As a summer intern at the World Resources Institute (WRI) in the Markets and Enterprise Program, SNRE M.S. student Emily Taylor had the opportunity to be on the cutting edge of financing climate change mitigation. Emily received funding for her internship through the Edna Bailey Sussman Fund Environmental Internship Program. This generous funding enables SNRE students to accept non-paying internship positions in environmental fields.
Author, environmentalist and activist Bill McKibben urged U-M students for their support Friday in a campaign to help prevent catastrophic climate change due largely to the burning of fossil fuels.
"We really are up against it. The swift deterioration of the physical conditions around the planet in the last couple of years has been staggering," said McKibben, author of the 1989 book “The End of Nature” and co-founder and chairman of 350.org, which describes itself as a global grassroots campaign to solve the climate crisis.
Forbes contributor John McQuaid in an Aug. 21 post revisits an article by SNRE Professor Andrew Hoffman on culture wars and climate, which first appeared in the fall issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review.
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.
Loss of biodiversity appears to impact ecosystems as much as climate change, pollution and other major forms of environmental stress, according to a new study from an international research team that includes SNRE Assistant Professor Bradley J. Cardinale. The study, published today, is the first comprehensive effort to directly compare the impacts of biological diversity loss to the anticipated effects of a host of other human-caused environmental changes. The results highlight the need for stronger local, national and international efforts to protect biodiversity and the benefits it provides, according to the researchers, based at nine institutions in the United States, Canada and Sweden. (VIEW IMAGES OF SCIENTISTS AT WORK)
SNRE Professor Rosina M. Bierbaum was a featured speaker at the 2012 Investor Summit on Climate Risk and Energy Solutions, held last week at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. Bierbaum's speech, "An Urgent Challenge: Economic Impacts of Climate Change and Resource Scarcity," linked the issues of climate change, development and economic prosperity. "Climate change has severe economic ramifications, affecting the availability and sustainability of financial capital and natural resource capital," she said. "It could easily exacerbate inequality in the world, as the poorest countries will experience the greatest impacts, yet have the least financial , technical and scientific resources to cope."
Two SNRE students in the Frederick A. and Barbara M. Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise maximized a prime career and scholarly opportunity this month, as they exchanged ideas and met with global policymakers at the United Nation's global climate change convention in Durban, South Africa. Miguel Sossa (M.S./MBA '13) and Daniel Gerding (M.S./MBA '14) represented the Ross School of Business at the conference, which brought together leaders in business, government and non-governmental organizations. Sossa also moderated an official side event Dec. 2 on the topic of professional standards in carbon markets, an idea generated in part during his first visit to the conference last year.
SNRE Professor Andy Hoffman talks about reframing the climate change debate during an interview on WEMU-FM (89.1). The interview was aired during the public radio station's "November First Friday Focus on the Environment" show. The hosts are WEMU's David Fair and Lisa Wozniak, executive director of the Michigan League of Conservation Voters.
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.
Faced with increasing risks of intense storms, heat stress, clean water availability and economic hardship, municipal leaders are seeking high-quality, location-specific analyses to help plan for climate change impacts. That is the focus of a new $1.2 million University of Michigan research project called the Great Lakes Adaptation Assessment for Cities.