Other events that took place during Earth Week 2010 included "What Must We Do About Fossil Fuel CO2?" a lecture by geochemist Wallace Broecker, an Environmental Film Fest, an Earth Day Rally, a workday and potluck dinner at the Dartmouth Organic Farm, an Energy Pledge Drive Launch, an event featuring the Big Green Bus, a "Do It in the Dark" Party and a Dartmouth Green Alumni Networking Event.
In his speech, Speth emphasized that although Earth Day is an opportunity to celebrate sustainability initiatives, it is also a time to engage in realistic "assessment" and "truth-telling" about the effectiveness of environmental efforts and our unwillingness to infringe upon global economic progress.
"The current approaches in mainstream environmental work today are simply not succeeding," Speth said.
Speth implicated the influence of the economy on American politics in delaying meaningful environmental reforms, adding that the United States is characterized by "an unquestioning society-wide myth of economic growth at any cost." He said the United States needs a government led by informed citizens who are willing to "make the market work for the environment rather than against it."
"We clearly do not have that today," he said.
Financial progress has created environmental and social problems that outweigh its benefits, Speth told his audience. He added that significant growth in the gross domestic product of advanced economies has not corresponded with an increase in well-being and happiness among citizens.
Event attendee Jon Mingle '01, who studied energy efficiency as a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, said that he was familiar with Speth's tenure at Yale University and agrees with his appraisal of the current environmental situation.
"He pretty clearly lays out the systemic issues, and I totally agree with his message all of these problems are linked, and you can't treat them in isolation," Mingle said. "I think he's pretty honest about how hard it's going to be."
Marissa Knodel '09, the College's Sustainability Initiative's programs specialist, said Earth Week 2010 went "really well."
"What we tried to do this year was to really get a lot of sponsorship from a lot of different groups and have a wide variety of activities to show that environmental issues are interconnected with issues of social justice, political justice and the economy," she said.
Knodel said that one key to Earth Week 2010's success was the organizers' effective mobilization of Dartmouth alumni. They achieved this by sending mass e-mails, running advertisements on the College website and reaching out to the recently established Dartmouth Green Alumni network, she said.
Dartmouth Green Alumni, founded in 2009, works to unite members of the Dartmouth community interested in environmental issues and provide opportunities for them to become involved in sustainability projects, according to the group's website.
Earth Week 2010 opened with an appearance by members of the team behind the Big Green Bus, an annual project in which students drive a vegetable oil-powered bus around the country to promote energy efficiency.
Members of the group parked the bus on the Green on Thursday and held an open house at the Thayer School of Engineering on Friday, according to co-general manager Betsy Dain-Owens '10. The group followed Earth Day with a weekend tour through Massachusetts, visiting the Dartmouth Club of Central Massachusetts and working with inner-city students, Dain-Owens said in an e-mail to The Dartmouth.
The group traveled to Fletcher Maynard Academy in east Cambridge to help prepare a "learning garden" to teach students about sustainable agriculture. The project was an effort to make the Big Green Bus program "more of a year-long presence" instead of a summer project, Dain-Owens said.
"It was a really fun way to give back to the community and make an impact at the local level," she said.
A broad range of campus groups co-sponsored the week's events, including Student Assembly, Programming Board, the International Students Association, Dartmouth Coalition for Global Health and the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Polar Environmental Change Program. Other sponsors included the Dickey Center for International Understanding, the earth sciences and environmental studies departments, the Thayer School, the Dartmouth Class of 1964, the Institute of Arctic Studies, the Sierra Club and the Climate Institute.
Speth previously served as a law professor at Georgetown University and is the former dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
