Environment

Focusing on urbanization as a key driver of environmental change in the 21st century, researchers at Princeton have created a framework to understand and compare cities’ food systems and their effects on climate change, water use and land use. The research will allow planners to estimate the impact of a city’s food system and evaluate policy actions.

One of the first studies to examine the effect of climate change on diseases such as influenza that are transmitted directly from person to person has found that higher temperatures and increased rainfall could make outbreaks less severe but more common, particularly in North America.

Princeton University-led researchers have extracted 2 million-year-old ice cores from Antarctica that provide the first direct observations of Earth’s climate at a time when the furred early ancestors of modern humans still roamed.

Cutting carbon emissions quickly requires a price on carbon, experts from industry, government and academia said at the annual meeting of the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment last week. A carbon fee would provide a dual benefit: offer direct incentives to cut emissions, and also create a new market for firms that can monetize carbon dioxide as a resource by transforming the gas into products and fuels.