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Opinion: UC fails to communicate true scope of Carbon Neutrality Initiative

Universities must do their part in reducing carbon emissions, and that means going further than glossy initiatives with no real impact. (Katie Frei/Daily Bruin)

By Alexandra Kaiser

Aug. 26, 2021 3:46 p.m.

This post was updated Aug. 29 at 2:15 p.m.

The clock is ticking – and we are running out of time to act.

The Aug. 9 report released by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tells us that, at this point, the question is not whether we will experience the consequences of climate change but how extreme they will be.

Climate change is no longer a problem for future generations. Its impacts – fires, droughts, hurricanes and more – are well underway and predicted to worsen in the coming decades.

With current global emission trends falling short of what’s needed to keep global warming below the 2 degrees Celsius end-of-century goal set by the Paris climate accords, we can’t pin all our hopes on top-down action by the federal government. There just isn’t time.

People, especially large organizations, must act now to prevent the irrevocable effects of climate change. In order to set an example for similar institutions, the University of California must ramp up its efforts to limit carbon emissions and implement initiatives to counteract the damage already done.

The UC’s current project to that end is the Carbon Neutrality Initiative, which states that the University will reach carbon neutrality by 2025. It’s the first major university to make such a promise.

But this promise isn’t quite what it seems.

Much of this neutrality at UCLA will be reached through offsets, not an actual reduction of UC-produced carbon emissions, said Cheryl Ma, a former Carbon Neutrality Initiative ambassador.

Offsets are aimed at counteracting carbon emissions elsewhere in the world, such as through planting trees in open land. It’s how institutions can portray themselves as “net-zero” without actually tackling their own carbon emissions.

“(Offsets do) not hold UCLA accountable to actually reducing the emissions that we’re creating,” said Ma, a fourth-year economics student. “It instead is just showing off the fact that we have the amount of money to do it.”

The UC is hardly acting as the leader academia and California need when it’s just buying its way out of taking responsibility.

On top of that, the initiative only focuses on offsets to carbon emissions attributable to university-owned buildings and vehicles, which fall under scope levels 1 and 2 of the Environmental Protection Agency Center for Corporate Climate Leadership’s guidance.

Scope 3 includes emissions that come from staff and students when commuting and traveling, which will not be neutralized by 2025.

This difference between the connotation of the Carbon Neutrality Initiative and the actual actions taken by the UC is a real problem. People think the effects of these actions are greater than they will turn out to be.

“I think it’s a communication flaw because you’re flashing a bunch of really pretty numbers without describing the discrepancies and the asterisks,” Ma said.

Additionally, the IPCC report states that reaching carbon neutrality is the bare minimum. What we need to do is rapidly reduce carbon emissions while continuing to put our efforts into offsets, including carbon capture projects.

The UC already has projects that focus on carbon capture, including UCLA CarbonBuilt, which is working on storing carbon emissions in concrete. Investing in projects like these is a much better way of helping the environmental crisis than showy goals that don’t actually mean what they seem.

The report also shows that future work must include climate resilience efforts.

“I guess my biggest takeaways are just that, as we knew, but even more so, this work is so urgent and so critical,” said Nurit Katz, chief sustainability officer at UCLA. “Both the mitigation work to reduce our emissions but also the work to adapt and be able to be prepared for the impacts that we’re going to face as a community.”

This is not to say the process will be easy. The problem of meeting our University’s energy needs without the fuel inputs our campuses were built around is a daunting task.

“The barriers for UC’s action are similar to the barriers for state or national action,” said Matthew St. Clair, director of sustainability at the UC Office of the President. “It’s the cost of transitioning away from fossil fuels. It’s the time involved in making those transitions.”

But the money will have to be spent at some point, whether we choose to spend it now on prevention and preparation or wait until we are forced to spend it on recovering from disaster after disaster.

The solutions we implement will involve everybody on campus, Katz said.

“We’ve made a lot of progress in terms of energy efficiency, but we still need to continue to do more to reduce our energy use and engage our students, staff and faculty in conserving energy,” Katz added.

The UC has not been lax in the fight against climate change. In 2018, the UC received the EPA Green Power Leadership Award for its work toward sustainability. But this is only the starting line. There is still more work that must be done before time runs out.

The UC has an opportunity to set an example for other universities and businesses, which is why a strong, transparent set of goals and initiatives to prevent future damage to our climate is so critical.

The UC has an obligation to do all it can to prevent climate change and keep current and future generations safe.

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Alexandra Kaiser | Campus politics editor
Kaiser is the 2022-2023 campus politics editor. She was previously a News reporter and Opinion columnist. She is also a third-year communication and political science student.
Kaiser is the 2022-2023 campus politics editor. She was previously a News reporter and Opinion columnist. She is also a third-year communication and political science student.
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