John B. Simpson isn't the only one with a plan for the year 2020. Like the old gag from Conan O'Brien about what happens "In the Year 2000," two decades later, everyone's got some wacky plan about how things will turn out.
Barack Obama hopes to have reduced energy consumption by 10 percent in 2020, with at least 30 percent of the federal government's electricity coming from renewable sources.
The EU wants to cut energy consumption by 20 percent and phase out the sale of the incandescent light bulbs by 2011. London plans to manage 85 percent of its own waste by 2020.
Australia will reduce greenhouse emissions by 30 percent, and Colorado will double its renewable energy use.
Stinky ol' New Jersey has a plan in which 20 percent of the state's electricity will be from wind or solar power by 2020.
Even Arnold Schwarchenegger - who once referred to all democrats as "girlie men" - seeks to slash greenhouse gases by 25 percent in California by the year 2020.
UB, however, has a different kind of plan. We have a plan that doesn't like the word "reduce." It prefers words like "increase," "growth" and "advancement." And those words can't deny projections of 10,000 additional students and 1,350 additional faculty and staff members. Like obesity in America, the University will grow by as much as 40 percent by 2020.
With over 40,000 people, University at Buffalo is suddenly sounding more like a small city than a college. In fact, I'm not sure that the name University at Buffalo is even accurate, as the University's not in Buffalo - at this point, it's not even really in Amherst. UB has effectively become its own entity: UB-ville...or Ubopolis...or Ubopia.
Simpson has talked about connecting the school with the community. To do this, he has more realistically developed a plan to become the community.
Thus far, UB-ites have done a pretty good job alienating the rest of the city. Paralleling classic "white flight" from urban areas, in 1964 the University acquired land that would become North Campus and consequently ostracized itself from the rest of Buffalo.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
