Raven: Teach about the environment in all majors

Peter H. Raven delivers the Jill and Ken Iscol Distinguished Environmental Lecture in Call Alumni Auditorium, April 29. Frank DiMeo/University Photography

By Roger Segelken

The topic for Missouri Botanical Garden Director Peter H. Raven's 2004 Iscol Distinguished Environmental Lecture on April 29 was "Biodiversity, Sustainability and Cornell." His Call Alumni Auditorium audience listened through an hour of gloomy statistics and dire predictions to hear what Cornell can do to help an imperiled planet. The answer from the renown conservationist was, in a word: education.

Regarding biodiversity, Raven said, "the situation today is so awful, so threatening to human future civilization," and it probably will get worse. He cited numbers for species extinctions, starting with the fossil record, which shows that "hard" organisms leaving fossil evidence apparently went extinct at a worldwide rate of about 10 species per year throughout prehistory. As humans achieved ascendancy on the planet, the species extinction rate rose to around 100 per year, Raven said, and currently several thousand species disappear every year. That annual rate soon will rise to tens of thousands, he predicted, noting that millions of species have yet to be identified and cataloged.

A leading cause of biodiversity loss -- second only to habitat destruction from land development, Raven said -- is the arrival of alien, invasive species -- things like the zebra mussel, an aquatic nuisance, and purple loosestrife, which out-competes native plants in North American wetlands. Coping with invasive species costs an estimated $140 billion a year in costs to the American economy, nearly as much, Raven noted, as U.S. expenditures on law enforcement. "Biodiversity will only survive in a world that has reached a state of sustainability," Raven said. "If we're going to base sustainability on biodiversity, it's pretty dumb of us to be killing [biodiversity] off at such a fast rate."

Yet, biodiversity holds little interest for starving people in impoverished regions where the first priority is keeping their part of the human family from going extinct, Raven observed. Worldwide, one out of eight people is starving, "their bodies wasting away while the brains of children cannot develop properly," he said, and one of two humans, worldwide, is malnourished.

Getting back to Cornell, Raven displayed the university's list of goals for sustainable futures (see "Cornell University and the Environment" at http://www.cfe.cornell.edu/cfe/cuenvironment.cfm). He said many of the goals are being achieved, adding: "Cornell University should be very proud of its record of training people all over the world," particularly in Mexico, China and Brazil. And Cornell's campus and the surrounding community of Ithaca have a good record for conserving resources and encouraging energy-efficient transportation systems, he said. "You have one of the finest records in the environment of any institution in the world.

"But here's one," Raven said, "where you could do better." He called for environmental education in all the majors, not just fields where that curricular component might be expected, such as agriculture or natural resources. The University of Georgia system, with more than 40 campuses, teaches everyone something about the environment. Surely Cornell can do the same, he said. "Whether you're going to be a poet or a junk-bond salesman, the health of the environment will determine your future."

Raven spent two days on campus as part of his Iscol Lectureship, which brings prominent scholars, newsmakers, scientists and leaders to Cornell to address environmental issues of paramount importance to humankind. He met with students, faculty members and research staff, and participated in panel discussions, then delivered a second lecture April 30, titled "How Many Species Will Survive the 21st Century?"