Spotlight on Human and Planetary Health | A Keynote Talk with Dr. Solomon Hsiang

***Updated Location: now in Shriram Room #104, 443 Via Ortega, Stanford***

From Evidence to Policy: Climate and Public Health

In celebration of Earth Month, please join the Center for Human and Planetary Health for a keynote talk by Solomon Hsiang, PhD, Professor of Global Environmental Policy at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, co-founder of the Climate Impact Lab, and director of the Global Policy Laboratory. 

Moderated by Dr. Steve Luby, Director of the Center for Human and Planetary Health

Description:

Climate change is already impacting our everyday lives. Record-breaking temperatures, intense wildfires, more frequent coastal flooding, prolonged droughts, and damaging storms are just some of the growing risks we face. These massive changes impact public health and well-being in significant ways – ranging from increased respiratory and cardiovascular diseases due to air pollution, to increased domestic violence because of extreme heat, food and water insecurity, and mental health challenges linked to eco-anxiety and climate-related displacement. These changes are likely to accelerate over the next few decades, with profound implications for the health and welfare of every community around the world and the performance of every sector of the economy. Addressing these challenges requires new research, urgent action, and policy change that can withstand the growing impacts on human and planetary health. 

 To confront these challenges, Dr. Solomon Hsiang, through the Climate Impact Lab and the Global Policy Laboratory, is working towards developing a first-of-its-kind, evidence-based, data-driven approach that uses detailed historical climate data to quantify the impacts and costs of climate change, sector-by-sector and community by community – to generate actionable insights about the future. Please join us to learn more about Dr. Hsiang's work. 

Speaker Bio: 

Solomon Hsiang directs the Global Policy Laboratory at Stanford University, where his team integrates social science, natural science, and data science to better understand how we can effectively manage global resources. He combines data with mathematical models to understand how society and the environment influence one another. In particular, he focuses on how policy can encourage economic development while managing the global climate. As a current Professor of Global Environmental Policy at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, a co-founder and co-director at the Climate Impact Lab, co-founder of mosaiks.org, Research Associate at the NBER, and a National Geographic Explorer, his research has been published in Nature, Science, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

Hsiang earned a BS in Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Science and a BS in Urban Studies and Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and he received a PhD in Sustainable Development from Columbia University. He was a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Applied Econometrics at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy at Princeton University. Previously, Hsiang was faculty at the University of California, Berkeley at the Goldman School of Public Policy (2013-24). Hsiang was also Lead Author of the first Economics chapter in the Fifth National Climate Assessment (2023) and, from 2023-24, Hsiang served as the first Chief Environmental Economist at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where he oversaw the inaugural year of the United States natural capital accounting program.

 

Space for this event is limited; Stanford affiliates will be given priority. 

Refreshments will be served.

For more information, please email Allison Phillips, Managing Director, Center for Human and Planetary Health at ap10@stanford.edu