Climate Action

A conversation with Anya circa January 20, 2022, would leave you with very little idea of what Second Nature does as an organization. When friends or family asked me what my new internship entailed, I would reply with something along the lines of “something to do with sustainability in higher education?” In seeing the job […]

Sunday, June 5th, was World Environment Day.  Monday, June 6th, was National Higher Education Day.  You cannot honor and celebrate one of these days, without also celebrating the other, because in order for us to succeed in having a more sustainable and equitable world, we need a livable environment AND an educated global society.    Led […]

Friday, April 30th was Arbor Day in Illinois and to celebrate, we proclaimed UIC’s tree accomplishments to all 47,000+ faculty, staff and students. We have been recognized, once again, as a Tree Campus Higher Education institution for our efforts in 2020. We put a lot of work into our urban forestry management, and we are […]

I ran across a new term today: Crisification. It doesn’t show up in any online dictionary, and I’m honestly not sure it’s a real word, but it seems to refer to the act of framing something as a crisis that may otherwise exist as a “problem” or “issue.”  Crisification happens in our household on a […]

Higher education institutions engage in many different types of emission reduction activities to achieve campus carbon neutrality. Recently, many schools have become interested in purchasing carbon offsets to counteract their unavoidable travel-related Scope 3 emissions. Data Analysis I looked at the data that Signatories, higher ed institutions that have signed commitments to climate action, reported […]

The University Climate Change Coalition (UC3) is an ensemble of research universities that are venturing outside their campuses to connect with local businesses, governments, and communities to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon future. This blog post is part of a series highlighting the climate action work of UC3. Up next is Ohio State University. The Ohio State […]