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April 2019 was the first time that a government declared climate change a national emergency. Over 1,900 local governments and 23 national governments have expressed similar sentiments since then.
A 2021 report released by the IPCC labeled climate change a ‘code red’ for humanity, and every day more than 2 million people search the term ‘climate crisis’ on Google. So it’s apparent, the climate crisis is imminent. What’s the solution? Experts at Duke’s annual Research WeekDuring a virtual panel on February 1, participants presented their research-based ideas.
The panel was mediated by a Biology professor Mohamed Noor,The solution was offered by professors. Mark BorsukAnd Jonathan Wiener. Known as solar radiation modification, SRM is “an attempt to moderate global warming by intentionally increasing the amount of incoming sunlight that is reflected by the atmosphere back to space,” according to Borsuk. Its primary technique is stratospheric aerosol injection. Wiener explained that their research is “trying to understand the risk… And we’re working to study these multiple impacts because all too often, as we’re all familiar with human decision making at the individual level or the governmental public policy level tends to focus on one thing at a time.” However, even with possible governance challenges at play, their research poses an extremely cheap yet effective solution for avoiding some of the worst impacts of climate change.
Next on the panel was Dalia Patino Echeverri, an associate professor at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment. She began by reflecting on the difficulties faced in Texas last year after the snowstorm, and how climate changes have made these challenges more acute. Her research focuses on how to address the electricity issues that climate change is producing in our nation, through a system called ‘GRACE’. ‘GRACE’ is a power grid that is risk-aware for clean, smart energy usage.
“It considers the forecast of electricity, the amount of load on the forecast of electricity generation from wind and sun of resources, and looks at the availability of conventional resources to schedule this commercial resources.” said Echeverri. Its operating system is highly intelligent and minimizes the expected value and total costs of energy in times of climate crisis.
Finally, a solution was found. Brian SillimanRachel Carson Distinguished Lecturer in Marine Biology. He created a grassroots approach to climate restoration called Duke Restore.
“A lot of our research and those of others have shown that the presence of restored marine environments greatly protects human societies on the coastline from increasing threat storm surge, and flooding generated in large part by climate change impacts, etc.” Silliman began.
Duke Restore is an initiative that seeks to restore ecosystems and shorelines, indirectly helping in climate crisis relief. Silliman is currently working with governments and other conservation groups to change the way they plan on restoring these ecosystems from scratch. ““We’re doing this here in North Carolina with US Marine Corps, changing the planting designs to switch the restoration trajectory from failure to success.”
Kay JowersThe panel event was closed by Senior Policy Associate at Duke Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.
“My charge is to give you some food for thought about creating a more supportive environment for environmental and climate justice at Duke,” she began. She explained the importance of action in comparison to documentation and suggested that equitable approaches were needed to prevent a climate disaster.
“In the world of Environmental Justice Studies, the communities, and the scholars have been calling for less problematization and documenting of problems, and more orientation towards solutions.” Her sentiments resonated deeply with the theme of the panel, as solution-based research is of paramount importance in the 21st century.
The Duke Research Week panel on climate solutions provided concrete explanations for the imminent climate crisis. These researchers have the solutions to the future, even though climate changes are more evident than ever.
Post by Skylar Hughes, Class of 2025