This is a downer of a blog post for Campus Sustainability Day.

Those who have been fighting battles for sustainability on campus should pick up the latest copy of BusinessWeek, which features an article about a corporate sustainability coordinator on its cover. Called “Little Green Lies” and billed as “the bitter education of a corporate environmentalist,” the piece focuses on Aspen Skiing Company’s quest for sustainability and the disillusionment of Auden Schendler, the man who has led the company to set up “green” power systems, replace inefficient light fixtures, and buy renewable-energy credits.

The problem, Mr. Schendler tells the reporter Ben Elgin, is that he doesn’t believe that his efforts are making much difference. The ski resort’s carbon emissions are still going up, he says, and he has to fight hard just to institute modest environmental programs at the company. Every decision at the company is evaluated for return on investment, which means that large and adventurous green projects are usually dead on arrival.

And some of his own ideas don’t work out as planned. Mr. Schendler is particularly disappointed with renewable energy credits, which he had pushed Aspen Skiing to buy. (A number of colleges are looking at purchasing them, too.) Renewable energy credits, or REC’s, are ostensibly a way to support the creation of green power to offset power from carbon-emitting sources — but Mr. Schendler doesn’t believe the credits actually do anything. The trouble, Mr. Elgin says, is that economics of REC’s don’t add up. Aspen Skiing has purchased credits for $2 a megawatt-hour, while wind power companies get $91 a megawatt-hour from utilities, tax breaks, and other sources. “Even many wind-power developers that stand to profit from REC’s concede that producers making $91 a megawatt hour aren’t going to expand production for another $2,” Mr. Elgin writes.

The whole tale might well apply to colleges. (In fact, one college on the East Coast will announce later today that it is purchasing “100-percent renewable energy” through REC’s. Stay tuned.) At conferences and in off-the-record conversations, we’ve heard story after story about the inconsistencies and shortcomings of colleges’ drives for sustainability in higher education. Higher ed, after all, operates like any business, and the efforts of sustainability coordinators and others have been hampered and dashed by organizational bureaucracy, old ways of thinking, and unsustainable business models.

At the annual conference for the Society for College and University Planning, in Chicago this year, we talked with a facilities manager at a prominent East Coast college who is fed up with business as usual at his college. As he sits in meetings covering new construction on campus, he tells administrators that their buildings are underutilized and that new buildings wouldn’t be needed if existing ones were used more efficiently. “I get laughed out of the room,” he said.

New buildings, after all, are thought to keep colleges competitive. “The only reason we have an Olympic-size swimming pool is because the college down the street has an Olympic-size pool,” the facilities director said.

Over the past week, we have talked with a number of college sustainability directors who feel they are making progress, but also acknowledge that the basic driving forces in colleges’ operations remain largely unchanged. One sustainability coordinator, employed at a college that recently declared sustainability a core value of the institution, was glum about the job. Every sustainability effort at the college involves a battle, the coordinator said. The administration wants the sustainability drive to be a “grass-roots” effort among students — in part, the coordinator believes, because students won’t know or care whether the college meets its lofty goals.

Today, on Campus Sustainability Day, headlines tell of California on fire, of sky-high oil prices, and of future water shortages. It’s time to reflect: What is the future of sustainability on campus, and what is higher education’s role in addressing the challenges that the world faces?

—Scott Carlson