As West Virginia's political leaders show their displeasure with the international climate change conference going on in Paris, even seeking to undermine American negotiators there, one West Virginia institution is playing a small role in the talks.
The West Virginia University School of Public Health is one of 118 public health, medical and nursing schools that has signed a "Health Educators Climate Commitment," promising to train their students to address the health impacts of climate change.
The full list of schools, from 14 different countries, was announced by the White House on Friday in Paris.
Leaders from more than 190 countries are meeting in Paris with the goal of securing commitments from each country to set specific limits on greenhouse gas emissions, which cause climate change.
"We commit to ensuring that we train the next generation of health professionals to effectively address the health impacts of climate change," the pledge signed by WVU and others reads. "As leaders responsible for educating the health professionals of tomorrow, we are keenly aware of our obligation to ensure that they are fully prepared to address all health risks, including those resulting from the impacts of climate change."
Gregory Hand, the dean of WVU's School of Public Health, said that just about every major school of public health in the country had signed on to the pledge.
"What the university has signed on to is the understanding that climate change is real, that there are issues related to the public's health with climate change," Hand said in a phone interview. "We have severe water shortages, especially in the Southwest and those are areas where the U.S. population is moving. It's starting to affect food, the bread basket in the United States has slowly been moving northward because of the drought, it's affecting food supply, water supply."
At the same time, West Virginia politicians continue to push back against the climate talks and the White House proposals to cut greenhouse gas emissions in America.
The U.S. House on Tuesday, passed two resolutions disapproving of the Obama administration proposals to regulate carbon emissions from power plants, a key plank of his climate change platform.
The vote was timed to coincide with the first day of the Paris climate conference. Obama has vowed to veto the resolutions.
West Virginia's two senators, Sen. Joe Manchin and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, sponsored the resolutions, which passed the Senate last month.
"Sending these resolutions to the president's desk is an important step in the fight against the harmful Clean Power Plan and shows that any international climate deal reached in Paris will be met with skepticism here at home," Capito said last week. "World leaders should be cautious about entering into a deal with an administration whose misguided policies lack the backing of a bipartisan majority."
Manchin also tied the resolutions to the Paris conference, although less explicitly.
"We are showing the rest of the country and the rest of the world that we will continue to fight these unobtainable and unreasonable regulations with everything that we have," Manchin said.
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey has gone even further, writing directly to 10 foreign leaders to stress what he calls "significant legal limits" the president faces in trying to execute any climate deal.
Hand, the dean of the School of Public Health, said that he sees climate change and the Paris conference as signs that WVU needs to continue looking for ways to boost energy research, of all kinds, to have less impact on the climate.
"Climate change is no longer a problem for future generations, we are already feeling its effects in every corner of our nation and across the globe, which threatens our economic and national security and our health," the White House announcement reads. "Today's commitments reinforce not only how vast the impacts of climate change are, but also the opportunity to join together and address this problem."
Reach David Gutman at david.gutman@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-5119 or follow @davidlgutman on Twitter.