sustainability

Armed with shovels and environmental initiative, eco-friendly students gathered outside of Pupin Friday afternoon for the groundbreaking of Columbia’s new community garden. The project aims to raise student awareness about sustainability, agriculture, and food-related issues.

The new Columbia-based online environmental journal, Consilience, has something of a balancing act to perform. On the one hand, it promotes sustainable development across the globe—shedding light on local issues such as the struggles to clean water in Panama, provide electricity in India, and combat instability in Afghanistan. On the other hand, it seeks to blur the boundaries of those geographic identities by connecting participants worldwide via the Internet.

In early November, members of Columbia’s Student Sustainability Organizations attended Power Shift 2007 in Washington D.C., the first-ever national youth summit committed to solving the climate and energy crisis. Roughly 5,500 youth attended workshops, shared ideas, forged bonds, and succeeded in sending a unified message to national policy-makers. We are invested in this issue in the long-run, and you should be too. Power Shift 2007 inspired Columbia students with innovative ideas for sustainable programming through our peer-to-peer sustainability education program, CU Eco-Reps.