Dr. Francesca Hopkins: “Win-Win” Solutions to Climate Change and Extreme Heat

In this episode, Associate Professor of Climate Change and Sustainability Dr. Francesca Hopkins talks with students from the UC Riverside School of Public Policy about comprehensive solutions to climate change, as well as the importance of local change amid global warming.  

About Francesca Hopkins:

Francesca Hopkins earned her B.A. in Environmental Studies and Spanish from the University of California, Berkeley. She also completed her M.S. and Ph.D. in Earth System Science from the University of California, Irvine. Before joining the University of California, Riverside Department of Environmental Studies as an Assistant Professor of Climate Change and Sustainability, Francesca was a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Currently, Francesca runs the UCR Greenhouse Gas Emissions Lab, which studies emissions that affect the climate and air quality with the goal of developing the science to reduce these emissions. 

Learn more about Francesca Hopkins via https://www.linkedin.com/in/francesca-hopkins-a904822/ 

Podcast Highlights:  

“There's so many other ways we contribute to climate change... So I think we always need to think about what are these solutions that are going to give us a ’win-win’. Not just reduce emissions, but increase our joy and help us feel good. I think those are the best ones.”

-       Francesca Hopkins on the topic of how solutions to climate change can better other aspects of our lives, such as mental health and well-being. 

“Cities have a really unique power and role in reducing transportation emissions, because they're often in control of what gets built, how it gets built. And really, we need to think about changing the form of our cities in California, so they're not so spread out [to promote reduced emissions by walking more]. And that's going to solve other problems, hopefully, including housing affordability issues that we have, and building houses in wildfire prone areas.”

-       Francesca Hopkins on the topic of the power of city planning to reduce emissions. 

“Because right now, we have a chance to redesign our future. We can actually create the world we want. And we definitely need to think about how the climate is impacting that. But we can do that without knowing how tropical storm tracks might change slightly in the next decades, I would argue.”

-       Francesca Hopkins on the topic of how slight uncertainties as to the exact effects of climate change don’t need to be resolved to take effective action.  

Guest:

Francesca Hopkins (Associate Professor of Climate Change and Sustainability) 

Interviewer:

Rachel Strausman (UCR Public Policy Major, Dean’s Vice Chief Ambassador) 

Episode image designed by Freepik (www.freepik.co)

Commercial Links:
https://spp.ucr.edu/ba-mpphttps://spp.ucr.edu/mpp 

This is a production of the UCR School of Public Policy: https://spp.ucr.edu/ 

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