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News from the CU Environmental Center December 2007
Director's Corner | Green Holidays | EJ at CU | Bookmark This! |What's Happening: Upcoming Events | Green Living Tip

Greetings!

Enjoy the monthly update from the CU Environmental Center. Please let us know if you have ideas, input, feedback or news.

Happy Holidays!!

Director's Corner  

Carbon Neutrality Sends Mixed Signals That Mean One Thing: Action

It's not about carbon neutrality-it's about going beyond neutrality, some say. Others say we can't get to carbon neutrality anyway, so why even focus on it? And still others say we don't really know if or how we may be able to get there-so we should focus on doing as much as possible as quickly as possible and not worry so much about the carbon neutrality debate.

I just want to get things done; maybe that puts me in the `ready, aim, fire' category. But I have little patience for those who continuously dither with proposals by finding their imperfections. Hello, we are imperfect humans; hence, anything we do is, by definition, imperfect.

So, we can choose to do nothing but argue-or we can choose to try our best. We can choose to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, as many are adept at. Or we can take our best shot. IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri told the world last month that, "What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future." I vote we take our best shot.

Sorry for the rant.

The good news is that CU's Carbon Neutrality Working Group (CNW), appointed by the Chancellor to write CU's "Comprehensive Plan for Carbon Neutrality," isn't wasting time on the debate-we're getting to work. In the end, I think all the points of view have elements of truth-and the CNWG is determining a work plan that will honor disparate perspectives.

The game plan emerging so far is:

• Listen to the campus, get buy-in and new approaches that help develop consensus and momentum. To do that, the CNWG will embark on a public meeting tour of the campus and community starting in January. All stakeholders will be approached, all ideas considered. And we're bringing in all the `experts' we can find and talking to them too.
• At the same time, get to work. We're cutting into teams to focus on specific areas such as: energy supply, capital construction and conservation/efficiency infrastructure, behavioral outreach and conservation (the students have been huge supporters/players here), transportation demand management, recycling and waste elimination, and finally, policy initiatives. Each category will look at the next 5-15 years of planning and tease out ways to do it better, lots better.
• Make it a robust sustainability initiative-not just an academic `carbon neutrality' debate. We are including all the benefits of projects within the categorical areas described above when we analyze pathways forward. So, not only will rigorous financial tests be applied to proposals, but we will look at their educational, research, student life/community, and leadership benefits.
• Focus on the predictable first. For instance, we have a capital construction plan that's in the ten-year pipeline. How can that plan be leveraged or tweaked to help move us forward? Likewise, we have a sense of our transportation plans and demands over the same period. What can be done with that? With all our plan analysis, we have a better sense of the fiscal landscape over the next ten years than we do over the next 50 years. So, let's look at the next ten years as a `business plan' of sorts. This is enabling us to look at this effort as a potential revenue-enhancing approach rather than simply a cost. The `business of carbon neutrality' has a much better ring to it than the `cost of carbon neutrality.'
• And at the same time, we work hard on breakthroughs. The prospect of powering the campus directly from large scale renewable energy, for instance, is gaining a lot of steam even since last summer. CU is getting closer to cracking this open and is now allied with several other Colorado campuses and state political leaders to help make this happen. It's crazy good.

I have been in the environmental industry in one form or another since 1976. I have never seen this level of interest, activity and frankly, hope. These are the days I have worked decades to be a part of. These are the good old days, as the song says. I am honored to be a part of a great team of campus and community players on the CNWG. What talent and enthusiasm we have!

In January, we will be offering ENVS 4100.004, "Carbon Neutrality Planning" as a campus and online course to help extend this conversation-and recruit more informed talent into the debate. I tell people, "I don't know much about carbon neutrality, that's why I am teaching the course: to learn." Frankly, I know most of the people in the US who have planned carbon neutrality for a campus (there are about five of us), and it is apparent that while all these folks are good, talented people, there is no cookbook on this stuff.

So, we can-and will-debate all the various considerations and perspectives related to carbon neutrality. It's an important and valuable contribution towards a body of work and intellectual capital that may some day write a cookbook the Earth dearly needs.

But we will also get to work.

So rest and relax these wonderfully white days of December in Colorado. Love your winters. Love your snow. In January we pick up the pace like never before. I want to answer the IPCC chair's admonition with a business plan that we will look back on as the end of debate-and the beginning of doing.

Have a great holiday. See you soon.

Green Holidays  

Making Your Holiday Ever Green 

Another snowflake fallen, another year gone. The holiday season is a time to celebrate-to connect with family, to put work aside, to savor 2007 before it slips away.

It's also a season to reflect. Here's some reflection material that, like the passing of time, is both uplifting and poignant:

• About 50 million Christmas trees are purchased in the U.S. every year. 30 million of these end up in landfills.
• The 2007 Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree is lit by energy-efficient LED bulbs and powered in part by solar energy.
• Likewise, the 2007 Times Square New Year's ball will be lit with LED lights, using 16 times as many lights with half the wattage of the last ball.
• Enough holiday greeting cards are sold during the holiday season in the U.S. to fill a football field 10 stories high. This amount of paper requires the harvesting of about 300,000 trees.
• If every American family wrapped just 3 presents in re-used materials, it would save enough paper to cover 45,000 football fields.

"Green Holidays" is a plan to make holiday consumption more eco-friendly. A gift to the earth, it's something positive to reflect on.

Give the Gift of Green

Santa knows that the best holiday gifts are the most thoughtful. This holiday season, keep the earth in mind and join in on the "Green Gift Giving" trend.

A Green Gift is one that is either reusable or recyclable, promotes a healthy person and place, uses little or no packaging, and supports social uplift (ie. is free from sweatshop abuses).

The benefits of giving green gifts are numerous: They help reduce holiday waste, help to save money, and are esteemed as unique and personal. Examples of eco-friendly stocking-stuffers and gifts include:

• Crafty bowls and plates made out of old fashioned records.
• "Cool Tags" that offset CO2 emissions, promote windfarms, and support Rosebud Sioux. $2, available at E-center UMC Tables and in UMC 355.
• Compact fluorescent light bulbs, reusable tote bags, reusable mugs, and transit passes.
• Donations are a perfect gift for that person who has everything. Choose your favorite non-profit and make a donation in your giftee's name.
• Your time. Instead of sending your grandfather's brother's elderly cousin a shimmery, impersonal, non-recyclable card, show up at her doorstep with An Inconvenient Truth and bowl of popcorn in hand.

A bonus: Many Green Gift ideas are cost efficient (did you know that it takes an average of 6 months for a credit card user to pay off their holiday debt?).

Once your holiday gifts are procured and the wrapping process begins, make sure your packages are eco-conscious inside and out. Here are some green gift wrapping tips:

• Avoid wrapping paper or cards with foil decorations or lining-they're not recyclable.
• Create beautiful packages without guilt. Wrap with magazines, cloth, maps, blueprints, calendars, or bags decorated with your art.
• Save wrapping paper and boxes from this year's gifts for next year.

Click here to visit the New Dream Conscious Consumer site for more Green Gift Giving ideas.

A Charlie Green Tree

Christmas trees are potentially the most environmental of holiday symbols: Bringing a tree into one's living room is literally allowing nature into one's life.

But note the word "potentially" before you snuggle next to your evergreen with a copy of Thoreau.

Most conventionally grown Christmas trees are fed fertilizers and sprayed with pesticides. Artificial trees aren't any better, as they are usually imported from China, made from vinyl, and contain lead. Likewise, polyethylene plastic trees often use PVC, a type of plastic that can leak poisonous chemicals.

Luckily, there's a way to avoid Christmas tree pesticides without facing the ba-hum bug: Organic trees.

Organic Christmas trees do exist, and many organic tree farmers use integrated pest management schemes in place of pesticides. Such pest control schemes include the use of natural predators, pest-resistant tree varieties, and biological controls.

Your best bet in finding an organic tree this year is to search locally. By searching in town, you have a better chance of speaking with tree farmers about their growing practices and procuring literature on organic farms. Ask your local co-op or natural food store for an organic tree-buying guide, or research local tree farms on the web. This way, you can assure that your Christmas tree doesn't just look green, but is green.

And once the LED solar holiday lights have been stored away and all the paper wrappings recycled, think twice before throwing your beloved living room companion to the curb. Click here for a list of local tree recycling programs. Recycling your tree will ensure it remains green long after its needles turn brown

(Source: www.grist.org)

Visit the E-Center Green Holidays page for more Green Holidays information: http://recycling.colorado.edu/reduce_and_reuse/holiday_greening.html

EJ at CU  

CU's Contributions to Environmental Justice

The Environmental Center, SORCE and UCSU have collaborated to successfully begin a series of discussions regarding how the CU community can further the environmental justice movement.

Recognizing that environmental degradation overburdens minority and economically disadvantaged groups, the Environmental Center's Diversity Outreach Coordinator, Alexis Goggans, began the planning stages of what would result in two successful discussion forums on environmental justice. Historically, the environmental movement has had most of its support from the white and affluent community. When addressing environmental injustices, such as the concentrated number of polluting facilities in the primarily Latino-populated zip-code 80216, it is essential that the views of those most affected be incorporated into the solutions for those injustices.

From the very start of the planning stages, Goggans and her team of "justice warriors" sought the input of a wide variety of groups, such as the Black Student Alliance, the Muslim Student Alliance, the Bahai'i Campus Association, Amnesty International, Coalition Against Sweatshop Abuses, and many others. Led by ethnic studies professor Dr. Reiland Rabaka, the discussion series began in October with an evening of dinner, speakers, video and a cross-cultural dialogue aimed at identifying pressing environmental injustices in our community. It was widely regarded as a successful event with a diverse attendance of nearly 200 people.

The seond part of the series encouraged participants to take part in the annual Bioneers conference, which is a nation-wide teleconference that focuses on creative solutions to environmental problems.

Finally, in November, the discussion series was concluded with a media presentation of Bioneer Van Jones and a roundtable discussion that focused on solutions. Injustices discussed included the prediction that the effects of climate change will hurt people of color and the poor first and hardest. As a tribute to the CU environmental justice movement, participants were asked to pledge personal action and record that pledge on the cutout of a hand, all 100 of which will be arranged into an art display for all to enjoy. In addition, all of the solutions that were proposed will be distributed to the participants.

Next semester, the EJ Roundtable Planning Committee (which is open to anyone) will partner with the Environmental Justice Steering Committee (managed by the Environmental Center) to take a role in Focus the Nation, a nation-wide event that asks universities, colleges, high schools and other institutions to focus on climate change issues. The idea is that on January 31st, no one will be able to walk through the CU campus without encountering education on this issue.

If you would like to become involved with the environmental justice movement at CU, please subscribe to the Environmental Justice newsletter by e-mailing Alexis Goggans at alexis.goggans@colorado.edu

Bookmark This!  

A Green Gift Idea for Your Favorite Bookworm: Wake Up and Smell the Planet 

Your mom was right. Books are better than computer games.

According to grist.com, a book uses half the electricity of a computer. Being an environmental information web site, this may seem like a risky fact to advocate.

Au contraire.

It's why grist is morphing, at least partially, to book form.

Wake Up and Smell the Planet is grist.org on 100 percent post consumer recycled paper: A witty, inspiring guide to living green.

grist.org reaches 750,000 people every month. It's popular because it's real: No preaching, no outlandish radicalism-just tangible, feasible information on how to make green decisions on a daily basis.

Now it's in book form, just in time for the holidays (see how smart they are at grist?).

Click here for a sneak preview and information on how to order a copy.

What's Happening: Upcoming Events  

• December 12 - Climate Change and Higher Education: Leadership to Achieve Climate Neutrality. A Webcast with Michael Crow, Billy Parish and E-Center Director Dave Newport, moderated by James Gorman. 12-1:30 pm, UMC 386.
• January 31 - Focus the Nation. A national teach-in engaging millions of students and citizens with political leaders and decision makers about Global Warming Solutions. Visit http://www.focusthenation.org/nationalteachin.php

To view the complete events calendar, click here

Green Living Tip   Spread Some Green Cheer

Save trees this holiday season: Cut down your paper use instead. Here are some eco-friendly card-sending tips:

• Consider sending your holiday cards electronically this year.
• If you do purchase cards, look for those whose profits benefit environmental NGOs.
• Make sure your cards are recyclable: No foil, no frills. Elegant simplicity is the key (and look for the recycling logo).
• Eliminate envelopes: Fold holiday letters and put the addresses on the back.

  Contact the CU Environmental Center email: ecenter@colorado.edu phone: 303-492-8308 web: http://ecenter.colorado.edu Join our mailing list!