Mitigation

Mitigating greenhouse gas emissions is the central way to combating climate change. Even if our planet is on a trajectory that precludes reducing temperatures to pre-industrial levels, the worst-case climate change scenarios without any mitigation are truly catastrophic. Every action to mitigate emissions puts our planet's future on a more sustainable path. Plus, there are countless opportunities to mitigate emissions and the list of affordable and actionable solutions grows every day. Empowering people through knowledge, mitigation research helps everyone make emission reduction decisions in a way that fits their ability and context.

Expert: Nathaniel Springer, Associate Research Professor in Economics and Industrial Ecology, Institute on the Environment, University of Minnesota Twin Cities

Adaptation and mitigation are both important pieces of addressing the challenge of climate change. Some efforts, such as carbon sequestration, are a strategy for both adaptation and mitigation, where the same carbon molecules leaving the atmosphere to reduce emissions also become organic matter and conserved soil, which is great for adapting to drought or severe storms.  

Expert: Jessica Gutknecht, Associate Professor, Department of Soil, Water, and Climate, College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences, University of Minnesota Twin Cities

Mitigation efforts aim to both reduce emissions and increase the removal of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Carbon sequestration is the movement of carbon from the atmosphere into natural or human-made storage (“carbon sinks”). One common natural carbon sink is forests, where trees remove carbon (CO2) from the atmosphere via photosynthesis, storing it in above and belowground biomass. In addition to carbon remaining in forests, harvested trees can further store carbon in wood products. Although carbon sequestration is an important tool toward mitigation, it is only half of the solution, and there is the risk of these carbon sinks becoming carbon sources due to things like wildfire, which emit stored carbon back into the atmosphere. 

Expert: Jon Knott, Research Forester, USDA Forest Service

I hope the future of mitigation research is more connected and integrated in three ways. First, climate mitigation research should consider both long-term (mitigation) and short-term (adaptation) designs and strategies. Second, climate mitigation work in the built environment should be more integrated with other disciplines (economics, natural sciences, medicine, etc.). Third and finally, climate mitigation (and adaptation) research should not only focus on reducing negative impacts but also reimagine what positive impacts could be in the future.

Expert: Richard Graves, Director of the Center for Sustainable Building Research, College of Design, University of Minnesota Twin Cities