Fast Times in Higher Ed

In the fast-paced business world, Fast Company has been keeping up with the winning trends at the leading edge. That's why it's very exciting that more and more they're seeing sustainability as a core strategic priority for any organization.

They've developed their own take on the concept, which they call Ethonomics and describe as follows:

"The end of the modern financial system as we know it has cleared the way for an era of ethical economics, or "Ethonomics"... Ethonomics is a hybrid of technology, design, and social responsibility, and at Fast Company we believe it is the future of business.

But we're not breathless cheerleaders for every daisy-splashed widget that comes down the pike. We have a skeptical eye out for greenwashing by large and small companies alike, and are impatient with lofty claims that stray too far from the marketplace or from Main Street."

What's even more exciting is that Fast Company sees the importance of higher education's role in developing and fostering this concept of Ethonomics, and driving the innovation, creativity, and prosperity-generation that comes with it. They've asked Tony Cortese and I to develop a 4-part blog series on the topic based on our work at Second Nature and with the ACUPCC.

In part one, we start with an overview of the education for sustainability movement and the basics of why this is the most important, core, strategic imperative for higher education and its students in the 21st century:

At colleges and universities, tomorrow's business leaders, architects, product designers, policy-makers, schoolteachers, economists, etc. learn about how the world works and how things get done. To date, they've learned how to do this in an unsustainable way. But a change is coming, with hundreds of U.S. colleges and universities transforming the way they teach and the choices they pursue in research and operations. Simply put, they are preparing students for 21st century citizenship.

To create a sustainable society, we need to be rethinking how we design just about everything - our products, our industrial systems, transportation systems, buildings, energy systems, agricultural systems, etc. - and we need to be doing so quickly. This is happening in many real ways in business and civil society, but the education sector is too often overlooked.

This is important in the medium-to-long-term as tomorrow graduates will soon be in the work force making decisions, and need a comprehensive understanding of sustainability - at the very least the basics of ecology, how social systems work, how complex systems operate, and what mechanisms undermine ecological and social systems.

But it's also important in the immediate-term. Colleges and universities operate as small cities, and can serve as great role-models for solutions. They have the social mandate to create the knowledge and graduates needed for a civil society and are set up to experiment with new and better ways of designing all of our systems.

Hundres of colleges and universities are taking this on in a real way with commitment from the top and incredible solutions emerging from all levels of the organizations - take a few minutes to check out a few of the 200+ climate action plans that have been submitted to the ACUPCC Reporting System to date.

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It's electric so it's guaranteed to shock y'all

Another great video from the folks at Green For All - this by Doo Dat. After you check out the video, check out the clip "behind the video" for more about the rapper and the movement.

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Leveling Appalachia: The Legacy of Mountaintop Removal Mining

The negative impacts of coal are so numerous it can be difficult to hold them all in your head at once - CO2 emissions driving climate change (SP1), toxic coal ash spills (SP2); strip mining & mountain top removal (SP3); the devastating social and economic impacts on miners and local communities (to say nothing of the indirect impacts from climate change, etc.) (SP4) - the list goes on...

For a good, 20-minute look at the story on the ground, check out this video from Yale Environment 360 in collaboration with MediaStorm:

Leveling Appalachia: The Legacy of Mountaintop Removal Mining

Our best solutions are to dramatically reduce our demand for energy through smart design (of buildings, cities, transportation systems, vehicles, appliances, etc.) to a point where the available alternatives (solar, wind, geothermal, etc.) can meet our needs.

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Post Hopenhagen...

There's lots of continued fall-out, analysis, despair, and renewed hope and energy in the aftermath of the Copenhagen negotiations in December. I won't spend too much time diving too deep into my own thoughts and analysis but suffice it to say, it fell far short of what we need, but had some very hopeful silver linings, most importantly so many heads-of-state getting in the same room and getting more serious about this - particularly those from the US and China.

On that note, check out a must read from Guardian reporter, Mark Lynas, who was in the room and in this article exposes the barriers the Chinese delegation presented in making sure no real targets came out of Copenhagen. In my view this a pretty solid case for imposing a carbon tariff on Chinese imports, which is not normally the kind of isolationist approach I'm a fan of, but would have some ancillary benefits of protecting American jobs and addressing some of the "we-can't-price-carbon-cause-it'll-make-us-less-competitive" arguments.

Also, get involved with the latest 1Sky campaign: The just-passed international climate talks in Copenhagen show the critical need for the U.S. to take bold action on climate and energy in the New Year. Next Tuesday, January 12 people all across the country will flood Senate offices with phone calls to urge support for strong climate and clean energy legislation in 2010. Sign up at http://www.1sky.org/call-in to join this effort and make your voice heard!

Finally, in our work at Second Nature, many people have been saying how Copenhagen's results have prompted them to refocus on the local efforts, and set precedent for real action that will make the federal/international agreements easier to make. The signatories of the ACUPCC (American College & University Presidents' Climate Commitment) have been doing so for 3 years now, and making great strides - about 500 have completed and publicly reported their GHG Inventories, and over 130 have submitted plans for pursuing climate neutrality in operations and incorporating climate and sustainability into the educational experience. These are all available at www.acupcc.org/reportingsystem - see if you're school has signed and if they're up-to-date on their progress. For a great breakdown of what happened in Copenhagen, how colleges were involved, and what it means in the context of the ACUPCC, check out this article from Sarah Brylinsky at Dickinson College.

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A message to World Leaders from Global Youth

A compelling post-Copenhagen message to those in leadership positions from leaders around the world:

This is part of 350.org's recap of the 2009 - an amazing year for progress on climate action, but one that still fell far short of what's needed. 2010 is going to be huge.

Happy New Year.

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Solve Climate blog highlights absurd fossil fuel subsidies

Solar Could Generate 15% of Power by 2020, If US Ends Fossil Fuel Subsidies

The Result: 882,000 New Jobs, 10% Drop in Emissions

by Stacy Feldman - Dec 29th, 2009

in

• Clean Energy
• Clean Tech Sector
• emissions
• Environmentalists
• Governors
• Investors
• Solar
• Subsidies

Solar power technologies could generate 15 percent of America's power in 10 years, but only if Washington levels the playing field on subsidies, a report by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) says.

That means either rolling back fossil fuel subsidies, as President Obamaproposed earlier this year, or increasing subsidies for clean energy, the association says.

Fossil fuels received $72 billion in total federal subsidies from 2002 to 2008, keeping prices artificially low, according to figures from the Environmental Law Institute (ELI). About 98 percent of that went to conventional energy sources, namely coal and oil, leading to more emissions. The rest, $2.3 billion, was pumped into a new technology to trap and store carbon dioxide spewed by coal plants.

During that same period, solar got less than $1 billion, according to the SEIA, a trade group representing 1,100 solar companies across the nation...Read the rest at Solve Climate...

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GFN, COP 15, and Enlightened Self-Interest

Below is an update from Mathis Wackernagel in Global Footprint Network's latest newsletter (subscribe) about the COP 15 climate meetings in Copenhagen.

I'll let his words speak for themselves, but they do a great job of highlighting the importance of "enlightened self-interest" when it comes to sustainability, and showing how sustainability is not a nice thing to do when we have the time and money, but it is the strategic imperative of our time - whether you are an individual, company, community, or nation.

Dear Friends of Global Footprint Network, I have just come back from Copenhagen COP15. While it was a thrill and privilege to participate, it also made evident how far we still have to go to meaningfully address climate change and resource degradation. I was touched to see the buzz and interest of 40,000 participants engaging at the official conference, and of many more participating in side events and demonstrations. Most paid their own way to Copenhagen, showing incredible commitment to making this world work for all, now and later. There is tremendous public will to make a difference, beyond the 193 country delegations, and possibly over 130 heads of state. But much about the Climate Talks was quiet puzzling as well: Most delegations seem to be unaware of the link between climate change and resource constraints. Why would Europe propose to reduce emissions by X, and to reduce even more if everybody participates? If they fully realized resource constraints, and recognized that without a strong Copenhagen regime the world will get volatile more quickly, their proposition would look differently: They would suggest to reduce emissions by X, and if NOBODY participates,would propose to reduce European resource use even more to get Europe ready for a wild and rapidly resource-constrained future. Informed negotiators would arrive to Copenhagen with the mind-frame of “we have a big incentive to make this deal work, because without the deal, we will have to work harder," rather than “I will not reduce if you don’t”. Perhaps these Climate Talks should not be called negotiations (which connote: “How much am I willing to give?”). A better name would reflect designing a new framework for cooperation (“How do we need to work with each other in order not to sink the planet?”). It was particularly stunning to see how addicted we still are to outdated terms like “developing and developed countries”. These terms embody the linear development that is not only becoming physically impossible, but is also the one that got us into the climate problem in the first place. What we need is green prosperity, or green development, that works with, rather than against the budget of nature. The obvious was missing: If we are to meet the G-20 intention of keeping climate change within 2 °C, we’d need to follow the IPCC reduction path of at least minus 80% from 1990 levels by 2050. This essentially means moving out of fossil fuel. But hardly anybody admits this mathematical truth. If we accept the G-20 intention and its mathematical consequences, then consider this: Why is it that we haggle so much about access rights to emissions? It would essentially mean negotiating access to zero emissions (after 2050). Why are we putting so much effort into trying to negotiate access rights to zero carbon? Perhaps most striking is that the great majority of leaders ignore their nation’s self-interest. Possibly the most notable exceptions were Arnold Schwarzenegger and many of our partner countries like UAE or Ecuador. Others ignore that preparing aggressively for a resource-constrained future is in their most immediate national self-interest. After all, it takes decades to prepare countries, cities and economies for a resource-constrained future. For most countries it is in their self-interest to go beyond the most hopeful Copenhagen targets. Waiting for a global consensus would hurt their own ability to operate in the future. But there were also quite a few achievements: Many local initiatives – cities, pro-active businesses, regions - are already moving ahead even without global agreements. The United Arab Emirates’ Masdar City is a prominent example REDD+ (United Nations' collaborative programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) represents a solid recognition, that land-use and biocapacity are keys to the global carbon cycle. Many solutions to climate change will come from carefully managing our use of ecosystem services. Delegations showed their level of commitment, negotiating through the night and working tirelessly towards solutions – all encouraging signs that we are at a historical crossroads. Sustainability is certainly no longer a sideshow. In January, we will be sending a more detailed newsletter on how we will help shape climate action, and how this can go hand in hand with securing wellbeing for all. With growing interest in resource degradation and climate change, Global Footprint Network will play an even more significant role in 2010. We are both excited about this prospect, and immensely thankful. We are grateful to you, our partners, and for your ongoing trust and interest.

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