Professor Monica Mazurek, REI member, School of Engineering, at Rutgers University and Michael Thwaite, President of Plug-in America and the NJ Electric Auto Association discuss how you can make a choice as to what sort of car you have and what level of impact you have on our environment. Listen to the Show: The Green Hour
Our own Robert (Bob) Kopp, Associate Director of the REI, has been awarded the Shackleton Medal recognizing his pioneering efforts in understanding the changing trajectory of Earth’s climate.
The Shackleton Medal is awarded by the International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA) once every four years to an outstanding young Quaternary scientist, chosen by his or her peers and evaluated by a blue-ribbon committee of distinguished scientists. The medal, INQUA's first, honours Sir Nicholas Shackleton, a giant in the field of Quaternary science, in recognition of his distinguished career in Quaternary geochronology and paleoclimatology, which spanned 40 years and was based on isotopic studies of deep-sea sediment. Read more...
Congratulations to REI Associate Director, Dr. Robert Kopp, of the Department of Earth & Planetary Science for his designation as a Chancellor's Scholars for Rutgers University - New Brunswick. The Chancellor's Scholar initiative was created through the New Brunswick Strategic Plan to recognize truly outstanding and highly promising faculty members at the associate professor level. As a Chancellor's Scholars, Kopp will receive an addition towards his research account for innovative research initiatives and/or program development for up to five years. Congratulations to Bob on this honor!
Robert Kopp, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and associate director of the Rutgers Energy Institute, a lead author of “Economic Risks of Climate Change: An American Prospectus" (forthcoming this summer from Columbia University Press). This report provided the technical analysis underlying the Risky Business Project organized by former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and philanthropist Tom Steyer.
We often think about climate change as an economic issue, and it is. But as the pope's encyclical highlights, climate change is also a profoundly ethical challenge. In part, it's a matter of equity. The benefits of fossil fuels have accrued primarily to the world's rich, while the risks have fallen disproportionately on the poor. Moreover, burning fossil fuels imposes an increasing "climate debt" on future generations, who have no direct voice today – an imposition that we shakily justify by assuming that our descendants will be better able to clean up our mess than we are able to avoid making it.
Many of the challenges of dealing with climate change arise from the "short-termism" that dominates our economic and political systems. By contrast, the 2,000-year-old Catholic Church has a longer term view. With its focus on both social justice and the long term, as well as a network of followers that spans all the countries of the world, the Church brings an important perspective to tackling climate change.
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