Though many factors contribute to increased temperatures, human activity is without a doubt a main factor in the warming. In its 1997 Special Report on the Regional Impacts of Climate Change (a report released, astonishingly, more than 10 years ago), the IPCC made it clear that “human activities (primarily the burning of fossil fuels and changes in land use and land cover) are increasing the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, which alter radiative balances and tend to warm the atmosphere.” A majority of scientists and an increasing percentage of the population have come to accept the truth: We are in the midst of a climate crisis that we must mitigate.

In the midst of an economic meltdown and a flawed health care system, it might seem easy to brush the climate crisis aside. But effects of the climate crisis will exacerbate these problems significantly and also cause immense suffering resulting from natural disasters, starvation and water shortages. The longer we continue to emit greenhouse gases, the more suffering our actions will cause. And the longer we fail to make substantive changes, the less ability we have to mitigate the crisis.

The next president must address the climate crisis in a serious fashion. He must reduce greenhouse gas emissions and engage in global foreign policy initiatives aimed at reversing warming. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions will require tough policy, but it is necessary for a stable future.

Washington University must also do its part to prevent the climate crisis. Superficial displays of token environmentalism, such as building merely one of many new buildings to the LEED gold standards but not including the building’s parking garage in that calculation, do not count as serious attempts to prevent climate change. Though Washington University hired Matt Malten as assistant vice chancellor for campus sustainability, the University has provided no evidence that this was more than a political move to create the appearance of environmental concern. According to reports from the University administration, Malten has spent the past year gathering data that is to help him create a plan for sustainability at the University. But either Malten is not serious about change or the University has not fully supported him in his efforts—he still has not released the promised plan.

The University’s attempts at sustainability parallel the United States’ half-hearted efforts to combat climate change by discussing the issue with other countries while refusing to make substantive changes. Both the University and the United States government need to take the climate crisis seriously, eliminate token gestures toward sustainability and implement ambitious policies in order to achieve results. The climate crisis has already affected us, and it will only cause more suffering. To Washington University and to the United States government: Stop playing with the climate crisis—we are entrusting you with our futures.

This staff editorial is the second in a four-part series featured in Student Life’s Forum section this week. Each editorial will focus on a national issue that finds its parallel on Wash. U.’s campus.

If the University were truly committed to stopping climate change and teaching its students how to deal with this generation-defining problem, it would not work toward that mission by making token efforts like phasing out water bottles, increasing recycling and building a marquee energy-efficient building.

When Wash. U. undertook construction of the Danforth University Center (DUC), if it were truly committed to environmental change rather than the appearance of a gold-standard LEED building, the university would have constructed one of the most energy-efficient buildings possible, which cannot occur when huge open spaces have to be heated. And if Wash. U.’s goal was to act with environmental responsibility, the University would not have named the DUC parking garage as a separate building that did not matter in the energy count for LEED certification.

Constructing buildings to a certain LEED standard is a nice token, but what does it say when the goal is to receive a certain environmental ranking rather than when the ranking is received simply as a result of creating a building with as much environmental responsibility as possible? Is Wash. U. committed to an appearance or is it deeply committed to a cause?

There should be no question. We should know that the University is as concerned with leading a real effort to environmental responsibility as it is with raising its U.S. News & World Report rankings.

As a side note, some have argued that a commitment to the environment will leave the University with fewer resources to attract both the country’s and world’s brightest students, and that both its national ranking and value as a university might suffer as a result. But, in the face of climate change, the university with the most value is the university that forces its students to challenge world problems critically and that also acts as a moral role model, giving its students a sense of what commitment is required to challenge that world problem.

The University’s role is to give its students the best education possible, and if U.S. News rankings mean anything, then they will follow that education. Contrary to what many seem to believe, a better education does not come from a better ranking.

How has the University educated students about climate change? The Freshman Reading Program did force some students to consider the issue, and validated it as an important one. But what happened when those students left the discussions? Most of them went back to dorms that are using significant amounts of energy due to the University’s almost continual demolition and construction, or into University buildings, which waste a significant amount of energy because the University keeps them freezing in the summer and sweltering in the winter.

Students who participated in the reading program or heard the Chancellor speak at graduation learned that climate change is a buzzword academic problem that needs to be solved, but they did not learn that they must be part of that solution and that they must act now. If Washington University, with all of its resources, cannot make the sacrifices necessary to be carbon neutral, how are students supposed to know that they themselves can?

Furthermore, what does it say when the University hires Malten as vice chancellor of sustainability, and he spends a year gathering data? Either the University is not willing to give Malten the funds to hire a large enough staff or willing give him the resources he needs to gather whatever data is necessary to start tackling the problem of climate change.

A year of talk and no action teaches students to approach climate change the same way fossil fuel companies approach the issue—yes, they are concerned and willing to make an improvement here or there, but ultimately they do not have the resources.

More likely, they do not have the will.

If the University wants to be on the cutting edge of education, it needs to be on the cutting edge of solving the climate crisis. This means instead of phasing in their plans for sustainability, like stopping sales of all plastic water bottles and asking students to carry bottles and fill them up, implement these plans now. It means looking at what temperatures we set our buildings at and moving them up a degree or two in the summer and down a degree or two in the winter to save energy. It means building all our new buildings to the highest environmental standards.

And last but not least, a serious commitment to environmentalism means reaching out to all students and telling them what they can do to make a difference and to urge their society to make a difference. It means equipping the student body, through example and by transmitting information, to deal with the real problems their generation will face.

Wash. U. is such a great university that has accomplished so many incredible feats. In the face of one of the biggest issues of our generation, we should see the University work to do no less than it has on so many other occasions.

How many of you actually care? (Nobody moves.)

Welcome, class, to a dying world. Let me tell you two reasons why you should give up. And then let me tell you one reason why you shouldn’t.

To begin, the world is not worth its perceived salt. The world is saltless. We believe in progress. We invent things that are better and better at organizing our time and making our work efficient so we can do more things and occupy every moment of our time with some social, financial or metaphysical productivity.

We believe in capitalism. We believe that it is okay for McDonalds to have a store in every square mile in the United States because, well, supply and demand. Because people want McDonalds.

We believe in the power of knowledge. We believe that the faux-progressive mindsets of a majority population of a tiny number of top American universities has the ability to triumph over the irrelevant zeitgeist of the masses, and thus, figure out what is best and most practicable for those masses.

Unfortunately, class, that’s only number one. Judge for yourself whether it bodes better or worse than the following. The world, for us (humans), will end.  It will end really, really soon.  Those of you who read Elizabeth Kolbert’s book understand that it is almost impossible, even with a great amount of political and economic will, to prevent the oncoming disastrous climate change.

Those of you who picked up the supplementary and more intellectually satisfying “Short History of Progress” by Ronald Wright understand that the human race is not wired for that kind of collective, or even individual, will and long-term thinking. At best, we will wait until the effects of climate change have killed more than one half of us, until we personally see those deaths and until it is tangible and unescapable in our minds that we, too, will die. At that point, we will struggle, a last, suddenly hopeful remnant of the human race beating off unliveable conditions with our advanced technology until a freak and vast shift wipes out the final ones of us.

I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Again, none of you will have to face this, fully and undeniably, until much later. And it might not even be you personally who has to face it. You may well be dead by that time. But am I trying to tell you to lose hope? No, class, I am not. You can be sure that if I were trying to tell you that, I would not be here right now. I would not, in fact, be.

The same reason I have not cast myself into the lovely Grand Canyon is the same reason that none of you ought despair. We will all die. There are good and bad things about life. Life is extremely difficult. Life is full of negativity, full of personal and social hurt. But life is also full of beauty and, potentially, meaning. Each life leaves its mark on the immutable map of time.

So, too, will the species we have called Homo sapiens die. We appreciate the human race more than our own lives. Its destruction scares us more than our own. But its destruction is at this point, like our own, inevitable. There are terrible things about humans. They ravage, obliterate and kill each other and other things. But they have also created so much that is good. (“But isn’t the concept ‘good’ itself a human invention?”) That’s right, Tim. Humans even introduced “value” to the world.

Ronald Wright nears the end of his history of progress with a revealing sentence: “…the number in abject poverty today is as great as all mankind in 1901.” He, here, tries to shock us. But in my estimation, he succeeds only in bringing up the ambiguity of our own value judgments about the human race. Is it better, you should be wondering, to have a smaller human race and less suffering, but also less progress? Or is it better to have so much more humanity and happiness in the world, but for such a larger percentage of it to be miserable?

I sense I’m losing you, class. Please bear with me. I only ask, if we go on forever, and produce more and more happiness, and produce more and more misery, what more has the universe gained? I feel that humans have proved their point. They have given to the universe what they had to give.

(A hand goes up.) Yes, Rachel. (“It’s time to go, Mr. Sweeney.”) That’s right, Rachel. It’s quitting time. And to be truthful, I don’t find doomsday so upsetting.