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The Global Climate Concern
By Amy Selby

Life University President Dr. Guy Riekeman speaks with Anthony Cortese, Sc.D., of Second Nature, about the global climate crisis.

As we continue our World’s Greatest Conversations series, we go outside the profession to speak with Anthony Cortese, Sc.D., a forward-thinking leader with the mission to create a healthy and sustainable climate. As the president of Second Nature, an ecological advocacy organization, Cortese participated in the creation of the President’s Climate Commitment. The Commitment asks presidents of higher education institutions to develop an action plan to reduce the campus carbon footprint to zero and to educate their students about the climate crisis. Life University has joined the Commitment as a member of the Leadership Council, and is in the early stages of creating a carbon inventory of its Marietta campus.

The conversation about global warming, greenhouse gases, sustainability and climate change must reach beyond our boardroom and into your practices and homes. Here, we share President Guy Riekeman’s and Cortese’s discussion on an issue that affects the survival of modern civilization.

Riekeman: There is controversy around the issue of global warming. At a recent conference in Washington, D.C., I heard an impressive point that there are more than 900 peer-reviewed articles supporting the science behind the issue, and not one peer-reviewed article against it. Can you share with us the science behind this issue?

Cortese: The evolution of human progress over the last 10,000 years when we evolved from the hunter gatherer stage, through the agricultural stage through the development of cities and of complex human society, it’s all occurred during a time of relatively stable climate. Now, for the first time in human history, we are large enough in numbers and in technological and economic prowess that we are fundamentally shifting the biogeochemical cycles of the biosphere. The most evident is the carbon cycle and it’s creating a level of warming of the atmosphere that is disrupting all of the basic climate systems on the Earth. This becomes important because we have located our cities, our agriculture, our industries, our transportation based on the notion that we have a relatively predictable climate.

As a result of the industrial era and the pumping out of fossil fuels into the atmosphere as we burn them, it’s causing rising temperatures. Rising temperatures are an indication of the instability of the atmosphere. It’s an indication of the amount of energy in the atmosphere. And, as you raise the energy level in the atmosphere you begin to make all kinds of changes, which include changes in rainfall patterns, increased droughts in some places, it causes rising of the sea level—primarily because of the expansion of the water with rising temperatures—and then you also begin to get more intensity around the storms and normal weather patterns. You get more weather extremes. They increase in frequency and they increase in magnitude. This can undercut the ability of our civilization to survive.

What’s interesting is that we recognized that this was a serious problem in the mid 1980s. After the Earth Summit in 1992 the scientific community came together through the United Nations to form an international panel on climate change to determine what is causing climate change, how much change is occurring and the kinds of solutions we should be developing. This was a unique effort in the history of the world because the United Nations Panel was working with the World Health Organization and the World Meteorological Organization. Together, they created a panel of scientists from over 100 countries to begin the most rigorous scientific analysis that one could find around climate change. The International Panel on Climate Change, which has over 3,000 scientific members from 100 countries, has issued four reports with respect to understanding the human impact on the climate; the understanding of the variability of the climate; the effects of climate change on the environment and on society in general; and, finally, recommendations in regard for solutions.

During that period in 1988, when it was first created, to today, the four reports have been released on a period of every five years. The reports have come to the conclusion that the climate is changing in some really dangerous ways, and that unless we are to mitigate the pumping of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we are looking at catastrophic climate changes sometime in the 21st century. The reports suggest that we need to take immediate action to try to reverse the emission of greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere.

Riekeman: Based on that last point, one of the things I remember from the conference is that there’s this 10-year window in front of us that’s really critical. There may be a point of no return. Does that play into this?

Cortese: Yes. Greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, which causes over 90 percent of the global warming, stay in the atmosphere anywhere from half a century to almost three centuries. So the warming that we’re seeing today, which is about 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit on a worldwide basis over anything we’ve seen before in history, is based on most of the emissions that occurred before 1950. In fact, since the industrial revolution, which is when we began to see this increase in temperature, we have found that 56 percent of the greenhouse gases that were emitted at that time are still in the atmosphere. So there’s a big lag time in the effects occurring as we produce emissions.

The scientific community has told us that we have to stop the growth of greenhouse gas emissions. And we only have a decade to do so or otherwise we are creating conditions that cannot be reversed. And unlike other pollution problems, once we stop the emission of gases into the atmosphere, you don’t solve the problem. When we stopped putting sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere we were able to immediately stop the increase in acid rain. But in case of the greenhouse gas emissions, because of the lag period, once we begin to stop the emissions the effect of what’s already been there is going to continue on for the next 150 to 200 years.

Scientists have calculated that in order for us to avoid the potential for a catastrophic climate change, we have to cease the increase of greenhouse emissions that is occurring on a worldwide basis within 10 years and begin to reduce emissions by 70 to 80 percent by the middle of the 21st century.

Riekeman: I think that in most people’s minds, when they hear that news they think about car emissions. Are cars the biggest part of the problem?

Cortese: No, cars are just 25 percent of the problem. Forty percent of the total emissions come from the heating and cooling of buildings in the world. And the remaining percentage largely comes from power plants burning coal, and to a certain extent, oil. But it’s mostly coal-burning power plants on a worldwide basis that is responsible for the next largest chunk. The additional source is the burning of forest, particularly in the rain forest, which adds to 20 percent to the problem.

Riekeman: Obviously there’s no single source, but why did you target the presidents to lower greenhouse emissions?

Cortese: First of all we have to ask: Why higher education? Higher education is critical because higher education trains all the future professionals and leaders in society. And, the challenge we have, we have to, in essence, find a way to get ourselves off of being a fossil-fueled dependent society and one that moves to the primary sources of energy coming from renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind, geothermal and biomass. We need to do that within the next 30 to 40 years. That is a huge challenge, and it will require such a large change in mindset that the only institution in society that I know of that has the capability of helping all of society do this is the higher education system.

Why the presidents? Because the kind of change that’s necessary can only occur if we connect head, heart and hand. The colleges and universities not only need to be training the future generation’s professionals and leaders to help society to become climate neutral, but they also need to be a demonstration site for the rest of society for ways to do so.

We went to the presidents because only they can deem the chief faculty, the chief financial business officers, the trustees and students and say, “Look, we have got to go in a different direction as a society, and we in higher education need to lead this effort.”

It is unprecedented in a sense that higher education is not waiting for the rest of society to define the problem. It’s stepping up to the table and saying it’s largely been the scientific community that is part of higher education—which helped define and come up with solutions. We need to take the work that has been done and help the rest of society figure out how to do this.

Riekeman: If you picked “X University” anywhere in the United States, what would you ask them to do? What are they committed to do and what could they possibly do?

Cortese: The notion is that presidents who sign the climate commitment are committing to reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases and eventually eliminating them and becoming climate neutral in the operation of campuses. They also commit to produce the graduates with the knowledge, skills and values to help the rest of society do the same thing.

What they are committing to do is, within a year, do an emission inventory to determine all the greenhouse gas emissions that occur on campus—from heating and cooling of buildings, electricity, commuting to and from the university by students and the faculty and administration; and the air travel that is officially done by faculty and administration of the college. And, within two years they are committing to develop a plan on how to achieve climate neutrality in both curriculum and operations. The presidents get to determine the timetable for which they will try to do this reduction, with increments of progress. They will be producing a plan on how they are going to change the educational experience for their students.

The other thing they are committing to do is to report periodically, every two years, the progress they are making on the climate action plan and make it available to their own communities as well as to the President’s Climate Commitment organizations.

Riekeman: It’s easy as a private school to say we’re doing platinum buildings. We don’t have to sell that idea to the state. Do you think innovation is going to be made from large or small institutions or do you think the marriage of the two will have a uniqueness to it?

Cortese: The innovation is going to occur where the people are the most entrepreneurial and committed. We have found over the years in Second Nature and the Association of Higher Education and Sustainability that there’s no way of predicting which schools are going to be the ones that are going to lead. What we’re finding is that there is leadership occurring in every kind of institution across the United States.

We deliberately went after every kind of institution because of the magnitude of the mindset change that is necessary. Therefore, we have to work through every kind of college and university from the community colleges to the four-year colleges to the research institutions, public schools, private schools, small and large—they all need to be at the table.

One of the things most heartening about the President’s Climate Commitment is that today we have 340 signatures in the country. Of the 340 signatures about 70 are community colleges and about 90 are private colleges and universities. Twenty-one complete state university systems have signed on. We have colleges and universities in 46 of the 50 states.

So it has been an inspirational and terrific response on the part of every kind of institution in society. What’s been great is that when you look at the info on the website [presidentsclimatecommitment.org] you begin to find out what’s going on at colleges and universities across the country. You find that there is innovation occurring in virtually every type of school. To me, that is the most heartening. That means that this has become a social movement in a very positive direction.

Riekeman: Can you give us a couple of specific examples of what colleges are doing as part of the Commitment?

Cortese: Sure, if you look at the work of Ohlone Community College in California, all of their buildings have been built to high levels of LEED’s [The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design] standards, which is remarkable. Then you have Cape Cod Community College in Massachusetts, which is doing something similar. You have L.A. Community College district that is doing an incredible job—all of their new buildings will be built to LEED’s silver standard or better.

Then you have colleges and universities like Cornell University in New York, which was one of the first to sign the President’s Climate Commitment and put a major plan in place to move forward on these issues.

I could go on and on. It’s been over 90 colleges that have set LEED standards for new buildings and for all of their new construction. We have 200 colleges and universities that are now purchasing wind energy for their electricity. The higher education sector is the largest purchaser and user of wind energy over any major sector in the United States.

Riekeman: Our Board of Trustees is committed to all new buildings—and there’s a lot of them going up—being LEED gold and platinum buildings.

Cortese: That’s fantastic!

Riekeman: I had a student write to me over the break saying that he did not want one dime of his tuition going to the greening of campus. How have other student bodies responded to the actions taken by other presidents?

Cortese: I assume what you said to this student is that the way that we can afford to pay for these things is to reduce our operating costs over time and to make our buildings as healthy as possible and increase the productivity of students and faculty.

The presidents who have signed the commitment will tell you that they could not have done it without the enthusiastic support of their students. The students have been pressing several colleges to do a number of things over the last decade. I have to say what I see in the student environmental movement today, I think it’s the most sophisticated movement since the 1960s. Because the students are organizing and saying we want to do things differently, not just asking the administration to do something, they are willing to put both their money and feet where their mouth is. They have been organizing to create programs—creating pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly transportation on campuses, trying to use more public transportation, and in many cases students have been increasing activity fees to pay for the costs of these programs. It has been heartening to see.

When you ask students why they are doing this, they say that they understand that the worst impact of climate change is going to be on future students, on the students’ children and their children. And therefore they see it as an important, ethical responsibility to be a leader to help the future graduates to have a decent quality of life on a worldwide basis.

Riekeman: I’m sure there must be opposition to this. I assume it comes in the form of direct political opposition to the U.S. refusing to sign the Kyoto Accord. The other side of it is a lot of movie stars have jumped on board with this today, and in some degree the issue can be trivialized by some of their silliness. What kind of objections are you getting and how are those things playing into what we have to overcome?

Cortese: We have to overcome a larger sense of people thinking that this is not their problem. One of the things that has been challenging for us in the United States, particularly in comparison to Europe and other parts of the world, is that there has been a large disinformation campaign that has been funded by the automobile industry and the coal and the oil interests suggesting that climate change is not a problem and that there is a lot of scientific uncertainty. And it’s seated in people’s minds that there is a lot of uncertainty involved.

Studies have been done to look at all the scientific information that has been available both through the International Panel on Climate Change and all the scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals and peer-reviewed studies in the world. One study over a period of 10 years in Science Magazine and Nature Magazine found that there are about 968 studies claiming that climate change was a serious issue and not one that said the opposite. And yet when you go out and look at that time period and look at the articles in the news media, only 53 percent of those stories indicated that there was no scientific uncertainty. So the media has played into that there is a lot of uncertainty, when there isn’t.

Riekeman: How can consumers put pressure on their alma mater to be a part of the Commitment?

Cortese: The first thing to do is write a letter to the president to ask to join the Commitment. It will begin a process that says that this is not about a simple environmental change; we have a civil and moral crisis. It’s not an environmental crisis.

Colleges and universities need to see that this is part of their core mission. Look at the core mission of higher education: To provide knowledge for a thriving civilization and society. Unless we find a way to reverse the effects of global warming, there’s no way to assure everyone is healthy and that we are a thriving community. Economic opportunity for everyone is uncertain unless our life support system is in good shape.

It’s critical for higher education to be able to say, “I’m trying to define the success of our institution, and it is to lead to a sustainable society.” Then they can make it a part of their core mission and provide the know-how and value to do so.

It all starts with writing to the president asking them to join the Commitment. And by doing that, it begins a process of setting up the infrastructure and making some changes.

The president of Cornell University is now saying that sustainability is not an elective—it’s one of the core values of Cornell and it will be in the future. All sustainable issues have risen from a distinct strategic issue for the university and elevated the responsibility of these activities for all leaders at Cornell. That’s how we’ll be a carbon neutral society.