A Passion for Science - Columbia College - Columbia University

Columbia CollEgE Today MIChAEL gERRARd ’72
case and political pressure, recycling was expanded.
In 2008, he represented the NRDC in filing a petition — largely
drafted by Gerrard — with the White House Council on Environmental
Quality asking it to issue regulations requiring environmental
impact statements to discuss greenhouse gas emissions and climate
change. (The CEQ did issue proposed rules in February 2010.)
Gerrard has a reputation for tact and gentility, which make him
a more influential attorney and advocate and also, colleagues say,
a behavioral role model.
“Mike never gets frazzled,” Periconi says. “He’s the most generous
of people in helping colleagues with the right way to approach
a legal problem, providing sources of information you didn’t know
existed, telling you the right people to call on an issue … and yet
he’s supremely modest about his accomplishments. I’ve never heard
anyone say a negative word about Mike Gerrard — ever.”
Gerrard taught courses as an adjunct at
the Law School, NYU Law and the Yale
School of Forestry and Environmental
Studies before joining the faculties of the Law
School and the Earth Institute full-time at the
beginning of 2009.
“I came to feel climate change is one of the
most serious issues facing humanity, and since
I have some expertise, I felt an obligation to
devote myself to helping devise solutions and
train the next generation of leaders in the field,”
Gerrard says. “There’s too much to be done, and
not enough people to do it.”
Cohen says Gerrard is truly interested in education
and is a popular teacher, whose courses
on environmental law, climate change law and
energy law are always full.
“What he brings to the classroom is his enormous
experience from the time environmental
law started, so students get the benefit of knowing
what went on and how we got to where we
are today,” Sandler says.
Students say Gerrard, who can come across
as staid before getting to know him, makes even
lecture courses lively and interactive. He will play YouTube videos
to bring the material to life, and has brought in bumper stickers
from oppositional campaigns and original documents from cases
for show and tell. “He’s quite funny, and intersperses anecdotes
from his years of experience in the field throughout the class,” says
Ben Schifman ’11L. “He’s been involved in many of the foundational
environmental law cases we read in the case books — you
are unlikely to have a professor who can do that in other fields such
as, say, property law, which was largely developed centuries ago.”
While student interest in pursuing environmental careers has
been growing during the past decade or so — enrollments in related
courses have increased, and the College added a major in
sustainable development in 2010 — neither the school nor Gerrard
fully anticipated his reception on campus. For 18 spots available
in the spring 2010 semester for his “Seminar on Energy Law,” a
topic Gerrard says was previously considered “an obscure corner
of the law,” 130 students applied. Demand remains strong, and this
semester, for the first time, Gerrard admitted 20 undergraduates to
his “Climate Change Law” lecture class.
Carolyn Matos ’12, an urban studies major who interned at
the Center for Climate Change Law last summer, is taking “Climate
Change Law” and says she has decided to pursue environ-
Gerrard is a pioneer in environmental
law and has helped shape the growing
field with his prolific writings, professional
work and the founding of Columbia’s
Center for Climate Change Law.
PhOTO: ERICA MARTIN
MAY/JUNE 2011
29
mental law as a career, “primarily because of Professor Gerrard,
how much he loves environmental law and how passionate he is
about climate law.”
“I find a great deal more student interest in environmental law
now versus before,” Gerrard says, referring to his time as an adjunct
lecturer at the Law School from 1992–2000. “Before, it was considered
a specialty, and not a great many wanted to go into it as a career.
Now, people are attracted to it. They think environmental issues are
important to their own futures and the future of civilization. The environment
poses many fascinating legal and policy issues they’d like
to tackle. And they see job growth in this area.”
to reduce his carbon footprint, Gerrard commutes to campus
from his home in Chappaqua, N.Y., by Metro-North
train to East 125th Street, a crosstown bus and a half-mile
walk on Amsterdam Avenue. He points out that
mode of transportation is a major determinant
of one’s personal environmental impact.
Gerrard and his wife of 34 years, Barbara, to
whom he was introduced through taking the
Westin course, also are active in local politics. In
November 2009, Barbara Gerrard was reelected
to a second term as supervisor (the equivalent
of mayor) of the Town of New Castle, of which
Chappaqua is a part. The town has become increasingly
environmentally conscious under her
leadership and was the first in New York to sign
the state’s Climate Smart Communities Pledge to
lower greenhouse gas emissions, promote recycling
and reduce energy consumption.
Michael Gerrard has chaired the town’s Solid
Waste Advisory Board, which he admits sounds
unglamorous but says plays an important role
in any local environment. He also sits on several
nonprofit boards, and for 10 years was the pro
bono general counsel of the Municipal Art Society
of New York.
The couple’s sons, David ’03, ’07 Arts, and
William ’05, ’12 Arts, are third-generation Columbians.
Gerrard’s parents met while both were attending
graduate school at Columbia: his father, Nathan ’52 GSAS,
in sociology, and his mother, Louise ’69 GSAS, in political science
(she took time off to raise Michael and his brother, then completed
her Ph.D. when Michael was a first-year at the College).
A tagline for Gerrard’s career could be “Act Globally, Act Locally.”
At the same time that he has been working on the plight
of drowning island nations, he was one of six private citizens appointed
to work on the issue closer to home, as part of New York
State’s Sea Level Rise Task Force. “The sea is rising and rising
at an accelerating rate,” he says. “By the end of the century, the
rise could be quite significant for low-lying cities, including New
York.” Regarding his wide-ranging involvement in the field, he
states simply, “There are a lot of balls to juggle.”
Colleagues marvel at how much Gerrard accomplishes, and at
the way he does it. Periconi says, “I think of Mike as perhaps the
best exemplar of the mix of qualities promoted by a Columbia
education: a spirit of intellectual adventurousness, tremendous
public mindedness, contributing to the commonweal and not all
that focused on promoting his own career yet with outstanding
professional accomplishment.”
shira boss ’93, ’97J, ’98 sipa is a contributing writer to CCT.