After a year of aggressive campaigning to make Cornell go Beyond Kyoto, Cornell has embraced the goal of achieving climate neutrality to “make a difference… for the world at large” through leadership. With a majority of the campus supporting this goal, Cornell is ready to begin planning how to truly make the campus climate neutral.
Before you go on to read the press release, I wanted to let you all know that this has been the result of an amazing team. Among the most active members were Emily Rochon, Katherine McEachern, Kimberley Schroder, and William Eden. Everybody from the student organization KyotoNOW! should be proud, and we truly thank the entire Cornell community, as well as the broader campus climate movement, for motivating us to do better every day.
To read the press release on President Skorton’s commitment, click here.
Subscribe by Email!
Subscribe by RSS!
Share on Facebook
Please, I have been studying this issue of global warming for some time now. Yes, the earth is getting slightly warmer. Are we causing it? No one, and I mean NO ONE, has been able to provide evidence that we definitely are.
The best the UN-appointed panel of scientists could come up with in their latest report (they report every 6 years) is only “very likely” that we are capable of causing the current trend toward a warmer climate. Not very conclusive! I’m amazed at the hysteria that is perpetuated by websites such as this one. Doesn’t anyone care about facts anymore?
At least Pres. Bush was smart enough not to get tangled up in the Kyoto mess. There are actually some countries trying to get out of it because it is crippling them economically.
I just don’t understand people anymore. I remember back in the 70s the big ‘environmental scare’ was that we were headed for an ice age this century. What happened to that?
I also can’t find anyone to answer my question as to why everyone is panicking NOW over this issue when the earth has gone through a number of warming cyles (something ended the ice age…). The one thing I’ve learned since looking into all this is the earth does its own thing and has always done its own thing. It always has, whether cars and smelly factories existed or not.
Instead of constantly blaming the U.S. for our environmental woes, why doesn’t anyone blame China (with 16 out of 20 of the world’s most polluted cities), Russia (they’re in the top 10) and India? Our population is very small compared to those countries combined. I bet you $10 we have a far superior system for regulating and controlling pollution than they do…
I’m not going to start doing silly things like changing light bulbs and pulling electrical cords out of the wall until two things happen: First, they can actually say with a certainty that humans are causing our climate change, and second, we have the proven capability to reverse it.
WWWhooohhooooo!!!! You are all my climate heros. You make me proud to call myself an Upstate New Yorker (err, former Upstate New Yorker).
Perhaps I will write President Skorton commending the Cornell community’s leadership and to mention that when I’m looking at grad schools in a few years, campus’s overall commitments to the common good– and their climate commitments in particular– will top my list of deciding factors ; )
See you at Northeast Conference next month?!?
Kelly,
First of all, your description of what is happening as “slightly” getting warmer is completely out of scale. The 0.8C warming that the Earth has experienced is very significant. Keep in mind that it is an average, and that most of the warming is happening in the north, while many tropical regions are warming slowly and some areas are cooling due to regional physical changes. Therefore, while the average may be 0.8C, it may be 2-3C warmer in many places already.
In addition to that, this “slight” warming is already having substantial effects, from rapid melting of glaciers that supply water for agriculture and other uses to the documented extinction of more than 70 species (mostly amphibians). While you (you probably live somewhere economically stable enough to not know) haven’t been seriously affected, poor countries are getting hard hit. Vietnam, for example, was hit by 6 hurricanes in less than 2 months over the December/January period; Australia is getting a taste of what’s to come; and some islands are already going under.
“Are we causing it?” Of course we are. IPCC said it is unequivocal. But you know what? You probably mentioned “very likely” to point out that there’s less than a 10% chance that we’re not causing it. Proving this 100% with statistics may be nearly impossible. But if you ask any climatologist this question, he/she will tell you right away that greenhouse gases are largely causing this warming. The IPCC is a formal, highly scrutinized report that reflects the views of scientists and the agreements of politicians. If it were for the scientists, they’d say we are 100% sure we are causing it. But, for the sake of statistical and scientific honesty, they don’t.
Everybody cares about facts, and we care more about real facts. What many contrarians come up with are unsupported ideas that can easily be debunked and make no sense. For example, your senseless “environmental scare” about the 70s is brought up all the time to supposedly point out that the science was wrong then and may be wrong again. But the fact is that scientists in the 70s DID NOT conclude we were heading into an ice age. There was no consensus, not even a strong argument. What existed was a downward trend in the Earth’s temperatures due to the cooling effect of aerosols from sulphur emissions, which made ONE or TWO scientists believe that the Earth MAY be on a cooling pattern. After this was said, the MEDIA took it as if we were going into an ice age, as if the science was completely clear and we should get ready. Unfortunately, people like you put more trust on the media than on the consensus-based science!
As for your economics theory, we now know that investing in clean energy, energy efficiency, and better transportation will cost less than doing nothing. A profusion of studies who that, and any reasonable economist would tell you the same thing. A study came out some time ago saying that adopting Kyoto would cost the U.S. some $300-500 billion. BUT, what the study failed to account for was the benefits of the investment. We can’t just talk about investments and not think about future returns. Doing so is stupid because it assumed that the future is worthless! Investing in clean energy and energy efficiency will translate into a booming economy, and we know that. If we become more efficient and fund the proven renewable energy technologies, energy will be so cheap, abundant, and harmless that we will have no risk and virtually unlimited energy.
What the fossil fuel people will say is that we should instead invest in unproven carbon sequestration and clean coal technologies that are not going to be used any time soon. If the fossil fuel industry were smart, it would begin investing a sizeable portion of its annual budget into the development of departments that manufacture and install clean energy technologies. With their capital potential, they could do it and catch up to current competition while getting rid of fossil fuels. But they’re not doing it.
As for blaming who, it is clear that the US has put most of the CO2 in the atmosphere. In addition to that, we export lots of stuff that are manufactured in China, so in a sense, the US is responsible for a sizeaple portion of China’s emissions. It’s simply not reasonable to argue that growing economies are causing it because they’re looking more like the US. They’ve got millions of people in poverty and the US is not offering a better option. If the US were to join Kyoto and to work with China and India to promote development without the use of dirty energy, then the situation may have been different. The problem is that we blame China but don’t give them a solution. What’s your solution, Kelly? Stop development and leave millions of people unemployed, hungry, and with no resources? Put yourself in that position and think whether you would look to those who are already rich enough to set the tone for rightful action. The US should have led the world in reducing emissions years ago; because we didn’t, we are at fault, not China or India. Those countries simply have many severe problems that the US doesn’t have.
As for your final comment, you don’t have to join us if you don’t believe us. But keep in mind, especially if you have children, that it is the young people like me who will have to pay the penalty. 1) It is proven that we are causing global warming (ask any scientist, or Exxon); 2) we can slow the warming down and probably reverse it after we have transitioned to a clean energy system (with techs that gradually take out CO2). I hope you are convinced.
Congratulations, Carlos, Katherine, Kim, Emily, William and the rest of the Kyoto Now crew!!! I remember when Kyoto Now! led the way years ago by helping get Cornell to commit to Kyoto equivalent reductions, and it’s exciting to see Cornell take this next big step. Thanks for all the hard work you all put in to make it happen - one person, one school, one community, one nation at a time.