Where theory and practice meet: Sustaining and impactful, and especially for governance fiduciaries.
https://pbswisconsin.org/watch/nova/weathering-future-preview-txzvwi/
As extreme weather in the U.S. impacts more people – with longer heat waves, more intense rainstorms, megafires, and droughts – discover how Americans are fighting back by marshaling ancient wisdom and innovating new solutions.
Scientists, residents see changes in ecosystem of forests that make regions ripe for conflagration
Ecologists who’ve spent years in the field studying the forest say they see new swings of extreme rainfall followed by drought in the region, an expanding range of insect pests that are making forests more susceptible to fire, and shifts in the rich soils and permafrost that absorb and store carbon from the atmosphere. These changes are now combining with past fire management practices that some critics say have worsened this year’s conflagration.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/canadian-fires-signal-new-frontier-in-climate-change-a57788b2
The Marquette University Sustainability Lab is a cross-disciplinary project that aims to research and disseminate knowledge, foster and develop managers around effective sustainability and stewardship practices increasingly demanded across industries globally. Our lab aligns with the university’s commitment to the Laudato Si’ papal encyclical and furthers our Catholic, Jesuit mission to care for our common home. Through instructional opportunities that span business, the STEM fields, the humanities and more, the Sustainability Lab provides students with the knowledge they need to Be the Difference.
Housed in finance and the college of business, the S-Lab is interdisciplinary across the university including the Office of Economic Partnerships, supply chain management, communications, engineering, the natural sciences, the Women’s Leadership Institute, the law school and the Center for Peacemaking.
Its purpose: to research, educate and bring together this generation of sustainability leaders.
Marquette has long been recognized as a leader in sustainability. The university hosts the “Sustainability 2.0” Conference every fall, bringing together business leaders and executives from investment firms, public and private companies and NGOs for the largest regional conference on the issue. Our ESG (environmental, social and governance) courses are, likewise, unique among Midwest universities, designed with the future of corporate behavior in mind. Finally, the university itself is a recipient of the Princeton Review’s “Green College” designation and is recognized as one of the country’s most sustainable campuses.
Co-director, Dr. Christopher K. Merker, had this to say on the Lab and the critical importance of sustainability on present and future business performance: “Our goal is to help people understand and adapt to the world that’s changed around them. Those who undertake this successfully will be prepared to handle the strategic issues around sustainability, whether as an investor or as a business manager.”
Protecting nature is lovely but climate tech is cool. Learning from the success of the latter could be essential to bolstering the former: we need to move nature from the realm of nice-to-haves and place it firmly at the heart of the modern economy. While the climate fight is far from won, there is cause for cautious optimism. In 2022, the EU produced more power from wind and solar than from gas. The US Inflation Reduction Act marked the single largest-ever climate action taken by the world’s largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases. Global climate pledges, including from developing nations, have reached the point where they would keep the world well below 2C of warming if fully implemented.
Climate investments have also weathered the broader market slump. Last year saw a record near $500bn invested in renewable energy. There were over 1,000 venture and growth equity investments into climate start-ups in 2022; the number of deals grew in every quarter, with over $40bn deployed.
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