Climate Change

New investments in China and the Middle East have demonstrated a developing strategic interest in renewable energies. Yet every country still faces obstacles: be it legislation in the United States or enforcement and rapid development in China. Kelly Sims Gallagher of the Fletcher School at Tufts University sits down with IP to talk about the future of energy policy and its effects on foreign relations. Read the full interview

Last week, yet another high-level report on a topic of global concern was published by yet another group of eminent experts – this one on food security and climate change. The eminent experts – the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change – were assembled by a group of donor countries and the World Bank for the one-year task of producing the report and its recommendations. Read her full analysis

Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC) representative Dustin Mulvaney, an Assistant Professor at San Jose State University, works with SVTC to see that materials in computers and solar panels are safely handled and recycled. Mulvaney said First Solar is required to handle PV modules in a way that minimizes any accidental cadmium leakage at other sites. Most likely, he added, the biggest occupational hazard First Solar has encountered on the AVSR1 site is “workers being cut by broken glass.”

For 2011 Switzer Fellow Jeannette Laramee, it all started with designing a school in Zambia, Africa. That led to building systems that make biogas, which can save up to 10,000 pounds of firewood a year for a family in Africa.

Although strategies to prevent global warming – such as by conserving energy, relying on solar and wind power, and reducing motor vehicle use – are well-known, societies have proved unable to implement these measures with the necessary speed. They have also been unwilling to confront underlying issues such as overconsumption, overpopulation, inequity, and dysfunctional political systems.

The climate change awardees are Rafe Sagarin, an assistant research scientist at the Institute of the Environment, and Christopher Castro, an assistant professor of atmospheric sciences. They captured two of the four grants awarded nationally for climate change impacts under DOD's Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program.

Schimel, along with co-principal investigators Patricia Holden, a professor at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, and former EEMB postdoctoral researcher Sean Schaeffer, now an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, will be studying the physical processes that influence carbon sequestration in soil, including the access of microorganisms (bacteria and fungi) to carbon, and how they use it. Read the full story

Sad tales of our failures in society to be adaptable, remarkable stories of the intricate ways in which natural organisms have survived and thrived for billions of years on an unpredictable planet, and hopeful examples of how all sorts of people, organizations, corporations and bureaucracies have learned to be adaptable.

On this Switzer Network News report, we learn about the intersection between global climate change and agriculture, why current "solutions" are inadequate and where we need to go next globally.