Environment

As national debate over global warming heats up, LA students are finding a myriad of ways to get involved in pushing solutions to climate change and making the city of Los Angeles more sustainable. UCLA has over two dozen environmental centers, and a student group called "E3"--Ecology, Economy, and Equity--that has done work to monitor food waste at dining halls. Undergrads also run the Education for Sustainable Living Program, a credit-bearing course on green living strategies.  Other students are getting involved in both of UCLA's centers for environmental law, the Emmett Center on C

Student-funded sustainability projects at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire will be scaled down this semester from the $10 student fee passed in last year’s student referendum. The itemized fee created by the Student Senate will be cut from $10 to $1 by the student budget and finance committee, in part because of administrators' concerns over the rising cost of tuition. Similar programs are thriving at schools around the country, including UC Berkeley, the University of Georgia, the University of North Carolina, Oregon State, the University of Utah, Wilfrid Laurier University, an

  The Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory Calculator, developed eight years ago by a graduate student at the University of New Hampshire, has been one of the most influential tools used to determine the strengths and weaknesses of college campus energy emissions. The calculator is now being used at approximately 700 colleges and universities around the country. Read more from the University of New Hampshire

  University of Kentucky students and community members opposed to logging nearby Robinson Forest held a protest in an effort to appeal a Board of Trustees decision. Demonstrators presented their opposition to the plan that would cut about 800 acres of the Eastern Kentucky forest for a forestry research project. Read more from the University of Kentucky 

      Environmental student activists at the University of California, Santa Barabara staged a protest to protect the Gaviota Coast – the last substantial undeveloped portion of Southern California’s coast.  The protest, however, was held primarily for a mock documentary being made by students in UCSB’s film studies program.  The film, in turn, is planned to be used to protect the Gaviota Coast. Read more from UCSB  

A group of students at the University of Colorado, Boulder are raising money and looking to find sponsors for their upcoming summer road trip, an adventure they are calling “Option Green.” The students plan to travel in a diesel school bus that they will mechanically alter to run on vegetable oil and other grease products. The students also plan to create brochures that explain the purpose of their road trip in the green bus and spread the world as they travel across the country about what individuals can do to reduce, reuse and recycle in their lives.

  Students at Duke University are protesting the expansion of Duke Energy, one of the nation’s largest power companies, with letters and phone calls. While Duke Energy representatives say the new facility would be among the cleanest coal-burning plants in the nation, opponents counter that Duke Energy’s claims amount to nothing more than green-washing.  Student activists hope to leverage the University’s strong ties to Duke Energy – half of the University’s endowment is in the power company – to stop the construction of a new plant.

  This winter break, two student leaders from Virginia Tech’s Campus Climate Challenge attended a training session to learn to give Al Gore’s lecture from An Inconvenient Truth. The training session, held in Nashville, was the former Vice-President’s inaugural training in the lecture, and it attracted thousands of applicants. One thousand were accepted; they were then split into training sessions of 200 people. In the session the Virginia Tech students were assigned to, only one other student—from Harvard—was present. And if that doesn’t make you want to pony up, we don’t know