Four students and former president Clinton help Queen's Law go green

Alex Patrick, Law '10, Miriam Ortved, Law '11, Kathleen Davis, Law '11, and Andrew Lahey, Law '10, at the second annual Conference of the Clinton Global Initiative University held at the University of Texas in February 2009.

Four Queen's Law students travelled to Texas for three days in February 2009 to work with former U.S. president Bill Clinton to do their part in improving the world.  They're going to start by ‘greening' Queen's Law.

Kathleen Davis and Miriam Ortved of Law '11 and Alex Patrick and Andrew Lahey of Law '10 joined hundreds of students, academics and celebrities from around the world at the second annual Conference of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) University in Austin.  At the conference, where delegates committed to plans to fight poverty, disease and climate change, and to promote global education and human rights, the group pledged to follow through with an environmental action plan for Queen's Law.

Kathleen said the conference's focus is "to make tangible, concrete change not just generate fluffy public awareness."

The group said their plan for Queen's Law is "based on a five-point-plan to reduce, reuse, recycle, regenerate, and refuse."  Kathleen explained that ‘refuse' means going without certain luxuries.  That could be as basic as e-mailing a meeting agenda instead of printing it out.   

At the conference, CGI staff helped the four law students ensure their plans to ‘green' Queen's Law were as realistic as possible.  Kathleen said they also did their part at the ground level spending a day improving the city by painting and picking up trash.

The Global Initiative

The ‘university' branch of the CGI was begun in 2007 as a way to motivate students to get involved in their communities.

On its website, the initiative says their completed plans have affected over 200 million people, eliminating 40 million tonnes of carbon emissions.  

In addition to the former president, students were joined by Natalie Portman, John Oliver (the Daily Show) and representatives from over 60 countries.  "The opportunity to liaise with all these global experts was an incredible experience," added Miriam.  "It left me feeling very hopeful for the future of our world."

Greening Queen's Law

Now that the group has returned to Kingston, they are going to put their plan into action.

Their ideas are simple but could significantly lessen Queen's Law's carbon footprint and save the school money.  These include options like turning off unnecessary lights at night, creating paperless courses, and working to eliminate water bottles at the school.

They are receiving tremendous support from Queen's administration and the community.  Their participation in the project was funded by Pallett Valo LLP, the largest law firm in Mississauga, and the Dean's Excellence Fund.

"Pallett Valo LLP understands the need to support "green" initiatives and support of the next generation of lawyers being developed by Queen's is important to the firm a well," said the firm's general manager Frances Wales.  "We felt that by directing funding to this project, we could provide some assistance to both areas."  

Gillian Ready, Assistant Dean of International Programs, said "The Faculty was delighted to be able to provide Dean's Excellence funding to help the students attend the CGI University.  This conference gave the students a unique opportunity to work collaboratively with students from all over the world.

"We are looking forward to working with them to put into practice some of the sustainability ideas they have developed for the law school," said Ready.  Our alumni are very pleased to be able to contribute to worthwhile student enrichment projects such as this one."