Both Michigan State and Michigan faculty involved in upcoming Copenhagen conference

In independent announcements, both Michigan State University and University of Michigan revealed Tuesday, December 1st, that one or more of their faculty members would be involved with policy decisions concerning climate change. MSU reported that Associate Professor of Economics Jinhua Zhao has recently been appointed to a three-year term on the Environmental Economics Advisory Committee of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board. He has also been reported as advising Swedish officials as they develop proposals for the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen later this week. Nearly simultaneously, the University of Michigan announced that a group of three professors and nine students will be attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference.

Jinhua Zhao

Dr. Zhao divides his time at MSU between the Department of Economics and the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics. He also leads the bioeconomy and global climate change research activities in the College of Social Science at MSU. His research on the economics of climate change focuses on designing the architecture for the next climate treaty so that it encourages voluntary participation, increases cost effectiveness and promotes monitoring and enforcement. Dr. Zhao also conducts research on the economics of biofuels, with an emphasis on the long-term carbon footprints of biofuels.

In 2008, Zhao and Dr. Larry Karp, Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, co-authored a paper that argued that the next climate agreement after the Kyoto Agreement should impose national ceilings on affluent nations’ greenhouse gas emissions, with voluntary abatement by developing countries. To simultaneously address participation and enforcement, the pair advocated an escape clause tied to fines for nations that could not meet their treaty emissions reduction obligations. Their paper bested 27 others to win a research paper competition sponsored by the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements.

"One thing that we have to recognize is that it is expensive to actually combat global warming. So we have to reduce our emissions and restrict our growth in certain areas," Zhao was quoted in a press release this past February. "There is cost related to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, so this is the first thing I want to emphasize. But however, on the other hand, the benefit or potential benefit of avoiding climate disasters is so big."

In addition to his work on the E.P.A.'s Environmental Economics Advisory Committee, which advises the Agency on broad scientific matters in science, technology, social and economic issues and reviews the information being used or proposed as the basis for environmental regulations, Zhang expects to consult with Swedish officials as they develop proposals for the Copenhagen gathering later this month.

University of Michigan delegation to Copenhagen

A delegation of three professors, nine students, and an unspecified number of alumni will be making the trip to Copenhagen next week to attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference. Richard Rood, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences, will be leading the delegation. The other two professors attending the conference will be Henry Pollack, professor emeritus in the Department of Geological Sciences, and Paul Edwards, an associate professor in the School of Information. All three are recognized experts in some field related to climate change.

In a podcast, Rood, whose research focuses on the intersection of weather and climate, stated that he and other scientists think the meeting will be a tremendous success if the paths forward were defined and led to reduction of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, although he expected there will be difficulties reaching such an agreement and there might be a delay of up to 10 years before any action is taken. He also expected that alternative energy, the transfer of technology from developed to developing countries, and the use of coal, probably the worst fuel in terms of greenhouse gas emissions would all be topics of discussion at the conference. In response to a question about the role of universities, he responded, "The climate change problem touches everybody, it touches everything, so I feel as if climate knowledge has to be integrated across the unversity as a whole."

Pollack and Edwards have both recently published books on climate change. Pollack is the author of World Without Ice, in which he describes the role ice has played in the development of Earth’s landscape, climate, and human civilization, and the reciprocal impact of people on the planet’s ice. He paints a compelling portrait of the delicate geological balance between ice and climate, and why its rapid disappearance portends serious consequences in our not-so-distant future. He was also one of eight U-M researchers who contributed to the set of climate change reports issued by the UN-sponsored panel that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore. Edwards wrote A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming, which surveys the history of knowledge about the global climate from the 19th century to the present.

The team has been blogging about their experiences at the Michigan at COP15 Blog. Readers can also follow them on Twitter and Facebook.