The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
A university taking action on climate crisis
As a recent college graduate emerging into the world with aspirations and expectations, it’s hard to optimistically look into the future with the undeniable threat of climate change. The career that graduates aspire to build for ourselves is meaningless if our planet becomes uninhabitable within the next 30 years.
I graduated from Quinnipiac University, a school whose sustainability efforts were fairly stagnant throughout my four years there. Student apathy combined with a scarce environmental and social sustainability curriculum are some factors hindering administration from taking meaningful action.
However, Quinnipiac and one of its biggest attractions, Sleeping Giant State Park, are continuously plagued by the effects of climate change. Coastal storms are expected to play a more significant role in coastal hazards as a result of melting arctic ice sheets that raise sea levels, according to the Department for Energy and Environmental Protection. Tornadoes and severe rainstorms ravaged Mount Carmel Avenue, leaving the state park closed indefinitely, stripping Quinnipiac of an entire pine grove and damaging some academic buildings.
Despite these disasters, there is no director or even office of sustainability on campus, so outlining initiatives, receiving funding and planning campaigns becomes a disjointed effort.
Contrarily, there is one Connecticut university making the biggest splash combating rising sea levels — that is Southern Connecticut State University. After a decade of prioritizing proactive carbon reduction, SCSU president Joe Bertolino signed a climate emergency declaration on May 30, 2019.
The Climate Movement defines a climate emergency as “a cascading breakdown of the climate system due to unsustainable extractive economic and social forces, posing an existential risk to humanity and life on earth.” They therefore suggest on their website that in response to the climate emergency, the U.S. must launch a Climate Mobilization on a scale not seen since the mobilization leading up to and during World War II.
Beyond Connecticut, SCSU may be the first university in America to sign such a declaration, according to their website. Sustainability coordinator Suzanne Huminski said that despite years of progress, the university felt they needed to do more and quickly.
“The emergency declaration signifies that we understand the urgency and the risk that climate change presents to not just our community but nationally and globally,” she said.
SCSU is a part of a climate leadership commitment as well as a coalition of almost 100 colleges and universities called Second Nature, to which they report their greenhouse gas inventory, strategic plans and updates.
It is vital that other institutions, governments and countries consider students’ futures by following in SCSU’s footsteps and declaring a climate emergency with an established plan. The world needs more strong leadership that SCSU exudes. If we want future generations of thinkers and innovators to succeed, we must up the ante in the fight against climate change — and ultimately ourselves.
With all of this deeply unsettling information, it can be hard to think clearly and locally about solutions when the problem is so imposing. But, there are several organizations at the forefront of this fight. One is the New Haven Climate Movement, which joins with several other networks to petition for declarations of a city-wide climate emergency and an emergency nationwide mobilization to offer mitigation, resilience and education on global warming.
SCSU declared an emergency because of local community, health, environmental and economic risk associated with hotter summers, declining air quality, diminished biodiversity, extreme weather and changes in precipitation trends, sea level rise and acidification, drought, and other manifestations of climate change.
Transportation is one of the university’s main priorities of their climate action plan moving forward.
“Emissions associated with cars going to and from campus is quite possibly the largest percentage of emission that we can address on a meaningful level, so we have a number of programs in place to encourage and incentivize alternative transportation,” Huminski said.
But Huminski acknowledged that there is still more to do both on and off SCSU’s campus. She advised lawmakers to consider the effects of not declaring a climate emergency.
She continued, “Make sure that there’s meaningful change that can be fostered through collective action and a unified approach.” What better place for collective and unified action than a university — and hopefully future graduates will face a more optimistic future if other schools adopt SCSU’s policies.
Giuliana Grosso is a recent Quinnipiac graduate living on the shoreline of Connecticut. She is working on climate change initiatives for New Haven Léon Sister City Project, a nonprofit organization that organizes education, women’s rights, leadership development, public health and climate change projects.