Southern California Climate Action Network

Pasadena City College Green Summit and Community Fair

Program and Agenda

November 2, 2008

10:00 to 1:00 pm
Community Fair, Sculpture Garden

1:00 pm to 1:30 pm
SoCalCAN Summit (Forum): Welcome by Dr. Perfumo, PCC president and Bill Bogaard, Mayor of the City of Pasadena

1:30 pm to 2:00 pm
Keynote Address: Climate Change and Water, Tim Brick, Chairman, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California

2:00 pm to 2:30 pm
Introductions, Briefing - Accelerating Climate Leadership in our Region

2:45 pm to 4:00 pm
Working Group Sessions: Exploration of collaborative projects between campuses and other organizations in the Southern California region addressing the following topics:

Working Group 1: Sustainable Campus Operations, Bowen Patterson, Pomona College, Rick Van Pelt, Pasadena City College, Richard Haskell, Harvey Mudd College.

Campuses all across the country are giving the highest priority to efforts to green their campus operations from switching to clean energy sources, to improving building energy inefficiencies to using more sustainable garden and lawn maintenance techniques. This working group will look at how SoCalCAN members can work together to leverage our collective purchasing power to cut emissions, drive markets for sustainably-produced energy and products, and reduce operating costs. Some initiatives and projects that may be discussed include:

• Jointly investing in clean-energy (such as new wind farm) that would provide low-cost, carbon-free energy for participating campuses while creating new jobs in the community.

• Sharing strategies for financing major capital projects, from power plant overhauls to building retrofits.
• Reviewing one another’s climate action plans to glean ideas and offer feedback

• Developing a purchasing cooperative that offers discounts for local and organic food, environmentally-friendly paper, energy-efficient computers and appliances, and green construction materials.

• Working together to secure grants and financial sponsors for the network.

Working Group 2: Sustainability Across the Curriculum, Lyle Engeldinger, Pasadena City College

Recent evidence indicates that academics lag behind campus operations when it comes to environmental performance and sustainability, despite many campuses providing unprecedented attention to sustainability and climate change. This working group will evaluate how SoCalCAN members can work together to:

• Create opportunities for all students to acquire environmental, sustainability or climate change concepts, to examine regional issues, or to explore sustainable practices in their general education classes

• Develop mission statements and other statements of commitment to sustainability

• Develop rich interdisciplinary pilot courses addressing sustainability

• Build on existing programs to integrate sustainability across the curriculum

• Support and expand exciting, engaging curricular work-in interdisciplinary courses, learning community programs, integrative field courses, service-learning projects, and civic engagement initiatives

• Integrate environmental care, global stewardship, or sustainability into general college-wide learning outcomes, e.g. critical thinking, ethical responsibility, etc

• Get professional accrediting bodies to include sustainability in their standards for accrediting degree programs in the professions and where appropriate in licensure exams: Think of business, engineering, accounting, medical professions, teacher education, and all the other applied fields.

• Pressure textbook authors and publishers to infuse sustainability concepts/contexts/content/practices into textbooks

• Rewrite/reform teacher education standards at both the state level and at the NCATE level to include environmental sustainability

• Bring faculty from a particular discipline together to discuss strategies for integrating sustainability into their particular fields.

Working Group 3: Environmental Research, Richard Hazlett, Pomona College

Collaboration on environmental research is perhaps more important now than ever before as societies are looking more and more towards to the scientific community to provide leadership and guidance on tackling the climate crisis. This working group will address various inter-campus projects that can help build academic and community ties across the region. Topics discussed could include:

• Development of an annual region-wide conference of student-faculty environmental research

• Development of a funding and internship base to promote inter-campus student-faculty environmental research and to develop closer ties between Town and Gown in tackling environmental issues. (e.g.-UC Riverside and Pomona linking up to study air pollution associated with train yards in the Rialto area). These teams could operate as summer projects as well as in-semester (though that might prove more difficult in some respects).

• Identifying possible funding sources.

• Working with high schools

Working Group 4: Student Activism, Mark Vallianatos, Occidental College

Students are at the forefront of the movement of realizing the vision of a low-carbon economy by transforming their campuses, communities, businesses and policies through initiatives such as the Campus Climate Challenge, Power Shift 07 and 09 and Power Vote 08. Through internships and service learning projects, students are gaining valuable real-world experience while supporting energy efficiency and renewable energy in their communities. This working group will address how to build stronger alliances between students in the southern California region working with their campuses, communities, business and policy-makers. Some projects or initiatives to discuss could include:

• From Power Vote to Power Shift 09 (Feb 27 - Mar 2, Washington DC) - how to continue building the youth climate movement in southern California

• How students in service-learning programs can work with the Board of Education to develop a green K-12 schools program, construct schoolyard habitats and gardens, and start sustainability clubs.

• Working with community members and local businesses for tours of green features on campus.

• Hosting community forums on the global climate change and training citizens to serve as “climate solutions ambassadors” in their neighborhoods.

• Creating a revolving loan fund that helps finance energy-efficiency projects for homes and small businesses

Working Group 5: Green Buildings and Architecture, Peter de Maria, Pasadena City College

Energy use in buildings account for a vast majority of a campuses energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. This working group will address various strategies for sharing knowledge and information regarding green buildings and green architecture.

Working Group 6: Climate Policy

As countries, states, municipalities, and families make efforts to reduce their climate footprints, campuses have the opportunity and responsibility to support public policies that cut net emissions, revitalize the economy, protect natural resources, and contribute to national security. This working will address how SoCalCAN can empower campuses to use their expertise to advocate for better climate policies. Initiatives to consider might include:

• Establishing an advisory board to help state develop and implement its climate action plan and secure funding for campus sustainability projects.

• Working with planners and U.S. Green Building Council chapters to upgrade building codes and create incentives for businesses and households to invest in energy-efficiency.

• Meeting with state or federal representatives to support a bill that would invest in a green jobs training program or support legislation to fund programs that prepare students for a green economy through sustainability-integrated curriculum

Working Group 6: Community Engagement, Praween Dayananda, NWF and Energy Action Coalition

Overcoming the climate and sustainability challenges on campuses requires a broad array of solutions. This session will look at the role of strong, engaged communities. We will explore and brainstorm practices that would allow the broader student, faculty and staff populations as well local communities to be more engaged with and to support the creation of responsible and sustainable communities.

4:15 pm to 5:00pm
Come back together as a large group to discuss proposals, ideas from each working group and plan for next steps as a network.

5:00 pm to 6:15 pm
Dinner

6:15 pm to 9:30 pm
Awakening the Dreamer: Changing the Dream Symposium (Gym), Abraham Hopkins, Pachamama Alliance, Marcelino Sepulveda, Pachamama Alliance, Praween Dayananda, NWF

Awakening the Dreamer Initiative aims to wake people up from the destructive dream in which we are currently devouring the planet, and to inspire us to then step consciously into a new dream, the pursuit of an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling and socially just human presence on this Earth. The Awakening the Dreamer: Changing the Dream Symposium, is a three-hour workshop designed to awaken and inspire people to take action in pursuit of this vision. The aim of the Symposium is to grapple and come to grips with the very assumptions that underlie the way we ourselves see the world and our place in it, and with what each of us can do - both individually and cooperatively - to move the world in this new direction. Participants of this half-day event are inspired to reconnect with their deep concern for our world, and are empowered to make a difference.

Designed with the collaboration of some of the finest scientific, indigenous and activist minds in the world, the Symposium explores, through dynamic group interactions, leading edge information, and inspiring multimedia the current state of our planet from a new perspective, and connects participants with a powerful global movement to reclaim our future. It is an exploration of four questions: Where Are We? How did We Get Here? What’s Possible for the Future? Where Do We Go from Here? (For more info (http://awakeningthedreamer.org/)

Background

The first campus climate summit in April 2008 at Cal Poly Pomona addressed the broader role of higher education in a warming world, the nuts and bolts of measuring greenhouse gas emissions, strategies for instituting sustainable transportation systems and best practices for developing and implementing climate action plans. Perhaps the most important outcome was the formation of the Southern California Climate Action Network. SoCalCAN was established with the understanding that much of the critical climate work that needs to happen can be accomplished more effectively if campuses and non-campus partnerships shared expertise and experiences through frequent dialogue and collaboration.

Since April, several members of SoCalCAN have sustained the conversation started at Cal Poly Pomona through conference calls and listserv discussions. Pasadena City College (PCC), led by Ling O’Connor, has graciously stepped forward to support the strengthening of SoCalCAN by hosting a second summit on November 2, 2008.

The Summit at PCC will be focused on several working group discussions around initiatives and collaborative projects SoCalCAN can take on to accelerate climate leadership and action in the Southern California region. Working groups include: Sustainable Campus Operations, Sustainability Across the Curriculum, Environmental Research, Student Activism , Green Buildings and Architecture, and Climate Policy. Other components of the day’s activities include 1) a keynote address on Climate Change and Water, an issue many participants at the April summit indicated was an area that needed further attention, 2) a community fair that hopes to engage the larger Pasadena community and 3) the Awakening the Dreamer Symposium, which explores through dynamic group interactions, leading edge information, and inspiring multimedia the current state of our planet, and connects participants with a powerful new vision for our future, the pursuit of an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling and socially just human presence on this Earth.