With dozens of events, Climate Week 2024 will focus on solutions

Climate Week at Penn returns for the fifth time from Oct. 14-18, with partners across the University holding more than 50 in-person and virtual events ranging from lectures and panel discussions to hands-on activities, tours, and networking events.

The theme this year? Climate solutions.

“Climate Week can be a convening spot for folks who want to talk more and think more about how Penn can make a difference on our own campus, in communities that we’re part of, and in communities around the world,” says Environmental Innovations Initiative (EII) Director Katie Unger Baillie. “It’s a really exciting moment for thinking about climate and working on climate at Penn.”

Climate Week began as a grassroots initiative, and has grown into an institutionally supported event, with EII leading campus efforts.

“The level of commitment from the schools has never been higher, and I think the conversations are becoming more sophisticated and intersectional as well,” Sustainability director Nina Morris says.

Ahead of this year’s Climate Week activities organizers spoke about this as a pivotal time on Penn’s campus. German professor Simon Richter of the School of Arts & Sciences, a Climate Week organizer since the beginning, addressed the excitement around who will be appointed the inaugural Vice Provost for Climate Science, Policy, and Action; Baillie pointed to alumnus Alp Ercil’s $10 million gift to establish the Penn Climate Sustainability Initiative; and Morris noted that her office is about to launch its Climate and Sustainability Action Plan for the next five years. Leading on climate is also one of the key tenets of Penn’s strategic framework, In Principle and Practice.

Raising awareness is just one part of Climate Week, Richter says. “What Climate Week really is aiming to do is to help everybody find their niche, to find their place, to find the way in which they can contribute to climate solutions.”

Here are some ways members of the Penn community can get involved in Climate Week.

Learn about faculty-driven solutions

Multiple events are happening at the Climate Week Tent on College Green, where all members of the Penn community are welcome to join, no registration needed. This includes the Climate Solutions Showcase on Thursday, Oct. 17 from 12-1 p.m., featuring faculty from the School of Engineering and Applied Science, Weitzman School of Design, and School of Arts & Sciences. They will be talking about their work on carbon management, radiative cooling technologies, sustainable concrete, and more.

Also in the Climate Week Tent on Wednesday, Oct. 16 from 12-1 p.m. is the 1.5* Minute Faculty Climate Lectures, named for the maximum degrees Celsius the average global temperature can rise above preindustrial levels to avoid the worst consequences of global warming. The event is inspired by the School of Arts & Sciences’ 60-Second Lectures. Six faculty from political science, history and sociology of science, biology, Russian and East European Studies, and the Kleinman Center will talk about topics including elections, sustainable agriculture, and plants.

One of the people in the lineup is Sanya Carley, faculty director of the Kleinman Center and Presidential Distinguished Professor of Energy Policy and City Planning in the Weitzman School, who says she will discuss the urgency of the utility disconnection crisis in America and policy protections that are available but inadequate.

Later that day, from 2-3 p.m., Carley is also presenting at the Kleinman Center on obstacles and opportunities in solar energy development. She will be talking about residential use while event organizer Tom Daniels, Crossways Professor and director of the concentration of Land Use and Environmental Planning in the Weitzman School, and John Quigley, senior fellow at the Kleinman Center, will discuss large-scale applications.

Carley is also one of about a dozen faculty to participate in Wharton Climate Prof, an event showcasing the climate-related research of Wharton School faculty. This will take place Oct. 16 from 5:15-6:45 p.m. in Steinberg Hall-Dietrich Hall.

Build bat boxes

All are welcome to gather at the Climate Week Tent from 5-7 p.m. on Tues., Oct. 15 for Bat Bonanza. There, people can help build bat boxes and learn about bat conservation, an event idea that originated with Nick Tanner, a student who grew interested in bats from going caving with his parents and realizing that bats in the U.S. are under threat from habitat loss and white-nose syndrome. Female bats will breed and reproduce in these boxes, explains Julie Ellis, co-director of the Wildlife Futures Program at the School of Veterinary Medicine. Bat populations in Pennsylvania have declined dramatically from white-nose syndrome, she says, and building bat boxes is a great way to bolster their numbers.

Ellis says the Wildlife Futures Program works closely with the Pennsylvania Game Commission and that its state mammalogist, Greg Turner, is a world-renowned bat expert, so he provided information on how to build bat boxes. Once completed, they will be installed in Penn Park and James G. Kaskey Memorial Park. The team from Penn worked to ensure the project “wasn’t just about installing the bat boxes but educating the community about why this matters and the important role that bats play in our urban ecosystem,” Morris says.

Hear from two German youth climate activists

The Organizing for Climate Justice and Democracy: Perspectives from Germany Youth Activism event, taking place Oct. 15 at 2 p.m. in Houston Hall, features Luisa Neubauer and Helena Marschall, who helped organize the Fridays for Future school walkouts in Germany.

Neubauer, 28, and Marschall, now 21, are at the forefront of the climate movement in Germany organizing grassroots campaigns, influencing policy, and mobilizing communities to create sustainable solutions. The two are touring the East Coast and Midwest to share lessons learned from climate organizing in Germany and learn from American activists.

Understand climate careers

EII organized a panel about pathways to careers that blend a focus on health and climate, featuring “lightning talks” from 10 Penn faculty and staff in the Perelman School of Medicine, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, School of Nursing, and Penn Vet. This will take place in the Climate Week Tent on Oct. 17 from 5-6:30 p.m. Earlier that day, The Water Center is holding a showcase on careers in the water industry.

Other career-oriented events are taking place Oct. 15. From 2-3:30 p.m., Career Services is holding a tour of Carbon Reform, and participants can hear from the climate tech startup’s engineers, scientists, and creatives. From 6:30-7:30 p.m., College to Climate and Penn Climate Ventures are holding a virtual workshop on finding a job in climate.

Share climate feelings

Climate Week also provides space for people to work through climate anxiety. Ellis helped organize a Climate Cafe, which she describes as a “safe, private space for staff, students, and faculty to come and express their feelings and share their perspectives on climate change.”

It will be held on Friday, Oct. 18, with one session from 10-11:15 a.m. and another from 11:15-12:30, and interested participants must register as space is limited. The discussion will be facilitated by psychiatrist Beth Mark, recently retired from Student Health and Counseling Services at Penn; epidemiologist Jennifer Pinto-Martin, the Viola MacInnes/Independence Professor of Nursing and director of the Master of Public Health Program; and Katharine Staley, a clinical psychologist and visiting scholar at the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media.

Additionally, on Monday, Oct. 14 from 10-noon on Locust Walk at College Green, students are invited to do chalk drawings related to climate anxiety.

A few other events

• Play for the Planet — Faculty, staff, and students can come play Daybreak, a cooperative board game about climate change from the designer of the game Pandemic, on Oct. 17 from 6-9 p.m. in Levine Hall room 107.

• Ramanan Raghavendran, Chair of Penn’s Board of Trustees, and Michael Weisberg, the Bess W. Heyman President's Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and deputy director of Perry World House, will be in conversation about the meaning of climate leadership. Raghavendran is the managing partner and co-founder of a venture capital firm focused on climate and sustainability, and Weisberg is a philosopher of science and climate policy researcher who has advised island nations at COP. Their “fireside chat” will take place in Bodek Lounge on Oct. 18 at noon.

• Penn Vet Annual BioBlitz — Come to the BioPond at Kaskey Park from 3-5:30 p.m. on Oct. 16 to “spend a couple of hours there inventorying what’s in the pond and what’s in the area around the pond in terms of biodiversity,” Ellis says. “We get waders on, we go into the pond, and we look for turtles and fish and crayfish any kind of birds that we can see.”

To see all Climate Week events, visit climateweek.provost.upenn.edu.

Along with Richter, Baillie, Morris, and Ellis, the Climate Week core organizing committee includes Kate La Spina, program coordinator at the Environmental Innovations Initiative; Heidi Wunder-Riegel, associate director of EII; Chenyao Liu, a second-year student and Climate Week intern; Jon Hawkings, assistant professor of earth and environmental science; and Paulo Arratia, professor of mechanical engineering and applied mechanics.