MIT Alumni, Students, and Faculty Active in Copenhagen

This year's climate talks in Copenhagen are exciting for a number of reasons; chief among them is the fact that, after years of turning a blind eye, the United States is now actively participating! Another point of interest is MIT's engagement in the talks.

Alumni engagement:

Tom Fiddaman PhD ’97, Travis Franck SM ’05, PhD ’09, Andrew Jones SM ’97 and Beth Sawin PhD ’96 are providing a “climate scoreboard” that uses the C-ROADS  simulation to calculate the long-term climate impacts of proposals under consideration. Watch the video below for background and explanation of its features.

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Student engagement:

Aaron Thom and Katherine Potter, leaders of student group Sustainability@MIT, have been live-blogging from the conference daily. Read some of their posts:

60-100,000 March Through Copenhagen in Support of Action Against Climate Change

Access Denied: UN begins restricting entrance to COP15, Delays among negotiations

Bright Green Conference: Steven Chu and Rajendra Pachauri

Closing the Climategate

Faculty engagement:

Ian Waitz, the Jerome C. Hunsaker Professor and head of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and James Hileman, a principal research engineer in the department, spoke about the “Greening of U.S. Aviation” on December 8th. View the presentation notes (PDF).

Carlo Ratti, associate professor of the practice and head of the MIT SENSEable City lab in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, presented the “Copenhagen Wheel,” a project that aims to transform bicycle use in Denmark’s largest city by promoting urban sustainability and building new connections between the city’s cyclists. View a short video about the project:

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