Green Colby Events

Auden Schendler is Vice President of Sustainability at Aspen Skiing Company. He worked previously in corporate sustainability at Rocky Mountain Institute. Auden has been a trailer insulator, burger flipper, ambulance medic, Outward Bound instructor, high school math and English teacher, freelance writer, and Forest Service goose nest island builder. An avid outdoorsman, Auden has climbed Denali, North America’s highest peak, and kayaked the Grand Canyon in winter. His writing has been published in Harvard Business Review, the L.A. Times, Slate, Scientific American, Orion, Rock and Ice, Salon and other media, and his work has been covered in Outside, Fast Company, Travel and Leisure and Businessweek. He was named a global warming innovator by Time magazine and a Climate Saver by the EPA. Auden has testified to congress on the impacts of climate change on public lands, and speaks widely on sustainability. His book Getting Green Done: Hard Truths from the Front Lines of the Sustainability Revolution was called “an antidote to greenwash” by NASA climatologist James Hansen. Auden serves on the board of Protect Our Winters and Colorado Conservation Voters, and lives in Basalt, Colorado with his wife Ellen and their children Willa and Elias.

Searching for a great summer internship experience?  Then please join Prof. Robert Lilieholm, two Colby alums of the program, and the ES program to hear about the Acadian Internship in Regional Conservation and Stewardship.  For more information about this summer program visit: http://acadianinternship.wordpress.com/

The Environmental Studies Program is co-sponsoring this event with the Sociology Department. Professor Ducre will will discuss how contemporary African American mothers in an urban neighborhood thrive within a landscape dotted with persistent poverty, along with environmental and social risks. She presents a new dimension of environmental injustice in a community that hosts unwanted land uses projects, but also urban decay, abandoned housing, and crime. Dr. Ducree is a Assistant Professor of African American Studies at Syracuse University.  Her research focuses on environmental sociology and environmental justice.   She is a contributing author to "Echoes from the Poisoned Wells: Global Memories of Environmental Injustice".

David O. Carpenter serves as director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at UAlbany's School of Public Health. He previously served as director of the Wadsworth Laboratory of the New York State Department of Health. Carpenter was recently named to New York's Renewable Energy Task Force, charged with implementing plans to reduce electricity use through new energy efficiency programs in industry and government. Carpenter, who received his doctorate from Harvard Medical School, has 220 publications, 37 reviews and book chapters and 12 other publications to his credit.

Drawing upon the latest research this talk reviews the scientific and economic case for action on climate change, the experience with existing polices, and the current political situation both domestically and globally. It closes by assessing future prospects for action.

Ian McCullough, Colby ES grad ('10) will discuss his graduate thesis research on Maine lakes, natural resources applications of GIS, and also share some of his experiences that led him to grad school post-Colby.

John Clarkeson, Assistant Director of Water Policy and Intern Coordinator for MA EEA, will discuss climate change and offer a brief overview of the newly released report by the Massachusetts Climate Change Adaptation Committee. The report can be found on line at: http://www.mass.gov/eea/air-water-climate-change/climate-change/climate-change-adaptation-report.html. Mr. Clarkeson will also discuss the summer intern program at EEA, which a current ES student undertook last summer.

Our oceans may seem pristine and healthy from the shore’s edge, but the truth is, they’re in trouble. 90% of the ocean’s big fish – the sharks, tuna, swordfish – have disappeared since 1950. Our global fish catch has been in sharp decline since 1988. Our oceans are on the brink, but luckily we have the knowledge and tools to reverse this negative trend. It’s not too late. To date Oceana has protected 1.2 million square miles of ocean habitat and saved innumerable sea turtles, sharks and other marine life. Oceana, founded in 2001, has become the largest international conservation organization fully dedicated to protecting the oceans. Mr. Sharpless has been at the helm as CEO since 2003. He’s a graduate from Harvard College, Harvard Law, and the London School of Economics. Under his leadership, Oceana has expanded throughout the United States, Europe, Central America and South America and has won impressive campaigns to protect the oceans. Oceana’s board chair, Dr. Kristian Parker, is a 1994 graduate of Colby College. Join Mr. Sharpless on March 6th for an insightful presentation about the critical state of the oceans and learn what we can all do to save them.

Assistant Professor Travis Reynolds' primary research interests are in the fields of international environmental policy and sustainable international development. Drawing on institutional theories and ecological economics his research looks at common pool resource management problems and the roles of international, national, and local organizations involved in forestry and other natural resource management systems. His current work focuses on the design and performance of small- and large-scale carbon forestry projects in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Spring 2012 Hollis Lecture

Paul Andrew Mayewski, Director of the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine, tells his personal experiences going to some of the Earth’s most remote and challenging places, the scientific discoveries he and his teams have made there, and the journey that they, and the scientific community, made from a “gradualist” viewpoint—thinking that humanity was an inconsequential observer in a slowly changing climate—to the realization that we are deeply and irrevocably involved in the short- and long-term fate of a temperamental climate capable of dramatic changes in a matter of only a few years. He also describes discovering the worldwide reach of industrial emissions; their effects on climate, Civilization, ecosystems, and our individual quality of life; the remarkable success of the Clean Air Act and the Montreal Protocols; and how some of the effects can clear up in weeks or months—and others only over centuries.

In 1995, the Maine Legislature passed a law that prevented upstream fish passage for alewives at two dams on the St. Croix River, an international boundary water. The closing of the river came at the request of a handful of fishing guides in Washington County who believed that growing numbers of sea-run alewives had caused the collapse of Spednic Lake’s smallmouth bass populations in the 1980’s.  There was no scientific evidence to support these claims.  Nonetheless, the Legislature moved forward with the closure, over the objections of conservation organizations and fisheries experts on both sides of the border.  Since the closing of the fish ways on the St. Croix, the alewife population has crashed, falling from a high of 2.6 million fish in 1987 to only 1,300 returning adults in 2007. Maine Rivers and allies have been advocating to reopen the river for this critical native species. John R.J. Burrows is the Director of New England Programs for the Atlantic Salmon Federation, an international organization dedicated to the conservation, protection and restoration of wild Atlantic salmon and the ecosystems on which their well being and survival depends. John works on sea-run fisheries restoration efforts across Maine and has been involved in the effort to restore alewives to the St. Croix River since 2001. John holds a B.A. from Gettysburg College in Political Science and Environmental Studies and an M.E.S. from Yale University in Environmental Studies. Landis Hudson, Executive Director of Maine Rivers,has a graduate degree in forestry resources management from the State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry, and an undergraduate degree from Oberlin College. She has worked for Maine Audubon, the Natural Resources Council of Maine, the Earthwatch Institute, and the United Nations. She has lived and worked in France, Ireland, Ecuador, Mexico and Canada.

Ben was born and raised in northern Vermont, where he currently runs a small-scale, diversified hill farm with his family. He lives with his wife and two sons in a self-built home that is powered by a windmill and solar photovoltaic panels. To help offset his renewable energy footprint, Ben drives a really big truck. His work has appeared in numerous national periodicals, including the New York Times Magazine, Wired, Gourmet, Discover, Skiing, Eating Well, Yankee Magazine, Powder, Men’s Journal, National Geographic Adventure, and Outside. His most recent book is Making Supper Safe: One Man’s Quest to Learn the Truth About Food Safety (Rodale). It was published on June 7, 2011. From dumpster diving, to the battle over food rights, to genetically engineered salmon and the interplay between humans and the bacteria they consume, Ben explores the untold story of food safety with humor and good-natured skepticism. His first book, The Town That Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food (Rodale), was published in 2010. It tells the story of a rural, working-class Vermont community that is attempting to blueprint and implement a localized food system. The paperback edition will be released in conjunction with Making Supper Safe.   Co-sponsored by Colby Health Services, The Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs & Civic Engagement, Department of Biology, and Colby Dining Services

Megan Gahl is a broadly trained ecologist whose field work focuses on aquatic ecosystems, including community interactions and ecosystem responses to stressors. Most of her recent work has used amphibians as a model system, though she has extensive experience with other vertebrates (fish, seabirds, bears), invertebrates (meiofauna, marine and aquatic invertebrates) and plants (macrophytes, algae, and phytoplankton).  She particularly likes fieldwork that is mucky, wet, incredibly scenic or difficult to get to. She has over fifteen years experience in field research, community service and backcountry leadership in environments ranging from Central and South America to Northern Africa and the North American boreal and alpine. Megan also co-directs a summer field course in the Wrangell St. Elias National Park & Preserve, based in McCarthy, Alaska in collaboration with the Wrangell Mountains Cen

Reduced to one of its core components, the Arab-Iseali conflict is about land; more precisely - the borders that nations draw on the land. When thinking about what divides nations in this conflict, the land is often viewed as one of the major stumbling blocks to any reconciliation efforts between the various nations and peoples in the region. When the land is looked upon solely as a geo-political instrument that is true. However, when viewed from the perspective of the environment, a new framework opens up. The environment, which does not know from political borders, invites us to not be afraid of the other. That is the approach of the Arava Institute where Israeli, Palestinian, Jordanian, and students from around the world including the United States, who go there as a study abroad option, study and live together. Rabbi Michael M. Cohen a founding faculty member of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, since 1996 he has divided his time between Vermont and Arava’s Kibbutz Ketura campus. He was the  first rabbi of the Israel Congregation in Manchester Center, Vermont where he is now rabbi emeritus. A long time environmental activist he co-founded the first recycling center in Ewing, NJ in 1976 while in high school. He served as President of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association and co-founded the Green Zionist Alliance and the Arava Power Company that recently opened the first commercial solar field in Israel. He is the author of numerous articles and Einstein’s Rabbi: A Tale of Science and the Soul.