WASHINGTON, June 14,
2007 -- The leaders of 284 colleges and universities from around
the country officially unveiled this week the The American
College & University Presidents Climate Commitment, a pact that
urges educational institutions to eliminate their greenhouse gas
emissions.
The schools come from 45 states and represent about 15 percent
of the country's higher education institutions, and included
community colleges, major universities, and whole school
systems, like the 10-school University of California system.
The official commitment signed by all members of the group says
in part, "We believe colleges and universities must exercise
leadership in their communities and throughout society by
modeling ways to minimize global warming emissions, and by
providing the knowledge and the educated graduates to achieve
climate neutrality."
Michael Crow, the president of Arizona State University and the
chair of the group's steering committee, told the New York
Times, "Universities are huge institutions with huge carbon
footprints, but they also are laboratories for concepts of
sustainability."
The plan for signatories to the Climate Commitment follows three
steps:
- Begin development of a comprehensive plan to achieve
climate neutrality as soon as possible;
- implement two or more actions from a list of ways to
reduce greenhouse gases while the more comprehensive plan is
being developed;
- make the action plan, inventory, and periodic progress
reports publicly available through the Association for the
Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.
The first step, creating a long-term plan to become climate
neutral, begins with an inventory of each school's carbon
emissions within the next two years, followed by the creation of
specific strategies to neutralize those emissions.
The second step of the commitment includes taking at least two
of the following actions: ensuring that all new campus
construction will be built to at least the U.S. Green Building
Council's LEED Silver standard; purchasing only Energy
Star-certified products when possible; offsetting GHG emissions
from school-funded air travel; encouraging public transit use by
all comers to the school; purchasing energy from renewable
resources; and supporting shareholder resolutions that address
climate change and sustainability issues in companies that the
school invests its endowment.
Mitch Tomashow, president of Unity College in Maine, told the
Kennebec Journal that signing the commitment was a "no-brainer,"
but added that the sub-section of the commitment that requires
making climate change and sustainability part of the curriculum
for all students posed an entirely different challenge.
"That's going to be the most difficult thing to accomplish,"
Tomashow said. "Moving the curriculum so that every engineering
student, every medical student, takes these types of classes --
that's a much bigger challenge, but that ultimately will need to
happen."
More information about the commitment, as well as a list of all
the schools that have signed on, is available at
PresidentsClimateCommitment.org. |
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