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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