Fair and forum focus on global warming solutions, sustainability

Fair and forum focus on global warming solutions, sustainability
Nobel Prize winner, Shell Oil Company president and Houston mayor to speak

BY B.J. ALMOND
Rice News Staff

Rice University and more than 1,000 other colleges and universities are participating in a national ”teach-in” on global warming solutions for America Jan. 31. 

Rice’s Center for the Study of Environment and Society (CSES) has organized a Sustainability Fair and a CO2 Forum where students, faculty, staff and the general public can pick up environmental tips and learn more about global warming solutions. Both events are free and will be held in Rice Memorial Center (RMC).

Speakers for the forum include Rice President David Leebron, Houston Mayor Bill White, Shell Oil Company President John Hofmeister, Neal Lane, who served as science adviser to President Bill Clinton and is now a university professor at Rice and a fellow in science and technology policy at Rice’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, and Dominique Raynaud, a paleoclimatologist and glaciologist with France’s National Center for Scientific Research and lead-author in the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore for its scientific reports on the connection between human activities and global warming.

The CO2 Forum will be held in the Grand Hall from 7 to 9:30 p.m. and, in addition to short presentations by the five distinguished speakers, will include two panel discussions moderated by Amy Myers Jaffe, the Wallace S. Wilson Fellow in Energy Studies at the Baker Institute and associate director of the Rice Energy Program.

In addition to highlighting sustainability efforts on the Rice campus and throughout the city of Houston, and the panel discussions will examine how the US can become a leader on global warming issues. The forums also will explore alternative energy options for the next 25 years and the implications of using past variations of atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas concentrations to forecast climate changes in the current century.

Additional panelists include: Eugene Levy, Rice Provost and Howard R. Hughes Professor of Physics and Astronomy; André Droxler, professor of Earth Science and CSES director; Richard Johnson ’92, director of sustainability and associate CSES director; and John Anderson, the W. Maurice Ewing Chair in Oceanography and professor of Earth Science.

Prior to the forum, various organizations and businesses will set up information booths throughout the RMC for a Sustainability Fair from 4 to 7 p.m. Among the participants are the U.S. Green Building Council, the Rice Student Green Building Initiative, Engineers Without Borders, the Environmental Club, NuRide, Green Mountain Energy, the Community Garden, and the Rice University Biodiesel Initiative. Lovett senior Niki von Hedemann will display a carbon calculator that Rice students can use to estimate their personal carbon emissions, and Hanszen senior Ian Ragsdale will show the winning entries from his environmental film contest.

The nationwide educational initiative to get everyone talking about global warming solutions for America on the same day is being organized by Focus the Nation, a project of the Green House Network, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization based in Lake Oswego, Ore.

“Starting with the common reading, we’ve created a continuing dialogue for our students this year on the topic of humans, nature, and climate change,” Johnson said. “The Focus the Nation project provides us with the opportunity to bring the broader Houston community into that discussion, and to engage with key leaders in government, academia, and industry. Considering that more than 1,000 other schools will be doing the same thing on Jan. 31, we might find ourselves with a population focused on implementing climate change solutions when we wake up on the morning of Feb. 1.”

For a complete list of presenters at the Sustainability Fair and CO2 Forum, visit http://sustainability.rice.edu, or contact CSES at 713-348-5736 or CSES@rice.edu.

For more information on the national teach-in, visit www.focusthenation.org.