Experts in the News

For years, a team of Rice researchers co-directed by environmental scholar Jim Blackburn has supported the Galveston Bay Park Plan, a recreational park doubling as a storm surge barrier, that could help minimize future damage amid increasing natural disasters.

BCarbon, a standard created by the Baker Institute, has been rated as one of the best publicly available protocols for soil carbon offsets in the United States. The rating comes from Carbon Plan, a nonprofit that analyzes climate solutions based on the best available science and data. BCarbon is a system to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in the soil as organic carbon. It is designed to work for landowners, businesses and soil carbon storage buyers. "BCarbon is practical, works for landowners and is absolutely needed now in our attempts to address atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide," said Baker Institute Rice Faculty Scholar Jim Blackburn. BCarbon is co-led by Blackburn and Kenneth Medlock, the James A. Baker III and Susan G. Baker Fellow in Energy and Resource Economics and senior director of the Center for Energy Studies. Robin Rather, CEO of Austin-based Collective Strength, is the group's facilitator.

"We've seen example after example of where lower-income areas [in flood zones] have trouble qualifying for the federal programs," said Jim Blackburn, a Baker Institute Faculty Scholar. But that's about to change, he said, due in part to the Water Resources Development Act.

Want to know about developments that affected the environment, economy and future of the Texas coast this year? Check out the 2020 Holiday Coastal Update by Baker Institute Rice Faculty Scholar Jim Blackburn, co-director of the SSPEED Center.

Federal agencies are no longer required to consider how emissions from projects contribute to climate change, said Jim Blackburn, Baker Institute Rice faculty scholar. “That allows business as usual to continue as usual, which is the enemy of dealing with climate change."