Eastern Mennonite University
IN-25: Innovation B

After two years of work, the Creation Care Council (or CCC, EMU's campus-wide sustainability committee) sent a proposal to the President's Cabinet laying out a plan for EMU to begin administering full-cost pricing on its use of fossil fuels (an internal carbon tax). This proposal came out of campus and CCC discussions during the writing of the 2015 Climate Action Plan and an interest in having the university add the cost of carbon in the cost-benefit analysis for proposed CAP projects and initiatives aimed at rapidly reducing the university's carbon footptint, Currently this full cost carbon pricing is being piloted by EMU's Center for Sustainable Climate Solutions for fiscal year 2016-17 and 2017-18. The proposal also included the creation of a Climate Change Reparation Fund (CCRF), which would be funded in part by the FCCP and also by donations from the campus and extended community. This part of the FCCP proposal has not yet received full consideration from the Cabinet due to competing, more immediate concerns for Cabinet in the past half year, including a transition to a new President. The CCRF comes out of EMU's understanding of our role in climate change as articulated in the EMU Statement on Climate Change: We accept the scientific consensus on the realities of climate change and the role of human behavior in contributing to the problem. We acknowledge that the wealth and opportunities afforded us today, unprecedented in human history, are partly due to energy derived from fossil fuels over the past 150 years, which we now know to cause climate imbalances. We agree that the effects of climate change disproportionately impact those who have contributed to it least, and who are least-equipped to adapt to predicted environmental, social, economic, and political changes. We agree that our continued emissions of greenhouse gases places further strain on the poor and disadvantaged, and impacts all of Creation. We agree that the operations of EMU and each of our individual parts in it are contributing to climate change. We agree that we have a responsibility and choice as an institution and as individuals to reduce our climate impact. We agree that taking full institutional responsibility requires a policy-level action plan.