Q. Why is academia slow to grapple with climate change?
First, institutional leaders find climate action politically too risky, with plenty of downsides and no perceived advantages. Second, faculty and staff tell me they are already overwhelmed with other issues. Students, in contrast, often report being passionate or depressed about global warming, but see little or no role for their academic career in this crisis.
Q. What are some of the risks that college leaders don’t think about when it comes to climate?
Institutional leaders all too often, and surprisingly, underrate immediate physical dangers to their built environment. One hundred year storms tend to come with disturbing frequency. Campuses near ocean coastlines are vulnerable not only to sea level rise and storms (increasing in both intensity and frequency), but also to salt water infiltration of their water tables. Inland institutions can face the opposite problem of too little or compromised water, not to mention fire damage Institutional insurance policies will reflect this.
We also rarely discuss the psychological impact of escalating climate change. That is, how do we support students (as well as faculty and staff) who will increasingly come to us with climate trauma in their lives, on top of the preexisting mental health crisis?
There are political risks we should also bear in mind, beyond the challenges to researchers mentioned above. A city, county, state, region, or nation might impose climate policies which require a college or university to change behavior, create or modify buildings, alter its landscape, change its curriculum, and so on. Those policies might be pro-climate action or come from a place of climate denial; either way, campuses will have to bear their costs.
Q. For trustees, climate risk seems like an enterprise risk, such as a cyberattack or loss of accreditation. But while those two examples have executives at the college focused on them most days, climate doesn’t. So how should trustees monitor climate risk as an enterprise risk?
One emerging campus strategy is to hire a sustainability officer, whose job it is to help develop institutional resilience. The jury is still out as to the impact such officers can have, depending on the configuration of their position and the attitudes of the rest of their institutions.
The COVID experience, painful as it is to recall, might give us an additional strategy. Many institutions in 2020 formed committees to handle the crisis, gathering and sharing information, generating plans, arranging collaborations, and developing policies. A campus climate committee is something to consider, especially if its members cross disciplines and other professional siloes, and includes students.
I want to double down on collaboration. Yes, every college and university has its unique history and character. Each meets the climate crisis based on its distinct situation. Yet we can learn so much by partnering with campuses, especially when it comes to developing and testing plans.
Q. The Wall Street Journal recently had a story that students are flocking to Southern colleges. It ran the same week that Hurricane Helene shuttered campuses for days in Western North Carolina and then Florida campuses had to close temporarily for the second time in as many weeks as Hurricane Milton came through. How should prospective students think about climate in their college search?
If students are concerned about climate risks to a physical campus during their anticipated years of study, we should make available good data on this topic. College rankings and other assessments should describe climate risks for academic institutions. Campuses should communicate their exposure and how they mitigate it.
At the same time students should be able to determine a campus’ climate offerings. Do they have climate minors, majors, certificates? What might a student do practically: organic farming, working on building or maintaining renewable energy systems, and learning social entrepreneurship.
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