Annual Meeting Session Sneak Preview: What the New Administration Needs to Know about Public Universities and Climate Change

In December 2015, nearly 200 countries, including the U.S., adopted the UN Paris Climate Change Agreement. This session will highlight the three main areas in which our universities can make a real difference in addressing climate change. Those areas are 1) adaptation and mitigation to changes in climate and sea level; 2) changes in energy production; and 3) the monitoring and quantifying of the broad-based changes resulting from climate change. Our universities are already intimately involved in all three of those areas and are leading the way to advances in agriculture, wildlife management, fire prevention and suppression, off-shore wind farming, and development of other sources of energy. University research on ocean acidification, droughts and water management, zoonotic disease transmission and prevention, community resilience, hazard prediction and mitigation, among many other topics will help in mitigating the effects of climate change on society and the environment. This session will also make the case for continued federal funding of university work in all of these areas.

Moderator: David M. Dooley, President, University of Rhode Island
Keynote: Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D, RI)

Panelists:

• Riley E. Dunlap, Regents Professor of Sociology and Laurence L. and Georgia Ina Dresser Professor, Oklahoma State University
• Margaret Leinen, UC San Diego Vice Chancellor for Marine Sciences, Director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Dean of the School of Marine Sciences
• Thomas L. Mote, Distinguished Research Professor, Geography, Associate Dean, Granklin College of Arts and Sciences, University of Georgia