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GOING CLIMATE NEUTRAL
April 22, 2006: Day of Climate Neutrality
Using Earth Day, 2006 to Change the Campus Climate

This Earth Day, 2006, the National Association of Environmental Law Societies (NAELS) will partner with leaders from universities and campus towns to make today's more than 4,000 campuses and their towns as close to "climate neutral" as possible! NAELS will encourage students, faculty, plant managers, administrators, trustees, citizens, and local professionals to work together to measure, reduce, and offset university and campus town emissions for the 24 hour period around earth day.

(Download a 2-page document)

 

Step #1: Get the Ball Rolling:

Cut and paste the e-mail below to an environmental professor or your closest environmental contact at your college or university TODAY!

Dear Professor ________,

My name is _____ and I am a student at ___________. I am writing to you because my student group is hoping to measure/estimate the aggregate campus greenhouse gas emissions (or fill in smaller target) for the 24-hour period around today, Earth Day, April 22, 2005.

We are running this project because we want to learn about the impact our University has on global warming and look into the money-saving solutions that the university community can take to reduce this impact in the future. We hope to use the estimate from April 22, 2005, to measure our progress for next Earth Day, 2006.

As you may know, many schools are now conducting overall greenhouse gas inventories to determine and reduce their contribution to global warming. In the process they are finding out that reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) can save money and make good business sense in many other ways. We feel that this project will help start an important discussion with the administration about doing the same here at _____. If you know about GHG reduction or other sustainability efforts already underway, please let me know.

(Optional)

I am also writing to see if you would be willing to meet to discuss supervising a climate/energy independent study I hope to begin next fall to explore this work further. The independent study will incorporate a multidisciplinary study of legal, political, scientific, and technological issues around energy and climate change and will seek to use the University campus as a laboratory for finding strategic opportunities to aggressively reduce GHG emissions.

I have attached a model independent study currently taking place at the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science & Management in UC - Santa Barbara. I hope to edit this rough model to fit the particulars of our University, this independent study, and my degree requirements.

Thank you in advance for any help you can provide.

Sincerely,

___________
(Your Name)

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Step #2: Get Connected

Find contact information for the:

  1. Chair of the Environmental Studies Department
  2. Energy Manager; and
  3. Facilities Manager; at your university or college.

Some schools also have student and professional environmental committees, sustainability working groups, or sustainability specialists. Your professor should be able to help you find these folks. They will likely have access to the information you need to estimate campus GHG emissions - primarily electricity and natural gas use in buildings and gas use in transportation. Once you have heard back from your professor, ask him/her to help you make contact with one or more of the folks listed above using a slightly modified version of the same e-mail.

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SUMMARY:

NAELS will encourage students, faculty, energy managers, administrators, trustees, and local professionals to work together to creatively reduce university and campus town emissions for the 24 hour period around earth day. Possible solutions will include purchasing clean energy, employing fuel cells, conserving energy, planting trees, and any other idea the university community can dream up.

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GOALS:

Through Campus Climate Neutral, students will:

  • Reduce GHG emissions on campuses and in campus cities
  • Raise awareness of the concept of, and need for, climate neutrality
  • Launch campus greening efforts on new campuses and connect current efforts
  • Educate the campus community on issues of climate change
  • Train students to run GHG inventories and develop and implement climate solutions
  • Connect students to local, state, and national climate efforts

NAELS believes this campaign also provides a unique chance to bring together various environmental groups working on climate. These groups can use the Day to:

  • Recruit interns, externs, and employees
  • Speak about the work they are doing
  • Publicize efforts to combat the problem
  • Direct hundreds of hours of student research

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MODELS:

Universities Models for Reducing Emissions:

Climate Neutrality Models:

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WHY CAMPUS TOWNS?

  • There are over 4,000 colleges and universities in the U.S. and more than 15 million students. [cite]
  • In 1999-2000, the expenditures of public degree-granting institutions totaled over $237 billion. [cite]
  • In 2001, the top 120 colleges and universities with the largest endowments had endowment funds totaling more than $186 billion. [cite] [cite] [cite]
  • Universities and Campus towns serve as excellent places to foster and catalyze climate efforts. Campuses exist in:
    • Environmentally-progressive cities and towns (i.e., Harvard in Cambridge, MA)
    • Campus towns (i.e., University of Michigan in Ann Arbor)
    • Major US cities (i.e., Boston)

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WHY STUDENTS?

Students remain an under-utilized resource in current efforts to reduce GHG emissions. Students can use their time in school to work on for-credit, collaborative efforts to develop and implement new technologies.

  • These opportunities will be extremely educational, interdisciplinary in nature, and will help dramatically reduce campus GHG emissions.
  • This work will prepare the leaders of tomorrow for an increasingly precarious climate future.
  • Technologies developed at universities to improve the climate impacts of nearly every discipline can be exported to urban and rural areas.

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WHY NOW?

There is a growing movement for top-down campus sustainability and sustainability education in this country. Groups like:

There is also a growing movement of bottom-up undergraduate student efforts to push US institutions, including universities, to take aggressive actions to reduce their climate footprints and promote clean energy alternatives. Many of these groups have recently come together to form the Energy Action Network, a coalition of young students and professionals working towards energy and climate solutions.

This campaign will catalyze efforts to connect these professionals and students and will serve as a much needed win-win, bipartisan, solution-oriented, climate campaign to plan for the future..

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HOW DO WE DO THIS?

NAELS has set also up a Going Climate Neutral site.

The Climate Neutral Network also gives several suggestions for going climate neutral including:

  • "Global-warming gases can be offset in a variety of ways ranging from
    • Investing in technologies that dramatically reduce carbon emissions, such as renewable energy, highly fuel-efficient vehicles or energy-efficient lighting in public schools.
    • Planting of trees which absorb global-warming gases. [more]
  • One day climate neutral efforts are emerging around the country.
    • This past year, the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Conventions (CERC) worked with the DNC and RNC to make efforts climate neutral using offsets and other techniques [more]
    • CERC efforts were modeled on the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, UT.

 
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