Thoughts from

The Gaylord Nelson  Institute for Environmental Studies

One of the values that Aldo Leopold’s farm provided was that it never allowed him think that heat simply came from a furnace. He notes that the February warmth that radiated from his hearth was June sunlight that had been accumulated and stored by a roadside oak tree over most of the preceding century. Leopold’s energy footprint was unequivocal, he could only be as warm as there was “good oak” for him to cut and burn.

As romantic as that is, it is not possible for most of us to glean the lesson of stored sunlight quite so directly. Most of the sunlight we use to heat, cool and light our buildings reached Earth many millions of years ago and has been stored not as wood, but as fossil fuels. The reservoirs of those fuels lie in states and lands far from our classrooms, laboratories and dormitories. Even as the oil, gas, and coal are delivered to Madison, we are divorced from the release of the sun’s stored energy by large facilities such as our new co-generation plant. The energy of millions of years old sunlight is delivered to us as hot and cold water and electricity. And, just as Leopold warned, for most of us, it is very hard to understand or limit our energy footprint.

The energy conservation and management goals and initiatives we are announcing today, and that have been underway for sometime now, are bold and important steps closer to Leopold’s oak tree and toward greater consciousness and reduction of our energy footprint.

The Nelson Institute is honored to support the stewardship these efforts represent. We are confident that Gaylord Nelson would see them, as we do, as epitomizing the University’s responsibility to the State of Wisconsin and to the people of Earth to provide strong leadership and good example regarding our environment and our future.