All That Performative Environnmentalism Adds Up

Annie Lowery has a new article in The Atlantic, “All That Performative Environmentalism Adds Up,” in which she considers the ways in which actions by individuals and households can play important roles in promoting effective policy actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

What communities do, laws reflect—this is another reason to act on climate change, and urgently. “We’re part of a society, where people interact with companies, companies interact with the government, and people interact with the government. And in all of these cases, the interactions go both ways,” Jonathan Gilligan, a physicist and a climate-change researcher at Vanderbilt University, told me. “Each part influences another.” Many climate activists believe that changing social norms around carbon-intensive behaviors makes the likelihood of dramatic climate-change legislation in the future more likely, not less.

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This past winter in Nashville was unusually warm and rainy. And it looks like spring will be, too.

I was quoted in a story at the Tennessean about the unusually warm and wet winter in 2018–19: “Winters have gotten so warm in the last 20 or so years that people forget. Weather that wouldn’t have been remarkably cold 30 or 40 years ago seems extraordinarily cold today.”

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Bangladesh's geography will naturally counter sea level rise until it becomes too rapid due to climate change

I was interviewed by the Dhaka Tribune on the impact of sea-level rise in Bangladesh. I explained that with good land-management, sediment carried to the coast by the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna rivers can raising the land as fast as the sea is rising for the near-future, but that eventually global warming may cause the sea level to rise faster than the land can adapt.

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Good Law | Bad Law Podcast

Michael Vandenbergh and I were interviewed by Aaron J. Freiwald for the Good Law/Bad Law podcast. We discussed our recent book and the role of the private sector in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

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Beyond Politics Webinar at the Environmental Law Institute

Michael Vandenbergh and I participated in a webinar hosted by the Environmental Law Institute on our book, Beyond Politics: The Private Governance Response to Climate Change. Cassie Phillips (director of the Private Environmental Governance Initiative at ELI) moderated. Stephen Harper (Global Director of Environment and Energy Policy at Intel) and Jackie Roberts (Chief Sustainability Officer at the Carlisle Group) provided private industry perspectives.

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Two US Professors meet DU VC

The Financial Express (Bangladesh) reported on the meeting between Prof. Steve Goodbred and myself, from Vanderbilt University, and the Dr. Md. Aktaruzzaman, Vice-Chancellor of Dhaka University. During the meeting, we discussed academic and research collaborations between Dhaka University and Vanderbilt on climate change, riverbank erosion, access to safe drinking water, and other environmental challenges.

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Scientific and Informed Research Needed on Waterways

The Daily Samakal (Bangladesh) reported on a workshop I helped to organize in Dhaka on “River Navigation and Inland Shipping in Bangladesh: Economic Importance and Impacts of Environmental Change”. Participants included academics, government officials, representatives of the shipping industry, and members of community and political activist groups.

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