Waking Up in the Century of Limits
Signs of Dawning Awareness in the Higher Education Community

(Archive | Logan | COM Department)

This note prefaces a more ambitious survey of curricular matters in 134 universities (work in progress: "Transitional" Academic Curricula).

I have previously urged consideration of a new vision for the University, one focused on Learning for a New Culture (May 2007). I would encourage the University, and higher education in general, to accept a new and expanded social responsibility. The primary mission of public higher education, I submit, soon needs to become to persuade new generations of graduates that they have long-term moral duties and myriad eminently-practical reasons to effect broad and enduring cultural changes of an unprecedented scope. These changes are pervasive and complex and in general difficult to envision or prescribe. At a minimum, they involve willful reduction in family size, minimization of personal material consumption, and unprecedented curtailments in rates of human draw down of global resources. By resources, I mean not only ores, fuels, waters, soils, forests, and fisheries, but also planetary capacities to absorb the residuals (i.e., pollutants) from human industries, agriculture, and settlements. The outcome of this learning must be an increase in awareness of the finite capacities of the earth and the fact that human numbers have already exceeded many critical limits—limits which dictate an end to growth as we have practiced it for most of our history—and the determination and courage to act on that awareness.

When Al Gore published An Inconvenient truth (as book and movie, both in 2006) he was faulted for being short on specific actions that we could take, individually and collectively. Specific suggestions were limited to the last few minutes of the movie and pages of the book. Most amounted to yuppie-style fashion shifts (buy a hybrid car, change your light bulbs), rather than the infrastructural overhaul and generational commitment envisioned elsewhere by, for example, Kunstler or the New Urbanists. Gore's underbelly was exposed subsequently as the right wing assaulted the rich-man's energy consumption patterns at his Tennessee residence—no confusing Gore with Gandhi here. Gore's reply was to say that change would not and could not take place until the degree of awareness of the problem was greater among the citizenry and their representatives. That leaves several questions. We might, for example, begin with "awareness of exactly what?" "what degrees of awareness?" and "how do we then act on that awareness?"

We can envision a point somewhere down the road (10 years? 20? 30?) by which time there is a strong and international replacement for the Kyoto accord, where both the United States and China have stopped being much of the problem and started being much of the solution, and where large scale technological fixes (windmills abundant along coasts and mountain ridges, solar panels in hundred-square mile arrays in southwestern deserts, ocean-based carbon sequestration technologies) are underway. More importantly, through top to bottom changes in the entire educational system, we can imagine the social infusion of a new culture of intergenerational and international equity, where one people or one generation respects the rights of all people, and for all times, to fairly sharing of the earth and its life sustaining environment, and to respect for the obligation of all people to be intelligent stewards of that environment. But here at the beginning of that visionary road, what will we look at as signs of dawning awareness, as evidence of seeds of change? That is, how will we ever know that we are actually on that road, instead of on our current road to century's-end disaster?

To promote thinking locally and to engage in a broader national discussion, I make the following observations. My point is not to undertake a serious scientific study, nor to create a statistically-supported argument, but rather to look at a small set of evanescent data, gathered over 3 days in a humid southern New England July, and to ponder a few questions which occur to me and which might be useful to stimulate the thinking of others. These caveats issued, I make no apologies for what may to others be obvious shortcomings in my exercise, premises, or suggestions. I will be conscious of the need to couch all possible conclusions in terms of questions, following the rhetorical example of Galileo's trek through the land of established truisms (I'm alluding to Jean Dietz Moss's Novelties in the Heavens, a very interesting read along these lines).

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The General Environment
for Awareness and Learning for a New Culture

Is Al Gore succeeding in increasing awareness in the general society? I can think of four general indicators to help track this:

1. National polls (these track what we say we are concerned about...)
2. Television ratings (...but do these track what we really are concerned about?)
3. Internet searches (these track contemporary listening interests)
4. Web hits (track contemporary expression using numbers of pages on topic)

Because my focus is on awareness exhibited in higher education, only the last of these four seems to me to provide any potential as a possible indicator, and that is where I'll focus this exercise. But the other three can provide insight into the general environment in which academia finds itself today. They also provide a gauge of the challenge, should it ever be accepted, which is to say if academia ever agrees with me that its 21^st century mission must include becoming a socially prominent source of engaged persuasion for change (I'll return to this topic in an article called The Rhetorical University, later this fall). Let's take a brief look at those other three indicators first.

National Polls: Under the circumstance of being challenged by a carefully designed series of questions, and gathering sufficient numbers of responses to attain statistical interpretation, national polls may help us hear public voices, tapping collective awareness. The Gallup Poll's tracking of "most important problem" (here, for current reports) teases out public concerns, portraying the common voice via statistically robust data sets. Our concerns for the long term and for cultural change are affected by awareness and perceptions of the public voice in both economic and non-economic arenas. Here are the problems and percentages saying they are most important, in the July 12-15, 2007 sampling, under "economic:" (Source: Gallup)

		%
ECONOMIC PROBLEMS (NET)		16
1	Economy in general	6
2	Fuel/Oil Prices	4
3	Unemployment/jobs	3
4	High cost of living/inflation	1
5	Taxes	1
6	Federal budget deficit/federal debt	1
7	Gap between rich and poor	1
8	Wage issues	1
9	Lack of money	*
10	Foreign trade/trade deficit	*
	Corporate corruption	--

Here are similar problems and percentages, also from Gallup on July 12-15, 2007, under "non-economic:"

		%
NON-ECONOMIC PROBLEMS (NET)		86
1	Situation in Iraq/war	35
2	Poor health care/ hospitals; high cost of health care	14
3	immigration/illegal aliens	11
4	Dissatisfaction with government/ Congress/ politicians; poor leadership; corruption; abuse of power	8
5	Terrorism	6
6	Ethics/moral/religious/family decline; dishonesty; lack of integrity	4
7	Education/poor education/access to education	3
8	Poverty/ hunger/ homelessness	3
9	International issues/ problems	2
10	Environment/ pollution	2
...	...	...
12	Lack of energy sources; the energy crisis	2
...	...	...
25	Overpopulation	1

(There are apparent overlaps or duplications such that percentages exceed 100% in these tables.)

These snapshots of ordinary people suggest that our concerns are immediate and that they are largely congruent with the nightly news. Our concern with fossil fuels is, for example, narrow and myopic. We are intently focused on our personal difficulty as we struggle to cope with current prices (#2 in "economic"). We do not see possible evidence of long-term perspectives until the 10^th "non-economic" item, Environment/ Pollution. I have to imagine (lacking any other information) that this reflects Mr. Gore's influence. If so, I can hope that awareness of at least one critical issue is showing signs of life. Put another way, can I posit that global warming might be coming onto the public's radar scope? Perhaps that is too much for now, and without deeper study it may simply be my own wishful thinking. But even if the issue is beginning to reach a higher level of public focus, it is still a very low and primitive level of awareness.

Gallup also maintains an interesting "The People's Priorities" page (here, for current). Gallop says they "...constantly update their analysis of the American public's priorities for their elected representatives in Washington." The 10 priorities (with annotations for three) for July 31, 2007 were:

1. Iraq
2. Terrorism and National Security
3. The Economy
4. Energy
   • "...concern about energy varies ... depending on the price of gasoline at the pump. At points in ... 2006, Americans rated the energy situation as more serious than they have in several years, and energy and fuel prices began to show up with high frequency as the nation's most important problem.... By the summer of 2007, however, this top-of-mind concern about energy had not risen dramatically, despite high prices, suggesting that the public is becoming accustomed to high gas prices. When asked which of two approaches to addressing the energy situation they prefer -- more production or more conservation -- Americans have consistently chosen conservation by a wide margin...[but]... conservation has dropped in recent months. Similarly, the percentage favoring opening up the Alaskan Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has increased over the last three years. ... Large majorities of Americans favor more stringent emissions standards for autos, business, and industry, as well as favor setting mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions, and developing alternate sources of fuel for autos. A slim majority favors expanded use of nuclear power as an energy source."
5. Illegal Immigration
   • ... "Americans are somewhat conflicted on some aspects of immigration -- they believe illegal immigrants are a drain on public taxes and services but also acknowledge the contribution of illegal immigrants to the U.S. labor force." [Note: the concern is not with overpopulation in general.—P.L.]
6. Healthcare
7. Education
8. Morality
9. Fixing Government Itself
10. The Environment
    • "The environment is not highly likely to be mentioned ... as a top problem facing the United States at this time.... The environment is seen as more important when Americans respond to a prompted list of issues. Americans willingly say the government is doing too little to protect the environment. Many worry about environmental conditions. A significant majority believes that the quality of the environment is getting worse, not better. There has been an increase in Americans' general concern about the environment and awareness of global warming. At this point, 55% of Americans say protection of the environment should be given priority over economic growth, and a majority of Americans believe that protection of the environment should be favored over energy source development. Americans are not opposed to policy initiatives aimed at improving the environment, but they are not pressing for them at this time. On the prominent global warming issue, most Americans take it seriously as a problem. At the same time, only about 4 in 10 Americans believe that immediate, drastic action is needed to deal with global warming, and just 28% say there will be "extreme" impact of global warming in 50 years if efforts to address the problem are not increased. The environmental policy initiatives Americans would most welcome would appear to be those with the most direct impact: maintaining the safety of drinking water, curbing toxic waste, and improving water and air quality." [emphasis added]

From these poll snapshots, we can entertain an hypothesis that the American public is showing dawning awareness of global warming, but we can also reasonably question whether this awareness has adequate degrees of long-term perspective. That is, there remains a question of whether we yet perceive the problem to be as severe as Gore and many scientists say it is (and will become), and a question of whether the degree of awareness is adequate to precipitate any meaningful collective individual or societal change. Note, too, that "the energy crisis" and "overpopulation" are far down the list of concerns. Does this suggest that current levels of awareness mean that for most Americans there is, in fact, neither an energy crisis nor a worry about global population? What other interpretation is there?

Television Ratings: Without dwelling on it, we should at least pause and reflect on what Americans are being served (and consuming) as food for thought via the main national medium, television. Here is the current (week of July 23, 2007) Nielsen ratings list (here, for current):

	Broadcast		Cable
Rank	Program	Viewers (millions)	Program	Viewers (millions)
1	CSI	9.34	The Closer	6.9
2	America's Got Talent	9.8	High School Musical	5.8
3	60 Minutes	8.7	Suite Life of Zack & Cody	5.1
4	So You Think You Can Dance	9.1	Monk	4.9
5	Two and a Half Men	8.8	WWE Entertainment (WWE Raw)	4.7
6	Shark	8.2	Return to Halloweentown	4.7
7	Singing Bee	9.5	Hannah Montana	4.5
8	CSI: NY	8.0	WWE Entertainment (WWE Raw)	4.2
9	Don't Forget the Lyrics	8.8	Halloweentown High	4.1
10	NCIS	7.9	Halloweentown	3.8

It is possible that 60 Minutes this week had something to do with matters of consequence, but it isn't apparent that television has yet taken on a crusade of broadcasting which will do much to advance "learning for a new culture."

Internet Searches: As of May, 2007 (total searches in the U.S. 7,165,940,000), a small number of web search companies dominate the genre. A partial listing (Wikipedia: "Search Engine", reported from Nielsen Ratings) includes:

Provider	Searches (000)	Share of Total Searches (%)
Google	4,033,277	56.3
Yahoo	1,540,949	21.5
MSN/Windows Live	605,400	8.4
AOL	4381,961	5.3
Ask.com	142,418	2.0

(Globally, Google is used for > 74% of searches (source above).)

What are we using all these internet searches for? I've based the following table on Yahoo's list of top 10 search terms for the year 2006. I enclosed the words of the search term in quotes (i.e., “Britney Spears”) and ran a search. Here are the number of pages available as reported by Google and Yahoo on July 31, 2007:

Term	Google Hits	Yahoo Hits
Britney Spears	17,800,000	45,400,000
WWE	22,300,000	31,400,000
Shakira	29,100,000	20,800,000
Jessica Simpson	12,200,000	17,900,000
Paris Hilton	24,900,000	63,100,000
American Idol	8,850,000	29,800,000
Beyonce Knowles	2,440,000	5,520,000
Chris Brown	2,300,000	5,060,000
Pamela Anderson	6,910,000	12,300,000
Lindsay Lohan	33,000,000	34,500,000

It appears that there is no shortage in contemporary society in either the thirst for celebrity soma nor in the depths being plunged to provide thirst-quenchers.

Web Hits: Before abandoning all hope, I extend this table to terms more useful for the task at hand. Here are terms selected as a context to evaluate both the above and what follows:

Term	Google Hits	Yahoo Hits
Iraq War	24,800,000	38,100,000
George W. Bush	53,200,000	48,000,000
Hillary Clinton	6,050,000	19,300,000
Al Gore	7,780,000	27,600,000
Global Warming	76,400,000	78,600,000
Global Climate Change	1,660,000	2,970,000
Limits to Growth	462,000	258,000
Club of Rome	435,000	281,000
Peak Oil	1,990,000	3,410,000
Sustainability	39,800,000	28,000,000

You may reflect on these two tables as you will and form your own impressions of the differences in hits between Yahoo and Google, or between George, Hillary, and Paris. The single thing that stands out to me is this: no matter what such numbers may tell about our contemporary obsessions (the Yahoo top 10), or about a culture so filled with panderers to those obsessions (millions of pages on pop icons), how do you explain the numbers of things being written that return search engine hits (indicating 76-78 million pages of content!) for the phrase "global warming?" Certainly, we can entertain an hypothesis that our society is writing on the internet as though it is aware of whatever it is that "global warming" now means to us. Unable to compare the relative magnitude of these large numbers to pre "Truth," I nevertheless wonder whether Mr. Gore hasn't made a significant contribution toward focusing our awareness. Are there better hypotheses?

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A Search for Signs of Awareness and Learning for a New Culture

To permit expansion of this exercise into a glimpse at higher education's possible role, I've used five key phrases as an index of awareness. In addition to "global warming," they are "global climate change," "peak oil," "limits to growth," and the familiar (albeit meaningless, as argued below) "sustainability." Reasons for focusing on these words follow. In general, after thinking about why they might be useful, and after commenting on the hits returned by web searches (tallied in the table above), I will use the same terms to probe a set of leading universities to stimulate a few questions about how we might detect contemporary levels of awareness in today's higher education establishment. That is, can we use web articles at these universities, ferreted out in searches for these five terms, to divine whether higher education is stepping to the plate to engage in the challenge of leading cultural change? I have also added a group of "URI peer" universities—not in the group of leading research institutions, which the governing officials of the University insist are a truer representation of the class to which URI belongs (although I am at a loss to comprehend why URI's leaders so cynical about their institution's place in the higher education industry)— and the rest of RI's institutions of higher learning (there are 13 College or Universities in Rhode Island) merely to be locally complete. But first, why these terms?

Global Climate Change: We have already noted the surprisingly large number of web pages producing hits on the phrase "global warming." Bolstered by this year's sobering pronouncements by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), there is decreasing public doubt that global warming is real and disturbing. However, the public may well be showing its naivety in its focus on temperature. The IPCC, we should notice, is a panel on "climate change." The thousands of scientists who have and are contributing to its summary documents are focused broadly on myriad aspects of climate change, including melting of the north polar cap, disappearance of glaciers, reduction and threat of liquefaction of both the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps (producing a 40 foot rise in sea level and the flooding of much of Florida, Bangladesh, and lower Manhattan by 2100), death of corals worldwide, decline or disappearance of marine and terrestrial ecosystems, desertification in some places, increased flooding in others, more frequent and more intense ocean storms (hurricanes), etc., etc. In this case, the more encompassing term "global climate change" doesn't imply a weaker general category, but has the clear meaning of a much greater collective phenomenon than the public may generally understand at this point. Even the remarkable public statements by the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, anticipating major economic costs from global climate change, may be a signal that there are incipient discussions in the business world. And although the IPCC statements have been so extraordinarily strong and decisive—sufficient to produce a round of placating public statements from the anti-Kyoto Bush administration—still there appears to be insufficient depth in both knowledge and passion about global climate change to stimulate broad support for commitments to action.

Peak Oil: Similarly, we neither hear nor understand enough about the concept of "peak oil" such that there is a singular public voice of alarm about the implications of declining production of liquid fossil fuels (oil and natural gas). Nor is there adequately widespread understanding of global projections for coal, nor awareness of the economic and environmental implications of attempting—and attempting we are—to replace gas and oil by substituting the 150 year supply of coal fossil fuel. Scientists build an ever more robust case suggesting reasons to be alarmed at the prospects of accelerated buildup of atmospheric carbon resulting from proliferation of coal-fired electrical plants, or from coal gasification technologies aimed at providing liquid fuels to extend the age of the automobile through the end of the century (there wouldn't be enough oil or natural gas to support an automobile culture much past mid century otherwise). Still, there is so little depth in public awareness, and therefore no meaningful public call for cultural change of the magnitudes capable of truly addressing solutions. The public tends to view the problem as one of energy costs, and the solution as one of building more efficient automobile (more miles per gallon), again a very naive and myopic understanding, not a sign of being on the road to cultural change. We remain in a state of denial, incapable of contemplating the end of the personal automobile era, paralyzed at the thought of building what must be built out of the rubble of our already largely defunct suburban infrastructures.

Limits to Growth: Global warming, climate change, and peak oil are all phenomena which challenge us to recognize that human economic systems operate within a finite biophysical environment. For the most part, contemporary human economies exhibit primitive presumptions of infinite sources and sinks. Awareness that neither sources (oil) nor sinks (atmosphere) are infinite is only just dawning on us. I use the phrase "limits to growth" as an indicator of thinking through the implications of the true relation between economy and environment, arguments well stated by Herman Daly and others. The phrase is also, of course, the book title of the Club of Rome study from 1972. A revised edition was published as Beyond the Limits in 1992, and more recently as Limits to Growth: The 30-year Update (2004). As a student of systems science approaches to ecological modeling (doctoral studies and 3 years of teaching simulation methods early in my time at URI), I tend to take seriously this group's focus and conclusions. They represent, I think it is fair to point out, thinking from one of the citadels of contemporary western intellect (MIT), and their work has been scrutinized for 30 years; I believe that their critics are largely naive ideologues (of the Heritage Foundation and Julian Simon stripe—"twice the human population means twice the number of Einsteins to solve problems") (e.g., the rant "Why There Really Are No Limits to Growth"). I urge you to work through the concepts and conclusions of their modeling efforts. For present purposes, I can think of no phrase which has a better chance of leading to a web page reflecting long-term thinking of the type needed to precipitate cultural shifts needed to avert long-range disaster.

These four phrases (global warming, etc.) cover a range of possible meanings, ideologies, etc. I am encouraged by reading the first several search results to believe that "limits to growth" generally refers to the specific modeling effort, and not, for example to too many hits on (hypothetical) texts such as "nitrogen deficiency is one of several possible limits to growth in home lawns". A search for "Club of Rome" (which might refer to a favorite Italian night spot, I suppose) produces a similar number of returns as "limits to growth," by the way.

Sustainability: This term has the conflicting attributes of being familiar while also having very dilute and possibly contradictory meanings. A story illustrates: Several years ago, Dr. Francis Drummond, on a post-doctoral assignment, and Dr. Eleanor Groden, then pursuing her doctorate, had recently left URI for Michigan State (they have since married and both now work for the very fortunate University of Maine, Orono). At one point they wrote to tell of their excitement about an upcoming major conference on sustainability in agriculture. Shortly after the conference, the wrote to tell me of the introductory remarks by MSU Agricultural Experiment Station Director Sylvan Witwer. Welcoming the participants, Witwer began by declaring his delight to be hosting a conference dedicated to "sustaining the current growth trends in Michigan agriculture," thereby severely deflating the expectations of Drummond and Groden (but only temporarily).

This issue is well presented by Barlett and Chase (Sustainability on Campus):

In addition to noting that the number of articles on sustainability produces fewer hits than "global warming," (above), also note that Google prompts users to explore elsewhere with

Searches related to sustainability
sustainable design	sustainability jobs	walmart sustainability	social sustainability
business sustainability	sustainability quotes	sustainability indicators	sustainability plan

Searching Higher Education
for Signs of Awareness and Learning for a New Culture

Here, mindful of the limited purposes and methods of this exercise, I extend the search for signs of awareness to selected, leading higher education institutions. What follows is prefatory to a larger, albeit similar conceptually, effort to assess the current state of sustainability curricula at research universities (in progress). That effort involves surfing through the web sites of 134 universities, made up of the joined sets of 1994 Carnegie Research I and II Universities, all 1862 Land Grant Universities, and 13 institutions considered peers by the University. (I also added to the appendix six institutions—CCRI, RIC, Roger Williams, Providence College, Bryant U, and Johnson and Wales—of local interest.) Methods are explained in that article. In part, as reported below I made a preliminary concerted effort to find "sustainability," "global warming," "global climate change", "peak oil", and "limits to growth" using the university site search, plus an effort to peruse sites for departments which are usually recognizable in lists of academic departments at each institution web site. The latter effort (link above) is underway and I anticipate will be completed this (2007) fall.

For this exercise, I visited the home page of each university, during July 30-31, 2007. In all but one cases, the home page includes a search box or a link the the University's search page. Search engines vary, with many using Google, and with perhaps a half dozen others that I was not acquainted with. An alternative would be to use the standard google site (www.google.com) with and advanced search limited to target university (e.g., "limits to growth" site:www.uri.edu); in all cases, this produced a much smaller number of hits than using the University's search engine directly (including google on the university site). Therefore, I used the 140 site search engines.

For each phrase at each university, I searched and recorded the number of hits. For the majority, this is the number returned on the first page or results (as, for example, "...1-10 of 249 results..."). In an annoyingly large part, the total number is not immediately available and the user is required to step through several pages of results (usually 9-10 pages at a time) until the last result is reached. In a smaller number of universities, the number of results is limited to 100 or 1000, with no apparent way to alter this. I refrain from comment on the competency of systems people at these institutions. Ten institutions were excluded from the results that follow for these reasons:

• Search engine was down during this time (So. Ill Carbondale and Lehigh)
• Results limited to 100 (UCLA) or 1000 (U. Ill. Urbana-Champaign, Texas A&M, Washington U.)
• Search produces a single page only (Rockefeller U.)
• Search will not permit strings (i.e., no "peak oil" but rather searches for both words independently) (North Dakota State and Michigan State)
• No search engine (Johnson and Wales Rhode Island)

Results were added to the database to be used in the study of sustainability curricula and were exported to an excel file to produce the following simple tables. The excel file has two pages, a raw listing and the sorted partial results presented below.

The number of hits on the five search terms using Google (repeating the table above), and the totals for the same terms from the 130 universities follow:

Term	Google Hits (above)	Ratio to Global Warming	130 University Hits total	Ratio to Global Warming
Global Warming	76,400,000	1:1	108,707	1:1
Global Climate Change	1,660,000	.019:1	42,039	.387:1
Limits to Growth	462,000	.006:1	2,685	.025:1
Peak Oil	1,990,000	.026:1	2,202	.020:1
Sustainability	39,800,000	.523:1	255,991	2.35:1

Not wanting to overanalyze these numbers, note

• Compared to hits on the web in general, the university sampling returns a much higher ratio of hits for the phrase "global climate change" to hits for "global warming" (38.7% in the universities vs. 1.98%)
• The number of hits for "limits to growth" is small in both populations, compared to "global warming" but proportionally higher in the universities (2.47% in the universities versus 0.614%)
• The number of hits for "peak oil" is small and similar in both populations, compared to "global warming" (2.03% in universities versus 2.65%)
• The universities return a much higher ratio of "sustainability" to "global warming" (235% for universities vs. 52.6%)

Again, for the primary purpose of posing some questions to promote discussion, I submit the following:

• Does the significantly higher relative frequency of "global climate change" indicate a higher degree of sophistication or problem awareness in the universities relative to the general public?
• Does the relatively higher frequency of "limits to growth" suggest a different perspective on the future in the universities relative to the general public?
• Does the relative similarity of frequencies of "peak oil" suggest that universities are not particularly more aware of the significant of declining liquid fossil fuels than the general public?
• Comparing "sustainability" to "global warming," what does the relatively high frequency of postings in the university sampling have to say about the possible use of this term in the academic community?

Without claiming answers, I suggest a rephrasing as working hypotheses:

• Academics see that there is a complex set of artifacts resulting from changes in the atmosphere that exceed simple warming, and therefore write relatively more about the greater phenomenological set, "global climate change."
• A small fraction of academics are more aware of the long term implications of global resource limits than is true in the general public.
• Contemporary academics show no sign of being ahead of the general public in appreciating the significance of declining liquid fossil fuel production.
• Academics use terms other than sustainability to write about the many facets of sustainability.

I suggest an additional hypothesis which is that relative frequency of at least some of these terms (or all of them) may indicate which universities might be best described as better seed beds of learning for a new culture. Again without elaborating, and without claiming any special significance to the following, I merely note the "top 10" universities in terms of search hits returned for each of the five terms, and for the total returns on all five terms, as follows (the N—% after the term is the number of hits for the 10 listed and percentage of this number out of the 130 in the sample):

"Limits to Growth" (N=917—34.2%)
Rank	University	Hits
1	Univ. Maryland, College Park	159
2	Univ. Minnesota	125
3	Massachusetts Inst. Technology	100
4	Stanford Univ.	92
5	Univ. California, Berkeley	88
6	Univ. Michigan	75
7	Indiana Univ.	73
8	Harvard Univ.	71
9	Univ. Pennsylvania	71
10	Univ. Wisconsin, Madison	63

"Peak Oil" (N=899—40.8%)
Rank	University	Hits
1	Univ. Michigan	192
2	Univ. No. Carolina,Chapel Hill	136
3	Tufts Univ.	105
4	Univ. Maryland, College Park	95
5	Univ. Texas, Austin	79
6	West Virginia Univ.	71
7	Univ. California, Berkeley	63
8	Stanford Univ.	58
9	Univ. Vermont	50
10	Virginia Polytech. Inst. & State Univ.	50

"Global Warming" (N=35,749—32.8%)
Rank	University	Hits
1	Stanford Univ.	5,600
2	Univ. California, Berkeley	4,490
3	Univ. Minnesota	4,340
4	Univ. California, San Diego	3,650
5	Univ. Michigan	3,620
6	Univ. Wisconsin, Madison	3,110
7	Duke Univ.	2,820
8	Cornell Univ.	2,770
9	Penn. State Univ.	2,710
10	Univ. Arizona	2,630

"Global Climate Change" (N=14,347—34.1%)
Rank	University	Hits
1	Stanford Univ.	2,520
2	Michigan State Univ.	2,360
3	Harvard Univ.	1,691
4	Duke Univ.	1,430
5	Univ. Minnesota	1,390
6	Univ. California, Berkeley	1,080
7	Univ. Michigan	1,040
8	Univ. Maryland, College Park	967
9	Univ. Arizona	950
10	Virginia Polytech. Inst. & State Univ.	919

"Sustainability" (N=90,288—35.3%)
Rank	University	Hits
1	Arizona State Univ.	11,500
2	Univ. Florida	10,700
3	Rice Univ.	10,400
4	Cornell Univ.	10,300
5	Univ. Wisconsin, Madison	9,300
6	Univ. Minnesota	9,060
7	Univ. Michigan	7,730
8	Univ. California, Berkeley	7,200
9	Stanford Univ.	7,110
10	Johns Hopkins Univ.	6,988

Total (N=133,754 —32.5%)
Rank	University	Hits
1	Stanford Univ.	15,380
2	Univ. Minnesota	14,963
3	Univ. Florida	14,099
4	Cornell Univ.	14,030
5	Univ. Wisconsin, Madison	13,429
6	Arizona State Univ.	13,038
7	Univ. California, Berkeley	12,921
8	Rice Univ.	12,762
9	Univ. Michigan	12,657
10	Harvard Univ.	10,475

These tables do not readily lend themselves to conclusions, but do permit the asking of simple questions. What explains, for example, the relative abundance of web pages on these topics at these centers? Certainly, if the overall web presence (i.e., number of on-campus web pages) is overall large, hits on these topics may simply be an artifact of robust local web publication habits. But are there particular reasons? Could, for example, the presence of a Herman Daly on the University of Maryland campus be stimulating an awareness of global resource limits, reflected in hits on Limits to Growth? What is it at Michigan which is responsible for hits on Peak Oil (3 times the hits of UT Austin (#5), which we could posit would relate to local oil interests)? Why is Stanford so interested in Global Warming and Global Climate Change, or Michigan State, or Harvard? Arizona State's new School of Sustainability, with its dozens of new courses in 2007 may explain its hits for Sustainability, but what does the word mean at U Florida, Rice, or Cornell? And is Sustainability at Johns Hopkins more related to medical use of the term, or to something to do with the environment?

The answers to such questions can in part come from a more detailed search for curricular developments at these institutions, or through an attempt to review the contexts in which the phrases are being found. The latter is clearly a prodigious undertaking, beyond the efforts of one unfunded academic. The former is a study underway, to be reported on this (2007) fall (work in progress is currently (early August 2007) about 40% complete.)

Suffice it to say, the lists of institutions with web presence in searches for these terms suggests that there is at least some form of awareness at leading American campuses. The hope for future social changes of the magnitude needed to exit the 21^st century in any but a disastrous fashion may well lie in the depth of scholarship that may be reflected in these centers today.

The local scene: Before moving on, I should accede to the parochialism of my campus and at least place Rhode Island in the context of the above. The following table is drawn from the same exercise, and lists local institutional results from web searches. I did not do Salve Regina and Johnson & Wales does not have a search engine. Column headings are abbreviations for "Limits to Growth," etc., as above. Rank is for total returns on the 5 search phrases, out of the 130 institutions in the sample.

Institution	"Limits"	"Peak"	"Warming"	"Climate"	"Sustainability"	Total of 5 terms	Rank for Total
Brown Univ.	9	6	519	175	460	1169	78
Bryant Univ.	0	0	7	0	14	21	128
Providence College	1	1	3	0	3	8	130
Rhode Island College	0	0	5	0	20	25	126
Roger Williams Univ.	1	0	23	7	32	63	123
Univ. Rhode Island	37	31	1140	231	1930	3369	39

Rhode Island's two research universities appear to be the strongest hope for awareness, but that awareness needs to grow. Most of the hits on "limits to growth" and "peak oil" at URI, for example, were from an online archive of the faculty senate forum, a roundtable of postings offering links to contemporary articles (newspapers, blogs) rather than glimpses into course outlines or scholarly research. These terms did appear on several pages of online course materials for two courses, my own "Centuries of Limits" course and an advanced economics course, and these were included in the hit totals. Again, a more extensive search for curricula at these universities (in progress) may shed further light, or lead to further questions.

Conclusions

The purpose of this exercise was to stimulate thinking about how we will know whether society is achieving the levels of awareness necessary to effect cultural changes dictated by global resource limits. That is, it was a preliminary search for Al Gore's awareness, a prerequisite to action. The argument is suggested that there are obvious degrees of awareness. Contemporary public opinion polls suggest that Gore's campaign to publicize the extensive scientific understandings of global warming has succeeded in putting the matter at the edge of the public's radar, evinced on lists of public "concerns." Television polls and counts of terms most popular in web searches suggest, however, that society continues to place far greater attention to its various contemporary diversions than to its future. Overall, however, there is an abundance of material on the web relating to global warming, and this may bode well, as social change can only be accelerated by social literacy, which must start with written materials.

This exercise also attempted a preliminary excursion into academia, again through the indirect method of counting web presence for five terms proposed as hypothetical indicators of awareness in leading American universities. It was further suggested that the terms vary in sensitivity to depth of perception, with "sustainability" perhaps too over-applicable to be used for current purposes, "global warming" reflecting general awareness but not to the degree of "global climate change." It was suggested that the 30-year-old "limits to growth" may capture the essence of a longer-term perspective, and if so, neither the public nor academia exhibits clear signs of this, although there is hope that academia, with its relatively greater percentage of hits, may be waking up to global resource limits. The same can not be posited based on the lack of materials on "peak oil," suggesting that perhaps academia is congruent with the general public in viewing this as tomorrow's problem, tomorrow being too distant to be of immediate concern.

I offer one final thought. The central thesis of all of this, for me, is that major cultural change will be needed to avert global disaster due to limits to growth, with effects becoming catastrophic (measured in raw mortality rates) near the end of this century. Higher education may be society's greatest hope as the central agent of change. If so, then the deeper the thinking of the academies, the sooner awareness will be likely to lead to change. Most universities reflect the immature state of awareness of the surrounding society, at least here at the beginning of the century. They are on the wrong road, still. I look at a single data point, however, and ponder. While almost all universities report a greater number of hits on "global warming" than on "global climate change," this is not so at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, where there were two and a half times as many hits on the more sophisticated term, climate change. I submit that those living in the midst of climate change—near the melting polar ice cap, on top of thawing tundra, aware of the sounds of oil fields being drained forever—may be more aware than the rest of us. I do hope that it will not be necessary for human kind to walk all the way to the edge of this global precipice before our eyes are wide open, as far too many of us will be pushed over the edge before we all draw back.

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