Earth Day Symposium

The University of West Florida celebrated the 40th anniversary of Earth Day on the Pensacola campus on April 22.

Starting at 9 a.m. in the Conference Center, The Earth Day Symposium presented five speakers from different lines of expertise who spoke about how being “green” was put into their career. Speakers included Andy Holdnak, from hospitality and tourism, Lawrence Howe, from philosophy, William Huth, from marketing and economics, Gary Ghioto, from environmental journalism and Sherry Schneider, from psychology.

It began with Holdnak presenting a powerpoint presentation which showed different hotels and attractions becoming greener as the years go on.

“The first Earth Day was 40 years ago, coincidentally that was the very first year of Sesame Street,” professor in hospitality, recreation and resort management at the Fort Walton campus Holdnak said. “Kermit the frog’s famous song, it’s not easy to be green and in 1970 it really wasn’t.”

Throughout the years, Florida has tripled in population from 6,789,000 to an estimated 18 million people now. The attractions were different in 1970 as well.

“We were all natured based,” Holdnak said, as he presented a 1970s Florida tourism commercial. “Notice no mouse, no amusement parks, no theme parks. Beaches, nature, that was us.”

Holdnak continued to speak about the new advances hotels and theme parks are adding to become greener. He said Disney actually asks their employees to recycle and to become greener.

“Their cruise ships are their biggest carbon footprint,” Holdnak said about Disney.

The second speaker was Howe from the philosophy department of UWF and he spoke about how important nature was to Aldo Leopold.

“One of the things he pointed out before he wrote that(The Land Ethic) was that some forms of recreation destroy their base and therefore it’s no longer desirable, and other forms of recreation don’t destroy their base and he promotes those types of recreation,” Howe said.

Howe ended his presentation by saying how he doesn’t use air conditioning in his house to save energy.

The next speaker, Huth, presented on the economic evaluation of ecosystem services, such as artificial reefs, springs and fisheries. There are 2,000 artificial reefs across Florida and of those, 400 are submerged vessels.

“They(Navy) spent $18 million on sinking the Oriskany off the coast of Pensacola,” Huth said.

Huth explained how the sinking of the Oriskany along with many other vessels has helped economically but actually hasn’t helped the natural coral reefs.

“The Vandenburg just went down in 2009 off of Key Largo,” Huth said. “It has actually caused more pressure on the coral reefs.”

The last speaker was Schneider from the psychology department and she started off by saying she could never live in a home with no air conditioning.

“No way will I live in Florida with no air conditioning,” Schneider said, referring to Howe living with no air conditioning. “My own hypocrisy was thrown back at me.”

She ended with saying that one person cannot make a difference but collectively, a community can make a difference.

“You run these risks of people taking too much,” Schneider said. “If you restrain yourself, these things will replenish. We kill the things we love.”