Greenpeace

    While their parents are reading about climate change in the newspaper, watching the TV news and listening to the radio recount the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report, students at Ivy League schools are taking action.
    Last week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released its long-awaited fourth report. The news we already knew is the group’s conclusion. The New York Times reports, “the group asserts with near certainty — more than 90 percent confidence — that carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases from human activities have been the main causes of warming since 1950.” Grist states the bad news we already basically knew. “They say by 2100, temperatures will likely rise 3.2 to 7.1 degrees Fahrenheit, and sea levels will rise 7 to 23 inches, plus another 4 to 8 inches if polar ice sheets keep melting.” Achim Steiner, the head of the U.N. Environment Program, tells us "Anyone who would continue to risk inaction on the basis of the evidence presented here will one day in the history books be considered irresponsible."
    The good news is the Ivy League schools will not be considered irresponsible in the history books. Students at these schools (Brown, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Cornell, Columbia, and University of Pennsylvania) are taking action. Students at these schools have banded together and introduced—no, not a new style of sweatpants with words across the butt or a new version of Ugg boots (can they get anymore unflattering? Just wondering … ) — a resolution that they all go climate neutral. Yay! As the celebratory email announced, “It’s official, students from all the ivies have come together and resolved that we go climate neutral!” The resolution demands this commitment from every school in the Ivy League, as well as the reduction of on-site emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050.
    So… next steps… there’s a lot more schools than the Ivy seven. Do you really want to be considered irresponsible in the history books? I think not.