The University of Maine System is the state’s public school; the people of Maine ought to feel they have ownership of it: ownership to participate in its activities, to carry its mission along, and to influence that mission—to ensure that it does indeed serve people and engage with their expressed needs. In some ways, UMaine demonstrates what is possible for a university in relation to the climate crisis: i.e. its wind energy projects. In other ways, though, it entrenches the uncritical, defeatist notion largely shared in the ecological and environmental sciences that the climate and biodiversity crises are beyond confronting; we are long past prevention, all that’s left for us is mitigation (for some). We disagree that things have to be this way. We reject that these crises are inevitable and instead contend that we can do something about it—right here, right now. The Universities of Maine can play important institutional roles in a future considerate of all.
