Leebron signs Presidents Climate Commitment

Leebron signs Presidents Climate Commitment

BY B.J. ALMOND
Rice News Staff   

Rice University’s ongoing efforts to become a greener campus reached another milestone this month when President David Leebron signed the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment — a nationwide call to action to combat global warming.

More than 400 college and university presidents have signed the commitment, which is a pledge to eliminate their institutions’ greenhouse gas emissions and to accelerate the research and education needed to end global warming.

“We, the undersigned presidents and chancellors of colleges and universities, are deeply concerned about the unprecedented scale and speed of global warming and its potential for large-scale, adverse health, social, economic and ecological effects,” the commitment states. “We recognize the scientific consensus that global warming is real and is largely being caused by humans. We further recognize the need to reduce the global emission of greenhouse gases by 80 percent by mid-century at the latest, in order to avert the worst impacts of global warming and to reestablish the more stable climatic conditions that have made human progress over the last 10,000 years possible.”

Supporters of the Presidents Climate Commitment must create a comprehensive institutional action plan to move toward “climate neutrality,” or no net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This entails minimizing GHG emissions as much as possible and using carbon offsets or other measures to mitigate the remaining emissions.

In the short term, each participating institution must commit to immediately take two or more of the following concrete actions:

“In an era when the Nobel Peace Prize acknowledges efforts to spread awareness of manmade climate change and ways to counteract these changes, the Rice community is proud to take a leadership role in the Houston area as we address the problem of global warming,” Leebron said.

Rice and Houston Community College are the only Houston institutions of higher education that have signed the commitment. The Rice Board of Trustees approved a sustainability policy in 2004.

Under that policy, the university states that students who graduate from Rice need to understand the concepts of sustainability and possess a sense of responsibility for the future.

“Our students are passionate about being part of the solution that will lead to a greener future,” Leebron said.

Many green projects under way

Rice has taken several major steps toward implementing the policy and achieving its goals.

Rice hired Richard Johnson ’92 in 2004 as its first sustainability director. As a pioneer in university environmentalism, Johnson coordinates, supports and leads a variety of campus sustainability efforts, ranging from construction projects and utility conservation efforts to recycling and environmental education.

In 2006 Barbara White Bryson, associate vice president for Facilities Engineering and Planning, announced that the university decided all new buildings on the Rice campus will be constructed according to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards.

“Although Rice has always been interested in building durable facilities, minimizing waste and maximizing energy efficiency, the LEED evaluation process helps us consider decisions specifically through a filter that reflects sustainability values,” she said.

The 10-story 477,000-square-foot Collaborative Research Center will be recognized as an example of utility efficiency and green building among major
laboratory facilities in hot, humid climates when it opens in 2009.

Earlier this year Rice unveiled the design plans for Duncan College, which will be the university’s first gold-level LEED building and one of the most environmentally sustainable buildings ever built in Houston. Duncan College will be completed in the summer of 2009.

Fostering commitment to sustainability

In addition to these milestones, a number of activities at Rice reflect widespread interest in sustainability.

Elizabeth Kolbert’s “Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature and Climate Change” was selected as the book for this year’s Rice Common Reading program. A series of discussions about the book and screenings of films on related topics are being held this fall. In addition, students are currently engaged in a month-long energy competition between the residential colleges, with the north colleges up against the south colleges.

The Student Association, through its Environmental Committee, indicated that the Presidents Climate Commitment was an issue of importance to Rice students.

Rice has a history of holding lectures and workshops on climate change. For example, in 2000, the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy hosted a three-day conference titled “Global Warming: Science and Policy.” In 2005, a President’s Lecture featured Richard Alley speaking on “How to Get Rich and Save the World by Cleaning Up After Ourselves: Another Look at Climate Change.” Who knew that just two years later, Alley would share the 2007 Nobel Peace Price as a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, along with former Vice President Al Gore?

“We’re in a historic moment at Rice,” Johnson said. “We’re seeing a rising and increasingly sophisticated dialogue on campus about environmental issues in general and global warming in particular, including a discussion about how to address these issues at Rice.

“Meanwhile, we are in the midst of a robust green building program and are continuing to see numerous other campus sustainability-related initiatives flourish, including some that have been under way for more than 10 years,” he said. “Rice’s participation in the President’s Climate Commitment grows out of this trajectory of Rice’s longstanding and deepening engagement with environmental issues.”

The commitment was launched in June at a summit in Washington and is being implemented by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, Second Nature and ecoAmerica. More information is available at www.presidentsclimatecommitment.org.