Confronting Our Climate Future

Engineers and applied scientists are increasingly integral to the future of a healthy planet. That’s true not just for the sustainable technologies they produce—materials to pull carbon from the air and slash the energy consumption of a digitized world; zero carbon fuels to keep the economy moving—but also for their ability to create mechanisms for systemic change, reconceiving how markets invest in clean tech and how cities balance the fiscal and cultural impacts of rising seas. Such innovations grow organically at Columbia, which has contributed to more IPCC reports than any other American university. Here, researchers think critically about what it means to create technology for the long term—in harmony with people and their environment. More