Dear Cornell Community,

Together with the rest of our planet, Cornell is entering a time of significant existential uncertainty. The acceleration of global warming and imminent climate tipping points have now been added to existing concerns stemming from weak climate pledges and failure to reduce emissions. With federal attacks on climate policy, it is imperative that we navigate this existentially challenging landscape with a shared understanding and common purpose, to continue to advance our mission and avoid the extinction of countless species, including ours.

To survive an increasingly catastrophic future, we must commit, across every sector of our institution, to sustainability today. To that end, we are declaring a climate emergency and launching the Office of Climate Science and Activism to oversee 30 bold initiatives for climate action. These initiatives showcase dramatic yet feasible changes that will bring our University’s operations into alignment with the Paris Agreement’s goals for a 1.5°C world. This strategic restructuring corrects our prior incrementalist approach that aligned with a catastrophic trajectory of 3-4°C warming.

The policies announced through today’s outreach campaign are ambitious but actionable. They will be implemented through democratic decision-making and transparent accountability mechanisms. Because Cornell’s climate action belongs to all of us, we ask all deans, vice provosts, vice presidents, and unit leaders to implement these initiatives in a manner appropriate to their units, making each and every decision through the lens of climate justice. 

Like many other corporations, we have too often treated climate change as a PR opportunity by communicating what we were doing “well” while failing to acknowledge the true scope of the avoidable disaster and our role in causing it. In today’s political climate, our approach has shifted. The most effective model of leadership is demonstrated by the United Nations: direct, honest accounting that clearly spells out and takes ownership of the consequences of inaction. 

To that end, we wish to inform you that Cornell has failed to reduce emissions since we began tracking progress in 2008, a fact evident after independent analysts updated our reporting to comply with New York State law and our own 2016 recommendations. Moreover, our prior Climate Action Plan only addressed 30% of reported campus emissions while completely ignoring our unreported emissions from investments, student travel, Cornell-affiliated private jet use, and non-Ithaca campuses. Despite our moratorium on new fossil fuel investments, faculty and staff pension funds continued to be invested in fossil fuels through TIAA and Fidelity, while fossil fuel funding continued to skew our donor relations and research agendas. We are making the radical changes required to correct all this. 

We previously speculated that declaring a climate emergency could conflict with institutional neutrality. We have updated our stance on this question. Research shows that confronting society with uncomfortable truths is necessary to create systemic change. From now on, we will communicate the climate emergency with uncompromising clarity and will model the radical change that is called for.

As a community, we have always emerged stronger from challenging periods. But we doubt that we can do so again if we fail to make radical changes now. We expect that you feel the same urgency and will recognize, as we do, the necessity of declaring a climate emergency and launching comprehensive changes for climate justice. 

In partnership,

The Invisible Office of Climate Science and Activism

P.S. Whether this stunning development is even real is irrelevant: Cornell's climate action belongs to all of us. As one of Cornell’s key stakeholders, you can (and should) send a real message of congratulations to the University’s senior leadership now!