A new Task Force on Campus Sustainability has been created to help revise the university’s Climate Action Plan, according to an email sent out by President Ron Liebowitz. The university created its first Climate Action Plan in 2009, which was then revised in 2016.
The President’s Task Force is composed of five faculty members, six staff members and six students. This coalition is responsible not only for updating the university’s past Climate Action Plan but to update our Energy Conservation and Management Policy, make suggestions for more sustainable behaviors on campus, broaden the scope to become more climate resilient and look at the potential to formally address sustainable goals, said Liebowitz in his email.
Liebowitz said that this task force will be working alongside four working groups. The working groups include a group on Campus Operations, Community Engagement, Incorporating Climate Change into the Classroom and Climate Resilience. Each of these groups will provide aid, assessments and recommendations to help achieve the goals set for the task force.
Professor Sabine von Mering (GRALL/ENVS/WGS) has been actively involved in the climate situation through programs both on and off campus, she said in an email to The Hoot. This will not be von Mering’s first time as a co-chair to a campus sustainability task force, but she is excited to be working with her co-chairs, Manager of Sustainability Programs Mary Fischer and Oliver Price ’20, to help achieve carbon reductions, said von Mering.
A part of the task force’s responsibilities is to make recommendations to improve sustainability on campus. Von Mering is confident that these responsibilities will become a reality.
“I wouldn’t be interested in joining a task force that doesn’t actually deliver,” said von Mering in an email to The Brandeis Hoot. “We intend to see measurable results, and we intend to ensure that there is follow-through beyond 2020.”
Von Mering additionally wants to see climate change become a top priority at all levels of decision making and see the university follow through with its commitments to see “forceful action” against the university’s carbon footprint and seek different modules of sustainability through high levels of activism among marginalized groups and student club involvement, said von Mering. Fischer said in an email to The Hoot that she hopes to see carbon neutrality achieved as a result of the task force’s efforts.
The task force will be looking at different types of practices to help reduce the university’s carbon footprint and is looking to seek responses from the community for their ideas on the matter, said von Mering. There are too many tactics seen in other institutions to help reduce their carbon footprints, said Fischer, and the task force will determine those that are best for Brandeis.
The goals of the task force are set to be completed by the end of this academic year, according to the email sent by Liebowitz. Fischer said she feels comfortable meeting the goals of the task force by this deadline.
“We all know that we should be reducing greenhouse gas emissions yesterday, so I welcome the proposal to move swiftly,” said von Mering regarding the deadline the task force has been given.
Despite seeing progress from previous attempts to improve sustainability on campus, the task force and Liebowitz hope to see additional measures created.
Editor’s Note: Layout Editor Sabrina Chow is a member of the task force and did not contribute to this article.
