UCSB Summer Sessions 2008

Why is a Picture of Planet Earth on the Cover of the Catalog?
The 12,756.3 km diameter, 5.972e24 kg orb pictured on the cover of your Summer 2007 general catalog is our most precious resource. Seventy-one percent of the Earth’s surface is covered with water. Heated by the sun, Earth’s water and remaining land mass, along with the treasures hidden beneath these surfaces, and the nitrogen, oxygen, and other gases and water that forms its mantle, are essential for life—life as we know it now, and life as we can only envision it in the future. There is, of course, a cost associated with life, and one of the greatest challenges of all is to learn how to sustain and achieve a balance of outcomes for human and natural environments. Despite the fact that the United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, we consume over 24 percent of the world’s energy. We need to change. When all is said and done, learning is the essential first step in change.

Did you know that*. . .

• The t-shirt you might have put on this morning was made from cotton, a derivative of a plant that accounts for 10 percent of the world’s annual pesticide consumption, and polyester, a petroleum based product whose manufacture causes the atmospheric release of 10 times the polyester’s weight in carbon dioxide?
• The cup of coffee you drank this morning was brewed from about 100 coffee beans—approximately 1/60 of the amount of beans that grow annually on a single coffee tree?
• The newspaper you might have read this morning represents a half pound of newsprint covered with two grams of petroleum- and soybean-based inks?
• The manufacture of each desktop computer and monitor you use in the library or at home requires about 55 pounds of plastics, metals, glass, and silicon and generates approximately 139 pounds of waste, 49 pounds of which are classified as hazardous?
• The production of the quarter pound of beef in the hamburger you consumed for lunch generated green house gases estimated to be roughly equivalent to those emitted into the atmosphere by a six-mile commute by automobile?
• The aluminum canned soft drink you drank today was just one can among the 100+ billion cans used each year in the United States, 60% of which come from recycled materials?

Come join us this summer and learn about yourself, the world you inhabit and share
with other creatures, and the resources you use in your quest to enhance the
quality of your own life, and those around you.

*The Did You Know “facts” were taken from John C. Ryan and Alan Thein Durning,
Stuff: The Secret Lives of Everyday Things. Seattle, Washington: Northwest
Environment Watch, 1997.