Keynote Speaker, 9/22: Bill McKibben
Bill McKibben is the author of nine books on the environment and other topics. His first book, the End of Nature, was also the first book for a general audience on global warming; it's now available in 20 foreign languages. A former staff writer for the New Yorker, his work appears in Harpers, the Atlantic, the New York Review of Books, and a variety of other national publications. A scholar in residence at Middlebury College, he is the recipient of Guggenheim and Lyndhurst fellowships and the Lannan Prize in Nonfiction Writing. His most recent book is Wandering Home: A Long Walk Across America's Most Hopeful Region, Vermont's Champlain Valley and New York's Adirondacks.
Plenary Lecture, 9/23: Dr. Bill Ruddiman
William F. Ruddiman
Emeritus Professor and former Chairman,
Department of Environmental Sciences
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Va.
E-mail: wfr5c@virginia.edu
Dr. Ruddiman's research has involved climate change on tectonic, orbital and human time scales; he's the uthor of more than 100 papers, mostly in peer-reviewed scientific journals; author of undergraduate textbook "Earth's Climate" (2001); author of the book "Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum" (2005)
On his plenary lecture: "For decades, two assumptions have been part of the scientific understanding of global warming—(1) natural forces kept Earth's climate in a warm 'interglacial' state for several millennia, and (2) humans first began to alter this state during the industrial era (the last two centuries). Both of these assumptions are flawed: natural processes have been pushing climate toward a cooler, partly glaciated state for thousands of years, and emissions of greenhouse gases from early farming held off most of this natural cooling."
Panel 9/23: Global Changes, Local Impacts
Climate Change and Indigenous Communities
Craig Fleener was the first Director of Natural Resources for the Council of Athabascan Tribal Governments in Fort Yukon, Alaska; he served as the regional biologist for several years and is currently the Executive Director.
He graduated from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1999 with a BSc. in Natural Resources Management and is currently working towards a MSc. in Wildlife Biology through the Resources and the Environment Program at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada.
He is the Chairman of the Eastern Interior Regional Federal Subsistence Advisory Council.
He is Vice-Chair for the Gwich'in Council International which is a permanent participant to the Arctic Council. He's serving on a multidisciplinary National Academy of Sciences committee to assist in the development of a long-range Western Alaska Salmon Research and Restoration Plan.
He served in the U.S. Marine Corps for four years and has been in the National Guard since 1991. He's been employed to work on a variety of natural resources issues with the Native Village of Fort Yukon and the Council of Athabascan Tribal Governments.
Darren J. Ranco, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Native American
Studies and Environmental Studies
6152 Sherman House
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH 03755
(603) 646-0578
Darren J. Ranco has a joint appointment in Native American Studies and Environmental Studies. A citizen and member of the Penobscot Indian Nation, he received a Masters of Studies in Environmental Law from Vermont Law School in 1998 and completed his PhD in Social Anthropology from Harvard University in 2000. From 2000-2003, he was an assistant professor of Native American Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. In general, his research focuses on the ways in which indigenous communities in the United States resist environmental destruction by using local knowledge to protect cultural resources, and how state knowledge systems, rooted in colonial contexts, continue to expose indigenous peoples to an inordinate amount of environmental risk.
M John Mameamskum
Director-General & Secretary
Naskapi Nation of Kawawachikamach
P.O. Box 5111
Kawawachikamach, Quebec. G0G 2Z0
July 1989 to present:
Advise Chief and Council on Comprehensive Land Claims Settlement regarding the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement and Government Relations;
Senior Negotiator: November 1975 –January 1978 for the Northeastern Quebec Agreement;
Senior Representative of the Naskapi on the Cree/Naskapi (of Quebec) Act negotiations that lead to the First Indian Self-Government Legislation enacted by the Canadian Parliament in July 1984;
On-going files: Naskapi Nation Representative on the Nunavik Self-Government Negotiations and Quebec/Naskapi Partnership Agreement
Naskapi Nation Representative to the following organizations:
Quebec-Hunting, Fishing and Trapping Coordinating Committee, www.cccpp-hftcc.com
Institute for Environmental Monitoring and Research, www.iemr.org
CirumArctic Rangifer Monitoring & Assessment Network, www.rangifer.net/carma
His Excellency Enele Sopoaga, UN Ambassador from Tuvalu.
Enele Sopoaga is Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Tuvalu to the United Nations. He's also vice chairman of the Alliance of Small Island States, and he remains active on issues of climate change and global warming.
Panel, 9/24: Religious and Ethical Perspectives
on Climate Change
Paul Gorman is Executive Director of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, an alliance of Jewish and Christian faith groups, which he helped found in 1993. In 1999, he received the Heinz Award for the Environment. Mr. Gorman is a graduate of Yale and Oxford University. He worked in the U.S. Congress, and served as press secretary and speechwriter to Senator Eugene McCarthy in the 1968 presidential campaign. He also taught at the City University of New York, Sarah Lawrence College and Adelphi University. Mr. Gorman hosted a public radio program for 29 years and co-authored How Can I Help? From 1985-91, he served as the Cathedral of St. John the Divine's Vice President for Program, overseeing community-based initiatives and helping organize international conferences on religion and the environment in Assisi, Oxford and Moscow.
Dr. Laurel Kearns, of Drew University Theological Seminary, teaches courses encompassing religion in social change, particularly issues of racism, sexism, sexuality and globalization; social movements in general, and non-violent and ecological movements in particular; the religious landscape of the U.S., with particular interest in the religious expressions of women, new immigrant groups and people of color; feminist and environmental sociology; and religion and ecology, with a particular interest in eco-justice and environmental racism. Her research is focused on religious involvement, particularly Christian, in ecological issues and movements in the U.S. and Australia, nature spirituality, and religious responses to global warming.
Barbara Lerman-Golomb
Communications Director
Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, COEJL
443 Park Avenue South, 11th floor
New York, NY 10016
212-532-7801
barbara@coejl.org
Barbara has recently taken on the role of communications director of COEJL and is developing new ways to promote the organization and its mission of environmental stewardship. She was formerly a COEJL board member, volunteer regional leader, and a contributor to both their print and web site materials. Barbara is an author, playwright, scriptwriter, activist, educational content designer, and co-owner of a 100% Made in the U.S.A. manufacturing company. As a film student at NYU in the early years of the "No Nukes" movement, she wrote, directed, and produced a public service announcement on the dangers of nuclear power. She is a member of the Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism and a former board member of GreenFaith, an interfaith environmental coalition. In 2000, Barbara received a Nathan Cummings Fellowship to be trained as an experiential environmental educator. This inspired her to create WOW (Wonders of the World), an interactive eco initiative, earning her the name "Barbara Wow." In 2001, she was selected to participate in a mindful meditation sea kayaking expedition to Alaska's Tongass National Forest, home to some of the last temperate rain forest left on the planet. The group returned as advocates for protection of this area that has become the epicenter of the old growth or "Ancient Forests" debate. Barbara lives in New York City with her husband and two daughters.
Panel, 9/24: Solutions: Initiatives by
Goverment, Business and Civil Society
Meg Boyle is the new Executive Director of the Climate Campaign, a youth-based coalition of student groups, environmental networks, and local organizations that strives to reduce the Northeast's contributions to global climate change by fostering student leadership, leading successful campus- and state-level greenhouse gas emissions reductions campaigns, and supporting the initiatives of its partner organizations. The Climate Campaign is rooted in a system of strong state networks led by student coordinators and on a series of annual regional and state gatherings. Founded in 2003, the Climate Campaign is now active on hundreds of college and university campuses across nine Northeast states. The Climate Campaign is also a founding member of Energy Action, a national youth clean energy coalition based in part on the Climate Campaign model. Meg is a member of Energy Action's steering committee. She graduated in 2005 with a degree in Biology and Environmental Studies from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. While at Bowdoin, Meg worked for the Office for a Sustainable Bowdoin, was a founding member of the Climate Campaign and Energy Action, was named a 2004 Morris K. Udall Scholar, and spent a year studying environmental issues in Copenhagen, Denmark. Her favorite place is Kent Island, a remote island in the Bay of Fundy where she lived and learned during Summer 2003. Meg hopes you will get in touch at (207)504-6166 and mboyle@climatecampaign.org.
Rachel Harold
Investor Programs Fellow
Ceres
99 Chauncy Street
6th Floor
Boston, MA 02111
Phone: 617.247.0700
Fax: 617.267.5400
As Ceres Fellow for Investor Programs, Rachel works with institutional investors to move companies toward sustainable practices. She works extensively with the Global Warming Shareholder Campaign and is also building the Investor Network on Climate Risk.
Rachel is a graduate of Green Corps, the field school for environmental organizing, during which she led campaigns with Clear the Air, Bluewater Network, Oceana, and the Fund for Public Interest Research in cities across the country. She came to Ceres from MoveOn PAC, where she was a field organizer for the Leave No Voter Behind campaign in New Hampshire.
Rachel holds a Bachelor of Arts from Duke University in Environmental Science and Policy, where her focus was on the intersection of public health and the environment
Dr. Michael K. Dorsey is Assistant Professor in Environmental Studies at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. He holds degrees from the University of Michigan's School of Natural Resources and Environment, Yale's Forestry School, and the Anthropology Department at Johns Hopkins University.
Dorsey's research involves international and domestic environmental (in)justice, with a sub-focus on resource management conflicts. He is writing a volume examining bio-commerce in Ecuador's Upper Amazon Basin.
Dorsey teaches courses on the above as well as on international environmental policy issues. He has been a lecturer at Rijksuniversiteit Groningen in the Netherlands, Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan in Sweden, and at the University of Witswaterstrand in South Africa.