Eugene Domack, the J.W. Johnson Family Professor of Environmental Studies
Hard science for hard questions
WHILE HAMILTON'S ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES PROGRAM WAS DESIGNED from the outset to build a conversation across disciplines — not only in the sciences — strong empirical research and study continue to provide a crucial foundation for that conversation. Associate Professor of Biology Bill Pfitsch, the current chair of the Environmental Studies Program, has worked since 1989 with Hamilton students who study sustainability issues, so he's not surprised to find his classroom filled with students intrigued by habitat restoration or the impact of human interaction with the environment. What is new and exciting for him, however, is the fact that he has more students from outside the sciences coming into his classroom.
"I have known environmentally inclined students since I've been here, so it is really hard for me to say that has changed, but I do know that because of the Environmental Studies Program I am exposed to more than conservation-based biology students," Pfitsch says. "It's brought more students into the science world, and they tend to have a different perspective on the questions that we think about."
Assistant Professor of Biology Michael McCormick, who developed a passion for sustainability issues while he was a Peace Corps volunteer in the late 1980s in Ghana, insists that it is a global responsibility to include the sciences in future debate. "Science plays an essential role in understanding sustainability," McCormick says. "If we are going to achieve a sustainable society, we will have to make important policy choices in the years ahead.
"Environmental decision-making is fraught with uncertainty. For example, we don't have perfect knowledge of how the world works. To the extent that science provides a framework for addressing these uncertainties, it can inform decision-makers of the likely consequences of their actions. Ultimately, decision-making is a political process that involves much more than science, but to make these decisions while ignoring science is folly at best and disastrous at worst."
Geoscientist Eugene Domack, the J.W. Johnson Family Professor of Environmental Studies, has played a critical role in the Hamilton effort to frame environmental education with cutting-edge research. His study of the paleohistory of Antarctica's Larsen Ice Shelf, documenting how the region's climate has changed over thousands of years, is a linchpin of contemporary global-warming research and was cited in the 2007 report by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the Nobel Peace Prize and was co-authored by Jonathan Overpeck '79. Just as important, Domack's work, funded continuously by the National Science Foundation since 1987, is built on student collaboration. He has taken more than 100 undergraduates on his Antarctic expeditions as researchers, and his work there continues with a NSF-funded collaborative research project with McCormick that applies multidisciplinary analysis to abrupt environmental change in the Larsen Ice Shelf system.
Domack notes that science plays an essential role in sustainability issues but also argues that "a three-tier policy of sustainability" articulated by physicist and environmentalist John Holdren — the new director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under President Obama — is how we must address issues that "are no longer jurisdictional."
"The large majority of the planet's population does not or cannot afford to care," Domack says. "It matters little to the starving and sick in Africa that the Arctic ice is in retreat." Citing Holdren, Domack argues that "sustainable well-being for the planet means attending to the population of malnourished and ill, anticipating and mediating the impact of a warming planet, and nuclear disarmament."
That struggle will require the "education of extraordinary global citizens," Domack says. "Places like Hamilton can do that, but not without a clear vision and discipline to a rigorous curriculum. Demand a great deal, and much can be accomplished. Expect little and gain even less. The former is what I expected out of my Antarctic students, and I was often surprised at how much the payback was in intellectual maturity, responsible growth and happy global teamwork."
