Climate Crossroads initiative tackles climate crisis
Michael Méndez, assistant professor of urban planning and public policy, has been appointed to serve on the Climate Crossroads advisory committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
Climate Crossroads is an initiative to focus the National Academies’ resources on key pathways to tackle the climate crisis.
“The initiative represents an important effort by the National Academies to ensure scientific research is responsive to pressing societal issues, like racial and environmental justice,” Méndez says. “I am honored to be a member of the advisory committee.”
Last year, Méndez was named to the 2022 class of Andrew Carnegie Fellows. He is completing his next book, titled Undocumented Disasters: (In)visible Communities Confronting Climate Change and Environmental Injustice, in preparation for Yale University Press.
In his first book, Climate Change From the Streets: How Conflict and Collaboration Strengthen the Environmental Justice Movement, Méndez argues that “critical attention must be placed on the cultural and human dimensions of climate policy” if society is to successfully navigate the rapidly progressing phenomenon of climate change. The work received the Harold and Margaret Sprout Award from the International Studies Association and the Betty and Alfred McClung Lee Book Award from the Association for Humanist Sociology.
In 2021, Méndez became the first Latino scholar to win the National Academy of Sciences’ Henry and Bryna David Endowment award for his wildfire and migrant research. The endowment annually recognizes one “leading researcher who has drawn insights from the behavioral and social sciences to inform public policy.”
— Mimi Ko Cruz