My grandfather is a farmer. When I was little, he always tells me, “To become a successful farmer, 30% depends on oneself and the other 70% depends on the weather.” At the time, my grandfather probably had nothing in mind about the impact of global environmental change on agriculture. But he also clearly did not … Continue reading Impact of Agriculture on Environment

Last year, two powerful hurricanes — Harvey and Irma — hit the United States, causing unprecedented habitat and economic loss. Even though Atlanta was not directly impacted by the high level of hurricanes, many students, faculty and staff at Emory are from the regions that are influenced by Harvey&Irma. It is important to understand that … Continue reading How extreme weathers like Harvey & Irma occur

Data have now become the indispensable part of people’s everyday life. From shopping in grocery stores to analyzing DNA results, numbers are everywhere. However, sometimes things get a bit tricky when you don’t put them into context. The most obvious example would be salary. When one said their annual income is $47k, others might no … Continue reading How to communicate numbers effectively to the public?

Atlanta Better Buildings Challenge   Energy In 2015, the ABBC’s annual source energy saving was 3.21 trillion Btu1, equals to 940,758 MWh, while the total energy production of Georgia that year was 622 trillion Btu2, equals 18,234,882 MWh. Savings from ABBC could account for 5% of the total energy production. If we are using a … Continue reading Numeracy Component for ABBC

Scientists have been struggling to deliver their research findings to the public-sphere despite their expertise in coming up with results. Some blame policy-makers only focus their own political success; others realized that the science-policy interface is truly a hard issue to address. At the end of the day, we have to realize that people with … Continue reading How to communicate results climate initiatives effectively to policy-makers

Atlanta Better Buildings Challenge   The Atlanta Better Building Challenge (ABBC) is a voluntary program that challenges key stakeholders to reduce water and energy consumption in buildings through a variety of efficiency improvement programs. Since its inception in 2011, the ABBC has been growing rapidly in terms of the number of participants and the total … Continue reading Policy White Paper/One-pager for Atlanta Better Buildings Challenge

Establishment of Gender Action Plan (GAP), progress on Green Climate Fund (GCF), starting of Talanoa Dialogue, all these wonderful things happened during the 23rd Conference of Parties (COP23), in Bonn Germany. However, what excites me the most is the historic breakthrough in agriculture sector, ending a deadlock that lasted for years. Agriculture is a field … Continue reading Agriculture Agreement Reached @ COP23

  Every Tuesday around 12 o’clock, I would walk over to the Cox Hall Bridge, not because I have any class at the time, nor do I have any friend to see. The only reason I go there is because the weekly farmers’ market here at Emory. Farmers’ market is not a brand new idea. … Continue reading Farmers’ Market — A community effort to support sustainable agriculture

If you were to ask me what’s my opinion on business’ effort on combating global environmental change last year, I would probably laugh at you. The nature of a corporation is profit-driven and I would not have regarded anything related to business as environmentally friendly. Things began to change after I enrolled in Dr. Benjamin … Continue reading Sustainable Agriculture — Corporations taking Social Responsibility

Gum, Yogurt, Ethanol, etc… What do these things have in common? Guess what, they are all corn products! Because its multipurpose, corn is a crucial agricultural goods to the whole world. But especially to the United States. In fact, the US produced 361.1 millions of tonnes of corn in the year 2014, accounting for 36% … Continue reading Money Power? Secrets behind Agricultural Subsidies