In 2003, shortly after I started work here, an alumnus wrote to express his suspicion that I planned to turn the Yale Alumni Magazine into a vehicle for environmentalist propaganda. I had just spent 15 years at the Natural Resources Defense Council, most of them as editor of OnEarth, its deep-green quarterly. It was cynical, but not utterly unreasonable, to conjecture that I saw Yale as merely a big, attractive, Gothic platform for promoting green causes.
Instead, we at the magazine have spent four and a half years on the "full complexity" of Yale, as our mission statement prescribes. The psychology of obedience, the origins of the Frisbee, religion on campus, labor relations -- it's a healthy mix. It has certainly included the environment; we've published an essay by Gus Speth, dean of the environment school, and regular coverage of Yale's environmental research. Until now, however, we've never done a feature on Yale's environmental record.
But it turns out that, even if I had committed the magazine to a campaign for a greener Yale, it's unlikely I'd have made any difference. Yale's president had already started thinking about the significance of global warming by 1999 (see Q&A). In 2004 he appointed a Director of Sustainability; in October 2005 he announced a serious and specific carbon-cutting plan. By now, green is everywhere at Yale. The residential colleges compete to save energy. The Divinity School has solar panels. Sterling Hall of Medicine's two newly renovated wings were rebuilt to a lofty environmental standard.
This issue devotes several pages to the greening of Yale, as a novel and growing element of Yale's full complexity (and believe me: the environment is always complex). You don't have to be an environmentalist to find it interesting that today one of the priorities governing decisions about Yale's physical plant, administration, and curricula is environmental quality.
The environment isn't a priority everywhere. Yale's endowment didn't grow to $22.5 billion through investments in green funds. The Yale Corporation requires the Investments Office to keep Yale's money out of, for instance, companies that benefit the Sudanese government. But the Corporation's environmental restrictions are minor. Yale's timberlands must comply with a program for sound forest management -- but it's an industry program that most environmentalists consider negligible. For the most part, Yale's directive to the Investments Office is that the endowment should make money, and "sustainability" isn't a word bandied about in portfolio discussions.
What about the Yale Alumni Magazine's own environmental record? If I were rating us in the pages of OnEarth, I'd give us a B+. Any magazine's biggest environmental impact is from its paper stock; ours contains 30 percent post-consumer waste -- that is, waste paper collected in consumer recycling programs. Thirty percent is rare for a full-color magazine. We'll be greener still when we move to 80 percent in January.
On the other hand, much like Yale, we haven't sought to secede from what environmentalists call the "carbon economy." In this issue, the head of Environmental Defense suggests that flying often on private jets is probably the single most powerful step individuals can take to promote global warming. But this issue also contains a full-page ad for a private-jet company.
Well, make that a B-. 