HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

Earth Day speakers praised the Green Campus Initiative, saying that through its efforts Harvard has become a leader in sustainability among higher education institutions. (Staff photo Peter DiCampo/Harvard News Office)

While Robert Musil (right), executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility, speaks with some optimism about the world's efforts to fight global warming, Eric Chivian, director of the HMS Center for Health and Global Environment, listens. (Staff photo Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard News Office)

Robert Musil, executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility, said that, although global warming is a serious environmental threat, the speed with which humanity has focused its attention and taken concrete steps to fight it offers hope.

Though the United States' reluctance to participate on the Kyoto global warming treaty is seen by some as a failure, Musil said focusing on that ignores the fact that large parts of the rest of the world have joined together to fight a serious global environmental problem.

"Humanity has identified and is moving toward a solution in global terms incredibly more quickly than in the past," Musil said.

Even in the United States, people are taking the lead with grassroots efforts to boost renewable energy, conserve power, and cut greenhouse gas emissions.

"People around the world are acting locally to solve the problem. That's what's happening here on the Longwood campus," Musil said.

Musil praised Harvard's Green Campus Initiative, begun in 1999, which promotes and facilitates a wide variety of environmentally friendly programs across the University. The Longwood branch of the Green Campus Initiative was formed in direct response to the challenges posed by the large amount of energy-hungry laboratory space on the Longwood campus, according to Green Campus Initiative Director Leith Sharp.

Musil spoke at an Earth Day event Friday (April 22) at the Harvard School of Public Health's Snyder Auditorium. The event, sponsored by the Green Campus Initiative, Harvard Medical School, and the Harvard School of Public Health, focused on the University's recently announced Sustainability Principles and on human health and the environment.

The Sustainability Principles, announced in October 2004, pledge the University to promote sustainable practices, such as energy efficiency and use of renewable resources, to design and maintain the University's "built environment" so that it promotes health and safety of the community, to enhance the health of campus ecosystems, to develop planning tools to evaluate sustainability options, to encourage environmental inquiry and learning, and to establish sustainability indicators to enable monitoring and improvement.

Though Musil said there is hope in both the global will expressed in the Kyoto treaty and in the proliferation of grassroots efforts, he and other speakers indicated that the problem facing the globe is severe enough to challenge even a united effort.

Eric Chivian, director of Harvard Medical School's Center for Health and the Global Environment, said the evidence that the globe is warming is ominous. Five of the hottest years since record keeping began in 1856 have occurred since 1998. Recent estimates of a five-degree centigrade temperature change in the next 100 years may not sound like much, but Chivian emphasized that 5 degrees in global temperature is a very large swing.

At the end of the last ice age, Chivian said, global temperatures were just 5 degrees centigrade cooler than today and the location where Friday's event occurred was buried under ice 1 mile thick.

"These are enormous temperature changes," Chivian said.

Chivian said no specific weather event can be directly linked to global climate change, but he added that researchers expect to see more storms, more droughts, more flooding, melting glaciers and ice caps at the poles, rising sea levels, species extinctions and a shifting in disease patterns due to changes in habitat for carriers such as mosquitoes.

It is up to each individual, Chivian said, to live as sustainably as possible, being sure to shut off lights, lower the heat in homes, and drive efficient automobiles.

"Each of us needs to be our own Kyoto Protocol and reduce our energy usage," Chivian said. "It's clearly not too late to apply the brakes."

Both Chivian and Musil praised the Green Campus Initiative, saying that through its efforts, Harvard has become a leader in sustainability among higher education institutions.

Through various initiatives, Sharp said, Harvard purchases 7 percent of its energy from renewable sources. Though Harvard is among the leaders in higher education in its use of renewables, Sharp said the magnitude of the global problem is such that there's still a way to go.

"This is a significant first step, but with the scale of climate change, we need a figure more like 50 percent," Sharp said. "Harvard is a large player in the [renewable energy] market. We've got a long way to go, though."

Robert Pratt, director of the Renewable Energy Trust of the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, said he didn't think other area universities had mounted an effort similar to Harvard's and that they could learn from Harvard.

"I think this is unprecedented," Pratt said. "I don't think any university is doing quite so much as you."

Musil called on those in the audience to continue to learn about the multifaceted problems facing the world, because today's problems are complex and their solutions will cut across many disciplines.

"The future is indeed yours," Musil said.