Campus climate challenge.

Having dropped out of Yale University before completing his degree, Billy Parish knows that getting an education doesn't necessarily require sitting in a classroom. Parish, winner of a 2004 Earth Island Institute Brower Youth Award and director of the Campus Climate Challenge, is teaching colleges and universities around America a thing or two.

The Campus Climate Challenge is a coalition of about 30 environmental and social justice organizations working to mobilize hundreds of college campuses to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The organization promotes creating a market for new energy technologies, finding technological and policy solutions to global warming, and educating the public about the need for such efforts.

Most colleges and universities are stable, respected institutions; often they drive the economies of their communities. With ample financial, intellectual, and physical resources and the ability to plan for the long term, campuses are free to experiment with new technologies, practices, and policies. Campuses have always been hubs of activist and reform efforts, encouraging dissent, inspiring idealism, and training future leaders. And as massive consumers of energy and emitters of noxious gases, they have the responsibility to function as models for their communities, and propose solutions to curb environmental degradation.

The Challenge has partnered with the Apollo Alliance, a coalition promoting energy independence, to compile a comprehensive list of campus reform recommendations. These include upgrading existing appliances and buildings to be more energy efficient, considering efficiency when constructing new buildings, buying or generating energy from renewable resources, expanding transportation alternatives and making it convenient to use less fuel, purchasing durable products that consume less energy and are better for the environment, and "institutionalizing a culture of conservation."

In building regional and state-based networks, the Challenge provides a forum to share ideas, best practices, and resources to diverse student-based groups. The Challenge Web site houses research and background materials, skills guides for planning, and a "power directory" of other materials. In addition, the Challenge organizers participate in coordinating state and regional summits, providing trainings and strategy sessions to campus groups.

The Challenge recognizes that every college and university is unique. Challenge organizers encourage each campus to be ambitious, setting concrete targets and timetables to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and quantifiable measures to track progress. The goal of the Challenge is to engage 500 campuses by 2008, working to reduce emission levels by two percent per year, reaching a reduction of 90 percent below 2005 levels by 2050.

On each campus, students team with faculty and administrators to conduct a greenhouse gas inventory, identifying campus pollutants and effective ways to reduce them. They can then set goals and draft a formal proposal to the ultimate university decision-makers. Before and during the approval process, the campus Challenge teams are encouraged to elicit widespread campus support for the proposal and be willing to compromise and negotiate on recommendations and calls for action. Finally, broad-based efforts should be made to implement the solutions developed. The aim on specific campuses ought not to be a short-term or one-time project, says Parish, but rather to institutionalize large-impact, multi-project reforms.

The Challenge attempts to change the culture of college campuses. Parish insists that "global warming is the challenge of our generation," and that to inspire more students to get on board, "we [have to make] clean energy look cool and sexy." He believes that effective environment-centered policy can be cultivated by students locally and expand from there, eventually providing alternate models to corporations, cities, states, and the federal government. The ultimate goal, says Parish, is to "bring the United States to environmental sustainability."

Aadika Singh is a recent graduate of the University of Rochester, and is currently an intern at Earth Island Journal.