The annual José de Acosta lecture series was initiated through the generous donation of USF Alumna and Board of Trustees member Michelle Skaff and her husband Dan. José de Acosta was a sixteenth-century Jesuit scientist who, nearly 300 years before Charles Darwin’s work on natural selection, studied natural history issues in South America. He based his work on meticulous
observation and keen insight and wrote extensively on wildlife, atmospheric science, oceanography, and anthropology.
This year's lecture was delivered by Dr. Daniel Kammen in McLaren Complex on February 25th, 2010. Daniel Kammen is a Professor in both the Goldman School of Public Policy and the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley, where he co-directs the Institute of the Environment and serves as the Founding Director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory.
Innovations for a Low-Carbon Society
What will it take to make the transition to a low-carbon society? In the aftermath of the Copenhagen Climate summit it is imperative that ecologically, economically, and socially effective strategies move into widespread use. This talk will examine both scientific/technical and political/economic opportunities to put this low-carbon economy into practice and into the marketplace of not only ideas, but of business. This talk will explore what rates of innovation and change can meet ‘Nature’s mandate’.
Kammen advises the United States and Swedish Agencies for International Development, the World Bank, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the African Academy of Sciences and the President’s Committee on Science and Technology, and is a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Previous José de Acosta lecturers include:
February 2009, Dr. Peter Gleick, University of California, Berkeley
September 2007, Dr. Stephen Schneider, Stanford University