In preparation for a semester full of campus events on climate change, junior Aditya Nochur spent the summer learning to organize student environmental efforts.
Nochur is the Massachusetts State Coordinator of Climate Campaign, a network of college student groups that lobby at the university and legislative level against human contributions to climate change.
He said Hurricane Katrina provides a reminder of the potential environmental effects of human actions.
"Not only do rising ocean temperatures due to climate change mean stronger, more intense hurricanes, but rising sea levels and degradation of natural storm buffers such as coastal wetlands mean that such storms will be all the more devastating when they hit land," Nochur said.
He spent Aug. 11-17 at Climate Campaign's third annual summer session, which featured workshops on energy efficiency, clean energy and investment campaigns. Students from 17 mostly northeastern colleges and several young professionals attended the conference, held in Boston.
"I think now, more than ever, is an extremely crucial time to address climate change issues," Nochur said.
According to Meg Boyle, the Executive Director of Climate Campaign, the conference was small but the participants were enthusiastic. "This one was characterized more than anything by the energy, talent and critical insight we had in the group," she said.
Boyle said the conference participants have stayed in touch to share ideas about how to raise awareness of climate change on campuses.
Nochur will work with student groups, such as Tufts Climate Initiative and Tufts Environmental Consciousness Outreach (ECO), this semester on climate change programming.
He will connect Tufts to Climate Campaign's university network, called Campus Climate Challenge, to pressure corporations to reduce greenhouse gases. "If all these universities are doing something, than corporations should be able to do something as well," Nochur said.
According to Nochur, ECO will work on projects with University faculty and staff, and these efforts "will be our contribution towards the Campus Climate Challenge as well."
Last April, a student referendum found strong support for student contributions to climate change initiatives. Eighty-eight percent of students supported a $20 annual addition to the student activities fee to help shift the University toward the use of wind power.
"We had an overwhelming amount of support," junior Melissa Henry, a Tufts Climate Initiative member, said. Instead of immediately purchasing wind power, however, the University plans to invest in energy-efficient projects and then reinvest the savings in further energy-efficient projects, potentially including wind power.
"The University has agreed to take more energy efficient measures," Henry said.
Another Climate Campaign effort this fall is the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which will coordinate carbon dioxide emissions strategy in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions.
Climate Campaign, founded in 2003, works on a national level with groups such as EnviroCitizen, the Sierra Student Coalition, Energy Action, and the Northeast Campus Sustainability Consortium.
