Ralph Meima

By Ralph Meima September 27, 2014September 29, 2015 Front page slider/News & Blogs/Ralph Meima/Uncategorized

The business implications of sea-level rise along the Atlantic coast, and especially in Delaware

I want us to envision an unfamiliar challenge together. I want us to think about the plans and investments we may need to make.

By Ralph Meima March 12, 2013July 26, 2023 Front page slider/News/Ralph Meima/Resilience in the news

2012 CERES Insurance Industry Study: Progress Slow, Urgently Needed

Climate-change-related disasters threaten industry profitability, and may drive less-prepared companies from a variety of asset and risk classes. A reduction in the availability and affordability of insurance and risk management services can threaten the economy…

By Ralph Meima October 31, 2012September 27, 2015 Front page slider/News & Blogs/Ralph Meima

Resilient design trend? Modern floodgates appear in vulnerable areas.

Walking along Flat Street in Brattleboro, Vermont this morning before businesses opened, I saw a sign that an important lesson about resilience had been learned over the past year. The floodgates were up in numerous doorways. Flat Street, as some readers may recall, lies in the floodplain of the

By Ralph Meima October 30, 2012September 27, 2015 Front page slider/News & Blogs/Ralph Meima

Sea-level Rise, Storm Surges, and Delaware’s Resilience Challenge (with a Sandy update)

Update Note, October 30, 2012 With Post-tropical Cyclone Sandy still whirling around somewhere to my west, the article below feels prescient. It wasn’t of course – there was no advance knowledge of this particular storm – but what just happened with Sandy is well in line with climate change trends.

David W. Orr, Ph.D

David W. Orr is Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies & Politics, Emeritus. He also served as “Counselor to the President” of Oberlin College for ten years. He is the author of eight books, including Dangerous Years: Climate Change and the Long Emergency (Yale, 2016) and Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse (Oxford, 2009) and co-editor of three others. He has authored over 220 articles, reviews, book chapters, and professional publications. In the past twenty-five years he has served as a board member or adviser to ten foundations and on the Boards of many organizations including the Rocky Mountain Institute, Bioneers, and the Aldo Leopold Foundation.

He is currently a Trustee of the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado, Children and Nature Network, and the WorldWatch Institute. He has been awarded nine honorary degrees and a dozen other awards including a Lyndhurst Prize, a National Achievement Award from the National Wildlife Federation, leadership awards from the U.S. Green Building Council (2014) and from Second Nature (2012), and a lifetime achievement award from Green Energy Ohio and the North American Association for Environmental Education. He has lectured at hundreds of colleges and universities throughout the U.S., Europe, Latin America, and Asia. He headed the effort to design, fund, and build the Adam Joseph Lewis Center, which was named by an AIA panel in 2010 as “the most important green building of the past thirty years,” as “one of thirty milestone buildings of the twentieth century” by the U.S. Department of Energy, and as one of “52 game-changing buildings of the past 170 years” by the editors of Building Design +Construction in January, 2016. He was instrumental in the design and funding of the Peter B. Lewis Gateway Center. He is the founder of the Oberlin Project and a founder of the journal Solutions. His current work is on the state of American democracy.