Welcome to the NWF Campus Climate Campaign

This web log is a new part of the National Wildlife Federation’s award-winning Campus Ecology Program. We started it to report on developments in campus-based energy and climate change reduction practices. Here, we will present a series of findings and observations on the importance of lowering the climate impact of American campuses– a sector with enormous impact and potential to lead by example. Today, more than 15 million people from all across the world are enrolled in the nation’s more than 4,100 colleges and universities. Higher education employs millions of people and has a vast numbers of businesses in supply chains. A single dining service may spend up to $100 million dollars in one year and a mid-sized institution may contract with more than 20,000 vendors. With hundreds of thousands of buildings of all types, fleets of vehicles, power plants, and, on any given day, tens of millions of computers crunching away, U.S. higher education contributes more to the world’s atmospheric carbon load than many nations combined.

Importantly, if our campuses achieve smart energy, transport, waste reduction and related practices, and involve student leaders in the learning process, graduates will better understand what must be done by the governments, businesses, households, places of worship and schools they will undoubtedly run in the very near future.