ABOUT PROF. JULIA COLE:
Julia Cole is a Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences and Chair of the University of Michigan's Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.
ABOUT LISA WOZNIAK:
Lisa’s career spans over two decades of environmental and conservation advocacy in the political arena. She is a nationally- recognized expert in non-profit growth and management and a leader in Great Lakes protections. Lisa is a three-time graduate from the University of Michigan, with a bachelor's degree and two ensuing master's degrees in social work and Education.
Lisa serves a co-host and content partner in 89.1 WEMU's '1st Friday Focus on the Environment.'
RESOURCES:
Michigan League of Conservation Voters
University of Michigan Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
TRANSCRIPTION:
David Fair: This is 89.1 WEMU, and welcome to the May edition of WEMU's First Friday Focus on the Environment. I'm David Fair, and on the first Friday of each month, we explore issues critical to the health and well-being of that which sustains life on Earth--that being our environment. My partner and co-host is Lisa Wozniak. She serves as executive director of the Michigan League of Conservation Voters, and we've had the April showers, and I, for one, Lisa, am looking forward to all of the May flowers!
Lisa Wozniak: Me too, Dave! Me too! There is a lot of rebirth and rejuvenation found in spring, and I know that I get a lot of hope and optimism from that. I hope others do too. However, we're also seeing greater concern bloom over our changing climate, and that's what we want to look at today. Our guest is among those figuring out what's next and how best to deal with it. Julia Cole is the Chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Michigan's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. And I want to thank you very much for joining us here today, Julia!
Dr. Julia Cole: David and Lisa, I want to thank you for having me! I appreciate your focus on this subject!
Lisa Wozniak: Well, as we get into a conversation about the changes enacted and coming from the federal administration, I'd like to start by getting a sense of the work that you do. Where in the climate arena is your scientific research focused?
Dr. Julia Cole: Sure! My work sits at the interface of the modern climate system and the recent past. And in doing that, I try to characterize the natural levels of variability that we see in the climate system, and have seen for centuries or millennia, and compare and contrast that with what's going on today. So, it helps us to place current trends in context, if, for example, we can develop records of climate that are much longer than the current instrumental record, which extends, in the best case, only about a hundred years back. So, that's where my work lies. And I focus on systems and places that have large human impacts. Most recently, my work has been really emphasizing the tropical oceans, where large, highly influential climate systems develop and wreak havoc in the climate worldwide. So, for example, working in the tropical Pacific, I studied the El Nino system, which is the largest source of year-to-year variability on the planet and sets the stage for things like droughts, floods, heat waves, and human impacts related to health, infrastructure, and well-being that go well beyond the tropical Pacific itself. I work on coral reefs, which are also a threatened ecosystem, and so understanding the natural levels of variability and the current human-caused crisis in that context is particularly important as we think about the resilience of those systems and how to protect them and save them.
David Fair: Monitoring change usually takes time. I'm curious, Julia, as to whether you see a disparity in where you would have assessed where we are in addressing climate change prior to November of 2024 and where we are today--100 days into the new administration. It's not a lot of time, but big change has been announced at least.
Dr. Julia Cole: Yeah, that's absolutely right! We have not seen this kind of disruption to the scientific enterprise, certainly in my lifetime, my scientific lifetime. And so, it's really destabilizing. Where we were prior to November is we had a system that had a very strong partnership between the federal government and universities. In every state, in every congressional district, federal dollars support research that helps people's lives. Here in Michigan, we have federal dollars supporting research on the Great Lakes, which are so critical to us. And I'm happy to talk about that a little bit more later, but I guess just zooming out, as you've asked me to do, I think the partnership that we took for granted and that has been so successful in making the U.S. a scientific leader and in creating unexpected and amazing innovations that we kind of take for granted, but, nonetheless, are saving lives around the world, that partnership is being blown up right now. We can destroy things much quicker than we can rebuild them, so I worry a lot about the future of this partnership.
David Fair: This is 89.1 WEMU's First Friday Focus on the Environment, and on this May edition, we're talking with Julia Cole. She is a professor in and chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences in the University of Michigan's College of Literature, Sciences and the Arts. And, Julia, you mentioned the Great Lakes. What are the potential impacts moving forward?
Dr. Julia Cole: Sure. One of the federal agencies that has been targeted by the Trump administration is NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA has a Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab that partners with the universities through a cooperative institute. And by targeting funding for NOAA and its research and cooperative institutes, much of that research is now being slowed and perhaps ground to a halt. It's hard to say. There isn't a lot of direct communication about the exact process that's going on right now, but there are tremendous delays at NOAA because NOAA is reviewing all funding that goes out the door, and those reviews are very, very, slow. So, dollars that should have been flowing to the university and to this Great Lakes environmental research group are now stuck, and they've been stuck for months. So, that group, known as CGLR, the Center for Great Lakes Research, is involved with things like understanding harmful algal blooms. Is it healthy to go in the water? They're involved with keeping the water quality high, so that drinking water crises don't happen as we saw happening in Toledo back in 2014. NOAA is also involved with real-time environmental data collection and forecasts on the Great Lakes, so, for example, keeping boaters informed and fishermen informed about weather conditions. NOAA is also involved in monitoring and forecasting lake levels, so that has a tremendous impact on coastal communities. That data is provided to the Army Corps of Engineers for long-term planning. They support search-and-rescue through providing real-time information to the Coast Guard. So, NOAA basically makes the Great Lakes what they are for us today, and we are more vulnerable. We're more vulnerable on the health side. We're more vulnerable in our recreational opportunities. The ability to care for the ecosystem over the long term is really undermined when we stop collecting data and stop observing and stop communicating important information about the Great Lakes to the greater public.
Lisa Wozniak: So, Julia, I'd like to ask about what the impacts of the administration's cuts on federal funding for programs that focus on climate and environmental justice and other related programs are having potentially on enrollment in environmental sciences at the University of Michigan or at other schools.
Dr. Julia Cole: Yeah, that's a great question, and I think it may be too early to tell, because, as you can imagine, the enrollment that we have right now comes from people who enrolled prior to November. I know that the support for research in our field is likely to go down. Even a cut of something like 25% in federal research funding has been suggested to have an impact that's the size of the Great Recession, right, with very large declines in GDP and low recoveries. And so, if we feel kind of declines in research, it also means we can't support the level of graduate students that we have typically supported on those grants. It may mean that the field becomes less attractive, but maybe it will inspire people to actually try to learn more about the environment. But it is definitely the case that we will not be able to support the level of research that we do. So, from a research support finance, it could be catastrophic. But from the educational side, I mean, we keep teaching about this stuff, and we hope that the students that come to us have the energy to understand that this is really important work and has to be done. And the question of international students or the high level of international participation that we have in our programs, that is very much at risk, because people don't see universities in this country as being so attractive if you're coming from overseas, because of the way--the capricious and cruel ways--that the Trump administration has been treating international students. So, I think we will stop attracting the best and brightest from other countries here, and that's a real loss.
David Fair: Sometimes, climate change in conversation can fall into a place of doom and gloom. And certainly, that kind of attitude has picked up of late. What, in your estimation, is something we can be optimistic about right now in terms of our planet's climate and our environment at large?
Dr. Julia Cole: I love that you asked that question, because I think we do need to remember that this could be a short-term blip, and we have set the stage for green energy progress that's still ongoing. So, green energy is still cheaper in most cases than fossil fuels when we're talking about large industrial-scale production, and the addition of energy to the grid is dominated now by clean energy--green energy. It's also the case that while the U.S. is a really important player in this area. Of course, we like to think of ourselves as international leaders. But in fact, many other countries are leading in this area as well, in terms of their production of green energy technology and adoption and regulations that go along with accelerating that transition. So, I think we are on a path to keep that green energy transition going. And if we can get our political act together, maybe this will be a short life disruption. I hope that we've crossed an economic threshold beyond which we can continue to make a lot of progress in the green energy area and keep the transition away from fossil fuels going fast.
David Fair: Well, Julia, thank you so much for making time and sharing your perspective today! We do appreciate it!
Dr. Julia Cole: It's been a pleasure! I really appreciate your attention to this, and I think talking about these things and promoting them helps a lot! So, thank you!
David Fair: That is Julia Cole. She is Chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences in the University of Michigan's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts and has been our guest on WEMU's First Friday focus on the environment. My content partner and co-host is Lisa Wozniak. And, Lisa, it's going to be interesting to see where the issues in our conversations take us next!
Lisa Wozniak: It always is, David! I look forward to our next conversation! Thank you!
David Fair: That is Lisa Wozniak. She is the Executive Director of the Michigan League of Conservation Voters, and, just like today, she's here on the first Friday of every month to advance our knowledge and understanding of the critical issues facing our environment. I'm David Fair, and this is your community NPR station, 89.1 WEMU-FM Ypsilanti.
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