Sustainability conference looks to next 100 years in Oklahoma

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City),  Mar 8, 2007  by David Page

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As Oklahoma celebrates 100 years of statehood during 2007, the Oklahoma Sustainability Network is envisioning the next century - economically as well as environmentally.

That is why the network's annual Oklahoma Sustainability Conference will feature representatives of industry, agriculture, architects, city planners and government.

"The Oklahoma Alliance for Manufacturing Excellence is becoming more green," said Roy Peters, the group's president.

"We have helped them to become more green by reducing waste and reducing the amount of square footage needed to produce their products," he said.

About 400-500 people are expected to attend the conference on April 20-21 at the National Weather Center in Norman. Information about the conference is available at www.oksustainability.org.

"The conference's focus on sustainability is very well timed, since sustainability is just another way of saying that we intend to stay a while," said Miles Tolbert, state secretary of environment. "In fact, you need to look no further than the headlines about the development of the state's alternative-fuels industry and debates over water to see how crucial sustainability is to the state's future."

Sustainability issues on the conference agenda include farming and agriculture, green building, biofuel, wind and solar energy, business and industry, food, climate change, land use, transportation, religion and ethics, activism, ecological footprints, and the natural environment.

Meals and snacks offered at the conference will be made of locally grown foods to support the local economy and ecology. Buying enough local produce to feed participants requires conference planners to place catering orders several months in advance.

"This difficulty is indicative of why we need this conference," said Jennifer Gooden, conference coordinator. "Part of the Oklahoma Sustainability Network's mission is to make it easier to buy locally grown and produced goods. Buying local produce should be as easy as walking to your neighborhood grocery store."

Victor Davis Hampton, a nationally syndicated columnist and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, will be the featured speaker April 20. He will discuss the relationship of food and farming to sustainability.

Doug McKenzie-Mohr, co-author of Fostering Sustainable Behavior: An Introduction to Community-Based Social Marketing, will the featured speaker on April 21. He will discuss how to take the ideas of sustainability to a broader audience through social marketing.

Other speakers will include Alan Hart, principal of VIA Architecture of Vancouver, architect and urban designer for transit infrastructure projects in Vancouver and Seattle; Mike McAnelly, senior planner for Carter and Burgess of Dallas and consultant for central Oklahoma's Fixed Guideway Study; Bob Waldrop, founder of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative; Jim Garrison, president of Wisdom University in San Francisco and president/co-founder of the State of the World Forum with Mikhail Gorbachev; and David Karoly, Williams Chair Professor of Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma and lead author and review editor of the United Nations report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"The challenge is to accept that global warming is real, it will increase in the future, and policy choices that we make now will affect the climate that our grandchildren will experience towards the end of this century," said Karoly. "The opportunity for Oklahomans is to use this information wisely, to seize its benefits, to plan for adverse impacts, and to take advantage of business opportunities in Oklahoma."

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