Group calls for lower emissions

// news / daily - october 23, 2006

http://daily.stanford.edu/article/2006/10/23/groupCallsForLowerEmissions
By Allison Dedrick

Global warming has become a hot issue at Stanford with the University’s announcement of new sustainability institutes and funding increases for environmental research in the past few years.

Yet students at last night’s kickoff for the Stanford Climate Change Campaign, a subset of the student group Students for a Sustainable Stanford, expressed concern that the University is not taking action fast enough.

Senior Zach Dembo spoke to a group of about 70 students and staff in the Bechtel International Center about convincing the University to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and establish targets similar to that of the Kyoto Protocol. The group has specifically demanded that the University reduce emissions by ten percent of the 1990 emission levels by the year 2020 and eventually work toward achieving zero-net carbon emissions.

To the campaign’s organizers, the proposed policy was everything but ambitious.

“I wish I could tell you that what we’re proposing to you now is cutting edge, that we’re pushing the envelope, but the fact of the matter is, we’re behind,” Dembo said. “We’re behind our other benchmark institutions, we’re behind in the state, and I believe we’re behind in the nation.”

Founded during the winter of 2006, the campaign met with President John Hennessy in the spring. Dissatisfied with Hennessy’s response, the group’s leaders hope to meet with the president again this year and secure his approval for the plan by the end of this school year.

In recent years, the University has announced several new plans for environmental action. In the spring of 2004, the University created the Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Institute for the Environment, which is headed by faculty members Jeffrey Koseff, Pamela Maston and Barton H. “Buzz” Thompson, Jr.

Designed to promote interdisciplinary research and address environmental issues from a variety of fields, the institute will be housed in the new Energy and Environment Building, tentatively scheduled for completion by the end of 2007. The building will serve as a central location for interdisciplinary environmental research on campus.

And just this month, the University announced The Stanford Challenge, which aims to make Stanford a more effective global citizen by establishing a $250 million goal for the Initiative on the Environment and Sustainability.

Alumnus Jay Precourt, who has spent most of his career in the oil and energy industry, also recently gave $30 million to establish the Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency at Stanford. The Precourt Institute will attempt to improve the efficiency of energy use, focusing on buildings, transportation, fuels and power distribution.

Academic departments and student groups have mobilized in recent months as well. Jordan Wilkinson, a member of the Environmental Engineering department, spoke about plans to test wind turbines on campus and in the surrounding area. The department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, meanwhile, continues to promote the Green Dorm project, which has brought together a group of students, faculty and industry experts to design and build a sustainable dorm on campus. The project’s goal is to introduce cutting-edge environmentally-friendly technology to the campus and make the Green Dorm the most desirable housing for students.

Organizers of the Climate Change Campaign, however, highlighted the importance of greenhouse gas testing on campus. Dembo said he was surprised when he discovered that Stanford didn’t already have emissions reduction plan in place.

“I figured, it’s Stanford — we’re a center of liberal thought in one of the most aggressive states on climate change,” he said. “If you’re going to tell me that Stanford, the home of Yahoo and Google, can only innovate when it comes to computers and not when it comes to other things, including public policy, then I would be ashamed.”

Hammad Ahmed, a senior majoring in international relations and one of the Climate Change Campaign organizers, said that a formal study to assess the level of carbon emissions on campus may be completed by Feb. 2007 with the University’s support.

Most students at the meeting expressed a determination to work with the University and raise the level of awareness among students.

“[Climate change] is one of the most important issues in the world today,” said freshman Teresa Robbins. “Things are going dramatically wrong very fast.”