Organizer of nationwide climate change initiative to speak Feb. 28

Organizer of nationwide climate change initiative to speak Feb. 28

The organizer of a major initiative that is engaging more than a thousand U.S. educational institutions on climate change will speak at Rice Wednesday, Feb. 28.

Eban Goodstein, an economics professor at Lewis and Clark College, will discuss ”Seen Inconvenient Truth: Now What? Focus the Nation on Solutions to Global Warming” at 7:30 p.m. in McMurtry Auditorium, Anne and Charles Duncan Hall.

Goodstein is organizing ”Focus the Nation: A Global Warming Educational Initiative,” which is coordinating teams of faculty, students and staff at colleges, universities and high schools across the U.S. to participate in a nonpartisan discussion on the theme of climate stabilization. The project will also include the participation of religious, civic and business organizations and will culminate Jan. 31, 2008, in a one-day symposium to be held simultaneously on campuses across the country.

Goodstein said, ”Focus the Nation could be a catalyzing event on par with Earth Day 1970 that could help turn the national conversation about global warming from fatalism to constructive engagement.”

Goodstein’s current research focuses on the economics of global climate change. He is the author of ”Economics and the Environment” and ”The Trade-off Myth: Fact and Fiction about Jobs and the Environment.” He serves on the editorial board of Environment, Workplace and Employment and is on the steering committee of the Center for the Applied Study of Economics and the Environment. Goodstein also is a member scholar at the Center for Progressive Reform.

For more information about Focus the Nation, visit <www.focusthenation.org>.

Goodstein’s talk is sponsored by Rice’s Center for the Study of the Environment and Society.