Celebrate strides UNC has made, but push for more

TO THE EDITOR:

Universities typically don’t rest on their laurels, but rather continue to aggressively advance future-looking leadership, especially regarding society’s most pressing issues like climate change. Following the University’s positive sustainability grade and the release of this week’s report, the attitude is, “Great! We’re doing our part.”

We should celebrate the strides that the University has made. But the University’s commitment is based on dated estimates of what is needed to address climate change. Since the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report was released in 2007, there has been an increasing recognition that even the most aggressive recommendations made by the IPCC are not enough, as reflected in a 2009 report by the United Nations Environment Program.

The next IPCC report due out in 2014 will substantially raise the bar far beyond the University’s current commitment. Especially for a University with the financial and intellectual resources of UNC, it is inadequate to rest on our laurels when we need to be taking an even more aggressive leadership role on this issue.

Already, we’re behind our rival Duke, which last week announced a commitment to become carbon-neutral 26 years before UNC. Let’s not fall further behind.



Brendan Watson
Graduate student
Journalism and Mass Communication