Climate Change | Penn Today

Philadelphia rowhouse roofs with solar panels in foreground and city skyline in background.

Architecture’s William Braham on energy, carbon, and buildings for the future

For Climate Week 2020, The Weitzman School speaks with Braham about Penn’s Climate and Sustainability Action Plan, and what he’s learned about the build environment and its carbon footprint over time.

A wildfire rages in the mountains above a city in California.

The burning of California

Experts from the Wharton School’s Risk Management and Decision Processes Center discuss the California wildfires, why people underprepare for disasters, and what individuals and governments can do to prevent wildfires in the future.

What scares Pa. teens about climate change and how do they want to fight back, a year after massive global protests?

Freshman Nia Peterson shared how she became passionate about combatting climate change. “To provide ourselves and our futures a fighting chance, we first need to acknowledge the situation,” she wrote.

Seeking refuge in the climate emergency

The Perry World House 2020 Global Shifts Colloquium looked at the need to address mass displacement and why climate change poses a national security threat.

A week’s worth of online events, aimed at engaging the entire Penn community, will examine the interplay of climate change, COVID, and social injustice.

Climate Week offers something for ‘every member of the Penn community’

With participation from schools, centers, and groups across the University and a focus on the interplay of the climate emergency with social justice issues and the global pandemic, Climate Week at Penn will run September 21-25. The week’s dozens of events will help participants learn about the climate crisis—and then act.

Person standing outside in front of a dark column, arms crossed.

The striking shift in climate politics in a post-Sandy New York City

Analysis of conversations with 75 disaster responders, social activists, and others revealed that immediately following the superstorm, the city moved away from cutting greenhouse gas emissions and toward adaptation.

COVID-19 has more Americans thinking about science. Could this be a Sputnik moment?

Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center spoke about how the evolution in the U.S. in recent years of perceptions of climate change, with almost 70% of Americans now agreeing that human activity is a contributing factor. “The evidence has become clearer. The communication has become more effective. And people have experienced events in their lives that they attribute to climate change,” she said. “That suggests this isn’t a hopeless task.”

A group of archaeologists and excavators standing and sitting at the entrance of a cave.

Q&A

Southeast Asian megadrought dating back 5,000 years discovered in Laos cave

In a Q&A, Penn archaeologist Joyce White discusses the partnership with paleoclimatologists that led to the finding, plus possible implications of such a dramatic climate change for societies at that time.

Several smokestacks giving off smoke in a scene showing a top of a building and the skyline in the distance.

Continued CO2 emissions will impair cognition

Rising CO2 causes more than a climate crisis, according to a study from Penn and CU Boulder. It may directly harm our ability to think.

The Arctic could have almost no summer sea ice by 2040, decades sooner than expected

Statistical analysis by economists from Penn and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco could supplement current climate models and help global climate prediction.

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