Climate Change and Higher Education – EDUCAUSE Review
B. St. Arnaud, L. Smarr, J. Sheehan, and T. DeFanti, EDUCAUSE Review, Volume 44, pp. 14-33 Published: Friday, October 30, 2009
Abstract
Climate change has taken center stage in global diplomacy. As John Holdren, President Barack Obama’s Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) stated in 2008: “‘Global warming’ is a misnomer because it implies something that’s gradual, that’s uniform, that’s mostly about temperature, and is quite possibly benign. What’s happening is rapid, nonuniform, affecting everything about climate, and almost entirely harmful. A more accurate term is ‘global climatic disruption.'”1 Elected representatives in many countries, including the United States, Canada, and Australia, are thus hotly debating “cap-and-trade” systems. The hope of such legislation is that putting a market price on carbon will incentivize high-carbon emitters to decrease their emissions and will accelerate the rate at which innovative low- or zero-carbon energy is introduced into the economy.