WP,pg1: Colleges Compete to Shrink Their Mark On the Environment

[DeepModem Mom]

Can Gen Y save us, or is it too late?



Colleges Compete to Shrink Their Mark On the Environment
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 26, 2005; Page A01


....From the College of the Atlantic's zero-waste graduation this month in Maine to Ball State University's biodiesel-powered shuttle fleet in Indiana, schools are moving in ways large and small to cut energy use and carbon dioxide emissions.

They are driven by everything from the rising cost of natural gas to student activism, and the consequences can be significant for local air pollution as well as energy markets: Yale University emits as much as 2.3 million tons of carbon dioxide each year, more than 32 countries, but that's a 13 percent drop from its 1990 levels. Harvard University, meanwhile, now ranks as the country's second-largest university buyer of renewable energy.

"Those of us who study the environment but don't incorporate what we know into how we operate as an institution, we are failing in our educational task," said Berea College President Larry D. Shinn, who has made environmental sustainability central to his school's mission. "Most of us humans, especially Americans, don't understand what a precarious situation we're in relative to human-nature interactions."

It is difficult to gauge how green academia has become, because no one keeps overall statistics on this aspect of the 4,100 U.S. schools' operations. But across the country, college administrators are vying to outdo each other in environmental consciousness, sharing their strategies and boasting about their accomplishments. They are hiring "sustainability coordinators," negotiating new purchasing contracts and building more energy-efficient laboratories and dormitory rooms.

"It's almost like an episode of 'Can You Top This?' " said Princeton University dining services director Stuart Orefice, whose cafeterias serve cereal grown without pesticides and ship students' unused food to local pig farms. "It's a good-natured competition, if you will."...


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/25/AR2005062501273.html

[mom cat]

1. These are the people who will be most affected by climate change.

No wonder they are scrambling to try to do something. Are we'll probably be long gone by the time climate change really starts "warming up", but they and their children will be facing the brutal ordeal at what should the the prime of their life. I hope that they get a handle on it, because we have failed so miserably.
:cry: