Confronting the Climate Disinformation Campaign at Penn State: Video

Here is the video for the free presentation given on April 30, 2012 on Penn State's University Park Campus. Penn State professors Michael Mann, Donald Brown, Janet Swim and Rick Schuhmann, and graduate student Peter Buckland spoke Monday evening at “Changing the Moral Climate on Climate Change,” a talk that focused on climate change denial. Mann is director of Penn State’s Earth System Science Center and part of the 2007 Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Susannah Barsom, with the university’s Center for Sustainability, moderated the event, which included a question and answer session.

The Journey of Friendship

Park Forest Junior High School. 1988. There I met one of the goofiest kids I’d met. A weirdo like me but a little taller and gawkier. But we were sort of nerds into Dungeons & Dragons, comic books, robots and aliens who joined the Science Fiction club. Twenty years later, he and I are still friends. For the last three years, we have done Sustainability Now Radio together.

At this time of year 2009, the guys from Freeze Thaw Cycles held the shop’s fifth birthday party at Mike’s house. Late in the night, after a lot of talk about local agriculture, renewable energy, sustainability and more than a few tasty Elk Creek and Victory beers, we decided to convert an hour of Mike’s Friday funk show, On the Good Foot, into Sustainability Now. Our deep roots in the area, Mike’s work on bike paths and landscape architecture, and my desire to meet as many people working on sustainability as possible guaranteed we could find guests on most topics. Of course, we were a couple of sheets to the wind at a party lined with mountain bikers. It was going to be awesome.

I think right from the first show we knew there would be a lot to talk about. But how to structure it?

In his book The Creation, E.O. Wilson gave some advice on how to teach biology. First principle he states is start big. Go with the big picture and then you can zoom in. A big concept in biology could be something like the tree of life. For us, it was “What does sustainability mean to you?” or “How do you define sustainability?” I tend to like the “mean to you” version because it’s about the person and not something formal.

The End of Our Era

Our last show looms ahead. Sustainability Now Radio's final entry airs this coming Friday, May 4th at 4 pm on The Lion 90.7 fm (listen here). Cole Hons of Penn State's Center for Sustainability will be our host and asking us the questions including - of course - "What does sustainability mean to you?"

What else would you like to hear? You can let us know here with a comment here, at Facebook or  Twitter, or give us a call on the air at (814) 865-9577.

Our Home in the Anthropocene

What do we call the age we live in? After realizing that humans had recomposed Earth's chemistry and overwritten its face, the chemist Paul Crutzen and his colleague Eugene Stoermer floated the label Anthropocene, or “the recent age of man." Minus the very deep trenches of the oceans wilderness of the world is largely gone in its "pristine" or "untouched" states. But even the chemical composition of the deep waters of the world are changing as the developed people of the world change the earth's surface and climate.

Over the last few years, more people are advocating shifting our epoch's label from the Holocene to the Anthropocene. From environmentalists like Vandana Shiva to mainstream publications National Geographic (image at right), the Economist, the New York Times, the term is taking off. It's even in the scientific literature.

But the merit of the Anthropocene is contested. To get a sense of why, you can get a rundown at Breakthrough Journal where Erle Ellis argues for it and others, like Bill McKibben, respond. There are some, like Ellis or Bjorn Lomborg who see the Anthropocene as an age of technological advance, discovery, and growth. They see progress. Ellis writes, "our unprecedented and growing powers also allow us the opportunity to create a planet that is better for both its human and nonhuman inhabitants. It is an opportunity that we should embrace." But McKibben and Shiva (who writes elsewhere) see unchecked technological advance and growth as the problem. There are limits. Shiva writes,

"If we continue to understand our role in the old paradigm of capitalist patriarchy based on a mechanistic world view, an industrial, capital centered competitive economy, and a culture of dominance, violence, and war and ecological and human irresponsibility, we will witness the rapid unfolding of increasing climate catastrophe, species extinction economic collapse, and human injustice and inequality."

Whether they like it or not, they agree that humans are the primary ecological force on the planet.

Earthships

There are a lot of thing that some people in the transition community seem to really want. One of them is surely to have a home off the grid, something that doesn't contribute to climate change and is built in a way that is bioregionally appropriate.

Enter the Earthship, a home concept that can be built in any (really?) environment. And it must have gotten somewhere when it's on the Weather Channel. Come on guys, there's a guy who works for the oil and gas industry living in one. Why? Because he understands the planet's systems.

Watch.



But can you retrofit houses in the northeast to be biotecturally in sync?

Higher Education in a Warming World

Last night about 200 people came to Thomas building to hear and see "Changing the Moral Climate on Climate Change."  The Centre Daily Times reports today:

Penn State professors Michael Mann, Donald Brown, Janet Swim and Rick Schuhmann, and graduate student Peter Buckland spoke Monday evening at “Changing the Moral Climate on Climate Change,” a talk that focused on climate change denial. Mann is director of Penn State’s Earth System Science Center and part of the 2007 Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Susannah Barsom, with the university’s Center for Sustainability, moderated the event, which included a question and answer session.  

See images of the event here or our sister publication, Voices of Central Pennsylvania.

The five speakers walked the audience through the dilemmas climate change, climate change disinformation and various kinds of climate change denial create. In particular,  they addressed why and how universities should do better to confront these issues.

"Changing the Moral Climate on Climate Change": Update 4.29.2012

Universities need to take clear stands for meaningful action on climate change.

Climate change is real. It is affecting the lives of people across the globe and it presents all of us – especially the most educated among us – with an incredible dilemma. Skepticism is a real virtue and something most of us should practice. But our dilemma is made awfully difficult by industry-funded, deliberately deceptive, anti-science denialism campaigns that feed fear. This is neither reasonable or virtuous skepticism.

Tomorrow, April 30th at 7:30 pm in room 101 Thomas Building at Penn State’s University Park (map), a group of esteemed Penn State faculty and one graduate student/lecturer will confront the climate change denial machine. Doors open at 7 pm.

Over the last few years, we have been discouraged by the successful of “the merchants of doubt,” a well-organized and well-funded climate change disinformation campaign. The five presenters of “Changing the Moral Climate on Climate Change” believe that as people working at a top-flight research and teaching institution, they have a responsibility to both inform the public about the many aspects of climate change – from social to environmental – and call for better action from universities in democratic society.

They will call on the University to educate civil society about the disinformation campaign and fulfill its educational role in a democratic society. They will explain the so-called “skeptics” campaign and who is behind it, distinguishing between deceitful disinformation from responsible skepticism. They will explore the problems colleges and universities face in a democratic society whose economy runs on fossil fuels. They will also explore relevant psychology findings around climate change. The audience will will learn about a college class that has confronted climate denial directly and learn about the backlash the professor received. Finally, you will hear from Dr. Michael Mann who has been at the epicenter of the international assault on mainstream science.

Presentations come from (pictured top to bottom): Dr. (Juris) Donald Brown from Science, Technology, and Society and former Clinton administration UN representative and blogger at Climate Ethics, Peter Buckland, A.B.D. in Educational Theory and Policy and co-host of Sustainability Now Radio, Dr. Janet Swim from Psychology and chair of the 2009 American Psychological Associations task force on the psychology of climate change, Dr. Rick Schuhmann, an environmental engineer and Director of Penn State’s Engineering Leadership program, and Dr. Michael Mann, director of Penn State’s Earth System Science Center, member of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars.

Following the presentations, the panelists will answer audience questions.

Sponsors Include:

Penn State Center for Sustainability

Campus Sustainability Office

Rock Ethics Institute

Department of Science, Technology, and Society

Human Dimensions of Natural Resources and the Environment Program

Sustainable Agriculture Club

Centre County Democrats

Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future

Elk County C.A.R.E.S.

Juniata Valley Audubon Society

National Wildlife Federation

Pennsylvanians for Clean Air and Water

PennEnvironment

Pennsylvania Environmental Resource Consortium (PERC)

Pennsylvanians for Clean Air and Water

Pennsylvania Interfaith Coalition for the Environment

Pennsylvania Interfaith Power and Light

Sierra Club Pennsylvania

Sierra Club Moshannon

Sustainability Now Radio

Voices of Central Pennsylvania.

Questions can be sent to Peter Buckland by email: pdb118@psu.edu.

How Should Bob Stop the Train from Hitting that Child and Dog?

Let’s start with a little thought experiment from Peter Singer’s “Singer Solution to World Poverty.”

Bob is close to retirement. He has invested most of his savings in a very rare and valuable old car, a Bugatti, which he has not been able to insure. The Bugatti is his pride and joy. In addition to the pleasure he gets from driving and caring for his car, Bob knows that its rising market value means that he will always be able to sell it and live comfortably after retirement. One day when Bob is out for a drive, he parks the Bugatti near the end of a railway siding and goes for a walk up the track. As he does so, he sees that a runaway train, with no one aboard, is running down the railway track. Looking farther down the track, he sees the small figure of a child very likely to be killed by the runaway train. He can't stop the train and the child is too far away to warn of the danger, but he can throw a switch that will divert the train down the siding where his Bugatti is parked. Then nobody will be killed —but the train will destroy his Bugatti. Thinking of his joy in owning the car and the financial security it represents, Bob decides not to throw the switch. The child is killed. For many years to come, Bob enjoys owning his Bugatti and the financial security it represents (picture courtesy of Eastern Horizon).

Bob's conduct, most of us will immediately respond, was gravely wrong. Unger agrees. But then he reminds us that we, too, have opportunities to save the lives of children.

Most of us will respond this way. My students often hem and haw on the matter but when confronted with the actual value of children’s lives versus the value of a Bugatti, they acquiesce and agree that Bob should put the Bugatti in front of the train. We can and should sacrifice for the health of others. I can be happy without a Bugatti.

Now complicate the story a lot. Imagine there were two people who came and talked to Bob. One begins carefully and calmly explaining that there is a train coming well before he can see or even hear it. The train will certainly kill the child but it can be stopped if he goes down the rail and throws some switches that will slow the train down and divert it. There is another man dressed to the nines who shows up and says there is nothing to worry about. The kid will be fine. Everything is fine.

Michael Mann on Conversations on WPSU

Mann Scores a Goal with Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars

In his new book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, Dr. Michael E. Mann (pic at left from Scientific American) recounts a moment on the Great Wall of China just months before his daughter was born. He wonders about “what sort of world our new child and her generation would inherit.” It will be…No. It already is a world whose land and climate industrial humans have radically changed. The only truly moral response from any father must be to work for a world that mitigates human impacts on the climate so that his daughter and her children and her children’s children can live well and live happily. That means reducing our reliance on fossil fuel and creating new strategies – moral, behavioral, and technological – for living today and living tomorrow.

The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars is a combination of personal storytelling, reflection, and science education that grants readers a tour of climate science. More importantly it shows us how our political process has been poisoned by shameless and corrupt interests. Reading Mann’s work is to get a sense of what it means to strive for thorough and important work as a “gee whiz” kid. But then we witness the “gee whiz” kid get schooled in the art of power politics and come out having outsmarted his opponents. For now anyway.

In 2009, I read story after story about hackers who’d stolen emails from the Climate Research Unit of East Anglia University and then released them. Journalists, eager for the next headline, ripped chunks from the climate change disinformation narrative. Thus was born “Climategate,” a shameful continuation of attacks on climate scientists by ideologues and fossil-fuel-funded institutes. Among the primary targets were "Penn State geosciences professor Dr. Michael Mann, co-winner [with many others] of the Nobel Prize in 2007 for his work with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the hockey stick" graph.

Snapping Turtle Needs a Happy Earth Day Too

Every day is Earth Day for this one.

In Praise of Wilderness

Rather than an extended blog about wilderness for Earth Day and Earth Week, I'd rather share the words on nature and the wild by people far more eloquent than I am and share some pictures of our beautiful area. At the end, you'll get why Cathy Pedler of the Allegheny Defense Project is on our show today.

"The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild, and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the World."

~Henry David Thoreau

“Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.”

~Edward Abbey

"Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature - the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter."

~Rachel Carson

"For unnumbered centuries of human history the wilderness has given way. The priority of industry has become dogma. Are we as yet sufficiently enlightened to realize that we must now challenge that dogma, or do without our wilderness? Do we realize that industry, which has been our good servant, might make a poor master?" 

~Aldo Leopold 

 

"We need to realize that, first, we don’t give rights to nature. Nature has rights. And more often than not, nature’s rights and people’s rights are allied as one in most places of the world, where, in places like Jaitapur, people are saying, 'This land is our mother.' This is not an esoteric idea. It’s the most relevant, potent, democratic idea of our times.” 

~Vandana Shiva 

"Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God." 

~George Washington Carver

We'll be joined by Cathy Pedler who's been active in the Allegheny Defense Project (ADP) since 2003. She's worked as an archaeological researcher and a sustainability coordinator and is an avid outdoors person. She will be telling us about the Heartwood Forest Council and the ADP's work past, present, and future to protect the forests and wilds of the Allegheny plateau and the Allegheny National Forest, Pennsylvania's only national forest. 

Listen in on Friday from 4-5 pm. Call in (814) 865-9577 with questions and comments. You can also join us on Facebook and Twitter as well.

Are Centre Region's Conscientious Omnivores Getting a Slaughterhouse They Want?

The locavore movement keeps growing. In the last few years, the small local farmer has reemerged as friend, hero, and businessman...actually it's more often a businesswoman. The smaller local farmer new shine has brought with them the other businesses. Seed savers and restauranteurs and brewers are integrating the market. And of course, the local slaughterhouse and butcher.

The last time I ate a fast food burger was the same day I watched Supersize Me. It was shocking. I don't think I was ever a fast food kid...well...I did work at Wendy's in high school. But I wasn't one of those every chance I get I'll eat a 99 cent burger types. Then when I read Fast Food Nation, I felt vindicated. And curious. Like a lot of people I know now, I started asking the question, "Where's my food come from?" I read Peter Singer, Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver, Francis Moore Lappe, and some others.

The industrial meat system terrified me. I read a piece, "Farmacology" in Johns Hopkins Magazine regarding the massive antibiotic inputs into chickens in industrial chicken, pig, and cattle farms called concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). Johns Hopkins researchers were finding that "nontherapeutic use of antimicrobials is building dangerous genetic reservoirs of resistance. If they are right, industrial agriculture is fostering and dispersing drug-resistant bacteria that impair medicine's ability to protect the public from them." It's an arms race. Eventually, we could lose. Rolling Stone's Jeff Tietz wrote a similarly alarming story on pig production (excerpts here) featuring the goriest details about manure lagoons and piles of dead pigs. And last month Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and Arizona State University researchers found evidence suggesting that previously banned antibiotics for poultry production are still being used by the poultry industry.

I've said nothing about the violence incurred on the animals across their whole lives. There are frequent reports of worker mistreatment and higher levels of drug and alcohol problems among such workers. And the enormous effluent waste CAFOs create lead to pollution on a scale unimaginable a century ago such that play into the expanding dead zones in our bays and gulfs.

So if you want to be a responsible omnivore, what can you do? Maybe we go back to that small farmer and that local butcher.

On Friday afternoon at 4:30 we will talk to the people starting Rising Spring Meat Company, a slaughterhouse and butcher shop in Spring Mills, Pennsylvania. They bill themselves as "your connection to a farming community that is dedicated to producing quality livestock and meat" including cows, pigs, sheep and goats expertly butchered to cuts of beef, pork, mutton and chevon.

So we'll be asking them about these things. How are they different from the big boys? Can I trace some mutton from the farm through the plant with any confidence the animal led a sheeply life? Will I get a good-tasting slice? Is money staying in our area?

Listen in on Friday from 4-5 pm. Call in (814) 865-9577 with questions and comments. You can also join us on Facebook and Twitter as well.

PSU Earth Day: Maathai Memorial & Sustainability Site Tours

On Friday, April 20, the Penn State Center for Sustainability will host a day of free activities at the University's 9-Acre Sustainability Experience Center, as part of Penn State's Earth Week celebration.

The day's activities include bird walks, tours of the Morningstar solar home, 70' Wind for Schools turbine, community gardens, and Ecological Systems Lab- all located of off Porter Road, next to Lubrano Park at Medlar Field. Free onsite parking is available for the day, which culminates in a one-hour memorial ceremony to honor Kenyan social and environmental activist Dr. Wangari Maathai, who passed away in September 2011.

Maathai, founder of the Kenya-based Green Belt Movement, is internationally renowned as a lifelong advocate for environmental restoration, women's rights, peace and democracy. The recipient of a 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, her work centered on the planting of trees, but extended out to many inter-related aspects of society.

"Recognizing that sustainable development, democracy and peace are indivisible is an idea whose time has come," Maathai famously stated.

To honor Professor Maathai's memory and legacy, the Center for Sustainability will plant five apple trees in her name, as part of a program celebrating her life. The memorial will include music, dance, poetry, personal reflections of Maathai's colleague Ephraim Govere, and the initiation of a new annual award for Penn State students who exemplify the values that she embodied in her life's work.

"All of us at Penn State's Center for Sustainability are honored to help make this lasting connection to the life and work of Professor Maathai," said Lisa Brown, associate director of the CfS. "Her courage inspired countless people when she was alive, and her impact will only grow over the years, like her beloved trees."

The Maathai Memorial is co-sponsored by the Center for Sustainability, the Departments of Women's Studies, African Studies, African American & African Diaspora Studies, The Africana Research Center, the African Student Association, the CfS Community Gardens Club, and Penn State's Office of Physical Plant.

Friday, April 20 schedule at Penn State's Sustainability Experience Center include:

9 - 10 a.m. Bird Walk Tours of Sustainability Experience Center (SEC)
12 - 3 p.m. Gardens & Tech Tours of SEC
4 - 5 p.m. Wangari Maathai Memorial Ceremony

Read the full schedule here.

April 30th: Real Skepticism and Phony Deceit

PennEnvironment & Commonwealth Foundation Talk Fracking on NBC

If you are interested in the so-called medical gag order, watch from about 9:45 on.

Community and Environmental Rights

A lot of people don't think of "the environment" has being owed rights. "What? Give trees rights?" You might think it's something to scoff at but there's a long tradition of recognizing nature as being owed something other than a numerical dollar value for its extractive potential, its ability to be turned into a chair, a car, or a hand-held device, or its value as property.

In 1948, Aldo Leopold wrote "The Land Ethic" in A Sand County Almanac. He believed that things were owed moral status if they are part of the community. He wrote,

All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. His instincts prompt him to compete for his place in that community, but his ethics prompt him also to co-operate (perhaps in order that there may be a place to compete for).

The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land.

These simple lines have infused much of the environmental movement's ethics for 60 years. They resonate to some degree in the work of environmentalists' and environmental groups' rhetoric to varying degrees. And some take it more seriously than others.

Today on the show, we will be talking to Ben Price of the Community and Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). They argue that the escalating ecological crises we are living in has resulted from decisions made powerful people in our major institutions. They argue that "sustainability will never be achieved by leaving those decisions in the hands of a few – both because of their belief in limitless economic production and because their decisions are made at a distance from the communities experiencing the impact of those decisions." What's the answer? In part, it's to change the power dynamics by invoking the rights of communities to determine their futures. The community is that broadest community including the environment, or what Leopold called the land.

Price helped craft State College's Community and Environmental Bill of Rights and Fracking Ban so successfully fought for by GroundswellPA and passed in 72% to 28% landslide. But recently passed legislation that has resulted in Act 13 of the Oil and Gas Law threatens local ordinances to regulate natural gas drilling operations. Will the State College referendum stand? Will the lawsuit against the state by seven Pennsylvania municipalities succeed? Do we need a revolution against what some call a corporate kleptocracy? We'll ask Price these and other questions.

Call in with questions this afternoon from 4-5 pm: (814) 865-9577. You can also join us on Facebook and Twitter as well.

Conservation and Sustainability from the Legislature: Conversation with Sen. Jake Corman

Pennsylvania has a complicated history regarding natural resource use. On the one hand, we have these incredible state park systems, forests, and game lands. But then we have the legacies of timbering, iron and steel, strip mines, and now the looming rush into shale gas. How has and is the legislature dealing with these issues? [See below.]

Over the last few decades, programs like Growing Greener have been helping us preserve our open and green spaces. The program has been very popular among a large segment of Pennsylvanians, but funding has been on the chopping block. And hearkening back to last week's show with Mike Hermann of Purple Lizard Maps and Frank Maguire of the International Mountain Bike Association, there's a lot of concern that Governor Tom Corbett is going to undercut the integrity of state forests and state parks by further opening them to gas drilling.

At the community level, people in the borough of State College overwhelmingly voted for a Community and Environmental Bill of Rights and a Fracking Ban in November. It was a landslide 72% "yays" to 28% "nays." But the recently passed Act 13 of the Oil and Gas Act might undercut home rule and the referendum State College passed. And pretty clearly, there are a lot of rumblings about shale gas development in the Marcellus Shale. Will Pennsylvania end up in another boom and bust like we did with oil and coal?

Our first guest on today's show, Senator Jake Corman (R - 34th district) grew up in Central Pennsylvania. His father was a senator before him and was my first acquaintance with a state politician. Jake Corman was elected in 1998 and is currently serving his fourth term. He chairs the Appropriations Committee and sits on several other committees. Because he sits at the helm of the Appropriations Committee, he has an intimate understanding of how the budget works whether that's money going into Going Greener or being dispersed from Act 13.

Call in with questions this afternoon from 4-5 pm: (814) 865-9577. You can also join us on Facebook and Twitter as well.

UPDATE: Senator Corman's office called this morning to inform us that a schedule change prevents him from coming on the show.

Eco Cars?

The United States is the home of the automobile. Since Henry Ford pushed the car onto the streets and we were changed from a walking, horse riding, and bicycling people, American life is different from other places. Fast food became what it is because people like Ray Kroc figured out that people in southern California wanted to eat in their cars.

"We the people" spend over 500 hours a year in cars. That has significant health and environmental impacts. If you don't smoke and are otherwise healthy, a long commute in a city could be the most unhealthy thing you do because you are exposed to enormous amounts of air pollution from car and truck exhaust. And the environmental effects of all that fuel combustion is clearly having a large impact. Carbon monoxide, ozone, and particulate matter generate air pollution. In total, 33% of the United States' carbon dioxide emissions come from the transportation and 60% of that comes - roughly 19% of the whole pie - comes from personal automobile use. All that time in the car pushes our waist bands, our lungs, and the planet's climate.

Our second guest today, Penn State student Taylor Kidd, is working to push the automobile's envelope. As part of Penn State's Advanced Vehicle Team, he is competing in the Eco Car 2 competition, an educational competition between 15 teams at colleges and universities across the U.S. sponsored by GM and other companies. The goal is to outfit a Chevy Malibu so that it "reduces fuel consumption, reduces well-to-wheel greenhouse gas emissions, reduce criteria tailpipe emissions, and maintains consumer acceptability in the areas of performance, utility, and safety."

How do you do that? Kidd is going to talk to us about the competition, his car, and the future of car design.

Call in with questions this afternoon from 4-5 pm: (814) 865-9577. You can also join us on Facebook and Twitter as well.

E.O. Wilson Coming to Penn State

I am a huge E.O. Wilson fan. His work on evolution, ecology, and love for life - what he calls "biophilia - has had an enormous impact on me personally and professionally. He is, to my mind, one of the 5 or 10 most important living voices on conservation and love of the land (along with Wendell Berry, Vandana Shiva, Lester Brown, Wolfgang Sachs, and the Ehrlichs to name some others) in the world. To my mind, his book The Creation is one of the best pieces of scientifically informed outreach to the religious community on the importance of saving biodiversity. You have the chance to see him at Penn State next week.

He is coming to Penn State's University Park campus on Monday April 16, 2012 as part of the 8th annual Colloquium on the Environment speaker series. His talk "The Social Conquest of Earth" is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. in 100 Thomas Building. A book signing and reception will immediately follow his lecture. Event is free and open to the public.

Wilson, the legendary biologist, is widely considered the father of the modern environmental movement. Named one of America's 25 Most Influential People by TIME magazine, and a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, he has made a giant contribution to our understanding of the rich spectrum of Earth's biodiversity. In his lectures, he makes a persuasive, eloquent plea to government, corporate and religious leaders to address the damage we have done to our planet before it's too late.

Wilson's works include Ants and On Human Nature, which both won the Pulitzer Prize; The Future of Life, which offers a plan for saving Earth's biological heritage; Consilience, which draws together the sciences, humanities, and the arts into a broad study of human knowledge; The Creation, a plea for science and religion to work together to save the planet; and From So Simple a Beginning, a collection of the four seminal works of Darwin, with new introductions by Wilson. His 2008 book, The Superorganism, was hailed by The New York Times as "an astonishing account of the intricate and unexpected swarm intelligence of wasps, bees, ants and termites."

A recent project of Wilson's, The Encyclopedia of Life website, catalogs all key information about life of Earth-- including data about every living species -- and makes it accessible to everyone. Launched with money from his 2007 TED Prize, the EOL recently received an additional ten million dollars from The MacArthur Foundation. Wilson is also the recipient of the U.S. National Medal of Science, the Crafoord Prize (a sister to the Nobel), and the Audubon Medal. He is the University Research Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, and continues to research at the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Recently, Wilson teamed with Harrison Ford to create a new PEN Literary award titled the PEN/E.O. Wilson Award for Literary Science Writing.

For more information, please visit this site.