Column by Emily Foerster

In the 1970s, the Kernel ran an environmental column written by a student everyone called—and still, to this day, every single one of his acquaintances, both personal and professional calls—“Fitz.” Sometimes, even his own children call him “Fitz.” His column was appropriately called “All the news that Fitz,” and it aimed to lambaste the university for its failure to appropriately address what he considered the essential issues of the day.

Today, Fitz runs a non-profit legal organization, Kentucky Resource Council, and he has been named Kentucky’s environmental watchdog. He is beloved by everyone except coal advocates, respected by everyone, and this year he received the Heinz Award for the Environment, a $250,000 prize.

On Monday, Fitz (after being personally recommended by Wendell Berry, Kentucky’s foremost name in sustainability) came to speak at UK’s inaugural installment of the Sustainability Lecture Series, and every other sentence was one I wanted to print on a t-shirt and wear around in public. For example, “Learn to be creatively intolerant of mediocrity and injustice.” He spent little time barking about why we must act, and more time presenting and explaining some strategies to effect change, that ambiguous concept that everyday loses more meaning.

Fitz has a unique and enviable ability to make his listeners feel that they are getting the whole truth, that they’re getting it in a balanced way and that everything will still be alright in the end. It’s empowering, and it gave me the sense that I knew what I had to do. I just needed to go out and do it.

Fitz said Kentucky’s big problem, or at least one of them, is that most of us do not bear the full cost of our energy use. Ninety-eight percent of Kentucky’s electricity comes from coal, and we have some of the cheapest prices in the nation. But there are 20 states with lower energy bills because we are so wasteful. “The big bill is coming,” he said, referring to the many other ill-effects of wasting energy, like black lung, global warming, poverty, etc. “How will we account for it when it does?”

He went on to add that, while Kentucky is in a veritable state of environmental crisis, we are in a position to make some fundamental and critical changes to our system that would allow for greater sustainability in the future. He quoted the original definition of “sustainability” as “meeting the needs of the present to avoid compromising future generations’ ability to meet their own needs.”

One thing we have to do, he said, is look at our situation as honestly as we can, by dispelling a couple of myths: first, that there are limited opportunities for developing renewable energy in Kentucky; secondly, that clean coal is actually clean. The reality is that the state is rife with potential for renewable energy. We have 800+ megawatts of low-impact hydroelectric power, and as much solar potential as Germany, according to Fitz.

We could reduce our demand for energy by retrofitting existing houses to be more energy-efficient, which could have the added benefit of creating jobs. On a national level, as we deal with the financial woes of the auto industry, we should not just throw money at a group that, Fitz says, “should have seen it coming,” without any sort of mandate to advance sustainability. Bailout money is public money, and it makes sense to leverage it by adding sustainability conditions to whatever package the government offers.

The bottom line is that Fitz was the perfect person to speak at the first sustainability lecture, and if you ever get another chance, go hear him.  You’ll come out of the lecture hall an environmentalist.