Houston mayor, Shell Oil Company president and a Nobel Prize winner to speak at Rice Thursday during national ‘teach-in’ on global warming solutions

admin
– January 28, 2008Posted in: News Releases

CONTACT: B.J. Almond
PHONE: 713-348-6770
E-MAIL: balmond@rice.edu

Houston mayor, Shell Oil Company president and a Nobel Prize winner to speak at Rice Thursday during national ‘teach-in’ on global warming solutions


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.

Houston Mayor Bill White, the president of Shell Oil Company and a Nobel Prize-winning scientist are among the speakers for the event at Rice, which is free and open to the public.

Rice’s Center for the Study of Environment and Society (CSES) organized a CO2 Forum and a Sustainability Fair to share environmental tips and global warming solutions. The fair will be held from 4 to 7 p.m. and will be followed by the forum, which is scheduled for 7 to 9:30 p.m.  Both activities will be held in Rice Memorial Center, 6100 Main St.

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 nonpartisan, nonprofit Green House Network.

“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,” said Richard Johnson, director of sustainability at Rice.

Along with the mayor, speakers for the forum include:

* Rice President David Leebron

* Shell Oil Company President John Hofmeister

* 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

* 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 Baker Institute for Public Policy

In addition to short presentations by the five distinguished speakers, the forum will include two panel discussions that highlight sustainability efforts on the Rice campus and throughout the city and examine how the U.S. can become a leader on global warming issues. The forum will also 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 the Howard R. Hughes Professor of Physics and Astronomy; André Droxler, professor of Earth science and CSES director; Richard Johnson, director of sustainability and associate CSES director; and John Anderson, the W. Maurice Ewing Chair in Oceanography and professor of Earth science. Amy Myers Jaffe, the Wallace S. Wilson Fellow in Energy Studies at the Baker Institute and associate director of the Rice Energy Program, will moderate the forum.

Among the organizations and businesses that will have information booths at the Sustainability Fair 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.

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.

For information on parking at Rice, visit www.rice.edu/parking.

About admin