Rice team blogs from Copenhagen climate talks

Five Rice University students will head to Copenhagen next week to listen in and report from the United Nations Climate Change Conference, which begins Dec. 7. Representatives from 192 nations, including President Barack Obama, will gather to find a consensus on ways to combat global warming.

The Rice students are enrolled in an independent study course, International Perspective on Global Climate Change: The Copenhagen Experience, taught by doctoral student Rosa Dominguez and Pedro Alvarez, the George R. Brown Professor and chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Though they haven’t left Houston yet, the students are already blogging about their preparations at http://cop15.blogs.rice.edu.

The students – Claire Krebs, Yves Meyer, Rachael Petersen, Roque Sanchez and Fernanda Alvarez – will spend five days in Denmark reporting on the conference, which concludes Dec. 18. Each will report on a different aspect of the gathering.

Krebs is a senior majoring in mechanical engineering who, upon graduation, will begin a stint with the Peace Corps to work as a water and sanitation engineer.

Meyer, also a senior, is a civil and environmental engineering major with an interest in the development of sustainable energy from renewable resources.

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Petersen is a sophomore anthropology and environmental policy major involved in wind-energy projects in Mexico, where she plans to spend next summer doing fieldwork.

Sanchez is a graduate student in environmental engineering and served as the student lead on Rice’s Solar Decathlon team, which took its ZEROW HOUSE to Washington, D.C., this year. His interests include renewable energy, distributed infrastructure systems and ”leapfrog” sustainable development.

Alvarez is a junior at Rice majoring in religious studies and minoring in sociology. She is interested in the effect new emissions policies that will be discussed in Copenhagen will have on developing countries, especially China.