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From climate change to green engineering, endangered species to resource economics, almost every aspect of the natural environment—and human interaction with it—is under scrutiny at Yale. On this page, a sampling of current work.
Dan Esty '86JD Esty studies the relationships between the environment on one hand and, on the other, trade, security, competitiveness, governance, and development. His recent book, Green to Gold, explores how global businesses such as Toyota, Nike, and DuPont have gained an "eco-advantage" and profited, not only by minimizing their environmental liabilities, but also by exploiting the upside opportunities to build company reputation and brand recognition.
Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim Grim and Tucker are co-founders and co-directors of the Forum on Religion and Ecology, an effort that fosters the emerging dialogue within religious and spiritual communities on ecological issues. The Forum explores the ways in which the natural world figures in various religious traditions.
John P. Wargo '84PhD Wargo studies the effectiveness of laws in reducing risks to human health posed by environmental hazards, especially to children. His most recent work documented the exceptionally poor air quality experienced by nearly 23 million children each day on school buses; these studies were instrumental in securing federal funds to retrofit buses with pollution-reducing equipment.
Lisa M. Curran Curran is working to understand the ecology of tropical forests in Indonesian Borneo and how to combat the devastating environmental and social consequences of deforestation. Working primarily in the Kalimantan, a supposedly protected forest, she documented and publicized illegal logging. Curran was named a MacArthur Fellow last year, for her ability to "forge new, practical solutions for sustainable natural resource extraction and development.”
Melinda D. Smith Smith is a plant community ecologist who studies the tallgrass prairie of the Great Plains to learn how species diversity and abundance relate to the functioning of ecosystems. Smith found that the dominant plant species were key to the health of the tallgrass prairie, even as the number of other species dropped. She is currently studying long-established field and salt marsh plant communities in New England and the effects of global climate change on grasslands.
Menachem Elimelech Elimelech works to bring "clean and abundant water to places that have neither." He studies the transport and fate of microbial pathogens in aquatic environments and designs better techniques for water quality control, and is involved (most recently in Tanzania) in improving water and sanitation in the developing world. He helped develop "forward osmosis desalination," which promises to be a lower-cost method of converting salt water into fresh.
Michael Dov Dove’s research focuses on how small communities in less developed countries, especially South and Southeast Asia, relate to the natural environment. He has spent two years in a tribal longhouse in Borneo studying swidden (slash and burn) agriculture, and four years in Pakistan advising its Forest Service on social forestry policies.
Michelle Addington Addington, who trained in both engineering and architecture and was a spacecraft engineer at NASA, explores advanced, energy-efficient ways to heat, cool, and ventilate buildings. She is also researching so-called smart materials, such as light-emitting diodes, "smart" glazing, and microheat pumps, and their potential in sustainable architecture and green buildings.
Paul Anastas Anastas, a synthetic organic chemist, is considered the "father of green chemistry," an emerging field that encourages the "design of chemical products and processes that reduce or eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances." He is currently working on green nanotechnology projects.
Robert O. Mendelsohn '78PhD Mendelsohn has studied how to identify the economic value of environmental resources, of environmental protection, and of such specific elements as air and hazardous waste pollution, wildlife populations, recreation areas, and oil spills. Over the last decade, he has been measuring the potential impacts from climate change on agriculture in the United States, Africa, Latin America, and other regions. Using his methodology, researchers have found that low-latitude countries will have more trouble than the industrialized nations in adapting their crops to climate change.
Robert Repetto Repetto’s recent research is on developing measurement tools that can estimate the financial risks that publicly traded companies face as a result of the environmental damage they may cause. One measure, TRUEVA (True Economic Value Added), was applied to 33 electric utilities and showed that, in terms of carbon dioxide emissions and other pollutants, all but four of them had economic risks larger than their after-tax operating profits.
Stephen Kellert '71PhD Kellert studies why humans love nature and how we express our love of nature. He is concerned with "biophilia," the biocultural basis and expression of human values of nature. He helped develop "restorative environmental design," which combines biophilic and low-environmental-impact building design techniques; it has been used in the Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC, and the Bank of America office tower in New York City. Kellert has also studied how childhood experience of nature relates to development and maturation.
Thomas E. Graedel Graedel is a pioneer in the development of industrial ecology—the art and science of designing industrial operations and products so they are as environmentally sound as possible. He also studies the use of virgin stocks of critical materials, such as mineral deposits, with an eye towards creating strategies to prevent their depletion. |
See also: Greasing the Skids The Basics: What You Buy and How You Clean Everyday Green Down in the Dumpster Getting Ourselves Back to the Garden |
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©1992–2012, Yale Alumni Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Yale Alumni Magazine, P.O. Box 1905, New Haven, CT 06509-1905, USA. yam@yale.edu |
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