Climate Hub Blog

Concerts can be damaging to the environment due to carbon emissions from fan travel, textile waste from fast fashion trends, and single use plastic pollution from concessions. Read on to learn how REVERB, a non-profit organization, is working to reduce these environmental impacts and how I was able to attend concerts for free as a REVERB volunteer.

The blog reflects on my experience observing climate negotiations at SB64 in Bonn and how my understanding of the process evolved. I share my initial frustration with the slow pace of negotiations and the attention given to refining just a few words in draft texts, but ultimately came to understand what those discussions were working toward and appreciated the complexity of the process.

Atlanta - the "City in the Forest" - is filled with amazing natural spaces within its urban center. Hiking is a great way to stay in touch with nature, and this list provides an overview of the best spaces to explore right in our city.

This blog post serves as introduction to what it's like to attend the annual conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)’s Subsidiary Bodies (SBs) in Bonn, Germany. It provides specialized insights into SB 64 alongside general recommendations for future attendees.

Last October, two Emory students joined 34 graduate students and sustainability educators from across the United States at the ANGLES Workshop at Colorado State University’s Spur campus. Hosted by ANGLES (A Network for Graduate Leadership in Sustainability), the session was a deep dive into three critical aptitudes: collaboration, communication, and impact and trying to understand the gap between research and reality. The workshop made one thing clear: the challenge is not only producing knowledge, but building the systems that allow knowledge to move, be trusted, and be used.

COP30 was an exercise in growth, critical thinking, and expanding perspectives on the global implications of climate change, allowing me to look for questions I had never seen before. COP, or the Conference of the Parties, is the United Nations’ annual climate summit where countries gather to negotiate and assess global climate action. It brings together world leaders, scientists, and advocates to look at challenges and shape responses to climate change. As someone whose COP30 journey was also my first experience leaving the United States, I felt a stark, and sometimes uncomfortable, confrontation with our global state around climate mitigation and adaptation, and the problems we still haven’t figured out how to solve.

The second cohort of undergraduate and law students in Emory's Environmental Law and Science Changemaker Program has submitted a formal comment opposing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's proposed delisting of Geocarpon minimum from the List of Endangered and Threatened Plants. The comment highlights gaps in population data interpretation, climate modeling, and risk assessment, and concludes that the FWS’s proposal does not meet the Endangered Species Act’s standards for delisting.

With the continual and steep climb towards 2℃ warming despite having completed our 30th multibillion-dollar Conference of the Parties (COP30), it’s time we address the flaws in our reliance on international climate governance. If we are unable to depend on parties to agree, much less follow through with their commitments, it’s imperative that we explore how other stakeholders should collaborate and fulfill their necessary roles to progress despite shortfalls at the negotiating table.

Think about what pollutes the air. Do cars come to mind? Maybe factories, power plants, or cigarette smoke? But here is something most people rarely think about: the road itself. Yes, the actual road we travel on. Right now, there are over 4 million miles of roads in America (ASCE, 2021). More than 94% of the paved ones are made of asphalt, a thick dark material made from crude oil (National Asphalt Pavement Association). Studies have found that asphalt releases chemicals called Volatile Organic Compounds, or VOCs, into the surrounding air, and understanding this is an important piece of the larger air quality puzzle.