On November 5, Governor Baldacci and the Maine Department of Environmental Protection presented the USM Biodiesel Partnership with an award for environmental excellence for contributions to public health and environment. CONGRATULATIONS USM! The award is displayed in a case in the Woodbury Campus Center to remind us of our remarkable achievement of working within our means to affect positive change at the local level. Over the past year the USM community-staff, the student senate, students and faculty alike-made a conscious decision to work toward running a more environmentally responsible bus fleet. By opting to use biodiesel in our buses, we are hopefully facilitating the availability and sale of biodiesel to other would-be consumers in the Portland area.
The biodiesel campaign was a long process that involved making a commitment. I hope that time will tell that the coordinated USM Partnership, which includes biodiesel suppliers and VIP Charter Bus Co., remains committed to the idea of growing the local market for biodiesel. The other side of this effort is conservation. The anti-idling campaign is still unresolved yet promises to reduce our overall emissions even more than burning biodiesel.
In the course of the campaign, which started over three years ago, I spoke with directly and helped educate literally hundreds of students about biodiesel. Most of the students I talked to didn’t know much if anything about biodiesel. In addition to educating USM students, I also represented the USM Biodiesel Initiative at a national conference for climate change activism at Harvard University and a state-wide conference for students in Maine at the Chewonki Foundation last spring. I would like to think I connected indirectly with thousands more students through these events and through the two fellowships (EnviroCitizen and National Wildlife Federation) I had. The website I created for the Biodiesel Initiative is still active and full of information: http://students.usm.maine.edu/sarah.ferriter.
It’s interesting to point out that Harvard University decided to switch its fleet to biodiesel last spring and to compare what they are doing with what USM is doing. The decision at Harvard came from the top down. Their administration decided to allocate part of their multi-billion dollar endowment to build their own private biodiesel fueling station. Good for Harvard!
USM doesn’t even own its bus fleet, let alone have the kind of resources it takes to construct a private fueling station. This is one reason that the “Partnership” is so special. The Governor’s Award for Environmental Excellence should stand as a testament to the ability to accomplish great things by our openness and willingness to cooperate in order to realize common goals. Our ability to work together as a community gives me hope for the future. The strength of the students’ voice gives me reason to hope for our democracy. The power to get biodiesel from three different suppliers within months of our decision (Union Oil, Irving Oil and Frontier Energy) gives me respect for our domestic market. Community, democracy, awareness and the economy are the means by which we have made such a remarkable change.
Improving health, strengthening national security and slowing the pace of global climate change are vital issues that can only be tackled if people are willing to reach out to one another at the local level. As all of the stakeholders involved in the USM Biodiesel Partnership must know, the benefits of such actions will far exceed any minor risks involved. We are all aware that climate change is becoming increasingly evident, health concerns such as cancer and asthma are worsening and we are facing the prospect of more unaffordable wars over dwindling limited natural resources in the future.
By thinking about what we have managed to accomplish in our own community, we should feel empowered to continue to work within our means to find more innovative and collaborative ways for solving the world’s problems. Unity and success are much more tangible at the local level. I look forward to seeing where the “biodiesel bus” takes our community in the months and years ahead.