Symposium covers issues facing planet

After the conclusion of the very successful Symposium on Sustainability that featured speakers such as Jean-Michel Cousteau, Winona LaDuke and Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), many have called upon the organizers of the two-day conference to make it an annual event.

The symposium, which covered all areas of the sustainability issue in an effort to preserve and restore the planet, featured 20 different speakers from around the country and across the globe.

Cousteau presented the keynote address as a part of the symposium and was backed by speakers who talked about oceans, consumption, climate change, rain forests, native tribes and a whole host of other topics.

While George Seielstad, director of the Northern Great Plains Center for the People and the Environment and organizer of the event said that there were no firm plans for next year, several university officials, including President Charles Kupchella noted that the free event should be a mainstay on the UND campus. Kupchella added that the topics discussed were a great benefit to the attendees and that it fit in well with the areas and vision that UND already has regarding sustainability and environmental stewardship.

Seielstad added, "The symposium is a great way to reflect on where we've come and where we'd like to go in the future; I hope it does become an annual event."

He noted that the wide array of speakers really displayed how diverse and dynamic the issue of sustainability is and how it is a problem effecting every single person on the planet. In addition, the backgrounds of each speaker "brought a different perspective and a different look on the conversation."

Environmental conversation

As an outspoken steward of the environment, Seielstad has made it his personal mission to educate and inform people about the impact humans are having on the environment. The two-day event was held in the Chester Fritz Auditorium but was also broadcast live on the Internet for people to see around the world. In addition, Seielstad said that the presentations would be uploaded to the Web site to be viewed at any time.

"[The symposium] was a start of a conversation," Seielstad said. "We live on a dynamic planet that is interconnected and it's time to start a conversation on how to change for the better."

He added that the university environment is the perfect place to bring about the topic of change and to educate students on how to live in a way that benefits the earth instead of impacting it in a negative fashion.

"Sustainability is not a destination you arrive at. It's something that has to be constantly adjusted and worked on in this changing and dynamic planet; what better place than at a university to deliver that message."

Seielstad said during the conference that the issue of climate change and environmental degradation is something that will effect the generations to come and it is for that reason that people need to start taking action today.

"It's time to be clever about this," he said. "It's our cleverness to reconstruct our history of space and time and to project the future that proves we're ingenious, we're extraordinarily clever people. Since we are so clever, this problems of sustainability should be a simple problem to overcome, it's proof that we can fix it."

For those that attended the event, Seielstad hopes that it incited some enthusiasm and some interest to change for a more sustainable future.

While the event was an enormous undertaking, Seielstad said he looks forward to seeing what may happen with it in the future and hopes to see others step up to make it an annual mainstay on the UND campus.

"I hope this symposium incited some thought and some change," Seielstad concluded. "It was a really great event and it got the conversation going."