If you have questions about CCN, please click here to contact the NAELS Executive Director, Dan Worth.

Campus Climate Neutral (CCN):
"Changing the Campus Climate"

This summer I went to see The Day After Tomorrow, a film that truly viewed climate change through a Hollywood lens. Although the film was more of a Final Impact disaster scenario than a science-based take on climate, the basic premise of the film is solid - our current actions put the world at increased risk of damage from both sudden and long term climate change. Over the past few years, increasingly visible and measurable signs of global warming combined with predictions of rapid climate change events (RCCE's) have brought the problem even closer to home. So, while law students reading this probably don't have to worry about being trapped by a tidal wave on the island of New York City at this year's annual conference at Pace, increased climate change does threaten to trap our generation and our children's generation on an increasingly warm and volatile planet in the years to come if we don't take immediate action.

Global climate change represents one of the greatest threats to life on Earth. There is a scientific consensus that increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) are one of the major causes of climate change and that humans are the major cause of increased GHGs. We are already seeing the effects of initial climate change. Nine of the ten hottest years since record-keeping began have occurred since 1990. Alaska already is more than 7 degrees warmer than its long term average. The Island Nation of Tuvalu faces total species extinction from projected sea-level rise. In 2003, the Pentagon issued a report on the possibility of abrupt climate change noting that climate change "should be elevated beyond scientific debate to a U.S. national security concern."(emphasis added) Scientific predictions of an additional 2½ to 10½ degree increase in global temperature over the next century ensure that climate change will be a major focus of the next generation. Given the lag time between GHG reductions and climate stabilization - every year of delay will require two to catch up - it is essential to accelerate our responses.

In the face of repeated warnings, the US government has been slow on national action to address climate change, despite the fact that the US is responsible for 25% of GHG emissions. As far back as 1980, President Carter was presented with a report on environmental problems from his CEQ. In the foreword to the report, co-author Gus Speth, now Dean of Yale's School of Forestry and the Environment, noted that, "if global fossil fuel use grows rapidly in the decades ahead, the accompanying carbon dioxide increases will lead to profound and long-term alteration of the earth's climate." After 25 years of inaction, recent, moderate, bipartisan legislation failed to pass the Senate last year and faces an even tougher time in the House. Internationally, the US has withdrawn from negotiations of the Kyoto Protocol, the initial and very modest treaty-based effort to address climate change, which will require an average of only 2.5% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions below the 1990 baseline, by the year 2010. Even if the Protocol is ratified and enforced, it would achieve a reduction in emissions well short of what is necessary to stabilize the amount of heat trapping carbon in the atmosphere, especially as emissions from developing countries continue to grow.

In the absence of effective international or federal action, it is critical to address climate from the bottom up, especially in the US. Even if a new administration is elected in November, the U.S. may continue to face a reluctant Congress, and will have to have support from the grass roots in the key congressional districts and key states. Recent bottom up efforts in the US are encouraging. Particularly effective efforts include state and local legislation, the CERES climate shareholder campaign, and litigation by NGOs and cities (Boulder, Berkeley). But much more is needed to turn this potential for a bottom up response into a groundswell in the next 5 years. This is where today's students come in.

Over the past decade, today's 18-30 year olds (most of you reading this) have grown up with the potentially cataclysmic threat of climate change as part of their world view. Climate is fast becoming our generation's Cold War. The students on today's campuses are scared for the future, frustrated with a lack of concrete action, and ready to work towards solutions. To date, however, youth and student efforts to address climate change have been disjointed, poorly funded and supported, and unable to make an impact on a national scale. Moreover, increasing concern over climate change has not translated into a significant, national increase in climate-related education and training on U.S. campuses, particularly on a graduate level. This is especially troubling, given that it is today's students who will go on to become tomorrow's professionals and parents - those forced to deal much more directly with an increasingly complex climate problem.

This fall the National Association of Environmental Law Societies (NAELS) will launch Campus Climate Neutral (CCN) in an effort to mobilize the more than 15 million students on today's campuses to work towards a climate neutral future. Through CCN, NAELS will help organize campus coalitions of students, faculty, and members of the administration who will work with key decision-makers to aggressively reduce the climate footprints of the more than 4,000 college and university campuses in the U.S. These coalitions will run climate audits, create climate neutral action plans, work with schools to implement projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and eventually push for climate friendly investment of endowments.

CCN will use independent studies to allow busy graduate students looking for credit to maximize their time commitment to CCN. These independent studies will be used not just as learning opportunities but as the mechanisms which drive the graduate work on this project, involve professors, alumni, and the administration, and produce solid research papers for both CCN campaigns and outside groups working on climate. While CCN's primary focus will be on reducing the climate impact of today's campuses, CCN will also involve students in climate projects for environmental law and policy organizations; educate and train the campus community on climate issues; raise awareness of climate change in campus towns across the country; and pressure corporations and city, state, and federal governments to take immediate, aggressive action to mitigate their contributions to climate change. CCN will initially focus on mobilizing law students and launching campus campaigns but will quickly expand to pull in students from other disciplines including environmental studies, the graduate sciences, engineering, business, economics, and design.

This fall, to launch CCN, NAELS will organize a series of high-level climate symposia; encourage every ELS to host at least one climate speaker/event; run a national "Hike for Change" set of fundraising outings; collect a list of climate speakers and research projects from national environmental groups; catalogue and connect to current campus efforts; develop a series of climate independent studies; and host a climate reading group featuring Red Sky at Morning, a new book by Gus Speth, the Dean of Yale's School of Forestry and the Environment. Details of how law students can get involved and project resources are available on the NAELS website at: http://www/naels.org/ccn/index.htm.

In sum, NAELS will use CCN to mobilize students to work on a national level to ensure that our institutions of higher learning become the moral leaders in the campaign to address climate change, the laboratories for the technologies and management processes to neutralize GHG emissions, and the breeding grounds for future climate-conscious world leaders, professionals, and citizens. CCN will empower today's students to follow in the mold of previous generations of students that used their universities as tools to work to end the Viet Nam war, apartheid in South Africa, and sweatshop labor and to guarantee civil rights and living wages. CCN will tap into the powerful combination of youth and the internet, as recent political groups have, to develop new student organizing strategies and to employ old strategies that can now yield unprecedented results. In doing so students will literally and figuratively "change the campus climate" at universities and colleges across the country and lead the way towards a climate neutral future.