Tar sands mines in Alberta, Canada, contain a reserve of 175 billion barrels of retrievable oil, making it the third-largest crude oil reserve in the world after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. TransCanada, a Canadian gas and oil company, has proposed the construction of a pipeline called the Keystone XL that will transport the heavy crude oil over 1,700 miles from Alberta to refineries along the Gulf Coast. The construction is a $7 billion completion of the company’s existing Keystone Pipeline that will allow for stalled oil in Cushing, Okla., to flow south to be sold. The current Keystone Pipeline carries half a million barrels of oil a day, but its planned expansion would increase oil production to over 900,000 barrels a day. The Consumer Energy Alliance along with twenty-five other organizations in support of the Keystone XL project report submitting more than 450,000 comments from Americans calling on the U.S Department of State to allow construction of the pipeline on American soil. While proponents of the pipeline cite many potential benefits, other Americans oppose the Keystone XL, saying that TransCanada’s extortion of Alberta’s dirty tar sands threatens human health and the future of the environment.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced on Monday that seven proposals to build an engineering and technology campus in New York City were submitted to the city by a total of 17 universities. There are “no immediate front-runners” in the competition, he said. 

Big Red Bikes, a student-run bike share program that launched last semester, has added new locations at Mann Library and Appel Commons, and doubled its fleet of bikes.

Prof. Joeseph Laquatra Ph.D. ’84, design and environmental analysis, works on“sustainability issues in housing,” teaching courses to homeowners and construction workers about sustainable, healthy homes.  His interest began in grade school when his uncle, who owned a home construction business, taught Laquatra how to hammer nails and has continued to this day as his academic interest. 

While hybrid cars offer an improvement to conventional automobiles, Prof. John Callister ’96, mechanical and aerospace engineering, and Prof. Max Zhang, mechanical and aerospace engineering, agree that they are not enough. Zhang, Faculty Fellow in the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future, said that although “hybrids are leading us to a sustainable future, [they’re] not the solution we’re looking for.”

Carbon footprint calculators, often used to measure one’s environmental impact, are not always accurate ­­–– often providing varying results, according to varios Cornell professors. Currently, researchers are working to understand the validity behind carbon footprints, the associated calculations and what we can take away from carbon footprint calculations.

The CALS Green program encourages members of the Cornell community to conserve energy and reduce their carbon footprints. 

The new Physical Sciences Building earned Leadership in Energy Environmental Design certification at the Gold level — a level above the sustainability standards Cornell required of it.