Former Canadian environment and climate minister Catherine McKenna has signed on as a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP).
McKenna “plans to work on practical solutions to help scale climate action with CGEP and the new Columbia Climate School,” the program said in a release this week. She’ll focus on “accelerating the transition from coal to clean energy, advancing work on carbon pricing, border carbon adjustments, and carbon markets, and supporting women’s climate leadership.”
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The one-year, part-time assignment will bring McKenna to New York City once a month, according to news reports, and will include working alongside Columbia students and faculty.
“The climate threat is the greatest crisis facing humanity today,” said McKenna, who unveiled her new climate initiative, Climate and Nature Solutions, late last month. “We need new models of thinking and systems change to ambitiously tackle climate change now.”
“Catherine is a tour de force,” said CGEP Director Jason Bordoff. “Her energy and spirit along with her leadership and practical experience are what’s needed if we’re to have a meaningful impact in solving the climate crisis.”
News coverage of the announcement points to a mixed climate legacy during McKenna’s six years in federal politics, with some “undeniable political victories” while she served in a federal cabinet that bought up direct ownership of the Trans Mountain pipeline and approved other investments in new fossil fuel infrastructure.
The Climate and Nature Solutions site stresses the need to “scale climate and nature solutions” and features a 5½-minute video, produced ahead of the COP 26 climate summit, that emphasizes women’s leadership in response to the climate emergency. “Women and girls are disproportionately impacted by climate change in communities around the world, but the good news is they’re taking action, and we need their stories,” McKenna says in the video.
