Paris Climate Accord

The Paris Climate Accord to address climate change was drafted as part of the 21st Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change held in Paris in 2015. Member countries signing the accord, which became official on 4 November 2016, agreed to work towards reducing greenhouse emissions.

Mark Alan Hughes

Professor of Practice, School of Design and founding faculty director of the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy.
School of Design.
University of Pennsylvania.

As the founding director of Penn’s Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, Mark Alan Hughes helps the center to advance energy productivity by reframing the relationship between research and practice in support of policy innovation. Hughes is a Faculty Fellow of the Penn Institute for Urban Research, a Senior Fellow of the Wharton School's Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership, and a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Penn's Fox Leadership Program.  



Sarah Light

Assistant Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics.
The Wharton School.
University of Pennsylvania.

Her research examines issues at the intersection of environmental law and business innovation. Her areas of interest include administrative law, environmental dispute resolution, environmental law and policy, legislation and statutory interpretation, private environmental governance and the regulatory state.



Irina Marinov

Assistant Professor, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences.
School of Arts & Sciences.
University of Pennsylvania.

Marinov is an oceanographer and climate modeler. Together with lab members, she runs and analyzes large climate models to predict future changes in climate, with a particular focus on the role of the oceans in the global heat and carbon cycle.



Hermann Pfefferkorn

Professor, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences.
School of Arts & Sciences.
University of Pennsylvania.

Pfefferkorn studies ancient climate transitions as a means of understanding what ecological changes might take place under modern climate change. Specifically, he focuses on the previous icehouse to greenhouse transitions that occured in the Carboniferous and Permian between 304 and 260 million years ago, looking at paleoclimatology, landscape reconstruction, paleoecology, plant taphonomy, and whole plant reconstruction using plant fossils.