In these past few days, a miraculous event for the savior of our planet occurred in Austin. South by Southwest (SXSW) Eco brought together sustainable folk from across the country to collect understand the different parts of our world. I had the chance to see speakers like John Norquist, the president of the Congress for New Urbanism and former mayor of Milwaukee; Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell, Bill McKibben just to name a few. The principles of New Urbanism are fundamentally a huge part of Sustainability. Our cities need to be models for efficiency and sustainability, centers for social, cultural, and economic growth. John Norquist highlighted that well.
Bill McKibben, a well-respected environmentalist as the founder of 350.org and professor at Middlebury College in Vermont, spoke as well. He is really a spectacular speaker. He brought attention to the issues at hand while being a funny guy. He mostly touched on fossil fuels vs. alternative energy, as well as the Keystone XL controversy. He had some valid points “You can’t do what we are doing in the world today and not have people be outraged” of course referring to resource depletion. His works have became so popular among more than the environmental community. He even joked about his popularity jokingly discussing his Rolling Stone article “It’s weird ’cause Justin Bieber is on the cover and my article is getting 10x more likes on Facebook [it] must be popular.” Once things got serious, the panel spoke about the need for bipartisan, which according to McKibben it is not a fight between human beings but a fight between us and physics. He remarked that the head of the “richer than God” corporation ExxonMobil acknowledged the reality climate change. To make light of the serious topic McKibben joked “Just because Exxon has nicely melted the Tundra, it doesn’t mean we need to move the corn belt there.” Overall a good event. Lots of networking opportunities. Check it out next year!
Authored by Andy Hirschfeld ’14, Environmental Science and Policy, Co-President of Students for Sustainability