Global Sustainability Dialogue Day & Statewide Meeting

Public discussion of global warming has moved beyond debate about science to discussion of needed policy actions. Professor Dick White, retired professor from Smith College will review the 2007 reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, stressing the urgent need for policy action to mitigate global warming, and describe the national project Focus the Nation: Global Warming Solutions for America. Coming from a liberal arts college background where he taught for 30 years, he will discuss the breadth of approaches that campuses can take to raise awareness of the scientific, economic, historical, political and social dimensions of climate change, and the importance of this effort in placing climate change on the 2008 political agenda. I hope you can all join us for this interesting presentation.

This presentation is going to be followed by a statewide summit on Focus the Nation. Educators and students across the state are invited to join us in a discussion of the evidence for climate change and solutions. It is a matter of great urgency and we need to all come together to bring about change. Come to the Global Sustainability dialogue day to discuss what actions we can take as individuals, as a campus, as a state and as a nation.

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About the speakers...

Dick White is Professor Emeritus of Astronomy at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he also taught a public policy course on global warming. In the year after his retirement from Smith in 2002, he joined the Green House Network national speakers bureau and also chaired the Northampton Citizens for Climate Protection. A resident of Durango, Colorado, since 2003, he serves as Chair of the Sustainability Alliance of Southwest Colorado. He also serves on the Boards of the Southwest Colorado Renewable Energy Association and La Boca Center for Sustainability. He led efforts to have the City of Durango and La Plata County endorse the Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. In 2007 and early 2008 he will be working as regional coordinator for Focus the Nation, an educational effort seeking to engage more than 1000 colleges and schools, in addition to their surrounding communities, to focus on solutions to climate change. This project will culminate in symposia held across the country on January 31, 2008.

Ms. Katharine L. Jacobs is the Executive Director of the Arizona Water Institute, a consortium of the three state universities (Arizona State University, the University of Arizona, and Northern Arizona University) focused on water-related research, education and technology transfer focused on water supply sustainability. She is also the Deputy Director of the NSF Center for Sustainability of Arid Region Hydrology and Riparian Areas at the University of Arizona, and Professor and Specialist at the Department of Soil, Water and Environmental Science and Water Resources Research Center. She has more than twenty years of experience as a water manager for the state of Arizona Department of Water Resources. Her research interests include water policy, connecting science and decision-making, stakeholder engagement, use of climate information for water management applications, and drought planning. Ms. Jacobs earned her M.L.A. in environmental planning from the University of California, Berkeley. She was a co-author of the National Assessment of the Impacts of Climate Change and part of the National Assessment Synthesis Team, and has served on numerous National Research Council panels.

Focusing Arizona on Global Warming Solutions

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Faculty Professional Growth