By Vic Cox

Not satisfied with the two-day span of the national Focus the Nation teach-in to slow global warming, UCSB students, staff, and faculty made last week’s consciousness-raising campaign a four-day event.

Beginning the evening of Jan. 30, computers across campus caught a live, Focus the Nation Webcast, called “The 2% Solution,” that discussed global warming solutions with experts and youth climate activists. Audiences were encouraged to vote on line for the issues that most concerned them.

Like most of the 1,600 institutions that hosted Focus the Nation, UCSB presented its central effort on Jan. 31. Sustainability coordinator Katie Maynard’s troop of nearly 30 student volunteers organized a day of workshops, panel discussions, lectures, a showing of UCSB sociologist Kum-Kum Bhavnani’s documentary

“The Shape of Water,” and an off-campus community forum.

Bren School Dean Ernst von Weizsäcker keynoted the day’s activities with an address on “Solutions to Climate Change.” A subsequent panel with Bren professors Charles Kolstad and Roland Geyer engaged Wal-Mart Stores’ Janelle Kearsley, director of corporate strategy/sustainability, in a discussion of “Big Business: Leaders in the Climate Challenge?”

That night the Goleta Valley Community Center hosted a community forum with the mayors of Goleta and Santa Barbara, Michael Bennett and Marty Blum, respectively; Donna Carpenter, UCSB vice chancellor, administrative services; a representative of Santa Barbara City College; and a green business entrepreneur.

On the weekend, the UCSB Associated Students Environmental Affairs Board presented an environmental film festival and, on Sunday, a light bulb exchange and rally called Youth Climate Action Day.

Though all UC campuses participated in the teach-in, it is their ongoing sustainability programs that the Regents and the Office of the President track most closely. Outside groups and the media have also noted what the campuses are doing.

UCOP officials last month published their fourth annual report on sustainability practices across the system. In it they observed that UC received “extensive (media) recognition as national leaders in sustainability,” and that the Sierra Club’s Sierra magazine named the UC system “the fourth greenest university in the country, the highest ranking for any public university.”

In a summary for the media, UCOP said, “The University of California has been a leader in its sustainability practices and gained momentum in 2007 by expanding its sustainability policy, completing energy efficiency projects that are providing more than $5 million annually in operational savings, and gaining national recognition for its green efforts.”

For the complete report, which was presented to the Regents on Jan. 15, go online to <www.ucop.edu/facil/sustain>.