Climate change could be a very big problem.  Globally big.  Trillions of individual decisions made by billions of people compounding into one gargantuan tangle that could take generations to unravel.  It’s impossible to find all the loose ends — to know exactly where to begin.  And yet begin we must.

When the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill became a signatory of the American College and University’s Climate Commitment (ACUPCC), it pledged to untangle its own small part of a global issue.  The ACUPCC is a pledge to achieve climate neutrality by reducing the campus carbon footprint and offsetting all greenhouse gas emissions.  A year after signing, the University published its first comprehensive greenhouse gas emissions inventory, peeling back the layers of its ambitious goal to reveal the many small opportunities for improvement.

The importance of our task has not faded over the past year, but has become even more urgent as the implications of climate change expand beyond the bounds of scientific or social consideration into the business world.  At this writing, the US House of Representatives narrowly passed a carbon cap-and-trade bill that would gradually lower greenhouse gas emissions from large industrial sources by levying fees on emission permits.  At the same time, the nation faces the most stifling economic depression in a generation.  Attaching a price to carbon presents the University with new opportunities and challenges as we make the business case for emissions reduction.

In the University’s first Climate Action Plan, we’ve used historical data, along with development plans and growth estimates, to create a projection of how the campus carbon footprint will expand if we continue with business as usual.  Based on that forecast, we developed a comprehensive plan for achieving our goal of climate neutrality by mid-century.  As our business and educational models work to internalize the cost of greenhouse gas emissions, we will confront and address the many small problems we encounter on the path to climate neutrality.