In keeping with Yale's goal of becoming the "greenest" university, a group of students at the School of Management (SOM) have found a way to reduce the global warming impact of the air travel by its faculty and students.
In January, first-year M.B.A. students at SOM traveled to eight destinations around the world as part of the school's first International Experience, a required study abroad component of the new curriculum that was launched last fall.
A group of students at SOM calculated that the school's International Experience resulted in more than three million miles traveled, and the release of more than two million pounds of greenhouse gases -- the equivalent of 98 large SUVs on the road for a year.
The students -- led by Austin Whitman, Bailey McCallum, Matthew Sly, Amy Emerick and Koichi Kurisu -- organized a voluntary program to allow students and faculty trip leaders to purchase carbon emissions offsets to reduce the global warming impact of their air travel.
The offsets, purchased from five providers, will finance more than $7,000 in investments in renewable energy production, energy conservation initiatives, tree-planting, large-scale reforestation and other greenhouse gas reduction strategies in India, Africa, Costa Rica and the United States. These investments will counterbalance the travel-related emissions by preventing the release of more than two million pounds of gases that would have otherwise contributed to climate change.
Through the collective carbon offset purchases made by first-year students, faculty, staff, teaching assistants and two anonymous donors, the International Experience air travel is now carbon neutral.
Whitman, who along with McCallum is enrolled in the joint degree program offered by SOM and the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, said the effort received an enthusiastic response from classmates and helped to educate the SOM community about climate change.
"In the course of study at SOM we learn how to find and analyze new information and use it to make smart decisions," said Whitman. "In addition to offsetting our emissions, one of our goals in this project was to give the SOM community new information about climate change and carbon markets. We wanted to encourage people to consider the longer-term business implications, the risks and the opportunities. I think we succeeded in doing that."
The organizers also arranged for SOM to be carbon neutral on Feb. 22 to coincide with a lecture given at the school by Richard Sandor, chair and chief executive officer of the Chicago Climate Exchange, a self-regulatory exchange that administers a voluntary greenhouse gas reduction and trading program for North America. Through a gift from SterlingPlanet, a retailer of carbon offsets, the 4.5 tons of greenhouse gases that SOM generated through electricity and heating that day were abated.
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