David Orr is convinced global climate change will soon upend life as we know it, but he's less certain that science will supply the solution to avoid catastrophe.

"There's a huge gap between the scientific discourse and the public discourse," he told a Wednesday afternoon audience on the University of Montana campus. So in addition to trying to convince people the climate is changing for the worse, the Oberlin College professor has also led a long-term effort to re-energize his town along green, sustainable economic lines.

"College towns tend to be seen as the Socialist Republic of fill-in-the-blank, surrounded by a sea of hostility," Orr said. "We've got to overcome this, and become seen as drivers of economic renewal. If sustainability only happens in Missoula or Oberlin, we have failed."

Around Oberlin, Ohio, the landscape is scarred by the gutted industrial cores of Detroit, Cleveland, Toledo and Cincinnati. But it also has a number of high-tech centers, including some of the founding firms for solar electricity cells. Ironically, when the college wanted solar panels for a self-sufficient campus building, it had to look to German firms for production.

Those German firms were using American technology and doing good business because their government had put emphasis and incentives toward renewable energy sources, Orr said. A similar economic wave boosted investment in California last year after state passage of carbon cap legislation. There are 8,000 parts to a wind-powered turbine, and most of them come from industrial processes that are common in Ohio. The trick, Orr said, was to show people that the green economy was good business.

And that should come when those people start factoring in the true cost of fossil fuels that are currently cheap. Americans have been paying about 9 cents a kilowatt hour for electricity, without factoring in the ecological damage of mountaintop removal coal mining, foreshortened lifespans from toxic pollution or other costs of carbon dependence. When those costs are returned to the equation, then green energy makes economic sense.

But those customers also need to see and experience what such an economy looks like, and that's where the Oberlin project comes in. College officials and students have renovated old city blocks, built businesses and campus buildings, and developed products and processes that all grow out of renewable, sustainable principles.

"This won't fail for lack of financing or because the technology isn't there," Orr said. "Our biggest hurdle is our capacity to organize. We've got a track record for doing all these things. We know how to do this. The question is - will we do it in time?"

Reporter Rob Chaney can be reached at 523-5382 or at rchaney@missoulian.com.