As many of you know, or maybe more importantly, as some of you may not yet know, Middlebury as an institution is committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2016. So hypothetically, in less than four years, the campus proper, Bread Loaf and the Snow Bowl will not be putting any greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that it doesn’t somehow make up for. Having worked in the College’s Sustainability Integration Office for the past few months, I can tell you that we’re getting close — really close — to achieving that goal. Though oftentimes, when I talk to people about carbon neutrality and the College, I get the impression that most don’t have a very good idea of just how big a deal this is.
With that said, why, exactly, should you care?
Carbon neutrality at Middlebury is special. Not just because it will probably come with a great certificate to put on the refrigerator, or because it would make us the most-endowed carbon neutral college or university in the country (which it would — the only other carbon neutral schools I was able to identify were College of the Atlantic and Southern New Hampshire University), but because Middlebury’s commitment to carbon neutrality originated with us, its students.
In 2007, a group called the Carbon Neutrality Initiative Task Force put together a proposal called “MiddShift,” which outlined a plan for carbon neutrality at Middlebury with the rather ambitious goal of making it happen by 2016. Wanting to do it right, the students involved devised a plan that didn’t just say how we would pay for enough carbon credits (basically investments in sustainable energy industries — the easy way out) to make up for the greenhouse gases College operations produce, but created a blueprint for how we could outright eliminate our emissions and become more reliant on clean energy. Determined to see a change made, the group put the proposal before President of the College Ronald D. Leibowitz and received his support. The plan was then put before the trustees, who were clearly convinced enough to give the plan the go-ahead. Middlebury College was officially committed to carbon neutrality.
Maybe more than anything else, this commitment is a celebration of everything that makes Middlebury the institution that it is. It’s right in line with the reputation we’ve established for ourselves as a leader at the forefront of the sustainability movement in higher education at not just the national, but the global level. It shows that a liberal arts education may just be good for something after all, and that there’s hope of not having to flip burgers for the rest of our lives (insert alternate liberal arts cliché here). But more than anything, it showcases just how much potential each and every member of the Middlebury community has to create change in the way that not only this magical place, but the world, works. Carbon neutrality isn’t just some ploy by the administration to advance the so-called “Middlebury Brand,” but something that the student body committed itself to of its own accord.
And whether apparent or not, the commitment that those students made all those years ago wasn’t just theirs — it’s ours. As a member of this community, each and every one of you is a part of the movement to become carbon neutral. I’ll tell you outright that chances are, you’ll never know exactly how much energy you’ll have used when all’s said and done after your four years here, but we will know how much energy the community has used. Responsibility for any effects that the College’s emissions have on the global environment falls upon all of our shoulders. The greenhouse gas accounting process doesn’t calculate individual footprints — we’ll only have one number for the community to tell us just how close we are to accomplishing our goal. Carbon neutrality will only become a reality at Middlebury if each and every one of us here at the College takes full, unwavering ownership of the movement. Which, considering it’s already ours, hypothetically shouldn’t take that much effort.
In her doctoral dissertation, “Where Meaning Lies: Student Attitudes and Behaviors Relating to Sustainability in College,” NYU graduate student Annie Bezbatchenko points out that institutions themselves cannot prescribe types of behavior. The most effective means of changing attitudes towards sustainability utilized pressures from the community in the form of social networks, trust and norms. Consider this week’s column as pressure from the community to start caring.
Listen to Julian Macrone discuss his column with the Campus’ Will Henriques.
