There were eight President Huddlestons in the Wildcat Den on Tuesday afternoon. Most of them wore jeans and many of them were in sweatshirts, but they were all trying to brainstorm strategies for decreasing the university's annual greenhouse gas emissions.
These eight presidents, each played by a different student in Cameron Wake's Global and Environmental Change class, were joined by fellow classmates representing other significant players on campus such as the vice president of finance, energy manager, campus housing planner and transportation specialist.
The purpose of the scenario was to, after three negotiation periods, find a way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 3 percent each year over the next decade.
The class negotiation, a trademark experience of the class, comes at the end of a semester learning the details of global climate change. Some of the predicted effects of rising temperatures on New England's culture and communities include: the loss of local sugar maple trees and less snow for winter sports.
The groups discussed increasing telecommunications in order to decrease faculty air travel, implementing a university biking program while providing incentives for biking, carpooling or taking the bus, installing light-sensors in dorm bathrooms whose lights are usually left on all night and replacing campus soda machines with energy-efficient equivalents.
These suggestions and many more were brought to the table on Tuesday and will be considered for the end proposal. The proposal will be organized by a student facilitator assigned to each group and will be presented to the class in a couple weeks.
The University of New Hampshire released about 76,000 metric tones of carbon dioxide in the 2006-2007 fiscal year, according to the UNH Greenhouse Gas Inventory, the first university inventory of its kind. The class's strategies, which are grounded in cost of implementation, money saved and amount of greenhouse gases reduced, must combine to total a decrease of 15,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year by 2020.
"I encourage you all to dream a little," said Wake to the eight facilitators in regards to their group's strategies. "We're talking 10 years from now. Image how different the world will be in 10 years."
Wake, an associate research professor in the earth science department well known for his climate research involving ice-cores, has been teaching the class since 1998. It was created a year after the university implemented their Office of Sustainability (UOS), the first endowed sustainability program in higher education.
Wake said although UOS has been functioning on campus for over 10 years now, UNH senior administration has really embraced sustainability in the last two to three years.
A big milestone for the UOS came in February 2007 when UNH Interim President J. Bonnie Newman signed on to the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment. This brought UNH into the circle of 60 colleges and universities who had pledged to eliminate their campus greenhouse gas emissions over time in order to attain a climate-neutral campus.
The commitment now has over 600 signatories, representing colleges and universities from each of the 50 states.
The negotiations of creating Global and Environmental Change, a new UNH course, mimic some of the milestones that UNH must reach in order to become a campus with zero net carbon emissions, which is in agreement with the commitment. The students must find the right combination of strategies that are cost-effective and reduce carbon dioxide significantly.
Taffidy Davis, a sophomore psychology major playing the role of energy manager in negotiations, said education is the most crucial aspect of reducing UNH's emissions. She said she thinks raising student awareness is the way to change bad energy habits. One of the suggestions brought to the table on Tuesday was to implement Global and Environmental Change, or a one-credit class like it, as a requirement for freshmen.
"With greenhouse gas emissions determining our future [in terms of global climate], it's very important for students to know what's going on and how we can change it," said Davis.
Kendra Mack, a freshman communication major playing the university president in Wake's class, agreed education is a key part of decreasing emissions.
"We already have a lot of good programs at the school that just aren't getting put out there to students and faculty," Mack told her group.
Some of the under-advertised programs that Mack and Davis's group discussed include the university's carpool lot next to the MUB and GoLoco, an online organization advertised by UOS that seeks to connect locals to share rides.
Wake told his facilitators that although education is important, education alone won't reduce emissions.
"We need strategies," he said.
Although the course's reduction proposals don't directly affect university policy, facilitators present final strategies to the university's Energy Task Force, which is the operations-focused element of the university's Climate Education Initiative.
UNH is considered, as a university, on the forefront of the sustainability movement and this past July received a perfect score from the Princeton Review's green rating of U.S. colleges and universities.
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