Preparing Students to Combat Climate Change
And create a Sustainable Global Future

GreenTech Campus Learning Center

A Project-Based Teaching and "Learning-by-Doing" Program

The 21st century students must be prepared to think green – to learn about climate change and the impact of global warming on spaceship earth.  One of the most important challenges facing our communities is global warming and the need to create an environmentally sustainable local and global future.  Students must do more with less and take action by being prepared to part of the Green Economy.  

Under the leadership of Governor Schwarzenegger, California has adopted AB32, the Global Solution Act of 2006.  And the Air Resources Board approved California's plan to reduce the State's greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.  The Scoping Plan proposes to build a more secure and sustainable economy as well as break our dependence on foreign oil and promote a new generation of green collar workforce.

Solar, wind, biofuels and hydrogen will power the Information Revolution, just as coal and oil powered the Industrial Revolution that created an unsustainable lifestyle.  We must plan for a world without oil and the “world oil peak” that  will occur in the next decade caused by the industrialization of both China and India with over 2 billion people.

This threat affects everything about education – including the environment of learning itself.  In the natural world there is no waste.  Waste from one organism is food for another.  Nature continues to cycle and recycle organically.  Its only input is solar energy.  As we start the new century we must re-think, re-plan, and re-design our schools and colleges to function as dynamic ecological model of built environments designed for the Digital Age and the Solar Hydrogen Century:  sustainable mobility, ‘energy-smart,’ beautiful buildings that preserve the natural environment, digitally-enabled learning environments that maximize educational productivity, and multifaceted social environments that help students and their local communities become a part of the world community of nations.

Our school campuses and communities are excellent places to become a model Green Technology Center to meet this challenge of creating a Green Economy. The new Digital Age, in whose evolution America has played a prominent role, provides dynamic capabilities for local educational institutions to help shape the future, locally and globally:  the digital and aerospace technology developed in California has the potential to revolutionize everything from education (e.g., universal distance learning by satellite TV and the Internet) to sustainable mobility (e.g., hydrogen fuel cell cars, telecommuting) to sustainable urban agriculture (e.g., NASA-developed aeroponics) to sustainable energy production (e.g., solar photovoltaics), and  to sustainable clean water technologies.  And the growing obviousness of the need to save the global environment, as clear for your center as it is anywhere, also is an opportunity and a requirement for action.

The Greentech Campus Plan proposes a multifaceted approach that addresses these challenges, takes account of these capabilities, and meets these opportunities.