Sustainability

I want to go to a Yale where we make sustainability a priority. Yale’s academic and financial resources mean that we have the ability, and the responsibility, to emphasize sustainability in all that we do. The Yale administration has set strong goals for improving the university’s sustainability practices and carbon footprint, and the YCC should monitor the progress of these initiatives to ensure that Yale honors its commitments.

Yale Should:

- Designate sustainability as an official development goal.

- Expand its participation in the Renewable Energy Credit program.

- Employ alumni crowdfunding to make the energy used to power residential colleges renewable.

- Honor its commitment to reducing its greenhouse emissions by 43% by 2020, and commit to including even Tier 3 emissions in that total (which Yale suggested it may not in a recent report).

- Develop a Sustainability Action Plan for Yale College, just as each professional school did as part of President Salovey’s climate and carbon charge push last year.

- Re-institute the Yale Climate and Energy Institute, which was abruptly disbanded.

- Add a student representative to Yale’s Sustainability Advisory Council, which is currently composed of faculty and high-level administrators. There are so many students in Yale College and in the School of Forestry and Environmental Science who are committed to environmental studies, energy studies, and the economics of climate change, and they should have the opportunity to serve as advisors to this pioneering initiative, too.

- Divest from fossil fuels. The administration has cited the practical difficulties of doing this, as it has claimed that its portfolios cannot be disaggregated. However, after the student referendum showed that students are overwhelmingly supportive of divestment, it is important for YCC to honor the student voice.

 

YCC Should:

- Hold an annual meeting with the Yale Student Environmental Coalition, so that we can work closely with them to keep moving Yale forward on sustainability issues.

- Review Yale’s internal carbon tax and recommend potential improvements to be made.

- Lobby the University to revive the Yale Climate & Energy Institute and provide it enough funding to restart climate research.

- Develop a “Sustainability Course Inventory” that catalogues each class related to the environment or sustainability at Yale in order to expand awareness of and interest in sustainability.