Samuel L. Stanley Jr., president of Stony Brook University, and Kristina M. Johnson, chancellor of the State University of New York system, wrote that, with the Trump administration questioning the very existence of climate change, solutions to global warming must come from the country's 334 research universities.
"Every day, on hundreds of campuses, scientists dedicate their careers to understanding complex issues, predicting consequences, and testing solutions," they wrote in an Op-Ed published by The Chronicle of Higher Education, "students devote themselves to making their own mark in their chosen professions and on the larger world, and administrators commit to ensuring that their environment is welcoming and sustainable."
They added, "At no other place in the world do these cross-disciplinary minds come together more consistently than on university campuses."
"Climate scientists can predict long-range changes in weather patterns, but forecasting the social, economic, and other impacts of climate instability is harder, most notably because human behavior is less predictable," they wrote. "To be efficient, therefore, experts in myriad fields throughout academe must collaborate to mitigate the destructive effects of climate change."
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