Fast Forward: MIT’s Climate Action Plan for the Decade

Like the first plan, our new climate action plan is focused on MIT’s uncommon capacities to address the problem at hand: our powerful research engine; a community of scholars primed to work at the intersection of disciplines; experience moving ideas from lab to impact; and long-standing ties with industry and the public sector, domestically and globally. This plan includes many new steps to reduce our own emissions and climate impact. But the plan’s fundamental purpose is to marshal all of MIT’s capabilities:

• to make the greatest possible contribution to decarbonizing the global economy and its energy systems;
• to increase humanity’s capabilities to adapt to the climate changes that will certainly occur; and
• to build greater resilience into all of our activities, infrastructure, and systems.

Through more than a year’s worth of climate symposia and many months of direct discussions about the plan with every segment of our community (see Appendix), several themes emerged that infuse all of the plan’s commitments.