What can the social sciences contribute to the public debate about climate change? To answer that question, the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise and the Union of Concerned Scientists gathered 90 leading scholars, business leaders, policy makers, advocates, religious leaders and journalists to explore how better to communicate climate science to a skeptical public and mobilize progress. The summary report of that workshop distills the collective wisdom of that landmark two-day event.
U-M researchers at the School of Natural Resources and Environment will analyze the results of surveys given to about 120 veterans before and after upcoming six-day excursions. While scientific research increasingly shows a strong link between mental health benefits and the natural environment, the Sierra Club wanted to know if its programs, which are offered for free or at reduced costs, were producing the same results. Coordinating the research work at SNRE are Rachel Kaplan, the Samuel Trask Dana Professor of Environment and Behavior, and research scientist Jason Duvall.
North American forests appear to have a greater capacity to soak up heat-trapping carbon dioxide gas than researchers had previously anticipated. As a result, they could help slow the pace of human-caused climate warming more than most scientists had thought, a U-M ecologist and his colleagues have concluded. The results of a 12-year study at an experimental forest in northeastern Wisconsin challenge several long-held assumptions about how future forests will respond to the rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide blamed for human-caused climate change, said University of Michigan microbial ecologist Donald Zak, lead author of a paper published online this week in Ecology Letters.
Environmental injustice in people-of-color communities is as much or more prevalent today than 20 years ago, say researchers commissioned to conduct a follow-up to the 1987 landmark study, "Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States." The new report, "Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty, 1987-2007: Grassroots Struggles to Dismantle Environmental Racism in the United States, " shows that 20 years later, disproportionately large numbers of people of color still live in hazardous waste host communities, and that they are not equally protected by environmental laws.
It was like deja vu all over again as Alan D. Hecht, Ph.D., Office of Research and Development with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency visited the University of Michigan in early January to deliver a cautionary tale about the importance of sustainability to the global environment. Hecht was back in town recently (as he was 15 years ago to commemorate the EPA's 35th anniversary) to refresh the message as the EPA turns 50 years old.