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This blazing epiphany lit up my life at the spring Board Meeting of the ITC Trustees, 2005. It was sparked by an utterly indestructible plastic coffee cup which I held in my hand. That cup begged the question -- what on earth were we, the ITC, doing around environmental issues?
This narrative provides a condensed version of the origins of this powerful idea, hinged on the moment the entire ITC community came together to officially launch it, February 19, 2007. |
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On that April morning, 2005, I refined my question “What are we
doing?” to ask the Board’s Building and Grounds’ Committee,
“What WERE we doing?” As much as our very limited budget would
allow, we heard from Dr. Grady Anderson, assuring us that
Mr. Joe Cates, responsible for our physical plant, also cared very
much about these issues. The spirit was
willing. The obstacle ... was money.
I asked Dr. Battle for a meeting and he eagerly agreed. He’d
studied with the pioneering Francis Schaeffer, author of the 1970
book, Pollution and the Death of Man: The Christian View of
Ecology. ITC faculty members had published on related issues and
Dr. Miriam Burnett had developed an Environmental Justice
curriculum with a grant from the Nathan Cummings Foundation.
We had a track record.
From that day forward and through the summer, I was encouraged
by Dr. Battle, Trustee Lynn Huntley and Bill Russell, my husband
and executive producer of the radio/internet program I host. If I
could enlist people active in the environmental community, ITC was
open to exploring possibilities.
The first opportunity came in September, 2005. The Georgia
Conservancy had invited our friend Amory Lovins to give the
keynote address for a national meeting they were hosting in
Atlanta. Mr. Lovins is internationally recognized for his singular
expertise in energy conservation. His support staff at
Rocky Mountain Institute, which he co-founded in the 1970s,
carved 10 minutes out of Amory’s schedule for me to meet with
him. |
