State of the Planet

News from the Columbia Climate School

Climate270

  • The Long and Winding Road to Copenhagen

    A lot of hopes have been placed on the Fifteenth Conference of Parties (COP-15) which began earlier this week in Copenhagen.  Convened on December 7, the conference has been considered by many our best hope at keeping global temperature from rising to what many researchers consider potentially dangerous levels. The gathering of delegates from throughout…

  • The Collective Action Curse

    In the lexicon of sociologists, a social dilemma is when individual rationality leads to collective irrationality. With climate change, we are experiencing a very major and extraordinarily complicated social dilemma. On a social level, the benefit that many human individuals are getting from consuming energy is being pitted against humanity in general, because the impacts…

  • Protestors Should Press the U.S.

    By Dana Fisher At this point, most everyone agrees: the climate talks in Copenhagen will not result in a binding treaty. It is not for want of trying; negotiators have emitted tons of carbon flying to meetings around the globe for the past few years. Now, leaders have announced that the talks will merely serve…

  • Cities Produce the Emissions. Cities Must Deal With Them.

    By Elliott Sclar It is always good news when the international community gathers to address an important problem. On the other hand, an international conference on climate change implicitly frames this as a nation-state problem. It is, for all intents and purposes, an urban problem. Nations are supposed to be the ones governing carbon emissions;…

  • Farming in Future Climates

    Agronomist Pedro Sanchez has helped many regions of the world boost food production through better use of nutrients, and now heads the Earth Institute’s Tropical Agriculture and Rural Environment Program. He is at the Copenhagen summit looking for support to build a global soil map that will help farmers work more efficiently in the future.…

  • Real Scientists Are Climate Skeptics

    The emails stolen from climate researchers at East Anglia University and released online—“Climategate,” as it has come to be known to some–may say a lot about some of the scientists involved. But they also reveal much about the dangerous political atmosphere into which the messages have emerged, coincidental with the Copenhagen climate summit. Scientists need…

  • Is it time to water down Copenhagen?

    With the Copenhagen climate talks kicking off today, I thought it was  worth highlighting the close connection between water and climate, particularly as it pertains to energy use.  While goodness knows the delegates in Copenhagen will have enough to do to hammer out even a “framework” agreement, I hope some attention will be paid to the close…

  • Climate and Meningitis in Africa

    A new Google Earth tour explores the link between climate and meningitis outbreaks in Africa.

  • You Can Ignore Polar Bears, But Not People

    As the Copenhagen summit prepared to open, we asked geophysicist and social scientist John Mutter to talk about the prospects. While at sea, Mutter investigates the workings of deep ocean floors; on land, he directs the Earth Institute’s Ph.D. in Sustainable Development and works to focus science on humanitarian causes. Among other things, he pinpointed…

  • The Long and Winding Road to Copenhagen

    A lot of hopes have been placed on the Fifteenth Conference of Parties (COP-15) which began earlier this week in Copenhagen.  Convened on December 7, the conference has been considered by many our best hope at keeping global temperature from rising to what many researchers consider potentially dangerous levels. The gathering of delegates from throughout…

  • The Collective Action Curse

    In the lexicon of sociologists, a social dilemma is when individual rationality leads to collective irrationality. With climate change, we are experiencing a very major and extraordinarily complicated social dilemma. On a social level, the benefit that many human individuals are getting from consuming energy is being pitted against humanity in general, because the impacts…

  • Protestors Should Press the U.S.

    By Dana Fisher At this point, most everyone agrees: the climate talks in Copenhagen will not result in a binding treaty. It is not for want of trying; negotiators have emitted tons of carbon flying to meetings around the globe for the past few years. Now, leaders have announced that the talks will merely serve…

  • Cities Produce the Emissions. Cities Must Deal With Them.

    By Elliott Sclar It is always good news when the international community gathers to address an important problem. On the other hand, an international conference on climate change implicitly frames this as a nation-state problem. It is, for all intents and purposes, an urban problem. Nations are supposed to be the ones governing carbon emissions;…

  • Farming in Future Climates

    Agronomist Pedro Sanchez has helped many regions of the world boost food production through better use of nutrients, and now heads the Earth Institute’s Tropical Agriculture and Rural Environment Program. He is at the Copenhagen summit looking for support to build a global soil map that will help farmers work more efficiently in the future.…

  • Real Scientists Are Climate Skeptics

    The emails stolen from climate researchers at East Anglia University and released online—“Climategate,” as it has come to be known to some–may say a lot about some of the scientists involved. But they also reveal much about the dangerous political atmosphere into which the messages have emerged, coincidental with the Copenhagen climate summit. Scientists need…

  • Is it time to water down Copenhagen?

    With the Copenhagen climate talks kicking off today, I thought it was  worth highlighting the close connection between water and climate, particularly as it pertains to energy use.  While goodness knows the delegates in Copenhagen will have enough to do to hammer out even a “framework” agreement, I hope some attention will be paid to the close…

  • Climate and Meningitis in Africa

    A new Google Earth tour explores the link between climate and meningitis outbreaks in Africa.

  • You Can Ignore Polar Bears, But Not People

    As the Copenhagen summit prepared to open, we asked geophysicist and social scientist John Mutter to talk about the prospects. While at sea, Mutter investigates the workings of deep ocean floors; on land, he directs the Earth Institute’s Ph.D. in Sustainable Development and works to focus science on humanitarian causes. Among other things, he pinpointed…