Then, on Sept. 22 a diverse series of public sessions organized by faculty, staff, and alumni will explore potential solutions to the world’s most pressing environmental threats. Panel events will include discussions on the design of carbon markets; moving beyond the use of GDP alone to better measure societal progress, sustainability, and well-being; how cities can be leaders in the climate fight; how companies can reduce global warming by tackling non‑CO₂ “superpollutants”; how to decarbonize the electric grid; and bipartisan pathways to a sustainable future.
The Yale Club events will also include the launch of a “Resilient Cities, Reimagining Health” toolkit that will describe preventative urban initiatives that aim to protect public health in the face of the climate threat; the introduction of a forthcoming 2027 international study on public demand for climate adaptation that will inform national adaptation plans in the run-up to the next UN climate talks; and the launch of a “Corporate Roadmap for Superpollutant Action” by the Carbon Containment Lab, a nonprofit founded at Yale in 2020 and spun out in 2024. (View the full agenda.)
More than a dozen Yale schools, departments, and units are contributing to this year’s program, creating one of the university’s most interdisciplinary public engagements around climate and sustainability.
“Our faculty and alumni will be exploring how long-term climate goals — on natural capital, clean energy, carbon removal, and resilient cities — can translate into solutions we can actually deploy,” said Indy Burke, dean of the Yale School of the Environment. “Climate Week gives us a fantastic opportunity to do that work directly with government, business, and nonprofit leaders from around the world working toward the same goals.”
Scholars and practitioners from the Yale School of Public Health and its Center for Climate Change and Health will also come together to address what YSPH Dean Megan Ranney calls “one of the defining challenges of our time.” “The event highlights Yale’s extraordinary breadth of expertise while creating opportunities for collaboration across sectors,” Ranney said. “Those connections are critical to translating research into action and accelerating solutions that protect both human and planetary health.”
Throughout the week, members of the Yale community will also participate in:
a day-long exploration of climate action opportunities that reawaken humankind’s sacred connection with Earth through “mediation and dialogue, music and movement, and evidence-based stories of transformation,” hosted by The Fetzer Institute (Sunday, Sept. 20),an event hosted by the New Haven-based incubator ClimateHaven that will explore opportunities to recover critical materials from industrial water (Sept. 22),a day-long “Nature Your City” event, hosted by the New York Botanical Garden, that will explore nature-based strategies that promote more resilient cities (Sept. 23), and a discussion on the sustainable benefits of implementing “circularity” — including systems that minimize the use of raw materials and generation of waste — which will be hosted by the Center for Circularity in Interior Design (Sept. 25).
“Since its creation in 2020, Yale Planetary Solutions has been strengthening and elevating the scholarship and collaboration of faculty, students, partners, and leaders from across campus to advance big ideas that will help us tackle the world’s most pressing environmental challenges and achieve a more sustainable future,” said Scott Strobel, Yale’s provost and the Henry Ford II Professor of Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry.
“Climate Week offers an important opportunity to create new partnerships that move these ideas from campus to the global community, connect innovators with investors, and accelerate transformative policies that scale these solutions worldwide.”