I am very pleased to report that Bill Fedullo, Chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association, will be hosting a Chancellor’s Forum onNovember 6, 2014, on the subject of climate change. Bill has asked me to introduce the speakers.
The principal speaker will be Noted Climate Scientist Richard B. Alley, Ph.D. of Penn State. Dr. Alley will discuss the science of climate change, how it occurs, what causes it, and what can be done to stop it.
Dr. Alley is the Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences at Pennsylvania State University, and has ranged from Antarctica to Greenland to help learn the history of Earth’s climate and whether the great ice sheets will fall in the ocean, flooding our coasts. With more than 240 scientific publications, Dr. Alley has served on many advisory panels. He participated in the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He has been asked to provide advice to the highest levels of government, and been elected to the US National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society. He hosted the recent PBS miniseries Earth: The Operators’ Manual, and has been compared to a cross between Woody Allen and Carl Sagan for his enthusiastic efforts to communicate the excitement and importance of the science to everyone.
After Dr. Alley’s presentation, Robert B. McKinstry, Jr. will provide some brief comments on what is being done from a technical and legal perspective to combat climate change.
McKinstry is a partner in the Philadelphia office of Ballard Spahr, LLP, where he heads the firm’s Climate Change and Sustainability Initiative. He was counsel of record for the group of amici climate scientists supporting the petitioners in Massachusetts v. EPA, the 2007 Supreme Court decision that held that the EPA has the authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
This program is free and open to the public. It will be held at the offices of the Philadelphia Bar Association at 1100 Market Street in Philadelphia (10th floor). Registration is required.