Generation Magazine

By Keeley Sheehan

The UB Climate Action Plan is a skeptic’s dream. The simply stated goal of achieving climate neutrality by 2030 comes with a 107-page document attached, riding along in the back of the bumpy UB 2020 bandwagon.

While it’d be a challenge to find a university made up entirely of actively engaged students, there’s usually at least a core willing to make a ruckus for a cause they care about. UB is no exception. Students have been fighting for a more environmentally friendly campus with increased audibility in recent years. One might expect to find this juxtaposed with an administration looking suspiciously like “the man,” stomping on the resident tree huggers. Or perhaps an administration that parades their high-achieving hippies out when they need to look good to climate conscious donors, but otherwise ignores it in favor of budget slashing and political power playing.

Models of North Campus, complete with tiny cars lining the tiny roads, adorn the fifth floor Capen Hall office of Robert Shibley, professor and senior advisor to the president for Campus Planning and Design, and chair of the Environmental Stewardship Committee, along with books and pamphlets proclaiming the merits of the UB 2020 plan. A doorway in the small front of the office leads to a large meeting room, complete with a massive polished wood conference table. Full color story design boards with drawings of the university line the walls, across from windows looking out over the campus. It’s perfect for secret meetings to cook up super villain-sized plots.

But the truth is far less nefarious, and maybe a little refreshing: administrators working with students—and tangible progress.

“Since 2007, when [President] John Simpson signed the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment … we’ve reduced our overall carbon footprint by 11 percent, and just in the area that deals with energy, by 20 percent,” says Bradshaw Hovey, architecture staff associate.

The Presidents’ Climate Commitment was formed in December 2006, with 12 college and university presidents from schools across the country—ranging from California State University, Chico to Cape Cod Community College—agreeing to found the document and all the promises that come with it. Signing institutions agree to, among other things, draft a comprehensive climate action plan within two years of signing the commitment, incorporate sustainability into curriculum and produce public, transparent progress reports, according to the ACUPCC website.

The ACUPCC collected signatures from 152 presidents and chancellors by March 2007, and by June 2007, it had promises from 284 institutions. Simpson joined them in November 2007, and UB’s Environmental Stewardship Committee—the group charged with addressing climate neutrality on campus—drafted a plan to reduce and offset UB’s carbon emissions that was approved in September.

“The ACUPCC is basically higher education saying we’re universities and our job is knowledge—production, knowledge, propagation—and it’s going to take a lot of know-how to get this work done,” Hovey says. “We should be leaders in this field.”

It’s the continued effort of a committee made up of six sub-groups, addressing key issues related to sustainability and reducing the university’s carbon footprint: energy, transportation, materials, outreach and communications, and research, teaching and public service. The committee reaches across the university, connecting people and departments that otherwise might have very little contact.

“There’s the human resources department over here, and they do what they do. And there’s the student affairs department over here, and they do what they do. And facilities over here, and the provost over here, and they take responsibility for what’s in their area,” Hovey says. “They don’t always work across the areas as well as they might, but in the work that we’re doing, it’s really crucial to get everybody working together, and connect across [the university].”

Over the two years since the committee took shape, climate action plan has made progress in some specific, tangible ways, like the start of construction of buildings to meet LEED Gold standards as outlined by the U.S. Green Building Council. LEED provides “third-party verification that a building or community was designed and built using strategies aimed at improving performance across all the metrics that matter most: energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts,” according to the USGBC website.

Greiner Hall, the new dorm going up in front of the Ellicott Complex, is being built to meet LEED Gold standards. It will be a 600-bed suite style dorm housing mostly sophomores, with a green roof and a 100-bicycle shelter.

“It’s a demonstration throughout of a completely universal design approach which deals with students of all different abilities … and really deals with a different approach to thinking about how you size and work the environment to include all people,” Shibley says.

Parking and Transportation has made progress with a carpooling program. The program currently has 190 participants in 93 car pools. “It’s the beginning of a relatively small program, but there’s almost 100 spaces on campus that are empty that wouldn’t otherwise be, and there’s 100 extras, 200 extra trips a day that aren’t being made,” Hovey says.

The climate action plan has become inevitably entwined with the general UB 2020 plan. Though a lot of construction and other aspects of the UB 2020 plan are already underway, it’s come to something of a standstill recently since the Public Higher Education Empowerment and Innovation Act stalled on its way through the state legislature. PHEEIA would in part afford UB with increased autonomy to increase tuition incrementally without state approval and the ability to forge public/private partnerships and lease land—autonomy essential to realizing much of the goals of the plan. But while budget cuts and UB 2020 problems could slow the university’s path toward climate neutrality, it won’t halt it.

“We have, with the comprehensive plan and the climate action plan, painted a target. We’ve put a vision up there that is kind of a destination. The question is not whether or not we’re going to get there, but how long it’s going to take us,” Shibley says. “So a bad budget year, or two years, or three—a more complex system, which is what we have now, versus an easier system, which is what the legislation would give us, will make a difference—but it’s mostly in a time dimension, not in the destination.”

Achieving growth is a major aspect of the UB 2020 plan, with a goal of increasing the university 40 percent, with an additional 10,000 students—leading to the growth and revitalization of the greater Buffalo and Western New York area. But more people, using more resources, taking up more space doesn’t have to muddy up the green.

“If we get bigger, but still have a smaller carbon footprint per person, haven’t we done some good here? Ultimately we want to get to zero [but] if there are other reasons … academically, and I’m going to argue ecologically, for us to grow, then we should consider growing, and at the same time, do it with an increasingly smaller footprint per person,” Shibley says. “This notion that any growth means an increase in footprint, means don’t grow. Now if you apply that to Buffalo that’s been a shrinking city for all this time, are we condemned to never be a robust city again? Well, you could say no, be the size you are, but be good. But I would bet if we were really good, it would be more attractive and people would come. And should we say don’t do that, and therefore don’t get more attractive? That doesn’t work logically for me.”

The U.S. is projected to grow by 150 million people by 2050. The WNY area, Shibley says, has the potential to support an influx of people, with good water and arable soil, and an ability to grow its own food.

“We are much better equipped to deal with [more people], with a much smaller carbon footprint,” Shibley says. “In a way, it’s our stewardship responsibility … to create a region that’s conducive to growth, and part of that formula is an academic one. Good regions have great universities. Great universities have a certain kind of critical mass of faculty, students and staff. What we’re aspiring to in UB 2020 is building the critical mass of faculty, and you have to have the student base that drives that.”

But that kind of massive change to an already diverse university requires a certain amount of culture change—a large amount of culture change—that requires a careful consideration of approach, and student mobilization. Students have been fighting the green fight for a while, but there’s been a surge recently in student involvement, and increased visibility from groups like UB Green and Engineers for a Sustainable World. The Student Association added the Environmental Department this year, headed by director Chris Llop, who also serves as a student representative on the ESC.

“You can be like, ‘oh my god, let’s save the world.’ A lot of people tune that out. I’m an engineering major, I understand that people tune that out,” Llop says. “But if you say, look, you can’t argue with the fact that we have limited resources, you can’t argue with the fact that if the world is getting warmer, it doesn’t matter if we’re causing it or not, we have to find ways to stop it.”

“I think a lot of times, especially in the environmental movement, people don’t focus on those things. They focus on, ‘oh my god, polar bears’ … [and] fear tactics, and that tunes a lot of people out. You don’t really need to make big changes: recycling instead of throwing things out—it’s three feet to the right or left,” he says.

Culture change can be tricky at a diverse university with so many cultures represented. But Llop is encouraged by the change he has already seen, and unification under the idea that we all need to find ways to keep our world turning.

“During International Fiesta, we actually went on stage and gave a talk about being green and stuff like that,” Llop says. “We ended up getting a ton of cheers, so just from that, going into a room with a 1,000 students from all over the world, and being able to see them getting excited about it, I think it’s possible.”

SA is currently working on its own climate neutrality plan, Llop says, with a goal of 2020—trying to beat UB by 10 years.

“By the time we actually get to 2030, hopefully we’ll be accomplished, and we’ll be working toward the next level, the next initiative,” says Liz Alnutt, an intern in the SA Environmental Department. “When I first read [the climate action plan], it seemed unattainable, but I feel like, going to the ESC meetings and seeing the kind of steps we’re taking, it’s very achievable.”

Thirty SUNY schools out of the 64 in the SUNY system have signed on to achieving climate neutrality. SUNY Delegate Emily Bauer previously served as student representative on the ESC and is now the environmental affairs director for the SUNY Student Assembly. She has spent a good deal of this year “gauging” where other schools are in their commitment to green initiatives—“taking their temperature, if you will,” she says.

“We’re working on coordinating and connecting people at the SUNY level in terms of what’s going on at each school, and how we can bring people together,” Bauer says. “Environmentalism does not happen with just one person.”

We’ve moved beyond the conversation of whether climate change is real, and on to larger, more pressing questions of what we’re going to do about it, Bauer says. “I think people have opened their minds to it for the most part, but what do we have to do to make sure that you as a human being can go through a whole day and produce zero carbon emissions? How do you even do that? No matter what, we’re going to breath, we’re going to need offsets,” she says, noting the need to look at the bigger picture, to look at it as an equation—to get to zero carbon emissions on campus.

Student involvement is essential to ensuring that the reality of the climate action plan doesn’t fade into a myth. There are a number of environmental groups on campus, Bauer says, and even those who don’t have a lot of time to devote to a group can get involved peripherally, offering input or volunteering when they have time, reading and commenting on the climate action plan—comments Bauer insists people read—or just getting yourself and our roommates to start recycling.

Spreading knowledge about green initiatives is important to the overall goal of a university, Llop says, to further prepare students for the real world—a world that includes climate change.

“We’re finally realizing, as a species, that we have limited resources, and we need to use them properly. The best way for us to start thinking that way is to look at our institutions of learning—how do we get people to go out into the world, and make decisions that make sense economically, but also in terms of prolonging our ability to continue to sustain as a human race.”

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