Global Warming

Tuesday, September 11
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

The scientific evidence on global warming is as disturbing as it is definitive. Increasing carbon emissions challenge our planet and all who inhabit it, a challenge that is here and now and that we must both acknowledge and address. Taking off from the documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth, the presentation by Simmens, special assistant to Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, speaks to the average citizen.

Issue in Context
Global warming refers to the rise of the average temperature of the earth’s atmosphere and oceans and has become a prominent global issue over the last fifty years. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have been found by scientists to contribute in large part to the continued increase of the earth’s temperature. While some greenhouse gases are necessary to maintain a temperature suitable for life on earth, an excess of these gases can create serious problems. In the past decade, the earth has experienced some of the warmest years ever recorded. While changes in the sun’s orbit and some volcanic eruptions have contributed to global warming, scientists and environmentalists have found that the recent elevated temperatures of the planet can be attributed Read more

Monday, April 16, 2007
7:00 p.m. – Stern Center, Great Room
Metzger-Conway Fellow
Jeanne Lopatto, director of Government and International Affairs at Westinghouse Electric Company

Ms. Lopatto advises the chairman on international policy issues and programs related to regulatory assistance to foreign countries for nuclear safety and radiation protection, non-proliferation activities, and export licensing. She also acts as liaison for the chairman’s office and other federal agencies including the Departments of Energy, State, Homeland Security, and others. She will provide an energy perspective from inside “The Beltway.” Read more

Tuesday, April 10, 2007
7:00 p.m. – Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium

“Continuing the Conversation”
All are welcome to stay for The Clarke Forum’s student led follow-up discussion immediately following the presentation.

Philip Carey, M.D., pulmonary specialist
Thomas Au, environmental attorney
Colonel (Ret.) Paul J. Cunningham, Clean Air Board
Omar Shute, executive director, Cumberland County Economic Development Corporation
Jesse Keen, vice president, Keen Transport, Inc.
R. Russell Shunk, executive vice president of College/Community Development at Dickinson College, Moderator

Issue in Context
Since human occupation, the Cumberland Valley has been a crossroads of commerce, trade, and travel. American Indians traversed trails through the region, along waterways and over mountains. People crossing these waterways and mountains now rely on the area’s heavy network of interstate highways. A vast logistics industry provides jobs in an economy that continues to lose manufacturing and farming. The trucks that drive through campus on Route 11 are just a slice of this network, and local air quality has diminished because of the diesel fuel emissions. A recent study by the American Lung Association indicated that the Harrisburg-Carlisle-Lebanon area has the 24th most polluted air in the nation, a factor that affects health Read more

Thursday, March 29, 2007
7:00 p.m. – Stern Center, Great Room

Mike Ewall, director, ActionPA
Tom Tuffey, director, Citizens for Pennsylvania’s
Future Center for Energy, Enterprise and the Environment
Michael Heiman, facilitator, geographer and professor of environmental studies, Dickinson College

A discussion of Pennsylvania’s electricity provision, reform and contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions. Panelists will discuss the alternatives state laws allow, and the advances that have been made in wind and solar energy. An open discussion will follow.

Issue in Context
As both a major industrial state and a large producer of coal, Pennsylvania leaves a significant environmental footprint. Ranked third highest in the nation for production of greenhouse gasses (behind California and Texas), Pennsylvania contributes 1 PERCENT of all human-generated global carbon dioxide. Yet recently, this hotbed of energy generation and use has also given a lot of attention to alternative energy sources and environmental protection.
Although most agree that renewable energy sources are necessary to reduce our dependence on foreign sources and the carbon footprint accompanying fossil fuels, funding and support for alternative energy sources, some of which are less than “renewable,” is controversial in the Pennsylvania legislature and across the country. In Pennsylvania, Read more

Thursday, March 22, 2007
7:00 p.m. – Stern Center, Great Room
Benjamin Rush Award
Roger W. Sant

Roger W. Sant is co-founder and chairman emeritus of The AES Corporation, one of the world’s largest global power companies operating in 27 countries. Mr. Sant was assistant administrator for energy conservation and the environment at the Federal Energy Administration as well as director of the energy productivity center, affiliated with the Carnegie Mellon University.

Issue in Context
Over the past two centuries, “greenhouse gases” which trap heat in our atmosphere have caused global temperatures to increase. The concentration of “greenhouse gases” is formed from deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels. “Greenhouse gases” are critical to life for they allow the planet to remain warm. In recent years these temperatures have risen above traditional levels, providing cause for concern. Eleven out of the past 12 years have been some of the warmest years ever recorded. Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are 30 percent higher than they were during the Industrial Revolution. Polar ice caps are melting rapidly, at an average of 9 percent per decade; artic thickness has decreased 40 percent in the past 40 years. Furthermore, the number of Read more

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

7:00 p.m. – Stern Center, Great Room
Lynne Kiesling, senior lecturer of economics at Northwestern University and research scholar, Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science at George Mason University

Widespread electric power was one of the most dramatic achievements of the 20th century, and throughout its life there has been great tension among regulation, markets, and technological change. This talk will explore those tensions, with specific applications to regulatory, economic, and technological change in the early 21st century. Digital technology has transformed how we live our lives in many ways, but it has not affected how customers consume power or control their energy choices. We will explore the important implications of these questions for economic efficiency and equity, and for environmental quality.

Issue in Context
One of the most striking characteristics of the 20th century were advancements in the physical sciences. One such defining accomplishment was the spread of electrical power throughout the United States. Since then constant tension between consumers, electrical companies, regulation, and technological change has existed. Electrical companies continually strain to generate the amount of power consumers demand. Due to environmental issues, the U.S. government begins to regulate the electrical companies, which, some Read more

Thursday, February 22, 2007

7:00 p.m. – Stern Center, Great Room
Michael Klare, Five Colleges professor of peace and world security studies

As we move deeper into the 21st century, the global demand for energy in all its forms is rising at breakneck speed, but the global supply is failing to keep pace, producing intensified competition between the major consuming nations — especially the United States, China, Japan, and the European powers — for access to the available supply. On top of this, the center of gravity of world energy output is moving inexorably from the Global North to the Global South, producing increased anxiety and uncertainty over the reliability and safety of international energy shipments. Both of these trends are contributing to the increased militarization of energy policy. Unless more is done to reduce our reliance on hydrocarbons, we can expect a global epidemic of “resource wars” over oil and other sources of energy.
Co-sponsored by Environmental Science, International Studies, International Business & Management, and Political Science.

Issue in Context
The actions of the U.S. in the Middle East during the past twenty years have been the subject of considerable debate. In his 2001 article “Geopolitics of War” Read more

Thursday, February 1, 2007
7:00 p.m. – Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium
David Harvey, Distinguished Professor of Geography, Department of Anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York

The global economic transformations that have occurred since 1970 or so are increasingly being referred to in terms of the rise of a “neoliberal” form of political economy (privatization, the withdrawal of the state from social provision, the inculcation of an ethic of personal responsibility). The urban consequences of this transformation have been the focus of considerable attention, but the New York “fiscal crisis” of the mid 1970s and its aftermath turns out to have been an originary moment in the rise of neoliberal practices. Tracing the history of neoliberalization through the recent history of urbanization reveals much about the power structures lying behind these transformations.

Books authored by David Harvey are available at the Waidner-Spahr Library. Read more

Tuesday, December 5, 2006
Humans First Altered Climate Thousands (Not Hundreds) of Years Ago
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

Issue in Context
The earth’s climate naturally goes through periods of warming and cooling. Currently, the average temperature of the planet is increasing at an alarming rate. The most common conjecture of environmental scientists is that human actions are accelerating the natural warming of the planet. The amount of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and methane (CH 4 ), present in the atmosphere has increased, due in part to human consumption of fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas. Most scientists attribute this increase to the population growth and the industrialization of the past few hundred years in human history. However, William F. Ruddiman, a professor emeritus from the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia suggests that significant human intervention in the natural operation in the climate system actually began 5,000 to 8,000 years ago. Even while the world population was relatively small, heavy deforestation and rice irrigation in Eurasia , compounded by additional emissions from an unusually warm ocean caused a shift in global climate. Ruddiman suggests that by the start Read more