different aspects of the famous “3 E’s” of economy, equity, and ecology laid out in the original Bruntland definition of the concept. In addition, it finds that some sustainabilities have been more powerful than others, agreeing with scholars like Julian Agyeman that “equity-deficient” approaches have tended to win out.

Ronnie D. Lipschutz is Professor and Chair of Politics (the latter until June30), Provost of College Eight, and Director of the college’s Minor in Sustainability Studies. He has been active in campus sustainability activities for close to 10 years.

Elida Erickson joined the UCSC campus in 2005, and the Sustainability Office in 2011. Over the years, she has collaborated with the local community, students, faculty and staff to support the goal of Zero Waste by 2020, as well as reduce water usage by 25% in response to the statewide drought in 2014-15. She is also a strong advocate, along with the People of Color Sustainability Collective, for promoting the concept of “inclusive sustainability” to challenge the traditional campus environmental movement to be more open to different cultural notions of what it means to care for the environment. Student engagement and empowerment has always been at the core of Elida’s work on campus since 2005, including her prior roles in residential life and programming at Stevenson College and Colleges 9 & 10.