Angela Oberg

It was when Oberg fell in love with the atmosphere of higher education that things shifted—she had the freedom to ask interesting questions and had the space and time to answer them. After graduating with her Ph.D. from Rutgers University, she was offered a professorship. One year into it, the university created a climate action plan and was looking for someone with Ober’s credentials: experience working professionally on a team doing public policy planning.

“The academic world and the professional world are very different. They operate very differently. And so they were looking for someone who had both of those. And in that process, they asked me to help to direct the climate action planning process,” said Oberg. A year and a half to two years later, they had a climate action plan involving hundreds of faculty, staff, and students across the university. In 2021, the Rutgers Office of Climate Action was born to implement sustainability practices into all aspects of university life.

“I’ll start by saying that I think the generation of students that are college age right now, they know. We don’t have to convince them. In fact, we’re catching up with them. I mean, they are so far ahead of us in terms of understanding. And I think that as an administrator at a large university, my job is to help them realize the outcomes that they want,” said Oberg. She mentioned that climate support isn’t isolated to sustainability students on Rutgers’ campus—it’s widespread.

One of the most rewarding parts of working in higher education for Rutgers is helping people figure out how to realize the future. “They’re these balls of energy, like they’re just potential energy. And they’re just all over the place and scattered. And they have so much enthusiasm, and they have such a big vision,” Oberg said in reference to university students. “It’s our job as higher-ed institutions to take that energy and train it on something. So really to provide the skills and the knowledge and the discipline to say, yes, we want to change the world. It’s not going to happen overnight, and we’re not going to do it alone. And so really saying, like, you have all of this, what are we going to do with it?”

The Climate Action Plan at Rutgers focuses on decarbonization, resilience, and building a culture of sustainability. Oberg mentions that while there are big innovations coming around in climate actions, they are still working diligently implementing their solutions and crossing the bridge from technology to implementation. Speaking of implementation, Rutgers has an in-vessel composter behind their dining hall that’s currently being tested. While the idea of in-vessel composting isn’t new, the challenge is trying to figure out how to implement this technology behind a university dining hall and then analyzing why certain solutions succeeded or failed.

“So if you’re in a very urban environment and you don’t have, like, a farm, to do a bunch of composting, the question is, how do we deal with food waste in a very urban environment where we’re space-constrained and yet we have a lot of food waste? So that’s the situation we have behind the dining hall,” said Oberg. Oberg describes the mechanism as a large, screw-like system that turns food waste and composts it. They’ve been testing it for two years, but they are still faced with questions, such as the logistical aspect of getting the scraps composted properly, as well as the behavioral aspect of getting people to use the compost bin.

Oberg compared the concept of implementing technology like a composter into people’s habits to solar panels and electric vehicles— the challenge comes in getting people to adopt them. “It’s the responsibility of our institutions, whether that’s higher-ed or government or corporations, to then make those decisions easier. So if people want to make that choice and we make it hard for them to make that choice, then we’re doing a disservice to them, to the community, to the planet,” said Oberg. “That’s what we’re trying to do at Rutgers. We’re trying to make the institution do everything in a way that makes it very easy for people to make the decision that is more sustainable.”

By acknowledging that those living in challenging circumstances can’t always prioritize climate action, Oberg says that being environmentally conscious needs to have no bounds. “We need to create a way of life where you can make those decisions. And they’re easy. It doesn’t cost double to do that thing, or you don’t have to go to a specialty store, or you don’t.”

With the concept of climate action being a collective effort, Oberg encourages people to focus on climate action as a way to ensure independence and resilience. “When you have more than one energy or energy source, then you’re not dependent. If a big storm comes and all your energy is coming from one source, then that’s not very resilient, right? And so we could be doing this work without using the word climate. I’m going to continue using the word climate because I think it matters. But if it makes people uncomfortable or doesn’t, it makes it more difficult, then let’s just talk about the outcomes, like the clean energy transition is here. It’s going to happen.”

If you’ve ever doubted calling yourself an environmentalist, think again. Oberg argues that if you’re on this planet breathing, you have to be an environmentalist, because the source of all life comes from this planet. “We need everyone. Not only can we not do this alone, we have to have everyone. Right, and I would so that’s the first piece of it that everyone is required. We need you. We must have you as part of this process. And the second piece is, we need you as you are.”