Please join Dean Indy Burke of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and Elliot Gerson, Executive Vice President of the Aspen Institute, for a conversation with Yale’s Anthony Leiserowitz and Karen Seto.
Pathways to a Sustainable Future
This event marks the kickoff of the Yale Environmental Dialogue – a new initiative that seeks to inform and influence public debate over how best to address the 21st century “sustainability imperative.” Building on a foundation of fresh thinking, bipartisanship, and analytical rigor, this initiative will offer a set of innovative ideas for progress on land use, energy, pollution control, and natural resources management issues.
Seto, professor of geography and urbanization science, will discuss “Planetary Sustainability in the Urban Century” and Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, will highlight findings from his research on “Building Public and Political Will for Climate Action.” Please see the full abstracts below.
This kickoff event is the first of a series of conversations Yale will convene across the country in the next several years aiming to infuse environmental policy discussions with new energy, recast foundations, and policy breakthroughs. As part of this initiative, Yale will host a major workshop in New Haven in February 2019 looking at several dozen reform opportunities that might help to drive progress across the full spectrum of sustainability issues.
Thursday, November 15, 2018
Doors Open - 5:30 PM
Panel Discussion - 6:00 - 7:30 PM
Reception - 7:30 - 8:30 PM
The Aspen Institute
2300 N Street, NW, Suite 700
Washington, DC 20037
Anthony Leiserowitz
Senior Research Scientist and Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (YPCCC) at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies
“Building Public and Political Will for Climate Action”
Climate change is one of the most daunting challenges of our time. Americans have diverse and sometimes opposing views about global warming, fundamentally shaping the political climate of climate change. Drawing on more than a decade of research, and on the heels of the 2018 election, this talk will describe and explain recent trends in Americans' climate change knowledge, attitudes, policy support and behavior, and discuss strategies to build public and political will for climate action.
Karen C. Seto
Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography & Urbanization Science at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies
“Planetary Sustainability in the Urban Century”
The world is rapidly urbanizing. Between now and 2050, the world’s urban population will grow by about 2.5 billion, an addition of about 170,000 people a day. To accommodate (i.e., house, educate, employ, serve, and facilitate) this growing urban population, urban areas are expanding by 20,000 American football fields daily – equal to adding a city the size of Providence, Rhode Island to the globe every day. This talk will discuss the rapid pace of urbanization and its implications for protecting the world’s ecosystems, farmlands, climate, and biodiversity.
Moderator
Elliot Gerson is an Executive Vice President at the Aspen Institute, responsible for its Policy Programs, its Public Programs and its relations with its international partners. The Institute’s more than 30 Policy Programs focus on both domestic and international issues. They provide neutral venues, do nonpartisan analysis, foster candid dialogue among leaders, advocate new policy and promote best practices. The Institute’s public programs – including the Aspen Ideas Festival and many smaller programs across the country and world – open the Institute’s doors to a broader audience and further both its educational goals and its hopes that thought will lead to action. Gerson also administers the US Rhodes Scholarships. He was a Rhodes Scholar, a US Supreme Court clerk, practiced law in government and privately, held executive positions in state and federal government and on a presidential campaign, and was president of start-ups in health care and education, and of two leading national insurance and health-care companies.
