Posts Tagged: climate change

Addressing Climate Change the Smart Way

Climate change is real and accelerating. It requires an urgent response that focuses all the strategies and tactics necessary to stabilize the Earth’s temperature regime. The objective to guide research, development and implementation is straightforward: Achieve an all-electric economy. Simply put, all sectors of energy use—agriculture, transportation, industrial, residential, business, etc...

A Modest Proposal to Save the Planet

Nonprofit institutions with large endowments have been facing challenges from various stakeholders contesting the management of their investment portfolios. While these challenges are most commonly associated with institutions of higher education, pension funds and private foundations will increasingly face similar challenges regarding how the management of their endowments affects socially import...

Climate Denial and the Limits of Higher Education

Last year, I attended my 50th reunion at Amherst College. One evening at dinner under a tent, a former roommate, “Nick,” dominated the conversation with assertions that claims about human-induced climate change were a hoax and those about global warming a fraud. At first, I thought he was trying to be entertaining—or provocative. After a while, I realized my error. His was no parlor game; n...

Climate Controlled?

More than 250 higher education leaders from campuses across the U.S. met last week in Boston for the 2014 Presidential Summit on Climate Leadership. The summit was organized by Second Nature, the supporting organization for the American College & University Presidents' Climate Commitment (ACUPCC). Almost 700 colleges and universities have signed the ACUPCC and committed to achieve carbon ne...

After Five Warm and Stormy Years, Higher Ed Leaders Keep Commitment to Confront Climate Change

Photo: Presidents who signed the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) seen gathered in 2007. (Courtesy of Second Nature.) Preparedness. Opportunity. Innovation. These words capture the essence of higher education’s critical role in creating a healthy, just and sustainable society. Leaders in higher education are standing up to the greatest challenge o...

The Green Launching Plan for New Hampshire’s Environmental and Economic Future

Economic vitality and environmental protection have long been linked in New England, and will be again with efforts to address climate change in the region. There is an emerging body of literature to support the potential economic benefits of a so-called “green economy” in the region and the nation. In New Hampshire, economic studies of both the Renewable Portfolio Standards and R...