Catching up with ourselves on environmental commitments
If you read “Going Green” on page 22, you get a sense of how much Richmond is doing about the environment. We can give ourselves a pat on the back, but is it really good enough?
A few years ago UR’s president, along with hundreds of other university presidents around the world, signed the Talloires Declaration. It pledges, in part, to “create an institutional culture of sustainability, educate for environmentally responsible citizenship,” and “foster environmental literacy for all.”
But a balanced appraisal of our “culture of sustainability” would be mixed. There was, for example, the national “Recyclemania” competition of 2006, in which some really dedicated UR students worked hard to whip up campus interest. We finished a rueful 42nd out of 44 schools overall.
Not that I blame the students. Maybe they were just waiting for the right leadership. In fact, there are strong indications that they grasp a key point: While individual commitments to recycle paper and turn off lights matter, institutions can leverage more meaningful changes.
Last spring, students presented an unprecedented petition with more than 1,000 signatures to incoming President Edward Ayers, seeking new policies “to make UR a ‘greener’ place to live.” It calls for “green dorms,” the appointment of a full-time administrator for sustainability issues, and an activist stance, including a voice for students, on using shareholder votes in the University’s endowment portfolio to modify corporate behavior.
Another hint about how we are doing came in a recent report card from a group called the Sustainable Endowments Institute, which rated 100 institutions with the largest endowments in the United States and Canada (in other words, the schools that cannot plead poverty). Richmond got a composite grade of C, which included a D for climate change and energy initiatives. We flunked “shareholder engagement.” The Sustainable Endowments Institute does not have the last word on our progress, but we certainly could reflect a little on those marks.
You could even argue that the grade of B, awarded for our efforts on “green building,” is a moving target. A growing number of schools around the country have made more aggressive, on-the-record commitments to green building standards than Richmond has, according to Julian Dautremont-Smith, director of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (UR is not a member). In our own region, the list includes Furman, Clemson, Emory, North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and others.
UR has another opportunity for environmental leadership at hand—the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, which about 400 schools have signed as of this writing. It has tangible, measurable commitments, with deadlines, to achieve “climate neutrality.” That means we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible and offset the rest through support of off-campus projects that cut emissions.
Within a year of signing, we would inventory all greenhouse gas emissions from electricity, heating, commuting, and air travel. Within two years, we would have to develop an institutional plan for becoming climate-neutral “as soon as possible.”
Among the signers so far in Virginia alone are Emory & Henry, Ferrum, George Mason, Hollins, James Madison, Lynchburg, Norfolk State, Randolph, Shenandoah, Sweet Briar, Virginia Wesleyan, and Washington and Lee.
Ultimately, it does not matter so much what others are doing. Our best efforts grow from our own sense of ourselves.
On that score, President Ayers has posed a couple of questions to the UR community. One is, “What do we want to be known for?” And he has described his first-year reconnaissance among us as “heat-seeking”—asking, that is, “What needs immediate attention?” Thanks in large measure to strong signals from our students, here is the same answer to both questions: our university’s environmental commitments.
Associate Professor Steve Nash teaches in the journalism and environmental studies programs. His latest book, Millipedes and Moon Tigers—Science and Policy in an Age of Extinction, was published this year by University of Virginia Press.
