Swiss pitch views on climate in Rice exhibit

Swiss pitch views on climate in Rice exhibit

BY MIKE WILLIAMS
Rice News staff

It’s a point of pride to be the most greenhouse gas-efficient economy in the developed world, and the government of Switzerland wants to show how and why that came to be.

	COURTESY PHOTO
	The Swiss government’s Think Swiss Climate Trail exhibit — similar to this one held in Washington, D.C. — will set up shop at Rice’s Brochstein Pavilion from Oct. 27 to 30.

The government’s Think Swiss Climate Trail exhibit will set up shop at Rice’s Brochstein Pavilion from Oct. 27 to 30, concluding with a symposium Thursday at 4 p.m. at Farnsworth Pavilion in Rice Memorial Center that will feature a talk by Urs Ziswiler, Swiss ambassador to the United States.

The exhibit describes the greenhouse effect and other contributors to global warming, details its impact and offers solutions based on those adopted by Switzerland in recent decades, including transportation initiatives, low-carbon-footprint construction, renewable energy and strategies for sustainable living.

The goals of the exhibit are very much in line with those of André Droxler, professor of Earth sciences and director of Rice’s Center for the Study of Environment and Society, which is co-sponsoring the exhibit.

”Europe has taken a leading role in terms of climate change, being aware of CO2 and the impact of greenhouse gases, something we’re just starting here in the U.S.,” said Droxler, a native of Switzerland who negotiated the touring exhibit’s visit to Rice. By good fortune, it will be here during the upcoming Severe Storm Prediction and Global Climate Impact in the Gulf Coast Conference, which Rice will host Oct. 29-31.

Ziswiler’s Oct. 30 talk, titled ”From the Alps to the Rocky Mountains,” is billed as an international perspective on climate change issues affecting the world.

Adding their perspectives will be Neal Lane, Rice’s Malcolm Gillis University Professor, who will introduce Ziswiler; Marc Robert, a professor in chemical and biomolecular engineering, who will discuss environmental initiatives in the U.S. academic system; and Droxler, who will talk about the use of past climate records as a guide to climate change in the next century.

”We don’t know when it might happen, but we know it’s happened in the past,” Droxler said of the prospect that greenhouse emissions may affect the world severely and soon. ”There’s an event we can see from studying ice cores from Greenland about 12,000 years ago where the temperature changed by 7 degrees Celsius in less than a decade.”

For details of the Think Swiss initiative, go to www.thinkswiss.org.