In January, the American Public University System (APUS) submitted its Progress Report to the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC).  The Progress Report is intended to update the ACUPCC on the schools’ progress since submitting its Climate Action Plan (CAP) in 2009.   

There are a few notable highlights from the Progress Report that are worth sharing. 

• Buildings:  Since APUS submitted its CAP report to ACUPCC in 2009, the university system has completed and occupied a new building situated on a brownfields site and built to LEED Gold standards.  (The building is currently in the LEED certification process and not yet certified with a LEED rating.)  The 45,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art Academic Center features solar panels on the roof, significant natural light throughout the building, a highly efficient HVAC system, motion and heat sensor lighting, and native landscaping.  The outer façade of the building is reminiscent of the surrounding historic buildings of downtown Charles Town.  The university system is currently constructing another green building behind the new Academic Center.  Expected to be completed later this year, one of the highlights of that building is a solar array of 1600 solar panels which doubles as a covered parking lot and will provide plugs for electric vehicles for public use. 
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by Ryan Harding

Last year, Hannah Jones, VP of Sustainable Business at Nike, wrote that businesses must adjust their sights, and begin to see sustainability as a “strategic prism.” The line of thinking Jones adopts seems to be an iteration of a familiar idea: to gain a competitive advantage in today’s progressively green-minded marketplace, sustainability must be allowed to develop into a constitutive strategic element driving and leading the commercial activities of businesses. Sustainability in the 21st century, Jones reflects, has developed into “a core strategic imperative for any company that intends to thrive and grow in the years ahead.”

Beyond labeling sustainability a “core strategic imperative”, or, translated into the rather muddled parlance in which I write, a universal social imperative, Jones underscores the transformative impact of transparency in the promotion of social movements encouraging structural changes to existing cultural paradigms. Put another way, in detailing how technology-derived and -related social pressures are not only driving corporations and governments to become more transparent, but have, in some way, directed the distribution of corporate and state-owned resources and become “a trigger for movements and political action,” Jones begins to trace the contours of a revolution that will come to define the Information Age.

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by Ryan Harding

Warning! What follows is a rather esoteric discussion of an ongoing debate centering on one early modern political theorist’s purported views on the value and function of a nation’s educational apparatus, seeing it a conduit to disseminate a specific brand of political or social dogma. Have I lost you? Trust me, this short discussion illustrates an important point—just bear with me.

On one side of this arcane debate, we have commenters who believe this unnamed political theorist seemed to see education as a social institution which can be easily politicized, and used to systematically inculcate a nation’s citizenry. Commentators on this side of the debate object to how this political theorist seems to envisage the institution of education as an arm of the state, which can be easily bent and used by the state as a means of brainwashing individual citizens. On the other side of the debate are a group of people (myself included) who see this political theorist, and the object of the theory he created, through a far less nefarious lens. That is, we see his motives as more noble than villainous. According to this lot, he sought to use the university as a means by which to bring about social accord, but not by disseminating a particular brand of political theology. Rather, by promoting and cultivating knowledge and understanding conducive to the common good—the curriculum taught by the university should transcend local politics and set its sights on creating an informed and socially aware citizenry.

Both sides seem to converge over one point in particular: that the university sits at an important crossroads and wields an inordinate amount of power because of it.

Without getting too in depth about how a university’s curriculum should look, or saying something which might inadvertently trample on academic freedom (something of which I am a staunch and unyielding proponent), I think what is important to draw from this debate is that the university, because of its function, is uniquely situated to lead the charge in the promotion of social change (for the better, I hope).

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by Angie Crone

As this year’s 17th conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Durban, South Africa, resulted in yet another stand-off among today’s leading nations, there are plenty of reasons to share in the embitterment and despair shadowing the climate change community. And while the Durban discussions did lead to a few positive outcomes –the Green Climate Fund and a sustained forum for discussing the issue, for example—the conference, unsurprisingly, was another failure of the global community to come to an agreement of how to slow the heating of the planet. The conference did, however, heed a rather constructive lesson: the climate change issue exceeds the realms of the climate community. This isn’t necessarily a newsflash, of course, but it brings into focus a new question: who is equipped to handle the climate crisis?

In a recent New York Times article, Mary D. Nichols, chairwoman for California’s Air Resources Board, poignantly stated, “Progress is going to come from the bottom up, not the top down.” The proactivity of regional climate commitments such as the Midwest Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord and the Northeast’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative which incorporate public stakeholders, private business, non-governmental organizations, and individuals have shown that bottom-up strategies are well-positioned to make meaningful contributions in combatting climate change. Additionally, industry specific agreements have been instrumental in identifying and mitigating their own contributions to the increasingly unpredictable climate. 

Let’s consider the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment (ACUPCC).  The ACUPCC has emphasized the importance of higher education taking a new lead by preparing for and responding to impacts and implications of climate change that include unprecedented effects on infrastructure, ecosystems, energy and water supplies, food production, national security, and people’s livelihoods.  With the US Census Bureau reporting that there are 4,495 higher education institutions in the United States and with college enrollment having increased 38% between 1999 and 2009, the ACUPCC has a unique opportunity to develop cutting edge solutions and best-practices in the fight against climate change.

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by Kelly Wenner

A recent report developed by the Higher Education Climate Adaptation Committee, convened by the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC), evaluated how colleges and universities are preparing for a changing climate through a variety of components. The report, Higher Education’s Role in Adapting to a Changing Climate, released in March 2011, looked at characteristics of colleges including their curricula and education, research, operations, and community engagement activities. The report provided an overview and examples on what colleges should be doing to engage students and manage risks in their own campus communities to become more resilient in the face of current and future climate change.

While higher education leaders have taken leadership roles in climate mitigation, they must now take a stance on climate adaptation. Mitigation involves preventing climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  Adaptation is for preparing for and responding to the impacts of climate change.  Changing climate conditions are already impacting campuses east and west, north and south.  At the 2011 ACUPCC Climate Leadership Summit nearly every campus representative attending reported climate change impacts to their campuses. Flooding damaged colleges in upstate New York and Vermont; roof collapses from snowfall halted college operations in Washington, D.C.; and drought concerns and erosion from sea level rise affected colleges in Atlanta and California respectively. These types of climate change- oriented impacts create real safety and health hazards for a campus and its inhabitants.

The report highlighted four different areas through which colleges and universities need to approach climate change adaptation, and offered a variety of examples of what campuses are doing to promote climate change mitigation and adaptation.  The four areas are curricula, research, operations and infrastructure, and relationships with local communities.  College campuses are unique in these efforts because they offer knowledgeable manpower with a mass of committed students willing and excited to contribute to any endeavors. The report concluded with suggestions of what campuses should consider when planning for future climate adaptation efforts.