Greener by the Campus
Colleges are working together to leverage real power on climate change.
By Elizabeth Crampton
January 18, 2008
The University of Texas’ new school of nursing building is one of the most sophisticated environmentally friendly academic buildings in the Southwest. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)Hockey players at Middlebury College in Vermont may soon be skating on purified ice—a substance that takes less energy to freeze than normal ice—to do their part in the fight against global warming. The change is one of many Middlebury is considering to help its campus become more energy efficient. When it comes to fighting climate change, colleges have a unique opportunity: Because most of them house and serve thousands of people, integrating green practices, even minor ones, can equal big steps toward fighting global warming.
Middlebury is a signatory to the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, an initiative to help colleges and universities go green. The program just received purchasing loans and benefits worth about $5 billion from the Clinton Climate Initiative, a foundation set up by former President Bill Clinton. Eleven signatories of the commitment have already decided to use these benefits to make their practical campus-wide changes more cost- and energy-efficient. The Clinton Initiative also includes deep discounts on energy efficient products from 25 green manufacturers.
Yet the most important part of the Presidents Climate Commitment is not the new funds by the Clinton Climate Initiative. It is the commitment itself. When campuses sign on to the commitment they must set emission reduction goals tied to a specific year and create a step-by-step long-term plan to achieve them. Schools don’t have to sign on to make changes, but it does give them resources and motivation to make energy changes a top priority. As of the end of 2007, 444 college and university presidents have signed on to the Presidents Climate Commitment. (Campus Progress supports similar initiatives through our membership in the Campus Climate Challenge.)
The partnership between colleges and the Clinton foundation provides over $317 billion to spend on green products. With so much money to spend, colleges and universities as a whole could have a significant impact on the market. And with an aggregate student population of 17 million, colleges and universities could start affecting how students think about buying green products and adopting green practices into their lives.
Tufts University signed their own climate commitment in 1990, the same year Tufts helped devise the Talloires Declaration, an action plan that is currently being updated for incorporating sustainability and environmental literacy in teaching, research, and outreach at colleges and universities.
“We’re on board with our commitment to climate change action,” said Sarah Hammond Creighton, project manager of Tufts’ Office of Sustainability and co-author of the book Degrees that Matter: Climate Change and the University. “For years we have been picking the low hanging fruits and engaging in opportunistic, deliberate, and very successful sustainability efforts, making decisions based on what will have the biggest impact and the fewest decision makers in order to get it done faster.” At the moment, Tufts doesn’t think a long-term plan required by the Presidents Commitment is suited for their needs. They would prefer to tackle problems one at a time.
Tufts may be a leader in its own community, but the Presidents Climate Commitment is one of the first large coalitions to move beyond debating the issue and take action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Collective action is the key to the Presidents Climate Commitment, an element which has been reinforced by the benefits provided by the Clinton Climate Initiative. “The other appealing aspect of the Clinton Climate Initiative for higher education is that it provides a learning network and a way to document and share best practices and innovations, similar to LEED (Leadership in Energy and Design), a green building program sponsored by the U.S Building Council,” says Jack Byrne, Campus Sustainability Coordinator for Middlebury College, one of the 11 pilot schools. After all, it’s easier to act as a group than alone.
Whether it is through the exposure to new ideas, a cheaper price for energy efficient projects or a purchasing pool model, the Climate Commitment now has the potential to speed up the time frame of climate action plans already in place among the pilot schools, and maybe even other signatories down the road. It also could result in more schools signing onto the commitment and devising comprehensive greenhouse gas reduction plans of their own.
Regardless of whether schools join the Presidents Climate Commitment, students can make practical energy efficient changes on their campuses. The main advantage to the Presidents Climate Commitment is that a school can exhibit a very public commitment to stopping global warming. And now, as a result of the Clinton Climate Initiative, a school will also be able to become sustainable faster and more cheaply by signing on to the coalition.
A college or university can tailor the plan to their own goals and needs. According to Matthew St. Clair, the Sustainability Manager of the University of California system and one of the authors of the commitment, “they have complete flexibility in making their own plan.” The Presidents Climate Commitment asks that the plan be submitted within two years.
“This is the public service opportunity that addressing climate change merits,” St. Clair continued, “we’re not sending the same signal to the rest of society if we go it alone. By doing it together the media will then take notice and the federal government will be forced to provide funding for the issue of climate change.”
Although the Climate Commitment is a good start, there are many ways to be a leader in the issue of climate change. Getting your school to implement small changes campus-wide can make a big difference. From switching to recycled toilet paper in public bathrooms to incorporating green building practices into new campus facilities, there are numerous ways your campus can make progress toward stopping global warming.
There’s solidarity in acting as a part of a group. “If every institution of higher education signed on to the Commitment then it has moved beyond just the individual carbon reductions of each school. It becomes a movement,” St. Clair said.
Elizabeth Crampton is an environmental activist at Swarthmore College.
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An important piece of this movement will be democratizing the expenditure and allocation processes in our universities. We have administrators and Trustees that feel much more comfortable in a corner office or board room than a classroom or library… and that was has not always been the case.
The only way to ensure that our tuition and endowment dollars don’t go to ExxonMobil stocks, get sunk into low-efficiency buildings, or are otherwise used in environmentally harmful ways is to make sure that students and faculty (not just wealthy boardmembers and VPs) have a meaningful say in our budgets.
— Liberaltarian - Jan 22, 01:05 PM - #