In an effort to bring awareness to a variety of environmental issues, the Sustainable Earth, Energy and Environmental Systems speaker series highlights issues involving climate change and natural resources. The “Water — Impacts of Climate Change and Solutions” lecture was presented yesterday by Prof. Rebecca Schneider, natural resources.

The discussion focused on the growing problem of freshwater scarcity. A 1997 report by Population Action International estimated that “by 2050, about 4.4 billion people of the world’s projected 10 billion people will suffer from chronic water shortages.”

With the growing need to be green, many dining halls on campus have, since October 2008, begun to join the growing trend of tray removal for sustainable purposes.

“We’ve reduced food waste in those dining rooms, which we’ve gauged to be about three ounces per person, on average,” said Karen Brown, director of campus life marketing and communications. A conspicuous absence of trays: Many dining halls throughout campus have opted to eliminate trays for sustainability purposes.

To the Editor:

Re: “Lights Out,” Opinion, Oct. 19

As a member of the staff community who frequently works late at night in my overnight-locked up building, I regret the policy that hall lights must stay on all night. It seems such a waste, but I am literally not permitted to turn off the lights when I leave.

Swap meets are increasingly affecting life in Ithaca, “for barter or worse,” said Ari Moore. With an aim of encouraging sustainability and the idea of trading to fulfill one’s exact needs, swap meets in the community have flourished since their inception in May 2009.

Swap meets are held monthly, usually at a community member’s house. At each event, participants speak individually regarding the items each brought and their specific needs that they hope to fulfill through the swap meet. After that, the participants proceed to barter and trade their resources with each other at their own discretion.

Because of its commitment to sustainability and environmental conservation, Cornell was recently recognized as a Tree Campus U.S.A. for 2009; the first time an Ivy League institution has received such a title.

The United States needs to drastically change its current patterns of consumption in order to lessen its impact on the environment, Chairman and CEO of S.C. Johnson H. Fisk Johnson ’79 said yesterday at a lecture in Statler Auditorium.

With the winds of winter wandering into Ithaca, Oct. 22 may seem like an odd day to reflect on global warming and Cornell’s sustainability efforts. But despite the coming cold, students, faculty and staff will congregate today on Ho Plaza to celebrate the Seventh Annual Campus Sustainability Day. They will reflect on the University’s sustainability efforts, celebrate what has been accomplished, examine possibilities of what is next and begin to turn those possibilities into reality. We do this with good reason and imperative.

Shock and disbelief were the only two feelings stronger than nausea when judges announced the results for architecture at the recent Solar Decathlon competition in Washington, D.C. After a two-year, Herculean effort, Cornell’s Solar Decathlon team (CUSD) had produced an innovative house of remarkable craftsmanship. Its peculiar form and materiality exerted an uncanny architectural magnetism, attracting the press and public and eliciting praise and pride from everyone involved.

Some statistics: Cornell has, ahem, the number one architecture program in the United States. The United States each year produces six billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions — which is, per capita, almost 200 times more than poorer countries in the world. Buildings represent 39 percent of those emissions. Let’s round that up to 40 percent. While turning off the lights in Rockefeller overnight is important, the energy saved by doing so is chump change compared to what could be wrought by the education of a well-trained and knowledgeable generation of builders and designers.

They are not hippie communes. They are not even about “living off the grid.” Largely unknown and misinterpreted, ecovillages are communities striving to “integrate a supportive social environment with a low impact way of life” according to the Global Ecovillage Network.