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 fossil fuel use to the development of renewable energy technologies to science and policy dimensions of global climate change, as well as a host of other topics related to energy, the environment, and society.

Spring 2008
Energy, Environment, and Society Graduate Program speaker series in conjunction with the Environment and Community Graduate Program Sustainable Futures 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 27
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
Postponed

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
Postponed

Spring 2007

Thursday, February 1
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 8
The Race for 21st Century Fuels
Alex Farrell
HSU Science B room 133, 5:30PM
Over the 20th century, petroleum provided most transportation energy, but several trends suggest this will not be the case in the 21st century, including scarcity, security, and environment. Thus, a race is currently on for new fuels for the 21st century. This talk will discuss the concerns that motivate this race, the competitors, and some thoughts about possible winners.

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 1
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 12
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 26
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.

 

Fall 2006

Thursday, October 5
Clean Energy and Armed Insurgency: Representing Security and Threat from the Nigerian Delta to the Mexican Gulf
Anna Zalik
Founders Hall 118, 5:30PM
Dr. Anna Zalik is a Ciriacy Wantrup Fellow in Natural Resource Studies at the University of California at Berkeley and Assistant Professor in Environmental Studies at York University in Toronto. Her ongoing research concerns social welfare interventions in oil producing sites of the Nigerian Delta and the Mexican Gulf.

Tuesday, October 10
Indigenous Peoples Rights and Environmental Justice
Evon Peters
Kate Buchanan Room, 12:00-3:00PM
Evon Peter is the Chairman of Native Movement and former Chief of the Neetsaii Gwich’in from Arctic Village in northeastern Alaska. He has served as the Co-Chair of the Gwich’in Council International, on the Executive Board of the Alaska Inter-Tribal Council, and as an alternate area Vice-President to the National Congress of American Indians.

Evon is a well-recognized advocate of Indigenous Peoples rights, youth, and a balanced world, active as a speaker, strategist, writer, and organizer. His experience includes work within the United Nations and Arctic Council forum representing Indigenous and environmental interests. He dedicates a significant portion of his time to youth leadership development, movement and coalition building, and gathering facilitation. He holds a bachelors degree in Alaska Native studies with a minor in Political Science and is pursuing a Masters degree in Rural Development. Evon is also featured in the 2005 award winning feature film “Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action,” that follows the work of four Indigenous people who are working on issues of Environmental Justice in North America.

Thursday, October 12
Beyond Environmentalism: Creating a Politics Capable of Dealing with Global Warming and Other Ecological Crises
Michael Shellenberger
Founders Hall 118, 5:30PM
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. POSTPONED to Spring semester

Thursday, November 2
The Specter of Fuel Based Lighting
Evan Mills
Founders Hall 118, 5:30 pm
Dr. Evan Mills is a Staff Scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.  His research spans the impacts of climate change and the means of mitigating those impacts through reduced emissions via improved energy management.  He has worked on energy-efficient lighting issues for fifteen years, and recently helped develop a major new World Bank / IFC project on market-based alternatives to fuel-based lighting in the developing world using high-efficiency white LED lighting coupled with renewable power supplies.

Monday, November 13
The Fire Next Time: Using Film to Address Community Conflict
Patrice O'Neill
Founders Hall 118, 5:30 pm
As co-founder of non-profit media company The Working Group, Patrice O'Neill has been producing and executive producing PBS programming for 15 years. The Working Group combines television, web and community organizing efforts to explore workplace, race and democracy issues. Not In Our Town, O'Neill and Rhian Miller's 1995 story of how the town of Billings, Montana, responded to a rash of hate crimes, set a new standard for broadcast impact. The film and outreach campaign helped inspire a national movement which continues in communities 10 years after the original broadcast (www.pbs.org/niot). The Working Group recently completed the first regional special in this series, Not In Our Town Northern California, and is developing an expanded version of the program for a national audience (www.kqed.org/niot).

Ms. O'Neill recently completed The Fire Next Time, a film that follows a rapidly growing community caught in a web of conflicts over the environment and the power of talk radio (www.pbs.org/pov/thefirenexttime). This program, supported by ITVS, the Andrus Family Fund and Sundance Documentary Fund, was presented to a national audience by the PBS independent film series POV. Ms. O'Neill is beginning an outreach and organizing campaign with the film in communities facing similar challenges.

Thursday, November 30
Plankton and CO2: The Role of Marine Organisms in Global Climate
Sarah Goldthwait
Founders Hall 118, 5:30 pm
Dr. Sarah Goldthwait is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Oceanography at Humboldt State University. She completed her Ph.D. in Marine Science in 2004 at the University of California, Santa Barbara where she investigated how krill can influence carbon sedimentation. Prior to arriving at HSU in January of 2006, Dr. Goldthwait was a post-doctoral associate at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science where she was involved in an interdisciplinary project in the Sargasso Sea aimed at understanding the biogeochemical significance of oceanographic features known as eddies.

Spring 2006

February 3
Screening of "All Power to the People: The Black Panther Party and Beyond"
followed by discussion with Ashanti Alston, Black liberation activist
Kate Buchanan Room, 7 pm

February 5
From Silent Spring to Silent Night: What do hermaphroditic frogs tell us about environmental and human health?
Tyrone Hayes
Kate Buchanan Room, 3:45 pm

February 16
Roundtable-Sustainable Community Design: Why Does it Matter? How do we do it?
Founders Hall 118, 7 pm
Proponents of so-called "smart growth" and "sustainable community design" believe they make better communities, to the benefit of residents and the environment. Is this the case, and, if so, then why aren't we seeing more of it? Join us for a round-table of Humboldt County leaders, academics, and elected officials to discuss the benefits of such designs and the obstacles to their implementation.
Mark Lovelace, Healthy Humboldt Coalition
Nancy Dye, HSU Dept. of Psychology
Sheila Steinberg, HSU Dept. of Sociology
Dan Johnson, Local Developer
Jill Geist, Supervisor, Humboldt County Board of Supervisors
Introduction and overview by Michael Smith, HSU Dept. of Environmental and Natural Resources Sciences.

February 23
The 30-Year Fight for Clean Air in California
Alan Lloyd, Secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
POSTPONED to May 4 see details for this event below

March 2
Collaborative Planning for Wildfire: Community Matters
Victoria Sturtevant
Founders Hall 118, 7 pm
Dr. Victoria Sturtevant has taught at Southern Oregon University since 1980, teaching a range of courses related to social theory, social inequality and community and conducting research on forest communities in transition and collaborative stewardship. Currently, she is working on two grants funded by the National Fire Plan regarding communities planning for wildfire. For ten years she has worked with and written about the Applegate Partnership, recently contributing to the creation and evaluation of the Applegate Fire Plan. In collaboration with researchers at the U.S. Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station, she is currently engaged in a study of community capacity, building on her research for the Northwest Forest Plan. She has consulted for both the USFS and BLM, facilitating and analyzing public input to planning, most recently for Cascade Siskiyou National Monument.

March 30
Connective Power: Solar Electrification and Social Change in Kenya
Arne Jacoboson
Science B 135, 7 pm
Dr. Arne Jacobosn, associate professor in the Environmental Resources Engineering department and graduate coordinator for the International Development Technology program at HSU, has a Ph.D. from the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley and an M.S. in Environmental Systems (engineering option) from HSU. Arne has international work experience in Africa, India, and Latin America, including his research over the past seven years on the social and economic dimensions of rural electrification with solar energy in Kenya.

April 6
The Village Lives
Mark Lakeman
Science B 135, 7 pm
Mark Lakeman is a founder of the City Repair Project in Portland, Oregon. City Repair is a multi-disciplinary, non-profit organization which works with place-based communities to redesign and creatively transform the infrastructure of the public commons where people live. Whether converting street intersections into public squares, or organizing other forms of permanent or ephemeral place interventions, City Repair is effectively engaging citizens in the reinvention of the public landscape. Mark is the principal of Communitecture, a private design firm specializing in ecological building and planning projects at many scales. He also sits on the Board of Directors of Southeast Uplift, Portland's proactive neighborhood coalition that is undertaking numerous initiatives to remake the civic landscape.

April 13
Environmental Health in the San Joaquin Valley
Carolina Simunovic
Founders Hall 118, 7 pm
Carolina Simunovic is the Environmental Health Director for Fresno Metro Ministry, an ecumenical and interfaith social justice organization. Her work has dealt with understanding the various geographic, scientific and political forces that created the San Joaquin Valley’s ‘extreme’ air quality, and empowering communities to advocate for clean healthy air policies. Carolina has worked on the San Joaquin Valley’s Latino Environmental Health Project (LEHP), and helped to coordinate the Central Valley Air Quality Coalition.

April 27
Testing Hubbert: Models of Oil Depletion and the Limits of our Predictive Ability
Adam Brandt
Founders Hall 118, 7 pm
Adam Brandt is a doctoral student in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley. His academic interests include depletion of conventional oil and the transition to substitutes for conventional oil. In particular, he is interested in understanding the consequences, both economic and environmental, of a large-scale transition to fossil-fuel-based substitutes for conventional oil, including low-grade oil resources, tar sands, oil shale, and synthetic fuels. He holds degrees from UC Berkeley in Energy and Resources and UC Santa Barbara in Environmental Studies with an emphasis in Physics. CANCELLED

May 4
The Fight for Air Quality in California: A 30 Year Retrospective and Visions for the Future
Alan Lloyd
Founders Hall 118, 7 pm
Dr. Alan Lloyd is Chair of the California Climate Action Team, a consortium of state agency representatives directed by the Governor to implement global warming emission redution programs. Dr. Lloyd is the former Secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), served as the Chairman of the California Air Resources Board, and was the Executive Director of the Energy and Environmental Engineering Center for the Desert Research Institute at the University of Nevada, Reno. Dr. Lloyd has been a key figure in California's progressive, and often controversial, measures to improve air quality through the regulation of automobile emissions.

 

Fall 2005

Humboldt County's Energy Picture
September 29, 7-8:30
HSU, Science B room 135
Jim Zoellick, Senior Research Engineer at the Schatz Energy Research Center, will deliver a presentation on the County's Draft Energy Element and Background Technical Report. This event is co-sponsored by the Environment & Community Graduate Program's Sustainable Futures speaker series.

The Outlook for Hydrogen as an Energy Carrier
October 20, 7-8:30
HSU, Founders Hall room 118
Joan Ogden, Associate Professor of Environmental Science and Policy at UC Davis and Co-Director of the Hydrogen Pathway Program at that campus's Institute of Transportation Studies, will present a lecture entitled "The Outlook for Hydrogen as an Energy Carrier."

The Soul of Environmentalism
November 17, 7-8:30
HSU, Founders Hall room 118
Dr. Michel Gelobter, Executive Director of Redefining Progress, will present findings from a new report, "The Soul of Environmentalism," (which he co-wrote along with other economic, environmental, and social policy leaders) that discusses ideas and actions for a winning progressive movement. This event is co-sponsored by the Environment & Community Graduate Program's Sustainable Futures speaker series.

Approaches to Rural Electrification in East Africa: Donors, Projects, Rural Electrification Agencies and the Private Sector
December 1, 7-8:30
HSU, Science B room 135
Dr. Mark Hankins is the Managing Director of Energy for Sustainable Development Africa (ESDA), a Nairobi, Kenya based consulting firm. Mark played a pioneering role in supporting the use of solar photovoltaic systems in Kenya as a Peace Corps volunteer during the 1980s, and he is now a leading expert on rural energy and development in the East Africa region. This event is co-sponsored by the Environment & Community Graduate Program's Sustainable Futures speaker series.

 

The speaker series is sponsored by the HSUSPF Small Grants Program, the Schatz Energy Research Center, the Environment and Community Graduate Program, the College of Natural Resources and Sciences, and the President's Office