Sustainability

Highlights from the Climate Change and Higher Education Webcast

Three speakers offer a wealth of valuable ideas and resources

As a member of the Higher Education Associations Sustainability Consortium (HEASC), NIRSA was offered a complimentary registration to the Climate Change and Higher Education Webcast held on December 12, 2007. Many resources were discussed for students, administrators, staff, and faculty.

The speakers were Michael Crow, President, Arizona State University; Billy Parrish, Co-founder and Coordinator, Energy Action Coalition, and Dave Newport, Director of the University of Colorado at Boulder Environmental Center. It was moderated by James Gorman, Science Editor, The New York Times. Many resources were discussed for both students and administrators/staff/faculty. The speakers provided a view from the university president on why sustainability should be a mission of the university; an examination of student efforts in this realm; and ideas from an administrator on how to implement plans to work toward carbon- neutral status on a university campus.

Below is a summary of each speaker's comments.

• Michael Crow, President, Arizona State University, spoke about the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment, why it is important, what it means, how they expect it to grow, and addressed why he thought some universities were not ready to sign on. He talked about universities having essential to their missions, to teach, learn and discover, and even though universities make up only 3% of the earth's carbon footprint, they can have influence over 100% of the students' carbon footprint as they go out in the world. He also said that the intellectual forces on university campuses have been instrumental in enacting change for a number of significant political, environmental, economic and governmental policies or programs. Sustainability is a concept where change or visionary shifts may occur from within the university system, but because it is broader and perhaps not as easy to define, it is harder for some to grasp or agree to be part of.
• Billy Parrish, Co-founder and Coordinator, Energy Action Coalition, talked about his mission of organizing students to effect change on their campuses. He said universities should be a model for communities in this area. He believes students and young people are ahead of the curve in understanding the concept of sustainability and the need to effect change. He is promoting the Clean Energy Corps movement to put Americans to work to solve the energy crisis, and the political movement PowerShift, which met in Washington, D.C. on November 5, 2007 to let Congress know that they had one year from that date to prove that they are committed to the environment, or the youth movement that has millions of voters would throw their support to candidates that support environmental causes.
• Dave Newport, Director of the University of Colorado at Boulder Environmental Center, talked about how to implement these plans on campus. He said first you have the leadership that supports the concept, and then you need to operationalize the plan. He said that in his job, he didn't need to stop global warming; he just needed to concentrate on what his campus was doing. He laid out plans for evaluating current university energy uses (read your utility bill), identify the sources of energy use (coal, nuclear, etc). Identify what you are buying off the grid, figure out your university emissions, and come up with options for implementation. All universities have long-range capital improvement or transportation plans; start with what changes can be made to those plans that would reduce or eliminate emissions. Come up with scenarios, e.g., if we did nothing, what would our carbon footprint be? If we invested some money to purchase offsets, what would that do? If we modified a, b or c, how would that effect our footprint? Then test the scenarios and come up with a plan. He said "Think long term, while acting short term. Sustainability takes forever -- that's the point."

How can NIRSA Members help? If your university is not part of the Presidents Climate Commitment, and you feel that it should be, start with getting students on campus involved. A large number of the presidents who did sign the commitment said that they signed because of student pressure. And take Dave Newport's suggestion to "think long term, while acting short term." Even if your university is not formally committed, your department can do things, however small, to help enact change, or educate students, faculty, and staff on sustainability principles.