UC San Diego receives Climate Leadership Award

UC San Diego recently received the first Climate Leadership Award for Institutional Excellence in Climate Leadership at the annual American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment Summit in Denver.

“The University of California, San Diego, as a major research institution, is an exemplary model in developing climate solutions,” said Anthony Cortese, president of Second Nature, a nonprofit corporation that is the primary supporting organization of the ACUPCC. “Both in its operations and curriculum, UCSD is preparing its graduates to create a low-carbon and sustainable society.”

According to a press release, the award “recognizes UCSD’s aggressive campaign to meet the goals of its climate action plan, which calls for the campus to be climate neutral by 2025, achieve a 4-percent annual reduction in water use and be a zero-waste campus by 2020. The award also notes the profound influence of the university’s green roots, which date back to 1957, when Scripps Institution of Oceanography Director Roger Revelle warned that greenhouse gases from industrialization could endanger the planet.”

The release also notes: “Later, Scripps chemist Charles Keeling was the first to precisely measure atmospheric carbon dioxide, and his Keeling Curve has since become the most important geophysical measurement of the 20th century.”