Ithaca College

I am distressed to learn that Ithaca College Natural Lands, of which I was a part for some years, has sought and accepted grants from a company with as lousy an environmental and community record as Dominion Energy.

This corporation peddles primarily natural gas, coal, and oil and is infamous for, among other things, its pushing of Cove Point (MD) liquefied \\\'natural\\\' gas import and export facility, which is sited near a nuclear power plant and threatens the fragile ecosystems of the Chesapeake Bay estuary. It has scoffed in the face of strong and almost universal community opposition to its plans in Maryland and elsewhere, and has struck deals with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and state environmental and health \"protection\" agencies to enable it to expand rapidly its fossil fuel infrastructure.

*Any* further use of fossil fuels hastens catastrophic climate change. People all over the country -- and the globe -- are experiencing firsthand-and-ongoing that climate weirding via \\\"unusual\\\" and \\\"unprecedented\\\" weather events. Skepticism about climate change is now understood to be simple willful ignorance, and many people are coming to the belief that deliberate contribution to further climate change is a criminal offense in reality, if not in U.S. legal practice. They are also starting to understand that the rights granted to corporations as (artificial but legally protected) persons are trampling the rights of real people, human communities, and Nature communities and ecosystems.

While I doubt there are any willfully ignorant people on the ICNL, I wonder at the ability to compromise ethical concerns to accept a few thousand dollars from an essentially criminal enterprise. The asphalt paving of \\\"natural lands,\\\" even for the noble intent of allowing universal access to those less mobile, is not worth such a deal with the devil.