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Stepping Up to the Next Level of Environmental Outreach
Nicholas Gift Will Help Us Fulfill the
Vision of a Better Environment
by William H. Schlesinger
THE WONDERFUL $70 MILLION GIFT from Peter and Ginny Nicholas
announced in January will carry the Nicholas School of the
Environment and Earth Sciences to its next level. (See
related story >.) Only a dozen years ago,
the Nicholas School was the nation’s first “School of the
Environment,” but it has quickly carried its mission of education
and research to renowned stature. Our faculty members receive
national acclaim for their scholarship, and they are elected
to office in professional societies across a broad range of
environmental disciplines. Our graduates populate the halls
of environmental policy in federal, state, and local agencies,
nonprofit organizations, and, increasingly, the corporate
world.
Yet, daily, we see that government and corporate
decision-makers continue to struggle to find the best science,
unbiased analysis, and policy options for the difficult environmental
problems and critical decisions they face. With the rising
price of natural gas, how can we supply electricity from coal
without releasing toxic quantities of mercury into the atmosphere?
How can we prevent climate change, when the economic well-being
of modern people seems so closely linked to energy derived
from fossil fuels? Should we log our national forests when
the price of lumber is already so low that many private timber
producers are leaving the business? As they wrestle with these
issues, policy makers are often influenced by politics and
special interests. They need the best science that academia
can supply.
We anticipate that a critical part of the Nicholas
gift will create the Nicholas Institute for Environmental
Policy Solutions, a think tank within the Nicholas School,
to fulfill the nation’s need for the best science, delivered
without bias, to aid in the development of effective environmental
policy. With its excellent faculty in place, the Nicholas
School can be the first stop for expertise on many important
environmental issues. Significantly, the Nicholas gift also
ensures that the Institute can call outside the Nicholas School
to bring the best minds to Duke as visiting faculty and consultants
on particular problems. In the process, these visitors to
Durham will enrich the daily intellectual life of the Nicholas
School and provide opportunities for our graduates. We look
forward over the next several months to working out the details
for the proposed institute.
Carefully selected new faculty in joint appointments
with other schools at Duke will enable the Nicholas School
to be the “big tent” for environmental expertise on the Duke
campus. The school will share its excitement with the public
by providing opportunities for leaders of media, policy, and
business to participate in the Nicholas Institute, receiving
advance knowledge of current projects and gaining insight
into current and future environmental problems and attractive
policy options. The Nicholas Institute may also provide office
space and an opportunity for partnerships with NGOs that focus
on environmental advocacy and preservation.
So, to the Nicholas family, on behalf of the
school that bears your name, let me say “Thanks to all of
you. We will fulfill your vision of how to ensure a better
environment for Planet Earth and the people who will populate
it.”
Schlesinger is dean of the Nicholas School
and James B. Duke Professor of Biogeochemistry |
