May 2008

THE NEW GREEN U
Major Green Initiatives are Sweeping College Campuses

"Climate change is our generation's civil rights movement," says Brianna Cayo Cotter, communications director for the Energy Action Coalition, which backed PowerShift 2007 at the University of Maryland last November. Drawing over 5,500 students, the event was the largest gathering of college students ever assembled to talk about solutions to global warming, a weekend of non-stop workshops, speakers and rallies. "We're at a crucial moment in history," Cotter said. "Climate change is an issue that's already impacting us, from the destruction of the Appalachian Mountains to the wildfires in California. We get that the steps taken today will end up being the future for tomorrow."

     She is not alone in her enthusiasm. The green movement has become a force to be reckoned with on campuses. Students are demanding changes -- energy conservation, waste reduction, sustainable course offerings, organic food choices, and real climate legislation from Congress beyond the campus confines. So far, 497 school presidents have signed the American College and University President's Climate Commitment, which commits them to implementing a plan to go "carbon neutral" within two years of signing.

     While the progress is encouraging, not all are convinced that the green campus movement has arrived yet. As Nina Rizzo, the California Freedom from Oil campus organizer for Global Exchange, says, "The movement is potent, but we're not there yet. I don't think people are angry enough."
  
    Michael McGonigle, author of Planet U, a professor of environmental law and policy at the University of Victoria and a co-founder of Greenpeace International, agrees that the incremental changes he's seeing on campuses have yet to resemble the sustained force of 1960s activism. "But the anxiety about climate change is really palpable -- students feel it," he says. "And there's an overarching social anxiety, something we have to act on... We can do something right here and right now at this institution."

    And students are doing something. In 2001, Pennsylvania State University made the nation's largest retail purchase of wind energy, buying 75 percent of what two local 24-megawatt wind farms produced annually. In 2005, wind turbine manufacturer Gamesa decided to locate its headquarters in the state, bringing with it 1,000 new jobs. The school had changed the market price for wind in the state, and other schools are following suit. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's "Green Power Partnership" rankings, Penn State now ranks third among schools for green power purchasing, with 20 percent of its electricity use coming from wind power. Its fellow state school, the University of Pennsylvania, is now second, at 29 percent. New York University is number one, with an incredible 100 percent of its electricity use generated by wind.

     Smaller schools have jumped in, too. Vermont's Middlebury College offers the complete package, from its natural landscape design to its fully composted dining hall waste to its "yellow bike" borrowing system for on-campus commutes. The school's $11 million bio-mass facility is scheduled to open late fall 2008, with the capacity to burn enough wood chips to displace the use of $1 million gallons of fuel oil-cutting the school's fuel needs in half.

    Minnesota's Carleton College is another small liberal arts school with green might, installing its own wind turbine on campus, engaging in "dorm wars" to encourage low energy use, and committing to green building retrofits and composting of all food waste. A similarly focused school, Maine's College of the Atlantic, has achieved near perfection in its student-led green pursuits, eliminating or offsetting all its greenhouse gas emissions, supporting on-campus watershed preservation and following the highest standards of green building in all new campus structures.

    These initiatives are reaching beyond the campus, too, as students begin to realize their collective might. A coalition of students in Virginia has teamed up to fight a new Dominion "clean coal" plant in Wise County, Virginia. "No new coal" has become a battle cry among college greens, particularly those in the Southeast confronted with the devastation of mountaintop removal mining, including polluted water, filthy air and land stripped of life. Ryan Hasty, a junior at Emory and Henry College in southwestern Virginia, who became president of The Greens on his campus last year says, "It's an old technology, it's very dirty and it isn't worth sacrificing the health and well-being of those who live near the mine sites and the power plant. Not to mention the destruction of some of the cleanest and most bio-diverse waterways in the world."

    There are changes underway inside the classrooms, too. Duke University has a new Energy and Environment track (combining business and environmental management) that prepares students to remake their worlds in very concrete ways. Erika Lovelace of Duke's Office of Enrollment says, "The degree prepares you to come up with sustainable ideas to assist local communities." At the University of Colorado in Boulder, 22-year-old environmental studies major Paul Chase says working environmental education into the broader curriculum is a major campus goal.

     It is not only in purchasing wind power, adding bike lanes and greening the cafeteria offerings that these schools contribute to the essential work of curing the nation's fossil-fuel dependency and other environmental ills. It is in educating students about the importance of creating and supporting a new green economy and in the process, turning out leaders. In that respect, the campus sustainability movement is already a resounding success.