In 2017, Environmental Defense Fund released an explosive report documenting the presence of heavy metals in baby foods. Lead – which can lower children’s IQ and cause behavioral problems – was found in foods such as grape juice, sweet potatoes and arrowroot cookies.

EDF reached out to their long-time partners at the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability. EDF and Cornell experts explored potential solutions in agriculture, food science, policy development and corporate engagement. In response to Cornell’s research and EDF’s advocacy, in January the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued new industry guidance aimed at reducing lead in baby foods. And California passed legislation requiring baby food companies to test monthly for lead, arsenic, cadmium and mercury in their products.

“We researchers alone could not have achieved the impact we did without this partnership with EDF,” said David Lodge, the Francis J. DiSalvo Director of Cornell Atkinson. “The pathways to achieving the impact required university-produced research, EDF’s work in Washington, D.C., and regulatory action by the FDA and the state of California.”

Credit: Simon Wheeler for Cornell University

Lodge and EDF President Fred Krupp discussed this success story and many others as part of a daylong celebration of Cornell Atkinson’s 15-year anniversary, held April 10 in the newly opened Atkinson Hall. More than 20 Cornell scientists and representatives from the Clean Air Task Force, the Nature Conservancy, Frontier Co-op and Nexwell, among others, showcased the research and collaborative partnerships that are preventing pandemics, protecting pollinators, accessing deep geothermal energy, reducing methane from dairy cows and recycling renewable-energy batteries, among other challenges.

A video recording of select sessions is available to the public.

Enabling economic growth, public welfare

Cornell Atkinson was founded in 2010, thanks to an $80 million gift from David ’60 and Patricia Atkinson, both of whom attended the anniversary celebration. Since then, the center has supported the work of 700 faculty fellows and awarded $45 million to more than 1,200 sustainability research projects.

“The center builds on a foundation that stretches back to Cornell’s beginnings: As a land-grant institution, established on the principle of ‘any person … any study,’ Cornell has since its early days been a place where research and practice have intersected,” said Provost Kavita Bala, an Atkinson faculty fellow. “Our mission was always to do the greatest good – for New Yorkers, for the state and, of course, the world at large.”

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Throughout the conference, presenters showcased the myriad ways that research on sustainability and environmental protection saves lives and protects the health of humans and the planet. For example, a 1952 toxic smog in London killed 4,000 people in five days; the Cuyahoga River near Cleveland caught fire multiple times from 1868 to 1969. Clean air and water legislation, and the regulatory agencies who enforce these laws, has largely eliminated such disasters in the developed world.

But the rapidly changing climate is creating new disasters, on a global scale, including decreased agricultural production, more frequent and severe storms and increased drought risk.

Globally, agriculture is the single-biggest source of methane, a potent greenhouse gas with a shorter lifespan in the atmosphere than carbon but 84 times as much warming potential as carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. Dairy cattle are a large source of methane, but it’s much harder to treat pollution coming from a billion cows than from a few smokestacks, said Britt Groosman, senior vice president of agriculture, water and food for EDF.

As both an Ivy League research institution and a land-grant university with decades of experience working with farmers, Cornell is at the forefront of research on both agriculture and climate change, said Daryl Nydam, D.V.M. ’97, Ph.D. ’02, the David Drinkwater ’94 Faculty Director and professor in population medicine and diagnostic sciences in the College of Veterinary Medicine. For example, the Cornell Net Carbohydrate and Protein System is used by farmers to feed 65% to 70% of all cows in North America, Nydam said.

Atkinson researchers and practitioners like EDF are working together to combat methane pollution by bridging the gaps between scientific discovery and solution implementation. For example, the pharmaceutical additive Bovaer reduces cow methane emissions by roughly 30%. Though it had been approved in Europe for several years, it was stuck in “regulatory purgatory” in the U.S., Nydam said. Cornell and EDF brought together consumer groups, dairy-sourcing companies like Nestle, Dannon and Starbucks, researchers, NGOs and FDA regulators to agree on an approach to expedite review and approval of the feed additive in the U.S.

With support from the center’s Innovation for Impact Fund, Cornell Atkinson is collaborating with partners such as the Clean Air Task Force, the Nature Conservancy and Sunnking electronics recyclers on pressing climate issues, including developing deep geothermal energy, protecting threatened pollinators and building next-generation renewable energy batteries with much less waste.

Seeking progress and hope

The evening keynote panel on the future of U.S. climate policy featured a discussion between Gina McCarthy, senior adviser at Bloomberg Philanthropies and the first White House National Climate Adviser under President Joe Biden; and Mary Nichols ’66, former chair of the California Air Resources Board and senior staff attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council. The panel was moderated by Anne Thompson, NBC News’ chief environmental affairs correspondent and a 2025 Zubrow Distinguished Visiting Journalist in the College of Arts and Sciences.

In her work on California air quality, Nichols saw how state-level action could have broader impact, she said. When California required stricter fuel efficiency standards for cars, manufacturers improved those standards for cars across the country.

“What we have learned is that states, cities, counties, nonprofit organizations, businesses and philanthropists working together can make a tremendous amount of progress, even when the federal government is completely sidelined,” Nichols said. “We’ve had this situation before, but we still made gains. Because climate change isn’t going away, neither are those of us who know that it has to be addressed. We’re not about to be deterred.”

In the Biden administration, McCarthy helped inform the Inflation Reduction Act, which included the biggest investment in climate mitigation and adaptation in U.S. history and incentivized domestic energy and manufacturing.

“When I was working in the White House, our goal was not to talk about greenhouse gas emissions. Our goal was to talk about human beings: bettering people’s lives, improving their health, lowering costs,” McCarthy said. “You need to engage people and grab for every opportunity.”

Krisy Gashler is a freelance writer for Cornell Atkinson.