Return to the University of Virginia

The relationship between the University of Virginia and the Rachel Carson Council was deepened this autumn when RCC President Dr. Robert K. Musil returned to the historic grounds at the invitation of Spencer Phillips, Associate Professor in the university’s noted environmental program in Global Sustainability that includes foreign policy and related issues.

In two large lecture classes on Sustainability Policy and on Global Sustainability, Musil urged UVA students to enter the RCC’s new national storytelling contest in any of three categories including essays, creative writing and poetry. Open until the end of 2026, three winners will be announced to whom the RCC will give a $250 prize and publish their work widely. Musil also emphasized that those who join the RCC Campus Network and activist list will also be invited to RCC’s annual Advocacy Days in Washington, D.C. with all costs covered, as well as hear first about applying for an RCC National Environmental Leadership Fellowship (NELF) which includes fully-paid residence and tuition at the 2027 RCC American Environmental Leadership Institute (AELI), also in Washington and Capitol Hill.

Musil then described RCC’s current policy initiatives including a growing campaign to end the clear-cutting of American forests to produce industrial scale wood pellets that are shipped overseas to Europe and the UK from ports in Virginia and North Carolina. The pellets are then combusted in former coal-fired utilities, giving off even more CO2 and pollutants than coal. The RCC’s newest campaign, Musil said, has begun with a new policy report called Saving the Boreal Forest along with an organizing campaign to end clear-cutting over 1 million acres each year of the Canadian boreal forest to produce the huge amounts of toilet paper used by Americans.

Since 2026 is an historic mid-term election year that may end the Trump and MAGA-controlled Congress, Musil urged UVA students to vote in November and volunteer for poll watching and electoral campaigns. The RCC is carrying out its largest voter education and turn out effort ever, including a nationwide RCC Votes! Day of Action and tabling on October 15.

In the discussion that followed, the students asked Dr. Musil how he became interested and involved in environmental issues. “Not unlike Rachel Carson,” Musil explained, “my mother introduced me to nature as a child on Long Island. She took me to gardens, wetlands, introduced me to backyards birds, and gathered shells with me at Jones Beach.”

But Musil said that it was really the war in Vietnam that gave rise to his interest and involvement with the interconnected areas of the environment, economics, war, foreign policy and nuclear weapons. An Army Captain who was teaching communications and policy at the Defense Information School, Musil was keenly aware of U.S. policy that carpet-bombed much of Vietnam, destroyed villages, dikes and dams, sprayed the chemical defoliant Agent Orange throughout South Vietnam, threatened to use nuclear weapons, and considered using two of them at Khe Sanh where U.S. forces were surrounded.

Photo: Vietnam Center, Texas Tech.

This intense involvement grew out of the American strategic commitment to Indochina that President Dwight Eisenhower had described as a vast source of resources including rice, tin, tungsten, rubber, jute, and sulphur, as well as control of the maritime choke points of Southeast Asia. Ordered to Vietnam as punishment for his anti-war efforts while on active duty, Musil refused and ultimately was discharged as a conscientious objector. Thus, began his long career leading national organizations opposed to the draft, war and nuclear weapons, and devoted to protecting the environment, environmental health, justice and democracy.

Dr. Musil then urged the Global Sustainability students to use their knowledge to act since they are facing, as he did in Vietnam, an ongoing war and bombing in Iran that was initiated by U.S. attacks without legal authorization. Musil concluded by urging them to make an ongoing, lifelong commitment to sustainability and peaceful foreign policy. He reminded them that Rachel Carson said, “…ours is a cause without any end. At no time will we be able to say our work is done.”

By the end of his visit, Musil had signed up one hundred new activists at the University of Virginia and had numerous students asking to get involved with the RCC through Advocacy Days and by applying for a 2026-2027 RCC National Environmental Leadership Fellowship.