Appalachian State University is a major contributor to the climate crisis that is harming people around the globe and that will damage the communities, environments, and economy of North Carolina for decades to come. However, a renewed Appalachian State that protects and uplifts our global and local communities is well within reach. This report shows how Appalachian State can act quickly and at low cost, employing a Just Transition framework to eliminate our carbon footprint, support thriving local economies, and enhance the well-being and empowerment of our state’s most vulnerable and historically marginalized people.

 

While pivoting to just sustainability is neither difficult nor expensive, it will require that we change the way we think about problems, solutions, and administrative decision-making. Our participation in climate action planning at Appalachian State has revealed several characteristics of the university that will make true sustainability impossible, including: the inability to think systematically, across the whole institution; a focus on symptoms rather than causes; the treatment of challenges like immovable constraints; setting goals destined for mediocrity; planning based on fear rather than vision and values; and a fear of accountability. Importantly, these same dynamics also underlie the administration’s other recent failures related to faculty salaries, racial justice, and Covid-19 response.

 

Recognizing that the university administration is currently both unwilling to advance justice and sustainability and incapable of doing so, we withdrew from the official climate action planning process in August 2020. However, we continue to engage in the movement for change. This report models the type of ambitious and principled, yet pragmatic, visioning that the university administration seems incapable of. It shows that urgent climate neutrality and climate justice are not only achievable, but feasible, inexpensive, exciting, and necessary… especially if we are going to continue to claim that we are committed to healthy, just, and sustainable communities.

 

Unfortunately, we have little faith that the university administration will respond productively to this analysis. (Indeed, the loss of faith in Appalachian State’s administration seems to be the most rapidly-spreading epidemic we face right now in Boone!) We expect that university representatives will continue to justify their march toward mediocrity with specious claims that our recommendations are impossible, patronizing statements about the naive but admirable vigor of youth, unresearched judgments about cost, and a long list of procedural difficulties that they blindly accept as absolute impediments. Or perhaps they will respond with silence, as they have done to us in the past, as they did to the Faculty Senate when it voiced concerns about faculty morale and Covid-19 preparations, and as they have done to Black at App. It is our responsibility to ensure that these tactics of manipulation and authoritarianism are met with resistance and an insistence on what is right.

 

In short, while we expect little consequence from our administration (please -- surprise us!), we hope that mounting student, staff, faculty, and community pressure will push the university to prioritize its mission and values. To the students, staff, faculty, and community members who read this report: we ask that you trust in your values and in science, and that you embrace your responsibilities to govern this institution that we all hold dear. This university belongs to you. To us. We can not allow Appalachian State to continue to harm our planet, our communities, and our future generations. Appalachian State has a responsibility to be a national leader on climate justice. Appalachian State has the resources to be a national leader on climate justice. And we are here to show exactly how that can be achieved.