Sustainability is the theme for 2010-2011 here at Guilford and the theme for this year’s Bryan Series.

While new solar panels and other improvements have been cropping up all over Guilford’s campus, sustainability has shown through in a different way in this year’s Bryan Series. David Brooks spoke of the hope he has invested in a new generation he sees as more responsible and reasonable than the past generation. Bill Clinton also spoke of the high expectations he has of our new generation.

When Clinton visited Greensboro Dec. 1, he spoke of his hope in a different way than Brooks. Rather than talking about how great the youth are, Clinton set out a laundry list of social and environmental issues the youth will have to address and how he has already started to address them. I agree with Clinton’s non-apocalyptic discussion of the issues we, the people of Earth, are facing today, and I am glad for his analysis of how these issues arose.

Environmental issues were featured strongly in Clinton’s speech. His description of the global warming debate that developed over the last 20 years contextualized the issues we are having now. In Australia, Clinton said, the environmental debate is not “Is it happening?” but instead, “How can we fix it?” Clinton praised this debate, and so do I. It is important that the debate on global warming move to a question of how to fix it.

The move the world has made toward debating how to solve global warming is extremely important.

Without a serious discussion on how to solve this issue our society will suffer. Ten years ago, people were trying to convince the world global warming exists and talked about how ignoring the problem would affect the children. We are those children, and it is time for us to help the environment.

Guilford was praised in Clinton’s talk for our solar panels and other attempts to offset our effect on the environment. Guilford is a test to see if a large-scale environmental campaign is practical on a college campus. According to Clinton, we are making a valuable contribution to the world by running this test.

I am proud of Guilford for this contribution. The attempts we are making to improve the environment are an excellent beginning to a healthier national approach to the environment. Our contribution to this experiment indicates to me that the hopes Bill Clinton and David Brooks have rested on us are deserved.