Taking steps to combat climate change and its impacts.
2019 was the second warmest year on record. We need to act quickly to slow the effects of our changing climate. The frequency of natural disasters is already speeding up. The research at our university will help slow this process, but we need everyone on board to bring us back from the brink.
Take a Deep Dive on SDG 13
Check out these resources that lifts up the importance of taking climate action from faculty, staff and guest lectures here at UB.
On this page:
UB's Climate Action Plan Earth Day Annoucement
On the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, UB announced its updated climate action plan (www.buffalo.edu/climate-action) with 10 strategies to get to climate neutrality in 10 years. This online panel featured opening remarks from Provost A. Scott Weber, and was joined by panelists Amir Rezaei, Cannon Design, Tonga Pham, associate VP for UB Facilities, Maya Miller, Education and Leadership Fellow in Sustainability, Dr. Elizabeth Thomas, paleoclimatologist, and Ryan McPherson, chief sustainability officer.
Western New York Youth Climate Council: Climate Change and Activism
The UB School of Social work hosted the WNY Youth Climate Council on April 2, 2020.
The 2015-16 El Niño and Climate Change
Michael McPhaden is a Senior Scientist at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, Washington. His research focuses on large-scale tropical ocean dynamics, ocean-atmosphere interactions, and the ocean’s role in climate. 6-14-18. RENEW
Carbon Reduction Challenge 2020
The Carbon Reduction Challenge (GLY479/579), co-taught each spring by Dr. Elizabeth K. Thomas, assistant professor in Geology and Ryan McPherson, UB Chief Sustainability Officer, is an interdisciplinary seminar-style science course that relies on subject matter experts from across the UB campus and beyond, encouraging lively discussion of both current events and past developments relevant to our energy and climate future. The main student activity is the semester-long "Carbon Reduction Challenge” project, which is carried out by teams of 2 to 3 students in collaboration with local businesses and organizations. The project involves designing, pitching, and implementing creative strategies to avoid carbon emissions and, where possible, identify benefits to all three legs of the triple bottom line: People-Planet-Profit. This video is of the spring 2020 final presentations.
Social Work Research on Global Environmental Change: Past, Present, and Future Directions
In this episode, Lisa Reyes Mason, PhD takes the Social Work mantra of "person-in-environment" and describes her work related to Global Environmental Change. Applying a social and economic justice perspective, she discusses the impact that Social Work research, education and practice has on shaping our responses to challenges that will continue to challenge those of us living on Planet Earth.
SUNY Distinguished Professor Andrew Whittaker is part of a cohort led by TerraPraxis, a non-profit focused on action for climate and prosperity, that is developing a digital platform to repower coal plants using advanced nuclear energy.
A plan to offset carbon emissions by converting brownfields to fields of bamboo. An “ecoscaping” initiative that would encourage even the busiest of people to grow food in their backyard by using ready-to-install garden beds.
In another instance of your mother being right, the presenter of this year’s Richard V. Lee, MD, Lectureship in Global Health showed how the weather — specifically absolute humidity — can affect our health.
Clean energy is critical to solving our climate crisis. But we need to consider the full environmental and human health impacts of solar energy generation across its entire lifecycle, including mining, manufacturing, use, decommissioning and recycling. This requires us to identify critical stages in the production process, and how choices in materials and chemicals at different stages of production influence each other.
Urban design students have once again shown what UB has to offer to the community. This month, students submitted proposals for transforming vacant spaces on Buffalo’s East Side between Zenner and Kilhoffer Street into areas for urban infrastructure and potential housing.
Tripathi noted that among institutions of higher education, UB ranked No. 1 in the world for climate action this year, according to the 2021 Times Higher Education Impact Rankings. He thanked the UB Foundation for aligning investment decisions with UB’s sustainability goals.
A UB research team will investigate why stocked fish in Lake Ontario are not reproducing. The effort is being funded by New York Sea Grant, which recently announced eight projects totaling $1.3 million.
Courtney Shafer, who will join the UB Department of Geology this fall as a PhD student, has been awarded a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Computational Science Graduate Fellowship.
Six UB scientists and engineers have received prestigious grants for early-career investigators through the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) or U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research to pursue projects in these areas. Together, the awards total nearly $3.5 million.
From Sept. 20-26, UB students, faculty and staff are encouraged to participate by utilizing green transit options to get to and around the university’s three campuses. People who take part can share details of their commute using the hashtags #UBuffalo and #GTG21 on social media.
In a continuation of the university’s climate neutrality efforts, UB will serve as a host site for an innovative battery technology system that uses zinc and air as fuel. The technology, developed by Vancouver-based Zinc8 Energy Solutions, provides a cost-effective solution for energy storage, making clean energy reliable and available as and when required.
In a barren field in the shadows of towering grain elevators at Silo City, a group of UB architecture students have created a beautiful structure that will continue to evolve and take shape. And they did it amid the stops and starts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Thanks to the entrepreneurial success of the late Carl V. Granger, founder of Uniform Data System for Medical Rehabilitation (UDSmr), a venture he created in partnership with UB and the UB Foundation, the university has received a $10 million gift to its Boldly Buffalo campaign.
In 2020, powerful online movements emerged to celebrate and elevate the voices of Black scientists. Called the #BlackInX movements, these efforts arose during months of protests against police killings and police brutality.
This Black Lives Matter Poster Project exhibit in Silverman Library aims to expand understanding of what it means to be Black in America. Photo: Meredith Forrest Kulwicki.
Diversity has always been an issue in STEM. Although a 2018 Pew report found that women make up half of the U.S. workforce in STEM occupations, it also found that their presence varies widely across occupational clusters and education levels.
More and more organizations are adopting a new approach: that of servant leadership, in which leaders prioritize multiple stakeholders and improve society, while prospering financially.
Anticipated to begin operation in early 2022, UB's second mobile dental clinic is expected to expand the dental school’s outreach by more than 1,000 patients annually.
Jeffrey and Irene Jacobson have endowed the Irene and Jeffrey Jacobson Fellowship for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the School of Management. The two-year fellowship will fund a first- and second-year MBA student every year.
Picture this: World leaders have just unleashed utter chaos, launching nuclear missiles in a global war. The world as we know it is now a nuclear wasteland.
In December, we asked the readers of our newsletter Climate Fwd: and our Twitter followers what they were planning on doing differently in 2021. We got some amazing responses. If you’re thinking of making a “green” New Year’s resolution, here are a few ideas, collected from those replies.
Rayshard Brooks. George Floyd. Daniel Prude. Breonna Taylor. These are the now-familiar names of just a few of the many Black people killed by police in 2020.
New York residents and businesses generate up to 20 million waste tires each year. Tire dumps are breeding grounds for mosquitos and pollute the air and water when they burn.
UB researchers were the driving force behind the publication last week of a major report that details strategies local governments in low- and middle-income countries can use to create more innovative and equitable community food systems.
Recently, researchers have been exploring how to turbo charge a passive cooling technique — known as radiative or sky cooling — with sun-blocking nanomaterials that emit heat away from building rooftops. While progress has been made, this eco-friendly technology isn’t commonplace because researchers have struggled to maximize its cooling capabilities.
In a burst of climate orders, the president also ordered federal agencies to begin the process of reinstating environmental regulations reversed under the Trump administration.
The array of directives — touching on international relations, drilling policy, employment and national security, among other things — elevate climate change across every level of the federal government.
The University at Buffalo has played a crucial role in advancing the University Global Coalition’s SDG 13 Decade of Action, alongside the University of Waterloo and the Universidad Carlos III Madrid. As part of this leadership initiative, UB senior Netra Mittal joined an international plenary panel detailing a new study the working group commissioned.
Partnerships are a vital part of Sustainability Month at UB, and many of the signature events occurring across campus throughout April reflect the growing partnerships being built as the university strives toward implementation of its recently updated climate action plan and achieving climate neutrality by 2030.
UB Sustainability worked with various campus partners to host the Earth Day event as part of Sustainability Month at UB. Billed as a candid conversation, the program challenged members of the campus community to think about what they might be willing to sacrifice to advance UB’s climate action plan (CAP) and its aggressive goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2030.
Without minimum requirements, costly and land-consuming off-street parking becomes an option instead of a mandate, paid for by those who use it. Rethinking car-centric urban planning allows for more green space, transit-oriented development and active living.
“How can we save the climate?” “What about ending fossil fuels?” “But what about lowering emissions?” “How does that affect biodiversity?” These are dire questions the world is facing, but you’d be surprised by who is asking them and feeling the urgency to act.
How do you explain glacial flow to children? Well an artist in UB's geology department developed a stunning way to show just that! Using a variety of paints, the end results are incredible works of art.
At Triad Recycling and Energy Corporation in Tonawanda, employees take waste that's headed to the dump, and recycle it. Drywall gets shredded and turned into flooring for cattle. Foam from mattresses gets shredded too, and is made into carpet padding.
UB has once again been recognized as a leader in sustainability in higher education, garnering high marks in two recent rankings. UB fared well across a number of categories in the Times Higher Education 2022 Impact Rankings, which assess universities around the globe against the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
UB will receive $4.5 million from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to create a new research center for improving plastic recycling.
When UB graduate student Matt Taboni began working at a local bakery in the summer of 2020, he realized how much food was wasted when he cut off the tops of cakes and tossed them into the trash. There wasn’t a proper system to store the scraps and donate them to local food pantries.
Larry Asp grew up playing shinny outside in this tiny rural town he calls home again after 40 years away. Since returning, he also holds the keys to the outdoor “Rink of Dreams” that gives the 90 local residents the chance to skate outside during the keen Canadian winters.
On Earth Day last year, UB rolled out its updated climate action plan, called UB’s 10 in 10. University leaders will gather virtually on April 22 to update the campus community on the plan’s progress over the past year.
After several years of due diligence, the Board of Trustees of the UB Foundation (UBF) Inc. announced Monday that its investment portfolio of U.S. public equities has divested from companies that derive revenues from fossil fuel.
There is a way UB media study PhD student Jason Livingston wants visitors to experience his “Goodbye, World!” installation, a collaboration with faculty member Jason Geistweidt now on display in the Burchfield Penney Art Center.
One mistake turned the water taps of Flint, Mich., into streams of suffering back in 2014 – and the same thing could happen in Buffalo or just about any other older community in America.
