The bond will provide funding for capital projects to protect our homes and ecosystems in an era of extreme weather and contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gases. It is a necessary step, but it is far from sufficient.

Technology solves problems and creates problems, and then new technology is needed to solve the problems created by earlier technologies. It’s an endless cycle.

The only way out is by learning to listen to each other and forging compromises. The alternative is too dire to contemplate.

Today, most of those running sustainability units are trained in other fields. As they retire they will be replaced by well-trained sustainability professionals.

As part of the MPA in Environmental Science and Policy, students undertake science courses that will serve as a foundational basis for tackling policy issues. Who better to learn from than the individuals who dominate earth science research?

Government should encourage urban living by making it more affordable and attractive, and provide incentives for density; it should not try to mandate it.

First responders have learned how to reduce the death toll from natural disasters, but America’s long-term response and approach to reconstruction suffers from uncertainty, bureaucracy and inadequate resources of every kind. Until we understand that disaster reconstruction is not part of emergency response, it will remain a disaster.

How do multiple stakeholders compromise their competing needs and develop a global coordinated strategy that is politically palatable, possible and comprehensive enough to have an impact? Students from universities all over the U.S. Northeast gathered at Columbia for the 2017 NASPAA-Batten Student Simulation Competition that challenged students to do just this.

Denying the science of global warming is absurd, but accepting the science of climate change does not require decision-makers to accept the policy prescriptions of climate scientists.

Privatization is seen by some as a way of rebuilding America’s infrastructure more efficiently than public sector reconstruction, but experience with privatization is mixed. Sometimes it works well; sometimes it doesn’t.