Virginia's universities are warming to the fight against climate change.

Presidents of 15 state schools have signed a pledge to end emissions linked to global warming, and other schools are investigating ways to tackle the problem.

Schools taking the pledge agree to become "climate neutral." That means they will either stop activities that cause greenhouse-gas emissions, such as using electricity created by burning coal, or they will end most emissions and offset the rest by paying companies that do such things as planting trees.

Neutralizing the emissions could take decades and could require technology that hasn't been invented yet, some university officials say.

"The campus-sustainability movement seems to have taken off like wildfire," said Judy Walton, executive director of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, a nonprofit group based in Lexington, Ky.

The schools' interest has been driven in part by a public energized by former Vice President Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," and the recent awarding of a Nobel Prize to global-warming researchers, Walton said.

Other catalysts include rising fuel costs. By reducing energy use, a school can save money and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, which contribute to global warming.

Schools also are responding to concerned students such as Jessica Lee, Virginia Commonwealth University's student-government president before she graduated May 17.

"We are the ones who are going to be around when the effects of climate change are fully felt," said Lee, 21, of Richmond. "It's going to be our generation and our children who are dealing with these problems."

Partly in response to a request from Lee and other students, VCU President Eugene P. Trani signed a pledge in April to end the school's greenhouse-gas emissions.

At Virginia Tech, student Angie De Soto, 23, of Chester said the public needs to know that students across the country are serious about fighting climate change.

"Another social movement, the youth climate movement, has begun," De Soto said. "It's similar to the movements of the past like the civil-rights movement, in that we are fighting for a just future for all."

And many schools simply want to do the right thing.

"If there is something we can be doing in our own little piece of the world [to fight global warming], then we ought to be doing it," said Brian J. Ohlinger, VCU's associate vice president for facilities management.

Trani and 14 other Virginia campus leaders have signed the Presidents Climate Commitment, a sweeping promise advocated by groups including Walton's sustainability association.

Norfolk State University was the first Virginia school to make the commitment, in December 2006.

Patrick J. Michaels, a Virginia climatologist affiliated with the libertarian Cato Institute, is skeptical of the climate pledge. "It's probably a feel-good exercise more than anything else," he said.

Michaels, a well-known climate-change contrarian, said schools should hold discussions on the seriousness of warming.

Colleges have long engaged in environmental programs such as recycling. But interest in global warming has spiked in recent years in part because the evidence continues to strengthen, said L. Preston Bryant Jr., Virginia's secretary of natural resources.

"The science of climate change -- and the perils of not addressing it -- has grown substantially in acceptance," he said.
Contact Rex Springston at (804) 649-6453 or rspringston@timesdispatch.com.