Upcoming
Presentations on Smith Sustainability
Exactly how much pollution
is Smith College contributing to the earth’s atmosphere
and what are some options to curtail that amount?
This pie chart illustrates Smith's greenhouse gas inventory. |
Those are questions that
presenters will answer during two upcoming sessions.
In comparison with other colleges
and its peer institutions, Smith is well-situated in its
emission of greenhouse gases, said Dano Weisbord, environmental
sustainability director, emitting about the same level of
gases as in 1990, a benchmark year for measurement. Even
while it has grown in terms of physical operations since
that year, Smith has retained its level of emissions due
to offsetting sustainability efforts, unlike most other institutions,
whose levels have typically increased.
Weisbord expects Smith’s
greenhouse gas emissions to decrease further with the activation
this fall of the college’s co-generational power plant,
he said.
To hear more on Smith’s
sustainability profile, attend these
events:
"My, What Big Feet
We Have." Weisbord
and Elisabeth Wolfe ’10
will give a lunchtime presentation outlining
the college’s “carbon
footprint,” a
measure of how much greenhouse gases are emitted by the college.
The presentation, which will take place from noon to 1 p.m.
in the Campus Center Carroll Room, is the culmination of
research conducted last year by five students as part of
the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment.
The pact is a nationwide collaborative effort among American
schools to address global warming by neutralizing greenhouse
gas emissions. President Carol Christ signed the commitment
in fall 2007.
"Dude, Where's My
Windmill?" Five experts on environmental sustainability will
participate in a panel discussion that
will outline possibilities for using renewable energy. The
panel will take place from 4 to 5:30 p.m. in Campus Center
103-104.
Panelists are:
- Byron Woodman, of Community
Energy, a renewable energy company;
- Christian Lagier, associate
director of the Clark Science Center and board member,
Coop Power;
- Todd Holland, energy manager
for Five Colleges, Inc.;
- Rachel Sasseville ’09,
president of Morrow House, which has begun its own Green
Team;
- Dano Weisbord, environmental
sustainability director.
 The two presentations
are complementary, said Weisbord. “It’s
important to know what our carbon footprint is because it
provides a baseline of where we need to reduce from. We need
to understand where we are in order to plot future reductions.”
Weisbord and others will
give a similar presentation of Smith’s carbon footprint
profile in January as part of the Climate Commitment.
The events are sponsored by the Green Team and the Office
of Environmental Sustainability.
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