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Lecture Abstract:
The disruption of global climate by human activities is one of the most complex and daunting challenges that society has ever faced. The key question is whether and how industrialized and developing countries alike can create and sustain prosperity for all of their citizens without wrecking the climate (and the crucial environmental conditions and processes that depend on it) with greenhouse-gas emissions from energy supply and tropical deforestation. Getting a sensible answer requires knowing what environmental science can tell us about the pace of climate change and its current and likely future impacts; what the study of technology and economics can tell us about the potential and cost of options for slowing it down; and what the study of public policy can tell us about how to get an adequate set of remedies embraced and implemented. Dr. Holdren has been working on all of these aspects of the problem for 40 years and will summarize what he now thinks he knows about it.

John P. Holdren is President and Director of the Woods Hole Research Center, as well as Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy and Director of the Program on Science, Technology, and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He is also Professor of Environmental Science and Policy in Harvard’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Co-Chair of the independent, bipartisan National Commission on Energy Policy. His work has focused on causes and consequences of global environmental change, sustainable development, energy technology and policy, nuclear arms control and nonproliferation, and science and technology policy.

Dr. Holdren was trained in aerospace engineering and theoretical plasma physics at MIT and Stanford. His past positions include physicist in the Magnetic Fusion Energy Division, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; senior research fellow in the Environmental Quality Laboratory and Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology; and co-founder, co-leader, and professor in the University of California, Berkeley's campus-wide interdisciplinary graduate program in Energy and Resources.

Dr. Holdren has also served as Chair of the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the National Academy of Sciences and was a member of President Clinton's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology from 1994 to 2001. In addition, he was a coordinating lead author of the Scientific Expert Group on Climate Change and Sustainable Development reporting to the Commission on Sustainable Development and the Secretary-General of the United Nations from 2004 to 2007, and President-Elect, President, and Chair of the Board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science from 2005 to 2008.

Dr. Holdren is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Council on Foreign Relations. He has been the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship, the Volvo International Environment Prize, the Tyler Environment Prize, and the John Heinz Prize in Public Policy, among other awards. In 1995 he gave the acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs (which he served as Chair of the Executive Committee from 1987 to 1997).


Dr. Gary Borisy will introduce Dr. Holdren. Dr. Borisy became the MBL’s 13th Director and 3rd CEO in 2006. Previously he was Associate Vice President for Research and the Leslie B. Arey Professor of Cell and Molecular Biology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. He received his B.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. After serving a postdoctoral fellowship at the MRC in Cambridge, England, Dr. Borisy joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, rising through the professional ranks to Chairman of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Perlman-Bascom Professor of Life Sciences, before moving to Northwestern in 2000. Dr. Borisy is the author of more than 200 papers, the editor of two books, and has received numerous professional honors, including an NIH Merit award and the Carl Zeiss award from the German Society for Cell Biology. He has served as president of the American Society for Cell Biology and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the biotech company CombinatoRx, located in Cambridge, MA.