A Personal Learning Bridge: How New Jersey and the World, Including Europe and Germany, Might Learn From Each Other
Sustainability Change Agent and Senior Fellow for Sustainability Innovation and Multidisciplinary Thought
Fairleigh Dickinson University, Institute for Sustainable Enterprise
Abstract
From Rutgers Class of 1977 through the present as a Ph.D. student at Erasmus University’s Sustainability Program, in the Netherlands, it has been a learning journey between the author’s base in New Jersey and the international scale, particularly Europe. The meta-purpose is to explore respective opportunities to address climate change, promote them through writings and at events, and speed up each’s exploration of possibilities. Vehicles included attendance at conferences in two European countries, including Germany; attendance at two German Embassy forums in New York City; articles published on “Global,” or local/state: international connections; 3 presentations to Rutgers Humphrey Fellows from developing countries while at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, where the author helped catalyze their initial climate change work. A major conclusion of 4½ decades of experiences is the way we often think, including the assumptions we make, can be unexpected and unforced barriers to knowing about, and therefore trying, new approaches. These mindset barriers, and there are many of them, are not necessarily impossible to overcome, although it is not clear how best to do so. An example is “There is nothing to be learned from Europe.” We can see this being challenged at this conference.
