ECO Hawk and Climate Costs!

This past week ECO Hawk, an environmental group I co-founded and am president of on the UI's campus, met with staff of existing College of Public Health (CPH) buildings to figure out how they can be more sustainable, specifically in the area of Recycling. Many in the CPH are excited for the new building, expected to open for classes Spring 2012, but there are also those that will not be moving and stay in the spaces they occupy right now on-campus.

The "GREEN" topic is definitely one that people are talking about and to even make it more relevant, one of our professors, Dr. Thorne was featured talking about the cost in the local newspapers. " The U.S. National Climatic Data Center has compiled data on all natural disasters since 1980 that resulted in losses greater than $1 billion. Adjusting for inflation, there were a dozen $1 billion disasters in the 1980s, 38 in the 1990s, and 46 from 200 to 2009. Of these, 39 percent involved flooding, including Hurricane Katrina" (The Gazette).

The cost and health implications (physical, mental and social) are staggering and are likely to continue. Recycling is just one way in which someone can help curb climate change but it will take more stringent and sustainable policies to make more staggering change as the decades go on.

Ryan