School Notes: School of the Environment
January/February 2024

New program will encourage high-impact climate careers

An exciting gift from Anita and Joshua Bekenstein ’80 to the Yale School of the Environment will establish a university-wide program to increase the ranks of Yale graduates in climate leadership roles and accelerate the pace of climate action. 

Through a combination of scholarships, internship stipends, and post-graduate incentives, the program will help make it more affordable for emerging leaders to pursue high-impact careers in areas of high need, such as government and the nonprofit sector. With the window of time to reduce emissions rapidly closing, the initial primary focus of the Bekenstein Climate Leaders Program will be on climate change mitigation.

Professor to lead DOE study

Yale School of the Environment professor Pete Raymond is leading a US Department of Energy study that explores promising methods to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and mitigate climate change.

The study, funded by the DOE’s Energy Earthshot Initiative, will create a modeling framework that connects rainfall, soils, rivers, coastal oceans, and open oceans to fully evaluate the impact of enhanced mineral weathering (EMW) and ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) on atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, ecosystems, and ocean pH. It will be conducted by Yale scientists from YSE and Yale’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences who have been working together through the Yale Center for Natural Carbon Capture. The research team from Yale includes James Saiers, Clifton R. Musser Professor of Hydrology at YSE, and Noah Planavsky, Matt Eisaman, and Juan Lora from earth and planetary sciences. Scientists from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Princeton University, and Texas A&M University are also partnering on the study.