The time has come to engage in a serious discussion about climate change, and focus national attention on the necessity of climate stabilization. “We don’t have much time left,” says Jim Hansen, Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “We have to act with what we have. This decade, that means focusing on energy efficiency and renewable sources of energy that do not burn carbon.”

Thanks to mainstream media attention surrounding climate change, we have all heard the rhetoric of doomsday fatalism. We now must turn towards a constructive engagement with the challenges that are now confronting our generation.

EMA has partnered with Campus Climate Challenge, a nation-wide collaboration of colleges and universities, to empower students to lead Northern Arizona University to a clean-energy future. The coalition is working to raise student awareness of NAU’s ecological footprint and educate the community about how it can reduce its carbon emissions. As an institution of higher education, Northern Arizona University has the responsibility to engage students, staff, faculty and the community to discuss innovative solutions that can be implemented now on the regional, national, and international level.

Climate change will uniquely transcend the boundaries of traditional disciplines. Faculty can use climate change as a model for interdisciplinary teaching and scholarship. Sustainability can be discussed in disciplines ranging from sociology, political science, economics, history, to the natural sciences or the humanities. This movement will embody EMA’s progressive involvement with interdisciplinary issues. It will be a model of scholarship in the twenty-first century.

For a list of partners already contributing to the effort at NAU, click here.

If you would like to contribute to this effort on the NAU campus, please click here.