Every Color in Green

Check out my blog post for Clean Air-Cool Planet as part of my Climate Fellow work there this summer! 

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama made a historic announcement about a new climate action plan for the United States. His speech included many references about the interrelated and rapidly accruing  repercussions of climate change, from sea level rise and flooding, and stronger storm patterns like Hurricane Sandy, to diminishing icecaps and snowpack, more frequent droughts and fires, higher temperatures, and scarcer clean drinking water. Such impacts challenge our infrastructure, food systems, public health, tourism, national security, real estate, and overall economic and social well-being. The prospect for a resilient and thriving future as well as present is at stake and America’s lauded land of opportunity will be limited if opportunities to adapt are not identified and progressed by leaders at all levels.

It was no mistake that President Obama made his stage an institution of higher education... [read more]

  My Climate Fellow Project Assignment:

A Quantitative Assessment of the State of Climate Leadership in Higher Education

Over the past decade, college and universities have often been at the forefront of action and leadership on the issue of climate change. They have convened teams of environmental advocates, adopted greenhouse gas reduction targets and climate action plans  built green buildings, installed and purchased renewable energy, and worked to support their local communities in  broader greening efforts. The proliferation of “green” rankings and rating systems attests to the volume of action  on climate change (and more broadly, sustainability), but these rankings and ratings do not really illuminate the impact of all of this activity. With the launch of the new online Campus Carbon Calculator, a robust and growing repository of quantitative data will make it possible, for the first time, to compile a broad and illustrative snapshot of concrete, measurable outcomes from higher education’s sustainability efforts. The result will be the first­ ever CA­-CP “State of the  Campus: Higher Ed” report, to be published in September, 2013.

Tasks: The Fellow will work with Clean Air-­Cool Planet, CA­-CP partners Sightlines and Second Nature, and others, to analyze and interpret data from the new online database of the Campus Carbon Calculator, and to use that data to  create a report for broad distribution.

Identify and analyze trends and summarize overall sector progress

Identify variables that seem to have the most impact on progress (e.g. institution type or geography, adoption of specific policies or use of specific funding mechanisms, etc.)

Provide relevant benchmarks suggested by the data

Create easy­-to­-absorb, attractive infographics based on analyses