Town-gown sign Clinton Climate 'go green' pact

With a challenge to change the Rust Belt to the Green Belt, Oberlin city manager Eric Norenberg and Oberlin College president Marvin Krislov signed memorandums of understanding to join the Climate Positive Development Program of the Clinton Climate Initiative on Thursday.

The town-gown partnership is the 18th participant worldwide in the program, which seeks to develop large-scale urban projects to prove cities can grow in climate positive ways, reducing the amount of on-site CO2 emissions to less than zero. Oberlin is the smallest city in the program, but the city-college partnership is unique in the program.

Renowned environmental architect Bob Berkebile said the decision of the city and college to work together to help reverse climate change is far more important than the early decisions by Oberlin College to admit students irrespective of color and to admit women into degree programs along with men. He said the collaboration of town and gown could have regional and global implications.

"This is a watershed event in redefining of that relationship," Berkebile said. "This is an agreement that rethinks the whole idea of community building, and education, and research and development, and it looks to be so ambitious, I think, that it looks to change the Rust Belt into the Green Belt."

The partnership with the Clinton Climate Inititiative and the U.S. Green Building Council is expected to prove instrumental in the implementation of the Oberlin Project, which includes the Green Arts District. The Green Arts District would revitalize the block bounded by North Main, East Lorain, North Pleasant, and East College streets, including the development or renovation of about a dozen buildings over the next five to seven years, according to a college press release.

Michael Cavallo, a director with the William J. Clinton Foundation, said the Clinton Climate Initiative was created to show that cities can do things on a local level that have global impacts. He said Oberlin and the college have all the ingredients to meet that challenge successfully.

"What Oberlin is becoming a part of today is a project with the audacity to attempt to put more energy onto the grid than we take out," Cavallo said. "This is being done in places like the dock areas of Sydney, Australia, and in Stockholm, Sweden. These are really large-scale neighborhood developments, but today Oberlin is showing that you don't have to be of huge size in order to have a huge effect on the world."

Norenberg said the city is already having an impact on the development of a sustainable culture in Ohio and in the country. He said the city is already home to four firms working on innovative solar and wind energy technologies, and the Oberlin project holds the promise of attracting more jobs in green technologies.

"More will come as Oberlin becomes known as a destination for green jobs in the areas of renewable power supply and green development," Norenberg said. "It is my firm belief our efforts to improve the global climate will also work to improve the local economy."

The other cities participating in the Climate Positive Development program are Melbourne and Sydney, Australia; Palhoça, Brazil; Toronto and Victoria, Canada; Ahmedabad and Jaipur, India; outside Panama City, Panama; Pretoria and Johannesburg, South Africa; Seoul, South Korea; Stockholm, Sweden; London; San Francisco; and Destin, Fla.