Monday, Feb 9, 2009
There are three over-riding messages contained in a recent scientific report: the climate is getting warmer, will continue to get warm and it’s virtually certain humans are the cause, said Nobel-Prize-winning scientist John Fyfe at his Thursday keynote address at Whitman College’s Maxey Auditorium.
Fyfe – a senior research scientist at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modeling and Analysis – was one of the authors of that report, produced by the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change that won a 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for its work, sharing the award with former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore.
Fyfe was one of several speakers last week at Whitman College, which was participating with hundreds of other colleges and organizations across the nation in a National Teach-In event on the issues of climate change and sustainability.
“Mitigation will not substantially affect the climate over the next few decades,” Fyfe told his audience. But he said choices made now will have a big impact on the climate toward the end of the 21st Century and will affect “our offspring.”
The Teach-in’s focus was to have solutions-driven discussions between students and decision-makers – with the goal in mind being how to cut carbon emissions 40 percent by 2020. Participating schools are then sending video letters, ideas to the U.S. Congress.
This teach-in event, the second annual, is smaller this year – about 800 schools and organizations instead of the 1,900 schools last year – because of the economy and a smaller organizing budget, said Eban Goodstein, a project co-director for the Teach-In and a professor of economics at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore.
The advisory board for the National Teach-in includes David Orr, professor of Environmental Studies at Oberlin College; Stephen Schneider, professor of Biological Sciences at Stanford University; Mohan Munasinghe, vice chair, U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); and James “Gus” Speth, dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
Whitman College’s Feb. 2-5 event included input from local business owners, politicians, Whitman students and professors.
Jesse Phillips’09, a coordinator for the Whitman event – which was put on by Campus Climate Challenge, a student group dedicated to addressing the causes of global warming on campus – said this year’s event introduced “new and exciting elements to the mix.” In addition to various speakers, including a talk by Karlis Rokpelnis ’09, Whitman's first campus sustainability coordinator – which is a part-time intern position responsible for advancing environmental awareness and sustainability at Whitman – there was the "Mind-Opening Mic" event so people could share their views through poetry or other expressions. Phillips said the goal of the open-mic event was “to expand beyond a scientific and political audience to relate environmental issues to the humanities.”
CONTACT: Virginia Grantier, Writer, (509) 527-4917
grantivc@whitman.edu
