Forbes Contributor Steve Banker highlights Prof. Yossi Sheffi’s new book, Balancing Green, which focuses on sustainability in business. As Sheffi explains, “many companies engage in sustainability initiatives to prevent them from having to react to a rising tide of sentiment,” writes Banker. “Getting ahead of these kinds of campaigns can be at the heart of a robust risk management program.”
In an article for Forbes, Joseph Coughlin, director of the AgeLab, discusses the results of a study on generational attitudes about the environment. While Millennials often believe their older peers committed “unforgivable environmental sins over past decades,” Coughlin argues the data also show that older adults “might just be the catalyst and be the best hope we have for a more sustainable society in the coming century.”
In an article for Salon, Associate Prof. Noelle Eckley Selin and postdoc Sae Yun Kwon discuss their latest research, which examined emissions in China. They write that although mercury pollution is often associated with fish consumption, “China’s future emissions trajectory can have a measurable influence on the country’s rice methylmercury” levels, as well.
In a Q&A with The Boston Globe’s Sarah Shemkus, Prof. Yossi Sheffi discusses his new book, Balancing Green, which examines “the challenges and benefits of ‘going green’ in a multilayered global economy.” Sheffi suggests green practices can be advantageous for companies because “certain things also cut costs and increase profit, like energy savings.”
In an opinion piece for The Boston Globe, Alex Amouyel, executive director of MIT Solve, explains how the initiative is ‘crowdsolving’ thorny global problems through open innovation. “We need to source ideas from innovators all around the world to find the next breakthroughs,” argues Amouyel. “We know talent and ingenuity exist everywhere.”
CNN’s Sophie Tatum reports that six scientists from the U.S., including a senior research scientist with MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, will join France’s new climate change initiative. The effort, notes Tatum, is meant to offer the international scientific community a chance to, “increase its efforts in battling climate change.”
Using several comparative models, a new study led by MIT researchers reveals that China’s pledge to peak its carbon emissions by 2030 could cut down on as many as 160,000 premature deaths. “Politically, the research confirms why Chinese officials have their own internal reasons to cut CO2 even though the U.S. is abandoning Paris and disengaging internationally on climate,” writes Ben Geman for Axios.
A new study finds that a 4% reduction in China's carbon emissions by 2030 could save a total of $464.5 billion in healthcare costs, writes Chase Purdy for Quartz. “We have all these policy goals for a transition toward a more sustainable society,” says Associate Prof. Noelle Selin. “Mitigating air pollution, a leading cause of death, is one of them, and avoiding dangerous climate change is another.”
Writing in The Boston Globe, Elise Takahama describes new research by MIT’s Sukrit Ranjan and colleagues that suggests sulfudic anion molecules provide evidence for the origins of life. Takahama also highlights the varying disciplines in the research team, which joined molecular chemistry experts with planetary scientists. “One of the most exciting things,” says Ranjan, is “how different communities, when they talk to each other, can really make dramatic advances.”
A study by MIT researchers examines molecules present in the early atmosphere to better understand how living things came into existence, reports David Grossman of Popular Mechanics. “Preliminary work by the researchers show that sulfidic anions would likely have quickened the chemical reactions required to convert extremely basic prebiotic molecules into RNA,” explains Grossman.
Deborah Cramer, a visiting scholar at the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative, writes for The New York Times about “the highly endangered North Atlantic right whale.” “We must act boldly and swiftly,” writes Cramer. “With only about 100 breeding female right whales left, we haven’t much time.”
Researchers utilized weather data from the region between Texas, North Dakota, and Ohio to see if an increase in crop growth had an effect on area climate change. Kimberly Hickok writes for Science that there is "strong indication" that the regional changes in climate in the late 20th century can be attributed to “agriculture, and not changing sea surface temperature."
A study by Prof. Daniel Rothman shows that there could be enough carbon in the Earth’s oceans by 2100 to trigger a sixth mass extinction, reports Mark Fischetti and Jen Christiansen for Scientific American.
A new study by MIT researchers found that the Clean Air Act has had a larger impact on reducing the mortality rate than originally thought, reports Alan Moses for U.S. News & World Report. The researchers found that, “the decline in organic aerosol may account for more lives saved than the EPA had estimated.”
In this video, Reuters reporter Elly Park spotlights a new technique developed by MIT researchers to purify contaminated water. Park explains that the, “highly-selective process can even capture micropollutants, things that can exist in small, but potentially dangerous amounts in water.”