Newswise — University of Redlands Professor of Environmental Studies Monty Hempel, Ph.D., an expert on environmental public policy, is available to speak on the consequences of the Trump administration decision to exit the Paris Climate Accord.

"Withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord indicates a politics of the "last hurrah!" by an administration clearly in touch with the far right of its base, but wildly out of touch with science and economics.  Trump's failure to see the economic folly of trying to revive the coal industry, and its negative effect on the rapidly growing renewable energy industry, suggest that he is not motivated by what's good for the country or for our grandchildren; only by what's good for himself and his core supporters," Hempel says.

Hempel has taught environmental science and policy at the University of Redlands since 1999 and currently serves as chair of the University’s Center for Environmental Studies. For the past nine years, Hempel has led an annual three-week University expedition to Palau to study marine ecology and sustainable development.

Prior to his role at Redlands, Hempel was a faculty member and administrator in the School of Politics and Economics at Claremont Graduate University, where he directed the graduate program in environmental public policy. 

Hempel is a graduate of the University of Minnesota (B.A., ecology and public policy) and Claremont Graduate University (M.A., international environmental policy, Ph.D., government environmental policy). He is a founding board member of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), and a senior associate of the California Institute of Public Affairs. Author of Environmental Governance: The Global Challenge (Island Press, 1996), and Sustainable Communities: From Vision to Action (Hewlett Foundation/CGU, 1998), he has also written, filmed, and produced more than one dozen environmental video documentaries, with subjects ranging from coral reef protection in Palau to the evolution of sustainability in an era of global change.