Can campuses and other institutions hold climate friendly events and conferences? This week’s activities in Montreal, Canada, suggests we can. This week is the eleventh session of the Conference of Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the first session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties (MOP) to the Kyoto Protocol in Montréal, Canada. Organizers of the conference have announced it will be carbon neutral (meaning it will result in no net emissions of carbon dioxide) or better.

According to the conference press release all climate altering emissions related to the conference and more will be offset. Hydro-Québec and its partners, for example, have adopted measures that will significantly offset the amount of greenhouse gases (approximately 60 kilotonnes of CO2 emissions) and the Corporation Saint-Laurent / Jour de la Terre's project will plant 10,000 trees in 100 Quebec communities beginning with Montréal. In all, 70 kilotonnes of CO2 emissions will be offset.

By hosting the United Nations Climate Change Conference as a carbon neutral event, the Government of Canada hopes to lead by example in the area of climate change mitigation, as well as help to set a precedent for future international meetings.

More specific climate-friendly conference preparations include:

*Encouraging sustainable transportation options for delegates including: vehicles for official use are gas/electric hybrids and vehicles that run on 85 per cent ethanol.
*Fueling all gasoline vehicles with low-level blended ethanol and all diesel vehicles with B5 biodiesel.
*Providing all drivers who will operate official Conference vehicles with defensive driver training, which included information on green driving techniques (i.e. anti-idling, etc.)
*Implementing an anti-idling policy at the Montréal airport, many hotels hosting delegates and the Biosphere and other COP venues for taxis and other vehicles;
*Issuing transit passes for public transportation to both delegates and volunteers on demand.
*Setting up 30 multi-capture recycling centers as well as 500 blue bins for paper at The Palais des Congrès.
*Sending excess food from operations at the Palais des congrès to local food shelters.
Significantly reducing the amount of paper information included in the delegate kit bags distributed to every delegate.
*Printing all paper distributed to delegates on at least 30 per cent recycled content paper.
*Making Fair Trade coffee available to delegates in the Cool Canada Café and other locations within the Palais des congrès.
*Purchasing wind powered computer certificates through the Pembina Institute to offset the electricity used to power the computers within the Palais des congrès and laptops used by delegates. This information will be made available to media and delegates.
*Contacting most hotels within the Montréal area hosting COP delegates with suggestions on how to help green their hotel.

The body of precedent for green conferences and meetings is growing. See the latest edition of NWF's Campus Ecology Yearbook for a case study on the College of the Atlantic's "Zero-Waste Graduation Ceremony" or you can also find information about it here in this blog. The Democratic National Convention in 2004 provided another cutting edge example.

Will Toor and Spencer Havlick’s book, Transportation and Sustainable Campus Communities (2004), is a vital resource for anyone interested in how campuses can reduce congestion related to cars on campuses and in surrounding communities while saving money and preventing global warming and other forms of pollution. The resource is held in such esteem by decision-makers that, last October, members of the City Council of College Park, Maryland who are concerned about how best to manage university-related growth and congestion issues purchased a copy for each member after a presentation by NWF staff on how campuses and communities all across the country are working together to improve the public health. Incidentally, the University of Maryland, according to the authors, has already begun to implement a number of strategies to reduce congestion and the demand for new parking, such as charging 75 percent less for carpool permits than for drive-alone permits (p. 7).

Universities are moving toward a new vision that encompasses better bicycle and pedestrian facilities, expanded access to transit and financial incentives to drive less, observe Toor and Havlick. With chapters on campus transit, nonmotorized transport and campus fleets, their book makes a strong, well-documented economic case for sustainable transportation policies on campus . “Because parking has not typically been priced at the true marginal cost of new parking supply,” the authors note, “good economic analysis of transportation options for university communities will generally show that an economically efficient transportation policy will rely less on parking and more on transportation alternatives compared to most universities’ current practice (p. 282).”

Campuses featured in the book's in-depth case studies include the University of Washington-Seattle, the University of British Columbia, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Montana at Missoula, Cornell University and the University of New Hampshire along with shorter references to almost 200 other college and university programs of various types and sizes.

Transportation demand management strategies considerably reduce campus carbon dioxide emissions. At the University of Washington, for example, alternative transportation plans enabled the campus to grow while reducing the anticipated growth in the number of cars driving to and from the campus by 10,000 vehicles per day. At 20 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted for every gallon of gasoline that would have been burned by those vehicles, the CO2 emissions reductions for just this one project on one campus alone could be well over 100,000 pounds of CO2 per day (assuming the cars would have used half a gallon per day on average which is probably a low estimate).

The book is published by and can be ordered through Island Press.

Also consulted by campus transportation planners are NWF publications Ecodemia (1995) and Green Investment, Green Return (1998) which can both be ordered through NWF's Campus Ecology Program. See also “projects” in the left-hand column of the website and click on “transportation” to find case studies on a variety of current transportation-related projects coordinated by member Campus Ecology teams and fellows.

The good news is that Americans with a college degree are significantly more likely to give the correct answer than those with a high school education or less. However, in only one instance did more than 50% of college graduates select the correct answers in assessments of environmental knowledge. For example, only 39% of graduates knew how most of the electricity in the United States is generated (compared with 22% of high school graduates) and only 20% were aware of the primary source of oil in nation's rivers, lakes and bays (compared with 12% of high school graduates). Moreover, only about 13% of schools of education provide courses on the environment which means that many, if not most, K-12 teachers start their careers with little or no training in environmental education much less in topics related to energy use and protecting the earth's climate.

In addition to an assessment of literacy trends, the report presents a detailed plan for improving environmental literacy with recommendations on where teachers, schools, school districts, state and federal governments, funding agencies, the media and others can prioritize effort, funding and further research to dramatically improve the kinds of environmental understanding and literacy most likely to lead to more informed and sustainable behaviors. Additional data on trends in higher education literacy can be found in NWF's State of the Campus Environment: A National Report Card on Environmental Performance and Sustainability in Higher Education (2001).