May 22nd, 2007
As commencement passes and the campus quiets down for the summer, the University has yet to issue a formal statement on the details of its climate change initiative, including whether or not the proposal will include a plan for achieving carbon neutrality.
President William Brody was expected to make a formal announcement before commencement last Thursday, according to Jerome Schnydman, his executive assistant. As of Tuesday night, no such announcement had been made.
As Town & Gown reported last week, Brody has endorsed the recommendations of the Sustainability Committee – many of which were heralded by the Hopkins Energy Action Team (HEAT) – and decided to convene a Climate Change Task Force to explore and possibly pursue those recommendations.
But the details of the University’s plan remain ambiguous, including its “vision for carbon neutrality,” a phrase used by James McGill, the University’s senior vice president for finance and administration, in an e-mail to HEAT co-presidents Blake Hough ’07 and Teryn Norris ’10 announcing the decision.
In a telephone interview last week, Norris said he was unsure of what to expect from the task force, but that he believed the University was committed to carbon neutrality.
“It’s very clear that carbon neutrality is part of the recommendations,” he said.
McGill, however, said the University’s decision “stops short of the commitment” to achieve carbon neutrality.
“It’s not appropriate to do that by some fixed date in the future,” he said. “It’s not the appropriate kind of response for Hopkins to make.”
In the e-mail, McGill wrote that the issues – such as achieving carbon neutrality – were “technologically knotty and financial uncertain, but require leadership on the part of major institutions such as Hopkins.”
According to McGill, Brody has asked the task force – which will collaborate with peer institutions – to complete its work in one year
The News-Letter editorial page has called on the University to adopt a carbon-neutral policy (“Hopkins still a dim bulb,” March 8, 2007; “Committing to sustainability,” Feb. 1, 2007), and Student Council has endorsed a resolution doing the same (“StuCo signs on to energy proposal after initial rejection,” March 29, 2007.)
Town & Gown will provide updates and analysis as more information becomes available.
sal.gentile@jhunewsletter.com
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