Sustainability should be a priority

Is IU making a concerted effort to join the nationwide movement toward implementing campus policies that are sustainable?

The Sustainable Endowments Institute awarded us with a B- on our College Sustainability Report Card, an upgrade from last year’s C+.

Within the past year, the University created the Office of Sustainability and hired one full-time employee devoted to the initiative, Sustainability Director Bill Brown, a prominent architect of environmentally sustainable buildings. Also, IU is now taking inventory of its greenhouse gas emissions, and the new 20-year master plan includes recommended timelines for reduction.

These improvements are important but potentially hollow developments, and it is still unclear how committed the University actually is to the cause.

For example, IU has yet to join the 392 colleges and universities whose presidents have signed the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC).

Schools like DePauw University, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Indiana State University and Ball State University have all included their signatures on this document.

The fact that IU President Michael McRobbie hasn’t yet felt compelled to sign the ACUPCC is somewhat troubling, considering his ambitious – and controversial – construction plans for the IU campus. In May 2008, the board of trustees gave consent on the addition of six new facilities, including the Jacobs School of Music Studio and Practice Facility and the International Studies building.

And the new master plan, as proposed in February, includes the development of 2.2 million square feet of classrooms and labs, as well as a great deal of renovations.
Is the issue of sustainability going to be considered a priority when these plans start to come into fruition?

If IU intends to distinguish itself to other institutions of higher learning as an example of a progressive, responsible university, we believe that President McRobbie needs to sign the ACUPCC and utilize Bill Brown’s expertise in the construction processes throughout campus. Until then, we’ll have to settle for a B-.

Dissent

There are still plenty of questions about how much college sustainability efforts really do for the environment.

When it comes to fighting global warming, it is pretty easy to illustrate how the efforts of individuals and organizations to assess their carbon footprints and reduce them on their own are inefficient.

The problem of global warming is a perfect example of market failure. People don’t pay the costs of global warming when they consume products that required the emission of carbon so they consume too much of those products from the stand point of society.

If you make people pay the full price of their emissions with a cap-and-trade scheme or a carbon tax, people will change their behavior to reduce global warming without thinking about the environment at all.

On the other hand, campuses trying to reduce emissions when carbon isn’t properly priced have to spend extra money on employees like a director of sustainability to make environmental considerations. Plus, if the rest of the world doesn’t change its behavior, every college in the world could be carbon neutral and it would do little to deter global warming.

With a proper carbon price IU wouldn’t have to think about sustainability at all to be good to the environment. It would just have to make the same cost-effective decisions people and organizations make anyway.

There seems to be a lot of support for campus sustainability at IU.
I can’t help but think that student activism would be better directed toward getting a decent climate change bill through Congress. 

– Nathan Dixon