As a kick-off for their Univerisity-wide Environmental Stewardship Initiative, Columbia hosted a campus sustainability day on Wednesday. I checked it out and though it was a beautiful sunny autumn day, there weren't many students in attendance (though I did get there just as it was beginning, so hopefully more people showed up as the afternoon progressed).

There was a jumbo screen set up with speakers being beamed from other universities, showcasing what they are doing at their schools. Columbia is jumping on the sustainable campus bandwagon a little late in the game, but I'm glad they're going there just the same. (Disclaimer: I'm getting my MFA in nonfiction writing at Columbia. Go Lions!) Perhaps they're engaging in a little Ivy League competition with Yale, which has been a leader in environmental stewardship, which makes sense, as it is home to the world-famous School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (the dean of the school is Gustave Speth, author of the excellent Red Sky at Morning.

NYU is now NYC's biggest consumer of wind-energy (and 11th largest in the U.S.) and UConn is making strides as well, including a biodiesel shuttle bus that's fueled by waste vegetable oil from the campus' dining halls (something Yale tried, and failed, to get going).

And finally, even MTV is jumping into the ring, joining the Campus Climate Change Initiative to create programming and information called "Break the Addiction".

[MTV] had just done some polling of its demographic group ranging from 12 to 24 years old. It found that the number one, long-term concern of young people is environmental issues, specifically global warming. So I think that was a real wake-up call for MTV—the numbers had changed a lot. MTV’s polling showed that young people have a strong level of interest in doing something about climate change, and a fairly high level of understanding. But what they don’t know is what they can do to help stop it.