“Sustainability at UBC isn’t just a word to define — it’s a term that defines us and how we interact with the world.”
This is the first line of UBC’s “commitment” to a sustainable future.
“UBC’s strategic plan, Place and Promise, commits all aspects of the university — its infrastructure, research, teaching and learning elements — to exploring and exemplifying social, economic and environmental sustainability.”
This is the second line of that statement.
I’m sure people have noticed that, despite the discourse which UBC presents to us and the world, this institution is incredibly conservative. You would have thought that the establishment here at UBC would heed the call of their students, staff and faculty and divest, respecting the basic principles of democracy. Alas, it is not so and we, the students who voted in favour of divestment in a referendum, now sit quietly as we observe or simply discuss in class the fact that our institution of higher education completely disregards the very principles which our society values as the cornerstone of civilization — the democratic process.
So what can we learn from this?
Deep ecology believes that the root cause of our environmental issues are the very principles which underpin our social and cultural systems that inform our lives. In other words, there is something fundamentally flawed with our institution called UBC and there is also something fundamentally flawed with ourselves.
Above all, what we can take out of the philosophy of deep ecology is an idea presented to us by its founder, Arne Naess, as “deep questioning” — a questioning which requires a reimagining of our entire systems of being. This reimagining travels deep into our social, economic and cultural systems as opposed to being a shallow critic, doing little to disrupt our cozy lives as consumers, colonizers, capitalists and as university students.
We can take these ideas, which are part of the deep ecology program but by no means created by it, and begin to explore ourselves from this perspective. What does it mean to be a student? What responsibilities do we have as knowledge seekers to be knowledge activists? Does that responsibility begin once we get our “pink slip,” so to speak, or now within and without the classroom?
As students of environment and sustainability here at UBC with the knowledge which we have been exploring in class, we can easily come to the conclusion that the issues that we are looking to address in today's world and here at UBC are not only environmental, but also social issues. With this knowledge, we have a responsibility to be engaged in disrupting the processes that are damaging our ecology.
How do we move forward?
Before we will be able to save the planet, we must be able to save ourselves — that involves an evolution of the campus community. We need to be able to challenge and question the fundamental purpose of UBC and its actions, to be able to stand up for what we learn and what we believe in. We need to act, to confront our inertia and hold those in power accountable because if we can’t do that here at a university, how will we ever be able to transform our cities, governments and societies?
We should be exploring an activism that seeks to heal both social and environmental divides. An activism that heals people first, institutions second and then our environment as a consequence of such an action. This activism starts here at home.
As students, we can demand change. It has happened on the streets of Paris in ’68 and more recently in Montréal — that is a fact. But as long as we believe that sustainability is something abstract that happens in a set of policies disconnected from our personal and collective actions, we will not be able to bring on the changes that are necessary.
I refuse to come to the conclusion that we are all apathetic and I invite you all to participate in an activism that transforms how we interact with each other — to engage with these issues full time, as a collective, in order to seek “deep answers.” This will be our real education. The future is now, for the revolution will not be televised — it will be live.
Lucas Worsdell is a fourth-year environment and sustainability major.