School of forestry and environmental studies

School Notes: School of the Environment
July/August 2014

Ingrid C. “Indy” Burke | http://environment.yale.edu

Professor published in IPCC report

Karen Seto, a professor of urbanization and geography at F&ES, was a coordinating lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) first-ever chapter to explore how greenhouse gas emissions can be mitigated at the urban level. The chapter, which is part of the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report, was published on April 13. According to Seto, climate mitigation strategies are more effective when policy instruments are bundled across sectors and when land use and transportation planning are integrated. “Thinking about mitigation from an urban perspective allows you to develop integrated strategies that might provide more effective results than thinking about the individual sectors separately,” she said. Seto says there is a narrowing window of opportunity to curb the effects of climate change at the urban level, as much of the world’s urban areas will be developed this century and infrastructure lock-in and behaviors have not been set in place. The IPCC reports are considered the authoritative reports on the current state of the scientific knowledge on climate change, and are the basis on which global climate change policy is determined.

Alumnus named to state energy post

Earlier this year, Robert K. Klee ’99MES, ’04JD, ’05PhD, was appointed the commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP), replacing Daniel Esty ’86JD, who returned to his professorship at Yale. Klee, who was Esty’s chief of staff for three years, says the new role offers the opportunity to use everything he learned at Yale, whether it’s when he’s exploring ways to improve agency efficiencies, reimagining how the state can manage its waste, or simply being able to speak intelligently with the state’s foresters. One of the benefits of working at the state level, Klee says, is that policymakers can actually achieve environmental and energy goals these days—unlike at the federal level where divisiveness has made any meaningful progress impossible. “In Connecticut we can mention the words ‘global warming’ and ‘climate change’ in ways that you can’t elsewhere in the country.”

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