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Right Here, Right Now Global Climate Summit

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Right Here, Right Now Global Climate Summit
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About CU Boulder

For more than half a century, CU Boulder has been a leader in climate and energy research, interdisciplinary environmental studies, and human rights programs, and has engaged in sustainability practices on campus and beyond. We’re co-hosting the event as part of our comprehensive public research mission and global leadership in research related to the environment, behavioral sciences and issues related to human rights.

At CU Boulder, we are devoted to enabling leaders in change and innovators in science who positively impact humanity by using their research to inform the public and advocate for change.

We recognize the exceptional opportunities associated with our role as a research university. As one of only 35 U.S. public research institutions in the Association of American Universities (AAU), we value the unique strength and character research achievements bring to education, benefiting people today and informing the next generation of citizens and leaders.

CU Boulder is the first U.S. university to:

  • Create a student-led Environmental Center
  • Launch a student-led campus recycling program
  • Purchase renewable energy credits
  • Fuel campus vehicles completely with biodiesel
  • Provide students with a comprehensive bus pass
  • Build an NCAA Division 1 zero-waste stadium and athletics program
  • Achieve a Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System (STARS) Gold rating
  • Be named Sierra Club’s #1 greenest school (AAU)

CU Boulder is located at the base of the Rocky Mountains and in the heart of one of the nation’s top environmentally focused ecosystems. This ecosystem is sustained by strong collaboration and a shared devotion to environmental sustainability among the university, the city of Boulder, its residents and local federal research labs.

 

Aerospace Engineering Sciences building

75+ research centers

Researcher in JILA lab

12 research institutes

Presentation at NCAR facility in Boulder

Partnerships with 15+ local federal research labs

Faculty and student at Biotechnology lab

50+ years of collaboration with federal research labs

Federal Partner Labs

  • National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, Colorado
  • NOAA Earth System Research Lab (ESRL), ​Boulder, Colorado
  • NOAA National Climatic Data Center, Paleoclimatology Program (NCDC), Boulder, Colorado
  • NOAA NESDIS National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC), Boulder, Colorado
  • NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), ​Boulder, Colorado
  • National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), Boulder, Colorado
  • National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), ​Boulder, Colorado
  • National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL), Golden, Colorado
  • Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA), Fort Collins, Colorado
  • Rocky Mountain Research Station (RMRS), Fort Collins, Colorado
  • Storm Peak Lab (SPL), Steamboat Springs, Colorado

“[Boulder has] amazing citizenry that’s very concerned about climate change, very concerned about human rights, and with all of the national labs, Boulder has the heft to host a global summit every year on the scale of the Global Economic Forum.”

—David Clark

Right Here, Right Now Global Climate Alliance founder

Congressional Tour discussing Science in Service to Society

Leaders in Change

Through strong partnerships, holistic leadership can take place. We’re proud to act in partnership with United Nations Human Rights and the Right Here, Right Now Global Climate Alliance as we, together, are committed to leading change for the humanitarian climate crisis.

Snow-ice research

Innovators in Science 

Complex global issues call for ingenuity. CU Boulder is home to many of the nation's most highly cited researchers who lead innovations in climate, energy, sustainability, earth and environmental sciences.

Sustainable WASH Systems in Kenya

Positively Impacting Humanity

Research brings solutions to light, engages others in thoughtful conversation and establishes actions we can take to better ourselves, our communities, our nations and our world.

80+ inventions sparked by CU Boulder energy research over the past 5 years

#1 ranked program in the world for geosciences
(U.S. News & World Report, 2020)

229 energy and clean technologies developed since 2006

#5 ranked program in the nation for environmental law
(U.S. News & World Report, 2019)

Top 4% worldwide for scholarly research citations

Chancellor Philip P. DiStefano

Working to Forge a Just and Sustainable Future

  We know that climate change is not just a challenge for the scientists to solve, and the solutions we seek will not be purely technical. The answers will come when all of us come together combining our intellect, our energy and our unique perspectives in one shared commitment. 

To confront the existential threat that is climate change, governments, industry and institutions of higher education must give voice to those most affected by it, transcend political divisiveness, and deploy empathy and compassion alongside research and innovation. This was the message that scientists, policymakers including Gov. Jared Polis, and University of Colorado Boulder leaders delivered at the Chancellor's Annual Summit on Working to Forge a Just and Sustainable Future on Feb. 23, 2022.

Read More About the Chancellor’s Annual Summit

Global Leadership in Research

CIRES

Environmental Science in Service to Society

The Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science (CIRES) connects CU Boulder's academic innovations, including world-renowned research and teaching, with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the nation's premier earth science research agency, driven by a mission of science in service to society.

Satellite image of hurricane

Human Vulnerability, Migration and Resilience

Institute of Behavioral Science (IBS) researchers study the relationship between social and natural systems around the world. Of special interest to these CU Boulder researchers are climate change and human vulnerability, population migration, and the resilience of communities to wildfires, hurricanes, droughts and floods.

People living on river home

Addressing 21st-Century Human Challenges

BioFrontiers Institute research bridges the biological and social sciences, ranging from climate change-driven emergence of viral diseases to tracking human density and mobility in response to disruptive events. Scientists spanning CU Boulder are using cross-disciplinary approaches to generate innovative solutions to 21st-century human challenges.

Wind farm

Energy-Based Solutions to the Climate Crisis

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI) researchers develop energy-based solutions to the climate crisis. This partnership between CU Boulder and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) enhances collaboration across the fundamental and applied sciences, driving innovation and implementation to address critical societal needs.

Researchers with snow ice equipment in arctic

Illuminating the Global Climate System

Since the 1980s, CU Boulder scientists at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), in partnership with NOAA, have analyzed air samples from a global network to better understand where greenhouse gases originate (e.g., from fossil fuels or wetlands) and to illuminate how the climate system works.

LASP

Informing Decision-Making from Space

Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at CU Boulder is a leader in developing the sensing capabilities that enable scientists to monitor and better understand our changing environment, extending decades of climate data records that help us understand and make informed decisions related to climate change.

Research Highlights

Unprecedented energy use since 1950 has transformed our planetary environment and humanity’s geologic footprint

Heat waves could cause 10 times more crop damage than now projected, research finds

No Country Immune from the Health Harms of Climate Change

 

Flowers on Niwot Ridge

$7.65 million grant to extend study of how climate change shapes life at 10,000 feet

Through the Niwot Ridge Long Term Ecological Research Project (LTER), housed at CU Boulder's Mountain Research Station, scientists will continue to examine the impacts of a warming world on the university's highest campus.
Researcher Erik Funk with a rosy-finch
Rosy-finches are Colorado’s high-alpine specialists—researchers want to know why
Congressman Joe Neguse, left, and US House of Representatives Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi
Why does climate policy lag science?
Indigenous women's movement
When Indigenous communities have legal land rights, this Brazilian forest benefits
Child in green surroundings
Childhood trauma linked to civic environmental engagement, green behavior
Read more at CU Boulder Today

Right Here Right Now Global Climate Alliance

 

About CU Boulder  About the Summit

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