Faculty members are recommending that University administration make sustainability issues top priority, especially when dealing with the campus’s carbon footprint.
The Urbana-Champaign Senate approved a proposal for a resolution in support of the Illinois Climate Action Plan at its meeting Monday. The Senate Committee on Campus Operations unanimously approved the resolution at a meeting last month, said Ben McCall, chair of the committee and associate professor of chemistry.
In 2008, University administrators signed the American College and University President Climate Commitment, which promised carbon neutrality, or a net-zero carbon footprint, on campus by 2050. Two years later, Robert Easter, interim chancellor at the time, developed the plan in response to this commitment. It lists broad goals and plans to potentially reduce the campus’ environmental impact.
“Climate change is a very important issue, and it is better for the University to be in front of this issue in a leadership role than behind it,” McCall said.
McCall said the University has made a lot of progress on these goals in recent years. All new buildings on campus are required to have Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold certification; last year, the University stopped using coal power during the summer months.
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But he said some faculty members have argued that the University has not made these sustainability goals a priority.
“(The resolution) encourages the University to make the full implementation of the iCAP (Illinois Climate Action Plan) goals a top priority for allocating both financial resources and human resources,” McCall said.
Donald Wuebbles, professor of atmospheric sciences, wrote a letter to the senate supporting the resolution.
“It would be really outstanding to have my alma mater, the University of Illinois, demonstrate its leadership to other academic institutions and to other large organizations that this is an issue that needs to be tackled and that it can be solved through ingenuity and hard work,” Wuebbles wrote in the letter.
The resolution passed in the senate without discussion.
Lauren can be reached at [email protected].
