News + Media
News Release
Jun 28, 2017
Sarah Fletcher receives new graduate fellowship and “Best Presentation” award
From 1997 to 2009, Melbourne, Australia experienced what was ultimately called the Millennium Drought, the worst drought on record in the island continent. To compensate, the city’s water planners invested about $3 billion in 2007 in a 150-million-cubic-meter (MCM)/year reverse osmosis...
Commentary
Climate Home | Jun 27, 2017
Climate Home: China is planning the world’s biggest carbon market, but with little detail given for its design, praise for the scheme is premature. Joint Program research assistant Emil Dimantchev comments.
By Emil Dimantchev
Much hype surrounds China’s national carbon market. Expected to begin later this year, the cap and trade system has been ballyhooed as an “ambitious” climate policy that will deliver a major portion of Beijing’s pledge to the Paris Agreement.
News Brief
Chaire Economie du Climat | Jun 23, 2017
Chaire Economie du Climat: Jonathan B. Wiener, J.D., author of a new essay on the current status and possible future of U.S. climate policies, spoke on this topic at the XL (40th) MIT Global Change Forum in March.
A professor of law and environmental and public policy at Duke University, Jonathan B. Wiener has written widely on U.S., European and international environmental law and risk regulation.
In The News
NPR Marketplace | Jun 22, 2017
NPR Marketplace: MIT Joint Program Co-Director John Reilly comments on the economic and societal impacts of heat waves, which are becoming more frequent under climate change
By Kimberly Adams
When air gets really hot, like 120 degrees hot, it means two things for the air-traveling public in the Southwestern United States. One, your plane will have to go faster to generate enough airflow over its wings to get enough lift to get off the ground. But two, the...
Commentary
Washington Post | Jun 22, 2017
Washington Post: MIT Joint Program-affiliated EAPS Prof. Kerry Emanuel co-authors op-ed critiquing the EPA administrator's call for opposing teams to debate climate change science
By Benjamin Santer, Kerry Emanuel and Naomi Oreskes June 21 at 1:08 PM
Commentary
Around Campus
MIT News | Jun 22, 2017
Funding will establish MIT professorship and support low-carbon energy and climate initiatives
Emily Dahl | MIT Energy Initiative June 21, 2017
Press Inquiries
In The News
FactCheck.org | Jun 20, 2017
FactCheck.org: The 0.2 C figure “reflects only the incremental effect of Paris when built upon all the previous commitments made through the UNFCCC,” and “assumed no further strengthening of national commitments in years after 2030,” says MIT Joint Program Co-Director John Reilly.
By Vanessa Schipani
Posted on June 14, 2017
President Donald Trump and his top environmental official said the Paris Agreement would reduce the global average temperature by only 0.2 degrees Celsius. Former Vice President Al Gore said that’s “not true.” Who’s right?
In The News
MIT Energy Initiative / Energy Futures | Jun 20, 2017
Energy Futures: John Reilly and colleagues in the MIT Joint Program used a comprehensive set of linked models to demonstrate how dramatically the world’s energy system needs to change—within the next few decades—to prevent excessive global warming by 2100
An MIT analysis of the Paris climate agreement finds that—even if all the participating nations meet their pledges—global warming will exceed the 2°C maximum targeted for 2100 as early as 2050. To determine what else is needed, researchers at the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of...
In The News
New York Times | Jun 14, 2017
New York Times: MIT Joint Program-affiliated CEEPR Executive Director John Parsons comments
Over the last decade, a glut of cheap natural gas from hydraulic fracturing has driven hundreds of dirtier coal plants in the United States out of business, a big reason carbon dioxide emissions fell 14 percent from 2005
Student Spotlight
MIT News | Jun 09, 2017
Amanda Giang models a pollutant’s pathways and assesses mitigation policies
Dispersal of mercury into the air has risen substantially since the industrial revolution, leading to increased deposits in water and soil, where it gets transformed by bacteria into methylmercury, a highly toxic form of the naturally occurring heavy metal that can affect neurological and immune...