A number of EEM faculty and students participated in the third annual Climate Action Conference conducted at The George Washington University on April 22-23, 2009. E&EM Lead Professor Jonathan Deason chaired a plenary session entitled “The Built Environment: Infrastructure and Climate Change,” featuring an expert panel, at the event.
The Climate Action Conference included an impressive array of speakers from business, education, energy, health, economics and other fields, who discussed many of the key causes of – and solutions for – human-induced climate change. With the conference theme of “Managing for Climate Change: Global to Local Solutions,” the event addressed topics vital to mitigating the anthropogenic causes of climate change. The conference was focused on encouraging individual and organizational action, providing interested students, the public, government agencies, businesses and others with a unique opportunity to learn first-hand about what they can do to make a positive difference in climate health.
Speakers on Professor Deason’s panel were Doug Gatlin, Vice President of the U.S. Green Building Council; Paul Hughes, founder and President of DeConstruction Services, LLC; Grady O’Rear, developer of EcoVillage of Loudoun County, Virginia, an environmentally friendly, socially responsive community 40 miles northwest of Washington, D.C.; and Franziska Borer Blindenbacher, an expert on sustainable transportation policies with the Federal governments in Switzerland and Canada.
More information at about the Climate Action Conference can be seen at: http://www.climateactionconference.org