IU to serve as satellite location for national conference on energy and climate change
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Indiana University’s Integrated Program in the Environment will serve as a satellite location for the Jan. 27 kickoff of the National Council for Science and the Environment Energy and Climate Change Conference. The event will be open to the public and IU community and will take place from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Ostrom Workshop, 513 N. Park Ave.
The National Council for Science and the Environment is focusing its 15th national conference on the energy and climate change. The conference, Jan. 27 to 29 in Washington, D.C., will bring together over 1,000 leaders in climate science and governance. Keynote speakers will include EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, former governors Bill Richardson of New Mexico and Jennifer Granholm of Michigan, scientist Amory Lovins and others.
Conference sessions are being broadcast to select satellite locations across the country. Indiana University will participate by serving as a satellite location, as well as by sending several graduate students and faculty to attend.
“The world is poised to make major decisions in 2015 -- particularly at the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris in December,” said Jeffrey White, director of the Integrated Program in the Environment. “I am pleased that IPE is able to host an opportunity for the campus community to listen in at the conference and to participate in a dialogue about this important challenge, quite likely the defining challenge of our time.”
Three plenaries will be broadcast at IU during the kickoff event: “The Big Challenges,” “Decarbonizing the Energy Supply” and “Smart Energy: Transforming Our Relationship to Energy.” The third plenary will be followed by a roundtable discussion featuring expert IU staff and faculty.
Participants are welcome to drop in for the program, as their schedule allows, with plenaries beginning every hour. RSVPs are requested for those who plan to attend the third session and roundtable discussion, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Light refreshments will be provided, and attendees are encouraged to bring lunch.
Sarah Mincey, associate director of the Integrated Program in the Environment, will attend the conference in Washington, along with four students. One of the students, Kathleen de Onis, is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University. Since coming to IU, she authored the divestment and carbon neutrality resolution for the Graduate and Professional Student Organization and received the Goddard Prize for work to bring solar hot water to campus dormitories. De Onis plans to continue her on-campus activism with the knowledge she gains at the Energy and Climate Change Conference.
“As a graduate student who studies communication and energy justice concerns, I am delighted to serve as an IU student representative at this conference,” she said. “From the keynote speakers to the various symposia, it's going to be a very instructive and worthwhile event. I look forward to sharing my convention experiences with the IU community upon my return.”
While the Integrated Program in the Environment will show just the first several sessions of the conference, all conference sessions are available to IU faculty through a special login. A complete schedule can be found at the National Council for Science and the Environment Energy and Climate Change conference website. Faculty interested in bringing any of the conference keynote or plenary sessions to their classrooms can request access by contacting Sarah Mincey at 812-855-8745 or skmincey@indiana.edu.
The satellite conference at IU is presented by the National Council for Science and the Environment, the IU Integrated Program in the Environment and the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at IU Bloomington.
About the School of Public and Environmental Affairs
SPEA was founded in 1972 and is a world leader in public and environmental affairs and is the largest school of public administration and public policy in the United States. In the 2012 "Best Graduate Schools" by U.S. News and World Report, SPEA ranks second and is the nation's highest-ranked professional graduate program in public affairs at a public institution. Four of its specialty programs are ranked in the top-five listings.
About the Integrated Program in the Environment
The IU Integrated Program in the Environment brings together more than 90 faculty members -- including world-renowned scientists and instructors. It reaches across 25 departments and five schools within IU -- one of the Big 10's top universities. The program encourages collaborations in the classroom, lab, field and outreach and in other activities.
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