Universities, States Have ‘Responsibility’ to Act on Climate in Trump Era, UMass President says
Across five campuses, the University of Massachusetts System is incorporating climate into the curriculum and working with state leaders to meet climate goals.
University of Massachusetts President Marty Meehan didn’t play it safe when giving his State of the University address at the UMass Boston campus this week.
Instead of talking about the system’s growing enrollment, faculty achievements or any number of non-controversial topics, Meehan laid out a vision for how the UMass system, with its five campuses and 73,000 students, would cement Massachusetts’s place as a leader in climate tech, sustainability, clean energy and climate justice.
“While forces seem determined to drag us backward, UMass and Team Massachusetts are going to continue to work together to move ourselves forward,” Meehan said in the speech.
Universities across the United States are taking wildly different strategies to deal with President Donald Trump’s threats to withhold federal funds or pull tax-exempt statuses unless diversity initiatives are rescinded and the ideological makeup of faculties is addressed. Meehan, a former Democratic congressman, spoke with Inside Climate News this week about his university’s approach to advancing climate tech and clean energy.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
DENNIS PILLION: You could have addressed any number of topics in your State of the University address. Why did you feel like climate and sustainability were important to focus on?
MARTY MEEHAN: As a public research university, I think we’re uniquely positioned to take a leadership role in this critically important climate tech industry, which is an emerging industry, and I’m committed to a whole-university approach to make our campuses an economic and research partner with the state’s efforts.
Massachusetts has some of the strongest climate and clean energy laws in the country, and the state is a leader in clean energy transition, job creation and economic growth in the climate tech space. I’ve asked all of our chancellors in each of our five campuses to develop economic development strategies that align with the state climate tech economic development plan.
In Massachusetts, the legislature, the governor signed into law the Mass Leads Act, which provides $1.4 billion in state funding to support climate technology for development. As a research university, this is part of our mission, this is part of what we do, working with business and industry, especially in those areas that are important to Massachusetts, and this is clearly important to Massachusetts.
So the idea behind this is to tap into our world-class UMass research expertise across our campuses for economic development and climate technology and sustainability, and also support industry partners in every region of the state. And we’re also obviously educating the industry’s future workforce, which is also an important part.
PILLION: It’s a challenging time for universities on a lot of levels with the new administration. How are you navigating that at UMass?
MEEHAN: Our goal is to accelerate the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’s efforts to make the state a climate tech hub, much like when Massachusetts positioned itself around the life sciences and biotech a decade or so ago.
But I think the fact that the federal government isn’t necessarily going to step up to the plate, that means that it’s our responsibility to step up. And I think in Massachusetts, the administration of Maura Healey, our governor, and the legislature, they’re employing a strategy to help strengthen Massachusetts’ position in climate technology. And I think it’s our responsibility, and the fact there’s a void in terms of the federal government, I think states are going to need to step up to the plate.
And Massachusetts has always. I mean, in 2021 we passed a law that requires the state to cut emissions in half of 1990 levels by the end of this decade and achieve net zero emissions by 2050, and in subsequent years, the state has passed laws, has mandated increases in clean energy, offering pathways for some communities to start banning fossil fuels in new buildings and things like that.
In November of last year, Gov. Healey signed a law, building on the state’s already strong climate laws, that made it easier to build solar and wind farms and transmission lines and other energy infrastructure. Massachusetts has said it’s stepping up to the plate and we want to partner with them.
There’s no question that the federal government is trying to take us backward on climate, despite the fact that climate change is the existential threat of our time, but I think in this instance, states are going to need to step up to the plate.
PILLION: Are you concerned about potential reprisals from the federal government in terms of grant funding, or any of those things?
MEEHAN: The federal government is not going to approve any federal permitting for offshore wind projects, but I don’t think that should stop states from getting involved in this. I don’t think states are going to be penalized for this. Obviously, Massachusetts is putting $1.4 billion into it.
We have a responsibility to meet our goals in climate tech, and the private sector is going to do it with or without the federal government, and states need to do it with or without the federal government.
PILLION: In your speech, you mentioned climate tech and climate justice. What is UMass doing in that realm?
MEEHAN: On all our campuses, we have specific projects related to climate. At UMass Lowell, for example, we launched the Clean Energy and Environmental Legacy Transition, which we call CELT, which stems from a partnership between UMass and universities in Ireland. Gov. Healy’s first trade mission was in Ireland, and she asked UMass Lowell to put together a roundtable on energy and sustainability. And so we’ve been working with university and industry partnerships supported by the Irish government.
In addition to that, our medical school is educating future doctors and healthcare leaders on how to confront the disproportionate impact of climate change on vulnerable populations, with a new climate change-focused curriculum. UMass Boston continues to lead research on nature-based resiliency strategies with innovation, such as the installment of America’s first ever living sea walls in Boston Harbor.
UMass participated in the Vatican-headed climate summit last May. I participated in it, and it was really an international summit that put a spotlight on the pressing nature of the climate crisis, focused on the disproportionate effect that climate change has on people, particularly in poor countries, poor parts of the world.
Pope Francis had a deep concern for our planet, and all of us who attended felt a need, and we made a commitment that when we were back to our jobs that we were going to bring together international researchers and policy makers and academics and work on this issue.
PILLION: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
MEEHAN: One other thing that the Healy administration has been working on is they proposed something called the Bright Act. In Massachusetts, the voters passed a law that added a tax for those who make a million dollars or more to go to education. And the governor’s proposing leveraging some of that money to provide $2.5 billion in capital funding for public colleges and universities.
Those funds would enable UMass to modernize buildings on our five campuses and make them energy efficient and sustainable. Due to the size and the age of our five campuses, most of our buildings are more than 50 years old, so UMass was one of the largest consumers of energy in the state. So I think this is, I hope, going to be a national model where states invest in new state buildings, and a good place to start is with research universities.
Cover photo: Students walk through the campus of UMass Boston. Credit: Suzanne Kreiter/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
