I was sort of intrigued when I stumbled across the Sierra Club’s 2010 “Cool Schools” ranker yesterday, which uses a detailed questionnaire filled out by undergrad colleges to determine how “green” they are – asking questions about energy use, efficiency, food, transport, waste, etc. – and then ranks them.

Cool idea!

But of course, I can’t look at anything without a critical eye anymore thanks to all you smartypantses out there, so here’s where I see this trendy green ranker coming up quite short.

While I applaud the decision to make “energy supply” the heaviest weighted category – which is really what prevented Emory University from ranking higher than #42 (50% coal/50% natural gas) – key questions about urban form are COMPLETELY omitted.

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