One-on-One with Gabriel Pacyniak
July 3, 2024 - Ellen Marks with the Albuquerque Journal
photo credit: Jon Austria
Gabriel Pacyniak loves it when his University of New Mexico law students bring home a win, especially if the victory involves battling climate change or benefiting low-income people.
If it does both, even better.
Pacyniak is interim director of UNM’s Clinical Law Program and the faculty supervisor of the Natural Resources and Environmental Law Program, in which students provide pro-bono work to protect natural resources and improve the environment.
His particular lifetime mission is the reduction of greenhouse gases and making sure the transition to clean energy is affordable for everyone, including those who live in low income and minority areas.
“I see my role as a law professor and somebody who works on the law and policy side of addressing climate change as offering options to policy makers,” said Pacyniak, who joined the UNM faculty in 2017 after managing the climate mitigation program at the Georgetown Climate Center in Washington, D.C.
“What I do know is that the science is clear that we need to get to net zero emissions globally by about 2050 to avoid catastrophic harms.”
