Also from TriplePundit, news that Vermont’s Middlebury College has won Clean Air – Cool Planet‘s “Climate Champion” award for 2005. While many colleges and universities are taking steps to redue their ecological footprint, Middlebury definitely stands out for a range of activities aimed at reducing greenhouse emissions throughou the NE region:
Middlebury:
* Completed a campus-wide emissions inventory, being among the first colleges to adapt and use the Clean Air-Cool Planet Campus GHG Emissions Inventory Calculator;
* Offered “Path to Carbon Neutrality” winter term course in 2003 in which 15 students led the development of potential carbon-reducing measures on campus;
* Appointed a Carbon Reduction Initiative Working Group to analyze and react to the students’ recommendations and create a portfolio of options as a plan of action
* Offered “Social Movements and Climate Change” winter term course in 2005 involving 20 students that culminated in a two-day public conference “What Works? New Strategies for a Melting Planet” bringing together national climate change leaders and students to build, share, and test strategies for a new climate movement.
* Offered “Environmental Economics,” a spring 2005 course that resulted in the development, by several 2005 Middlebury College graduates, of a credit card that enables its users to become carbon neutral. One percent of the money charged to the card is devoted to the purchase of carbon offsets, canceling out the pollution an average individual causes every day.
Congratulations to Middlebury College for setting a fine example for the rest of us. I’ll see what I can do to get the ball rolling in Mid-Missouri.
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