Focus The Nation, Hit--And Miss

America's colleges and universities focused on the environment yesterday, but what about the rest of the country?

First, the good news. Higher education largely heeded the call of the environmental advocacy group Focus The Nation: 1,200 colleges and universities hosted events, as did 300 K-12 schools across the country. So many users tried to watch the group's Webcast, "The 2% Solution", that the site crashed. Collegiate publications did a bang-up job covering the event. By the goals that FTN had set for itself, it was a big hit.

But the mainstream media? Not so much. OK, it is tough to command front-page space on a day when Microsoft makes a $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo! As you might have expected, FTN made the California papers with staff-written stories in The San Jose Mercury News, San Diego Union Tribune and Los Angeles Times. The FTN story didn't make the print edition of The New York Times, although its Web site ran a dispatch from the Associated Press. USA Today had the story only in print, though it's hard to tell how many editions ran it.

Did the big press miss the big story? Only time will tell.

Focus Your School On 'Focus The Nation'

Assign the color green to January 31, 2008 on your Google calendar: That's the date for "Focus The Nation".

Think of it as a teach-in on global warming. The non-profit group behind "Focus The Nation" says it has already signed up more than 1,100 colleges and universities across the U.S., as well as high schools and middle schools. The idea is to drop every other subject for the day, and spend 24 hours brainstorming about environmental change. Here's how it will play out at one school, Alfred University in upstate New York: There will be a panel discussion on global warming solutions, an art and essay contest (on recycled paper) and a screening of "The 11th Hour", the environmental movie narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio. Alfred offers a major and minor in environmental studies for undergraduates.

To find out whether your school is already "focused", check here. If it hasn't yet pulled together an agenda, don't despair. The Web site for "Focus The Nation" has a model of how the day could be structured, and offers a way to sign up for a Webcast called "The 2% Solution". That's a reference to how much we need to cut emissions levels per year for the next 40 years to hold global warming to a minimum.

It's going to be interesting to see what comes from a day of collective brainpower.