"Confronting Climate Change makes clear that we must start immediately to stabilize and then substantially reverse the trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions."
Timothy E. Wirth
President, UN Foundation
Sylvia Kopec
Sustainability Director, Calhoun School
Marc Magnus-Sharpe
Dean of Students, United Nations International School (UNIS)
David Patnaude
Director of Physical Plant, Riverdale Country School
Connie Wishner
GSA Director of Development & Allen-Stevenson parent
GSA Launches New York Pilot Program October 11, 2007
Inspired by Mayor Bloomberg’s PLANYC climate initiative, the GSA has issued a voluntary nationwide Call-To-Action in the form of a Climate Commitment Pledge. Piloted in New York, the Pledge asks all N to 12 schools to become carbon neutral by 2020, the first step being to reduce every school's greenhouse gas footprint by at least 30 percent in the next 5 years.
In partnership with state, regional and national organizations the GSA New York based Pilot Pledge and Four-Point Program will be launched nationwide with the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) at their Annual Conference in NYC at Radio City Music Hall in February 2008.
The Allen-Stevenson School in New York City hosted the first in a series of GSA Roundtable events on October 11, 2007, focused on Energy and Climate Change: What Schools can Do. Upcoming Roundtables will address: energy, interiors, exteriors and curriculum.
These Roundtables are intended to support and consolidate New York’s green schools community, and help to implement the many no-cost/low-cost energy and carbon reduction programs, incentive programs and sustainable school solutions immediately available to all schools.
As thought leaders and “early adopter” community catalysts, schools can help move the planet toward becoming climate neutral. The U.N. Foundation and the national science organization, Sigma Xi has identified carbon neutrality as an imperative to achieve by 2020 if we are to forestall unmanageable climate change. The GSA is committed to helping to empowering students and school communities to ensure that our children will inherit a planet with clean air, land and water.
