OAJ Hot Take: How Brandeis is Failing to Fight Climate Change
The transportation sector is the largest contributor of carbon emissions. So why isn't Brandeis doing their part to address the climate crisis?
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The piece below is part of our bi-weekly blog post series written by the Open-Air Journal team where we explore issues at Heller, current events, or whatever is presently on our minds.
Just over a month ago, Brandeis University President’s Task Force on Campus Sustainability released the results of a Year of Climate Action. Among their top priorities was to “develop campus emissions reduction targets through our ongoing decarbonization study.” And while the report’s writers tout a decarbonization study and action plan, they omitted the largest cause of American greenhouse gas emissions – transportation.
Transportation emissions play a considerable role in climate change. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that transportation accounts for about 29 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Proportionally, transportation emissions are an even bigger problem in the Bay State. 37 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions in the Commonwealth come from transportation and as the Boston Globe reported in May, Boston is doing a poor job reducing transportation carbon emissions, trailing comparable cities both at home and abroad.
Emission reduction is vital for many reasons. As the International Monetary Fund notes, climate change (which is caused in part by greenhouse gas emissions) is “associated with increasingly frequent and intense natural disasters ranging from droughts and wildfires to hurricanes and coastal flooding.” As extreme heat plays more of a role in our daily lives, the viability of our species is increasingly at stake.
To drastically reduce the university’s emissions, Brandeis must incentivize students to take buses and the MBTA commuter rail. Although the campus is set up as though it were 1955, with many parking lots, three buses currently run near Brandeis including the 553, 70, and 61, in addition to the Fitchburg Line train that stops on the south side of campus.
Perhaps the saddest element of Brandeis’ climate approach is that it already had this problem solved. As late as August 2022, derelict pages on the MBTA website listed Brandeis as a college participating in the Semester Pass program, alongside schools like Harvard, Bentley, Roxbury Community College, and Bridgewater State. The Semester Pass reduces MBTA fare by 11 percent for students attending participating universities. As The Justice pointed out last spring, for a university that touts its proximity to Boston, Brandeis does not make it easy or affordable to get there. At some point, Brandeis was reducing carbon emissions with reduced fares – and they chose to stop.
There is also an equity angle to this climate plan. Brandeis is an infamously expensive university, estimating an average cost of attendance of $70,816 to $86,242 for an undergraduate student. The least the school could do is throw the average student a dollar or two for the ride to Boston and back. Certainly, after shelling out all that money, Brandeis should not let a $14 round-trip fare stand between a student and pursuing their social, academic, or professional interests in Greater Boston.
The best news is that if Brandeis joined the MBTA’s existing Semester Pass program or the University Pass Program pilot (which offers unlimited subway and bus travel to their undergraduate or graduate student bodies), there is no need for a bidding process or to conduct an environmental impact report. The buses and trains are already arriving at Brandeis.
In October 2021, Brandeis President Ron Leibowitz contended that “Brandeis is proud to be a visionary leader of the movement toward net zero carbon emissions.” It will be exciting to see when Leibowitz's vision includes his own campus.
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