Colleges Strain to Reach Climate-Friendly Future

By RICHARD MONASTERSKY

On a mid-June day this year, 70 college and university presidents gathered in an overly air-conditioned ballroom in Washington as temperatures outside pushed into the upper 80s and a line of thunderstorms threatened from the Northeast.

In their pressed suits and power ties, the presidents formed a conference of executive Isaiahs, preaching the message that the threat of global warming required American higher education to fundamentally change the way it did business.

One by one,