Faces:

Environment on his mind

Work on climate issues earns national recognition

Global warming. Renewable fuels. Air pollution. Energy conservation. These topics dominate much of today’s news, and they dominate much of Barry Rabe’s thoughts.

Rabe is a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and also teaches in the school of natural resources and environment. Over the last several years, he’s become an authority on how the states have taken initiatives to lessen their impact on the climate.

lin z. jones/um photo services<BR><BR>Climate

lin z. jones/um photo services

Climate scholar Barry Rabe studies the role states play in developing standards for renewable energy production.

For his work, Rabe received the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Climate Protection Award.

“I’m not a longstanding climate scholar,” said Rabe, a member of Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Livonia, Mich., where his wife, Dana Runestad, is the pastor. “But around 1999, two years after President Clinton signed the Kyoto Protocol (a worldwide movement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions), it was clear the Senate was never going to ratify Kyoto. So I began to wonder about the role states might play.”

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