Universities and Climate Change Mitigation: Advancing Grassroots Climate Policy in the US

While US climate change mitigation policy has stalled at the national level, local and regional actors are increasingly taking progressive steps to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Universities are poised to play a key role in this grassroots effort by targeting their own emissions and by working with other local actors to develop climate change mitigation programmes. Researchers at the Pennsylvania State University have collaborated with university administrators and personnel to inventory campus emissions and develop mitigation strategies. In addition, they have facilitated a stakeholder-driven climate change mitigation project in one Pennsylvania county and started an ongoing service-learning project aimed at reducing emissions in another county. These campus and community outreach initiatives demonstrate that university-based mitigation action may simultaneously achieve tangible local benefits and develop solutions to broader challenges facing local climate change mitigation efforts. Outcomes include improved tools and protocols for measuring and reducing local emissions, lessons learned about service-learning approaches to climate change mitigation, and methods for creating climate change governance networks involving universities, local governments and community stakeholders.