Drew Shindell, PhD

Professor of Climate Sciences
Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University

About the Lecture:

The Lancet has identified responding to climate change as the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century, while air pollution is currently ranked as the largest environmental cause of premature death by the Global Burden of Disease. Emissions from power, transportation, industry and agriculture are the primary drivers of both problems. Hence societal choices related to these activities will affect public health via many pathways, including air quality, agricultural productivity and the many impacts of climate change. Although the world’s climate and air pollution agendas have begun to be linked via sustainability, and the broad concept of Planetary Health has been increasingly discussed, policy makers often lack integrated assessments of the impacts of their potential actions across multiple dimensions.

Dr. Shindell will discuss work to provide such policy-relevant assessments. Examples will include motor vehicle regulations, shipping emissions, electricity generation, food waste, livestock management and dietary choice, as well as ongoing efforts to provide widely applicable metrics that can inform policy decisions.

About the Speaker:

Drew Shindell is a Professor of Climate Sciences at the Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University. From 1995 to 2014 he was a scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City. Dr. Shindell taught atmospheric chemistry at Columbia University for more than a decade. His research concerns natural and human drivers of climate change, linkages between air quality and climate change, and the interface between climate change science and policy. He has been an author on more than 200 peer-reviewed publications and received awards from Scientific American, NASA, the EPA, and the NSF.

He has testified on climate issues before both houses of the US Congress, the UNFCCC and the World Bank, developed a climate change course with the American Museum of Natural History, and made numerous appearances in newspapers, on radio, and on TV as part of his public outreach efforts. He chaired the 2011 Integrated Assessment of Black Carbon and Tropospheric Ozone produced by the United Nations Environment Programme and World Meteorological Organization, was a Coordinating Lead Author on the 2013 Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and chairs the Scientific Advisory Panel to the Climate and Clean Air Coalition of nations, intergovernmental organizations and non-governmental organizations.