It’s only their third week of class, but University of Virginia students yesterday got an environmental wake up call. WMRA’s Jordy Yager was on hand.
About 75 people packed into UVA’s Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy on Wednesday to hear Patrick Regan speak.
[Sound of applause and Regan starting to talk…]
Regan’s got a lengthy title — professor of peace studies and political science at the Kroc Institute of International Peace Studies at Notre Dame. But his message, was simple: Climate change is very real. And we must do more.
So why aren’t we?
PATRICK REGAN: I think it’s asking you to change your behavior. It’s asking you to quit consuming more. And to the extent that we’d like the life that we have, it’s built on carbon consumption. So we either have to pay a lot to reduce carbon consumption. Or we have to change our behavior.
Regan says that either the U.S. can invest in smarter technology — more environmentally friendly cars, more energy efficient homes, better lightbulbs. Or we can change how we use existing technology — we can drive less, rely less on coal-fired electricity, unplug our home DVR’s more often. But either way, a change has to come, he says.
Regan focuses much of his work on the politics of climate change, and told the crowd that, unfortunately, global corporations are still winning out.
So I had to ask, are we at least making headway? Leaning in the right direction?
REGAN: I think we have to make headway. It doesn’t matter if we’re leaning or not, we just have to jump in and do it, or your generation will have a lot harder time than my generation, because we’ll get through this, you won’t.