During last week’s Rose Café events, Professors Shanjun Li, Greg Poe, and David Wolfe discussed a number of environmental issues both domestically and abroad. Due to the professors’ various backgrounds, the panel was very diverse. While at times there was disagreement about an international vs. domestic approach on pollution control, for the most part, the professors agreed upon the most cost effective and most environmentally sounds approach to tackle these issues.

Remarkably, when the professors asked who was involved with environmental activism, beyond shutting off your lights when you leave a room, the response was very underwhelming. While I am conscious about polluting our environment and wasting our valuable resources, I feel as though I could be doing much more. Although I agree that I should be involved more with environmental activism, I am rather frustrated by how the professors danced around environmental protection actions. I believe the professors’ lack of complete support for any one particular environmental measure stems from their cost benefit analysis. While trade offs are a huge factor to consider, such as fracking over using coal, they cannot and should not discourage people to the point where they do nothing at all.

Overall, I enjoyed this particular question and answer session. However, in the future I would recommend the professors engaging in a more informative discussion with some sort of presentation to educate the audience on some of the current environment debates in order to provoke a more nuanced discussion. I truly look forward to attending, If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front, this upcoming week. While I do not know a whole lot about environmental activism and ‘environmental terrorism,’ I am eager to learn about the issues.