Penn Center For Science, Sustainability And The Media

PCSSM Mission: The Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media (PCSSM) is housed in the Annenberg Public Policy Center, and is jointly affiliated with the Annenberg School for Communication and the Penn School for Arts & Sciences with linkages to the Perry World House and Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at Penn. The center focuses on the challenges and opportunities in communicating climate and environmental sustainability to the public and policymakers. We find ourselves in a fraught media environment today when it comes to communicating policy-relevant science due to an ideologically balkanized public arena. Nowhere is this more evident than the public discourse over human-caused climate change. PCSSM draws upon Penn’s unique positioning in the climate space to make inroads in addressing this problem. First and foremost, the Annenberg School and Annenberg Center, with projects like Factcheck,org, leads the academic world in the refutation of rampant misinformation. It is an unrivaled resource in the science communication battle. Arts & Sciences is home to experts in basic climate science, as well as a variety of other natural science, social science and humanities disciplines that are critical to assessing climate change impacts and the societal and ethical dimensions of the climate crisis. The Kleinman Center on energy policy and the Perry World House both bring in valuable domestic and international policy angles. Meanwhile other units at Penn including the Wharton School and Biden Center brings in complementary expertise, adding critical elements such as global engagement of the business and policy world and international diplomacy.