Climate Conference Focuses on Schools Students, Faculty Flock to Skidmore Regional Conference

Author: Katy Saunders

This past weekend representatives from 28 colleges and universities gathered together with environmental leaders and advocacy groups from around the northeast at Skidmore College for the first conference of the Northeast Campuses for Climate Action.
The conference, which was patterned after a similar meeting at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore., in February, brought together students, faculty and staff from different institutions to address the issue of climate change and to share what is happening on various campuses.
Lori DelNegro, visiting assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry, Jon Isham, assistant professor of economics, and Helen Young, associate professor of biology, joined Andrea Hamre '05, Doug Dagan '02.5 and Katy Saunders '02.5 to represent the Middlebury College Carbon Neutral committee at the conference.
The goal of this committee, which grew out of last year's Environmental Council, is to assess Middlebury's impact on climate change and to make recommendations on how the College, on both the individual and the institutional level, might reduce their emission of greenhouse gases, the cause of global climate change.
Ross Gelbspan, a retired Pulitzer prize-winning journalist formally of The Boston Globe, opened the conference. Gelbspan's talk, which drew primarily from research presented in his book, "The Heat is On," illuminated the continuous efforts of fossil fuel industries to hijack the science of climate change and plant seeds of doubt in the minds of politicians, journalists and the public that are, in fact, without the support of any significant scientific findings.
Climate change, said Gelbspan, is in fact the most peer-reviewed issue in the history of scientific study, and any disbelief of its threat stops at the borders of the United States.
On the second day of the conference, participants discussed ways in which the institutions can reduce their impact on climate change. While the schools represented were at various stages of the process, all participants recognized the need for their institutions to make significant reductions in their greenhouse gas emissions.
A certain level of these gases, such as carbon dioxide, is normal in the atmosphere, and can be handled by the earth's systems, but the level of carbon dioxide has risen over the past century to well above the level that had remained relatively constant for 10,000 years.
One of the ways to reduce emissions is to invest in renewable and sustainable energy sources. Several mid-Atlantic colleges have already committed to buy a certain amount of their power from renewable energy sources, and this trend is growing across the country.
Native Energy, a Vermont-based company that attended the conference, offers customers a chance to invest in new and future wind power projects as a way to offset their current consumption of fossil fuels. Another such company, Green Mountain Power of Vermont, offers the chance to purchase green energy that will be included in one's energy grid.
Though it was just one of the schools participating in the conference, Middlebury was recognized as an environmental leader by fellow participants. The College has done much to retrofit old buildings and make sure that older technologies are running as efficiently as they can.
What became clear to conference participants, however, is the need for all colleges and universities to take the next step, which is a significant reduction in the use of energy on campus, and a commitment to developing renewable and sustainable energy sources.
In a final address on Saturday night, Bill Moomaw of Tufts University spoke of the relevance of climate change to campuses across the country. "Universities are about education and research. I can think of no better issue on which to do education and research," he commented.
The Middlebury College group attending the conference was excited by what is happening on campuses across the country. "It was tremendously motivating to hear people's passion in the subject to remind us of the urgency of the problem," said Young, who pointed out that it was satisfying to see Middlebury College "among the leaders in small colleges in energy saving and plans for carbon neutrality."
The group expressed its commitment to the issue of climate change and the need to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. They noted they hope to begin the process in the next few months by making recommendations to Middlebury College on how, as a community, the institution can reduce its impact on climate change.
(For more information on Ross Gelbspan and the current news regarding climate change go to www.heatisonline.org.)