CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – An internationally known economist whose research on climate change contributed to a Nobel Peace Prize is among panelists for a Nov. 3 forum on global warming at the University of Illinois.
Charles Kolstad, an economics professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara, was a lead author and researcher for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore.
Other panelists are Nathaniel Keohane, director of economic policy and analysis for the Environmental Defense Fund, and Don Fullerton, a U. of I. finance professor and former deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury Department.
Larry DeBrock, the dean of the U. of I. College of Business, will moderate the forum, scheduled for 12:30 to 1:50 p.m. Nov. 3 in Deloitte Auditorium at the Business Instructional Facility, 515 E. Gregory Drive, Champaign.
The forum will address the prospects for climate policy in the U.S. and abroad, just weeks before talks begin in Copenhagen on a new United Nations-brokered climate treaty to replace the 1997 Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012.
Panelists will discuss global warming, the prospects for an international agreement to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and what policies each nation can use to meet its commitment.
Keohane, a former Yale University economics professor, develops economic policy on global warming for the Environmental Defense Fund, a national nonprofit organization that seeks innovative and cost-effective solutions to society’s most urgent environmental problems.
Fullerton, a leading researcher on the economic impact of environmental regulations, was the lone academic expert invited to speak about climate policy this month at a meeting of European Union finance ministers that was a springboard for December’s climate conference in Copenhagen. He will be the keynote speaker at a Nov. 30 global warming conference for EU tax commissioners in Brussels, Belgium.
He is a researcher for the U. of I. Center for Business and Public Policy and for the Institute of Government and Public Affairs, which are sponsoring the forum along with the campus’s Environmental Change Institute.
The event is free and open to the public.
