The Earth Institute is pleased to welcome National Grid into the Corporate Circle, a collective partnership of leading corporations from across the globe committed to pursuing sustainable development objectives. Through a generous gift, National Grid will support sustainable energy research at the Earth Institute.
Last October, Superstorm Sandy provoked widespread frustration and fear after it left more than 7.5 million people in the New York Metro area without power. In the hardest hit areas, outages lasted two weeks or more. These failures led many observers to wonder if America’s aging electrical grid was up to dealing with emerging climate and other challenges.
When the Environmental Defense Fund asked me to measure how biogas cook stoves were changing the lives of farmers in rural India, there wasn’t a word in that question with which I was comfortable. Having just graduated from the Undergraduate Program in Sustainable Development, I had never done fieldwork; and the concept of a biogas digester, which turns cow dung into natural gas through anaerobic digestion, was itself a mystery. I had no idea that this was the beginning of a steep learning curve into low-carbon development at a large scale. But even more, that it would provide a window into the lives of families whose existences have permanently improved thanks to the clean cooking stoves.
Eight hundred years ago, relatively small armies of mounted warriors suddenly exploded outward from the cold, arid high-elevation grasslands of Mongolia and reshaped world geography, culture and history in ways that still resound today. How did they do it?
Pushker Kharecha and James E. Hansen write about their recent paper on the long-term health effects of nuclear power versus fossil fuels, and argue that nuclear power needs to be part of the solution to climate change.
Researchers using nighttime lights data to ask questions about economic development in sub-Saharan Africa have findings counter to expectation.
Student Scott Miller, who raised $3,000 for the Earth Institute last year on a 300-mile bike ride from New York to Washington, plans to do it again, and he’s inviting you to join him.
The residential home sector is the third largest contributor to GHG emissions when energy use is included. As the housing market is showing signs of recovery and new home construction is beginning to increase, there is opportunity to address the emissions from residential homes with green building techniques that will have the added benefit of reduced energy costs and increased comfort.
Last week, the Earth Institute and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society hosted a discussion on cities, food and climate. What were people saying? Find out in this Storify recap of reactions from across Twitter!
Interdisciplinary collaboration, rather than polarized efforts, are needed to promote environmental sustainability.
State of the Planet is a forum for discussion on varying viewpoints. The opinions expressed by the authors and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Earth Institute or Columbia University.
