Goal: Engage thinkers of all ideologies

SoGES Associate Director of Research and Development, Dr. Gene Kelly, has been asked to write a monthly column for the Fort Collins Coloradoan. We will share Gene's column here with you each month.

Article originally published in the Coloradoan.

We often hear the terms green and sustainable tossed around together with words like business, leaving us to wonder: What do they mean? What do they have to do with me and life here in Colorado?

I think one of the fundamental problems with this language is that the words green and sustainable are often used interchangeably. My personal definition of green is relatively simple: Green means environmentally friendly, or, in one or more ways, our activities place less of a burden on our declining natural resources. Living green to me merely means we are making intelligent use of resources, which includes doing things in ways that use less energy, consuming fewer resources and reducing many of the harmful impacts our activities have on our environment. For example, a very common set of green activities across Colorado involves the three R's: reduce, reuse, recycle. Each of these activities adds to the greening of our communities.

Sustainability encompasses a broader, more long-term view, but at the same time incorporates plenty of right-now activities. Sustainability actually has a more precise meaning that is often obscured, distorted and diluted by the commercialization and marketing of the green movement. Sustainability in the environmental realm is commonly used in sustainable agriculture, or the ability to produce food indefinitely, without causing irreversible damage to ecosystem health. This is something Colorado State University has been pioneering and supporting for years with research, teaching and outreach in close collaboration with our agricultural communities. This partnership has fostered real change over the last century in the way we manage Colorado's agricultural and natural resources.

However, while the concept of sustainability traditionally emphasizes the environment, CSU, like other major universities, is moving in a relatively new direction by recognizing the importance of the three legs of the sustainability stool - environment, economics and social equity - with the formation of the School of Global Environmental Sustainability. We are now poised to gain from lessons learned outside of academia and are beginning to reach out not only to environmental interests but also to social and economic constituencies. Furthermore, we believe this broader and more inclusive view of sustainability is the only way to address the complexity, volatility and ever-broadening spectrum of issues that now influence local and global communities.

Sustainability is far more encompassing than green. Proponents of sustainability agree that without broad interdisciplinary buy-in, it is not a tenable solution to our environmental issues. This, in essence, will be one of CSU's, our city's and our region's major challenges now and in the future.

I am honored to have been asked to write this monthly column for the Coloradoan. I hope along the way to engage readers in a conversation that regardless of our individual political, ideological and professional positions can help lead to increased knowledge of and thoughtful discussion about these and other important issues in our community.

Gene Kelly is a professor of pedology in the College of Agricultural Sciences and associate director of research and development for the School of Global Environmental Sustainability at Colorado State University. Send e-mail to pedoiso@colostate.edu.