Dear College of Science Faculty and Staff,
The news around global warming is not good - our planet’s average temperature last year exceeded the 1.5oC increase relative to pre-industrial times (1850-1900), considered to be a threshold for irretrievable damage to the earth through climate change.
Many people understand the urgency to address climate change, but in an example below, there may be a reticence to participate. We’re proud to highlight an important recent analysis including Assistant Professor Sara Constantino (Psychology), assessing why people do/not support useful collective actions, such as committing to renewable energy that does not use carbon or produce gases that are excessively warming our planet.
Developing renewable energy is complex, but I would say we are getting somewhere. Take a look at this article which I found fascinating for several reasons. First, I learned that Kansas gets almost 50% of its electricity from non-carbon sources (mostly wind). And look at this list of % renewable electricity per state. Vermont tops with ~97%, Kansas is #9, Massachusetts is somewhat embarrassingly at #23 with just 17%. But Florida, with all its sunshine ranks even lower, #42 with just 6% renewable. The largest renewable source was wind power which in 2022 generated 7% of the world’s electricity. There is a range of environmental impacts, but the energy needed to build wind turbines has a short payback of about one year, and overall, wind is a clearly superior electricity source than fossil fuels.
A second interesting aspect of the Kansas article was how private energy companies are trying to set up small units on private farms, solar or wind, paying the farmers to do so. As noted by a long-time farmer, in the old days, oil companies would pay farmers to drill a well. They note that this is much better. It seems win-win-win, farmers get some extra money, companies harvest electricity, and the state increases its renewable energy percentage.
But the win-win-win has many roadblocks, and the third point of the article, related to Dr. Constantino’s analysis, is the negative, the pushback. Farmers and communities have united against what is being termed ‘industrial solar’. Everyone is for renewable energy but not in their community. For many farmers, this is ‘bewildering – and annoying’.
The synthesis for me is that we are getting somewhere in renewable energy – albeit a lack of understanding, and a long way to go, but the slope is positive. And private businesses, who want to make money from viable products are part of the solution.
At Northeastern, we have a growing focus on addressing climate change, and in our College of Science every department is involved. Right now, we have undergraduate majors and courses including Environmental and Sustainability Sciences, MS programs including Environmental Science Policy, PhD dissertations, research areas that extend from developing policy, to understanding how people evaluate and respond to information, to preservation of coastal habitats and species, to ‘greener’ chemical synthesis and sustainable battery development.
Thank you for your work to preserve and heal our planet.