February 15, 2001
“Global Climate Change: Prospects
for International Action” to be topic of talk March
7
Lecture on is free and open to the
public
MIDDLEBURY, Vt.”Global Climate
Change: Prospects for International Action” will be the subject of a
lecture by Jonathan Lash, president of World Resources Institute
(WRI), a leading environmental think tank based in Washington, D.C.
Lash served as the co-chair of the Presidents Council on
Sustainable Development from 1993-1999, and is the former head of the
Vermont Agency of Natural Resources. The talk will take place on the
Middlebury College campus at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, March 7, in Room
216 of Bicentennial Hall on Bicentennial Way off College Street
(Route 125). The event is free and open to the public.
Lashs talk will include a
discussion of the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was approved earlier this year
in January in Shanghai, China by climate-change scientists from over
100 countries. The report presents strong new evidence that most of
the global warming of the last 50 years has been caused by human
activities. According to the document, global temperatures are
projected to rise between 2.5 to 10.4 degrees from 1990 to 2100, a
higher increase than the estimates published in the IPCCs last
assessment in 1995.
“As the biggest emitter of carbon
dioxide, the U.S. has an historic opportunity and
a moral responsibility to jump-start
the stalled negotiations for the Kyoto Protocol,” said Lash,
referring to efforts to implement the international climate
protection treaty. “Scientists have presented compelling evidence and
politicians must move boldly to mitigate the impacts of climate
change before it is too late.”
Besides heading the Vermont Agency of
Natural Resources, Lash directed the environmental law and policy
program at the Vermont Law School and served as Vermonts
Commissioner of Environmental Conservation before taking his position
at WRI. He is a board member of the Montpelier-based Institute for
Sustainable Communities and the Washington, D.C.-based Wallace Global
Fund.
The lecture is part of a Middlebury
College program titled “International Studies and Environmental
Studies: Building the Connection” that is partially funded by a grant
from the U.S. Department of Education Title VI Undergraduate
International Studies and Foreign Language Program. For more
information, contact Charlotte Tate of the Geonomics Center for
International Studies at Middlebury College at 802-443-5795 or
tate@middlebury.edu.
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