Speaker Series
Energy, the Environment, & Society
The Environment and Community Program is pleased to participate in the Schatz Energy Research Center’s Energy, Environment, & Society Fall 2007 speaker series. All members of the HSU community and the general public are welcome to attend these presentations.
Energy is a vital element of some of the most important and most divisive processes of our times. The widespread use of fossil fuels provides the foundation on which economic globalization is taking place. At the same time, the use of these fuels is a central cause of global climate change, which may prove to be the single largest environmental issue of our times. Studies of fossil fuel resource availability indicate that world oil production may peak within the next decade, even while demand for the fuel continues to rise. As a result many scholars foresee increasing possibilities for resource conflicts as well as rising fuel prices. Renewable energy and energy efficiency have significant potential to contribute to solutions for some of the environmental, economic, and security problems associated with current trends in world energy use, but many barriers currently limit the widespread use of these technologies. The path towards progressive solutions to these issues requires an interdisciplinary approach that combines technical and scientific expertise with economic, social, and political analyses.
To shed light on these crucial issues, we have an ongoing speaker series to bring a dynamic set of presenters to Humboldt State University. The series includes leading scholars from a range of academic disciplines, as well as prominent government officials and inspiring activists. Topics addressed in the series include important issues ranging from the geopolitics of oil development to climate change politics and policies, as well as a host of other topics related to energy, the environment, and society.
Spring 2008
The Environment and Community Graduate Program Sustainable Futures speaker series in conjunction with the Energy, Environment, and Society Graduate Program speaker series.
February 7
Inventing Just Futures: Organizing for Human Rights in the Sonoran Desert
Zoe Hammer
7PM in Science B 135
Zoe Hammer is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northern Arizona University and teaches courses in Cultural and Regional Studies at Prescott College for the Liberal Arts and the Environment. A long-time anti-prison and human rights activist, Dr. Hammer is a member of the U.S.-Mexico Border & Immigration Task Force, sits on the Board of Directors of the Border Action Network and the Criminal Justice Steering Committee of the American
Friends Service Committee in Arizona, and the Criminal Justice Working Group of the Progressive Communicators Network. She is currently working on turning her dissertation, Criminal Alienation, into a book analyzing relationships between border militarization, immigration enforcement, prison expansion, and human rights organizing on the Arizona/Sonora border.
February 21
Campus Sustainability at California Universities
Matthew St. Clair
5:30PM in BSS 166
Matthew St. Clair is the first Sustainability Manager for the University of California's Office of the President. While a graduate student at UC Berkeley, he spearheaded a successful student campaign to get the UC Board of Regents to adopt a comprehensive green building and clean energy policy. Matt has a Masters degree from the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley and a Bachelors degree in economics from Swarthmore College.
February 28
Rethinking the Population Problem: The Terror of False Assumptions
Betsy Hartmann
7PM in Science B 135
Betsy Hartmann is the director of the Population and Development Program and associate professor of Development Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. A longstanding activist in the international women‚s health movement, she writes and speaks frequently on the intersections between reproductive rights, population, immigration, environment and security concerns. She is the author of Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: The Global Politics of Population Control (Boston: South End Press, 1995) and a political thriller about the Far Right, The Truth about Fire (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2002). She is co-author of A Quiet Violence: View from a Bangladesh Village (London: Zed Books; San Francisco: Food First; and Delhi, India: Oxford University Press India, 1983) and a co-editor of Making Threats: Biofears and Environmental Anxieties (Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005). With Joni Seager she is co-author of the report Mainstreaming Gender in Environmental Assessment and Early Warning: Conceptual Challenges and Opportunities (United Nations Environment Program, Division of Early Warning and Assessment, 2005). Her novel Deadly Election will be published by White River Press in early 2008.
March 17
The Five Trillion Dollar Challenge: A Roadmap for Containing Climate Change
Rick Duke
5:30PM in BSS 166
Rick Duke is the Director of NRDC’s Center for Market Innovation. The Center works with government and corporate leaders to accelerate market uptake of clean technologies and practices. Prior to joining NRDC, Rick was an Engagement Manager at McKinsey, where his projects included developing a hedging strategy for the world’s leading originator of Clean Development Mechanism CO2 credits and managing a major assessment of global greenhouse gas reduction opportunities that was published by both McKinsey and the EU utility Vattenfall. Rick has also worked for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, managed a small renewable energy company in Honduras and consulted for the International Finance Corporation. He holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University where his doctoral work focused on the economics of public investment to deploy emerging clean energy solutions.
April 3
The Environmental Politics of Sacrifice
John Meyer
7PM in Science B 135
John M. Meyer is associate professor and chair of the Department of Government and Politics at HSU. He teaches courses on political theory and environmental politics. He is the author of Political Nature: Environmentalism and the Interpretation of Western Thought (MIT Press, 2001), is co-editing a book (with Michael Maniates) exploring the role of ideas of "sacrifice" in contemporary environmental politics and is at work on a second project entitled, "Environmentalism as Social Criticism.
April 10
SMUD's Utility Planning for Climate Change: Mitigation, Adaptation, Regulation
H.I. Bud Beebe
5:30PM in BSS 166
H.I. Bud Beebe is Regulatory Affairs Coordinator for SMUD, Sacramento California’s Electricity Utility. Mr. Beebe has extensive experience in the field of energy and environmental policy for the electric utility sector. For more than fifteen years, he has been active in climate change issues, greenhouse gas accounting development, and renewable energy resource planning. Mr. Beebe is also experienced in the management of engineering projects and new product development. In this regard he has worked principally with advanced electric generation concepts and renewable energy based electrical generation technologies including: Fuelcells, PhotoVoltaics, Central Station Solar Thermal, Microturbines, Hydrogen as an energy carrier, and Wind Turbines.
Mr. Beebe has 40 years of professional engineering experience in many facets of power plant design, construction, licensing, operation, and electric utility planning and management. A Registered Mechanical Engineer in the State of California, he received his degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1967.
Fall 2007
Go Green! Global Warming Awareness
Monday, August 27 at 12PM in HSU's Goodwin Forum
Allison Rogers spent her undergraduate years at Harvard digging through trash, greening her campus, and finding creative ways to interest her peers in environmental issues. She was the Harvard Resource Efficiency Program Co-Captain, co-organizer for the 2004 Climate Campaign Conference, a delegate to the United Nations 13th session of the Commission on Sustainable Development and a National Wildlife Federation Campus Ecology Fellow. After graduating from Harvard in 2004, Allison received a two year Harvard University Management Fellowship to work at the Harvard Green Campus Initiative, where she coordinated the Green Living Programs for Harvard College, Law School, and Business School.
Desiring a way to reach out to new audiences, Allison decided to run for Miss Rhode Island with the platform “Go Green! Global Warming Awareness.” She gave a presentation on the issues of climate change based on training she received from former Vice President Al Gore. On April 22, 2006 (Earth Day!), Allison was crowned Miss Rhode Island 2006. In January, Allison won the “Quality of Life” award in the 2007 Miss America Competition. She continues to promote global warming awareness as she pursues her M.Ed. at Harvard. Her focus is on environmental sustainability education and institutional change. Recently, Allison was selected to be part of the “Greening of the Capitol” Team in the new Sustainability Office for the US House of Representatives.
California Climate Protocols and Politics- Through the Lens of Forest Carbon
October 4
Andrea Tuttle is former Director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF) and currently represents the forest sector on ETAAC, the "Economic and Technology Advancement advisory Committee" for AB 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.
October 25
Jennifer Allen
Hydrogen in a Renewable Energy Future
November 1
Peter Lehman is Director of the Schatz Energy Research Center and a professor of Environmental Resources Engineering at Humboldt State University in Arcata, CA. Dr. Lehman received a B.S. in chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of Chicago. He then served as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley where he conducted research on the aerochemistry of photochemical air pollution. Before coming to HSU, he has been a member of the faculties of Sacramento State University, California State University, Northridge, and Deep Springs College. While at HSU, Dr. Lehman has served as chair of the Environmental Resources Engineering Department, co-chair of the International Technology Development masters program, and faculty advisor to the Campus Center for Appropriate Technology. His research interests include renewable energy systems, especially solar thermal and photovoltaic technologies.
Rethinking the Population Problem: The Terror of False Assumptions
November 15
Betsy Hartmann is the director of the Population and Development Program and associate professor of Development Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. A longstanding activist in the international women's health movement, she writes and speaks frequently on the intersections between reproductive rights, population, immigration, environment and security concerns. She is the author of Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: The Global Politics of Population Control (Boston: South End Press, 1995) and a political thriller about the Far Right, The Truth about Fire (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2002). She is co-author of A Quiet Violence: View from a Bangladesh Village (London: Zed Books; San Francisco: Food First; and Delhi, India: Oxford University Press India, 1983) and a co-editor of Making Threats: Biofears and Environmental Anxieties (Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005). With Joni Seager she is co-author of the report Mainstreaming Gender in Environmental Assessment and Early Warning: Conceptual Challenges and Opportunities (United Nations Environment Program, Division of Early Warning and Assessment, 2005). Her novel Deadly Election will be published by White River Press in early 2008.
Spring 2007
Thursday, February 1st
Beyond Environmentalism: Creating a Politics Capable of Dealing with Global Warming and Other Ecological Crises
Michael Shellenberger
HSU Science B room 133, 7:00PM
Michael Shellenberger is a prominent environmental and political strategist, the managing partner of American Environics, and co-director of the Breakthrough Institute. In 2004, he co-authored an essay called, “The Death of Environmentalism” that sparked a heated national debate over the future of environmentalism and progressive politics. Michael holds a Masters Degree in Anthropology from the University of California and speaks Spanish and Portuguese.
Thursday, February 8th
The Race for 21st Century Fuels
Alex Farrel
HSU Science B room 133, 5:30PM
Alex Farrell is an Assistant Professor in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California at Berkeley and Director of the UC Berkeley Transportation Sustainability Center. He has a bachelor's degree in Systems Engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy and served as a nuclear engineer onboard a fast attack submarine. After that, Alex worked in private industry in Silicon Valley. Alex received his Ph.D. in Energy Management and Policy from the University of Pennsylvania and then worked at Harvard and Carnegie Mellon University before taking a position at UC Berkeley, where he teaches courses and conducts research on energy systems and energy and environmental policy . Alex has served on advisory committees for the National Academy of Engineering, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, and has consulted for various public and private organizations.
Thursday, March 1st
Changing Climate, Changing Fires: Predicting future fires in a carbon-rich atmosphere
Morgan Varner
HSU Science B room 133, 5:30PM
Dr. J. Morgan Varner is Assistant Professor of Wildland Fire Management in the Department of Forestry and Watershed Management. His research interests related to climate change are focused on how changes in atmospheric CO2 will influence changes in forest and grassland fires in the future. He uses Free-Air-Carbon dioxide-Enrichment (FACE) and other experiments to examine changes in fuels, fire behavior, and the potential for future crown fires. Since arriving at HSU in 2004, he has taught courses in fire behavior, fire management, courses in ecology, and a seminar on the effects of climate change on fire regimes.
Thursday, April 12th
Future Fuel Sources: Options and Opportunities
Jeffrey Jacobs
HSU Science B room 133, 5:30PM
Jeffrey Jacobs is the Vice President of Chevron Technology Ventures' Biofuels and Hydrogen Business Unit. Mr. Jacobs has over 20 years of experience in the energy industry, and has held management and executive roles at PG&E Corporation, PennUnion Energy Services, Power Gas Marketing & Transmission, and Texaco. In these positions, he developed new markets for retail power and natural gas sales, negotiated strategic alliances, led new business ventures, and directed both financial and energy operations. In addition to his position at Chevron Technology Ventures, Mr. Jacobs is a Director of both the National Hydrogen Association and Hydrogen & Fuels Cells Canada, as well as a member of the Board of Advisors for the University of California, Davis' Institute of Transportation Studies. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in biology/geology from Amherst College, a Masters of Science in marine studies/geology from the University of Delaware, and an MBA in finance and economics from the Katz Graduate School of Business at University of Pittsburgh.
Thursday, April 26th
Interpreting Technology and Policy Implications of Global Energy Scenarios for the 21st Century
Holmes Hummel
HSU Science B room 133, 5:30PM
Holmes Hummel entered the energy field working on experimental solar-powered vehicles and participating in small-scale renewable energy development projects. Responding to calls for transformation on a larger scale, Hummel has worked on energy strategies for major corporations and joined multi-national research teams in Europe and China to address energy security and sustainability challenges in the 21st century.
Dr. Hummel holds B.S. and M.S.E. degrees in energy engineering and recently completed a PhD through the Interdisciplinary Program on Environment and Resources at Stanford University. In 2005, the Environmental Leadership Program recognized Hummel as a "visionary, action-oriented emerging leader" in the United States.