Cal Poly President Warren Baker declined to sign a pledge for climate neutrality April 18 after a third official request from the Empower Poly Coalition for him to do so, said coalition president Chad Worth.
The pledge, known as the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment, promises that Cal Poly would meet certain standards for sustainability and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in order to combat the impact of global warming.
Five-hundred and eighteen universities have currently signed the commitment out of over 4,000 institutions of higher learning in the United States, according to presidentsclimatecommitment.org.
“We feel that in order for Cal Poly to keep its No. 1 ranking, then climate sustainability has to become a priority,” said Worth, an industrial engineering senior.
Five CSUs have signed the commitment including Cal Poly Pomona, San Francisco, Monterey Bay, Chico and Bakersfield.
“The Climate Commitment is a good idea,” Cal Poly Provost William Durgin said. “But there are a couple areas that are a problem for us.”
One of those problems is collecting and controlling greenhouse gas emission data as it relates to commuting, air travel and secondary services, he said.
Keeping a comprehensive inventory of those emissions is a key component of the commitment, according to the Web site.
At the April 9 Associated Students Inc. Board of Directors meeting, President Baker estimated the costs for collecting data on such carbon footprints would range from $1 million to $10 million per year.
“The simple question here is: where the heck do we get the money?” Durgin said.
However, that range may be inaccurate, Worth said.
“It would be a challenge, but it’s not anything we can’t work through,” he said.
Another problem Baker addressed was that the CSU system does not have life cycle accounting. Therefore, the LEED certification standards for sustainable building that Cal Poly tries to follow when constructing new buildings are very difficult to meet unless California changes the way it funds new buildings.
“I try to always be sure that I can achieve what I say I’m going to achieve,” Durgin said. “So one of the problems we have now is we’re not really sure how we could achieve climate neutrality at this point. Not that it’s something we don’t want to do, we just don’t know how we could yet.”
In addition to the five CSU schools, the UC system as a whole also signed the Climate Commitment, which has put added pressure on Baker to sign.
“My position is that the CSU ought to sign it, not individual campuses,” Baker said.
However, Worth feels that if Cal Poly signed individually, it would make the institution a leader in sustainable development and it could continue to encourage the CSU system to sign as a whole.
“There’s a lot of good things in the pipeline and that’s why we need a vision from President Baker,” Worth said. “I think this is the next vision for Cal Poly.”
One of those good things would be energy independence, another goal of the Climate Commitment.
“We have a lot of things at Cal Poly that other schools would kill to have,” Worth said. “The agriculture, architecture and engineering; we have wind, an incredible amount of sun; if anyone could actually (reach carbon neutrality), Cal Poly could.”
In fact, Cal Poly is already ahead of the game in a lot of areas, Durgin said.
The university plans to release a statement in a few weeks detailing some of the accomplishments they have already made and the goals they do have for carbon emission neutrality.
The statement is similar to one released by Yale University, who also didn’t sign the Climate Commitment.
Some of those goals include better education about solutions to global warming and perhaps, even a bachelor’s degree in sustainability, constructing facilities that would be sustainable in and of themselves, and engaging in practices that serve as examples for teaching and research on climate neutrality.
Cal Poly also signed the Talloires Declaration which began in 1990 and includes more than 350 college president signatures in over 40 countries, according to www.ulsf.org.
As a result of that declaration, and other greenhouse gas emission goals, Cal Poly currently has decreased the consumption of natural gas by 30 percent through heating and cooling improvements on campus, expanded recycling so that 60 percent of solid waste is diverted from landfills and has reached 17 percent of the 20 percent required by 2010 of renewable energy purchases.
The Empower Poly Coalition also plans to continue educating students on what they can do to help reach carbon neutrality and why the Climate Commitment is a good idea through a variety of events during Earth Week.
“It’s not an ‘us versus them’ sort of thing,” Worth said. “It’s more that we need to work together and take this seriously.”