By Farah McDill
Center for Green Schools UTC Fellow for Sacramento City Unified School District
Blog
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What’s Your Favorite Color? For SCUSD, it’s Green!
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The Center for Green Schools at the 2012 Green Schools National Conference
Six years ago, we launched the National Green Schools Campaign. Back then, if you had told me that just a few years later, several thousand people would be showing up at a national green schools conference to be keynoted by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, I would have said you were crazy. But what you and I both know is that green schools is a topic that brings so many different kinds of people together.
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Students Guide the Way in Sustainability at UC San Diego
The college experience: fraternity parties, football games and…LEED. LEED (or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) has played an integral part on the University of California San Diego (UCSD) campus. When UCSD students help to complete LEED certification projects on campus, they prove that making a positive impact is also an essential part of the college experience.
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Congressional Members Introduce Building Efficiency Measure
Yesterday, Representative Charles Bass (NH) and Representative Jim Matheson (UT) introduced bipartisan legislation that deploy energy efficiency programs across many sectors of the built environment.
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Senate Efficiency Champions Advance Elements of Recent USGBC Report
As members of the House and Senate tax writing committees continue to negotiate over the extension payroll tax cut and other tax incentives, six senators of the Senate Finance Committee, spearheaded by Olympia Snowe (ME) and Jeff Bingaman (NM) sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Acting Director Department of Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Jeffrey Zients urging them to advance policies to improve energy efficiency and continue to support clean energy incentives.
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House Bill Puts Transportation Programs in Reverse
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Next week, the House is expected to debate H.R. 7 “American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act.” The bill is the long awaited legislative product to reauthorize a number of federal highway, transit, rail, planning, trail and other programs. Unfortunately, H.R. 7 doesn’t look to be long term solution to our nation’s surface transportation problems.
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Obama Budget Charts Bold Course for Green Building Priorities
On Monday, President Obama released an ambitious $3.8 trillion budget for fiscal year 2013 that seeks to pump billions of dollars into the economy through clean energy and infrastructure improvements, while seeking to eliminate existing incentives for oil and gas and ending tax cuts for those making more than $250,000.
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Third Public Comment Period for Update to USGBC’s LEED Green Building Program to Open Next Month
LEED 2012 draft focuses on providing a simple-to-use, technically advanced and more robust system
Washington, DC – (Feb. 13, 2012) – The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) today announced that the third public comment period for the proposed 2012 update to its LEED green building program will open Mar. 1, 2012. The comment period, which will close on Mar. 20, marks the start of the LEED 2012 program delivery process.
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The Power of Persuasion: January 2012 Fellowship Training
I never thought it would take me 22 hours to travel by plane from Sacramento, CA to Washington, D.C., but on Jan. 23, I was proven wrong. After a delayed flight due to mechanical issues, a missed connection in Phoenix, being rerouted through Dallas, and a canceled connection to D.C., I finally arrived at the USGBC offices for the Center for Green Schools Fellowship training. My problem-free air travel record is now officially over, but I miraculously arrived to the training a mere two hours late.
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2011 National Wildlife Federation Campus Sustainability Case Studies are Online Now!
Want to find out what campuses nationwide are doing to green their operations and curriculum? Then take a look at National Wildlife Federation’s campus sustainability case study database, which is now available online.
Close to 100 new case studies were added for 2011, highlighting efforts to dramatically reduce pollution, waste and costs, including recycling, energy efficiency improvements, alternative transportation systems and green jobs training programs.