Copenhagen: The California Contingent

Here’s a list of prominent Californians either in or heading for Copenhagen next week. Compiled by Climate Watch intern David Ferry, it’s not intended to be exhaustive, but reflects responses from numerous queries we sent out prior to the conference:

Government:

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
Addresses the conference on Tuesday, with a call to rally “subnational” players to continue local and regional efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Linda Adams, Sec. for Environmental Protection,California Environmental Protection Agency
Linda Adams, former director of the California Department of Water Resources, was appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in May 2006 as Secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency – making her the first woman to serve as head of the agency. Immediately upon appointment, Secretary Adams was designated as Governor Schwarzenegger’s lead negotiator on AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. Adams is now working closely with states, provinces and countries around the world to develop a network of climate initiatives to achieve the greatest global reductions.

Mike Chrisman, Secretary for Natural Resources, California Natural Resources Agency
As a member of the governor’s cabinet, Mike Chrisman serves as his chief adviser on issues related to the state’s natural, historic, and cultural resources. In leading the Natural Resources Agency, Chrisman oversees the policies and activities of 25 departments, commissions, boards and conservancies. The issues run the natural resources gamut from conservation, water, fish and game, forestry, parks, energy, coastal, marine and landscape.

A. G. Kawamura, Secretary for Food and Agriculture, California Dept. of Food and Agriculture
Prior to his appointment, Secretary Kawamura was active as a produce grower and shipper from Orange County. As an urban agriculturist, he has a lifetime of experience working along and within the expanding urban boundaries of Southern California. On issues of domestic and international importance, Kawamura was an early supporter of renewable energy as well as being a vocal proponent of invasive species prevention, trade promotion and farm bill reauthorization.

Mary D. Nichols, Chairman, California Air Resources Board
Mary Nichols has devoted her entire career in public and private, not-for-profit service to advocating for the environment and public health. In addition to her work at the Air Board, she has held a number of positions, including: assistant administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Air and Radiation program under the Clinton Administration, Secretary for California’s Resources Agency from 1999 to 2003, and Director of the University of California, Los Angeles Institute of the Environment.

Eileen Tutt, Deputy Secretary, California Air Resources Board and CalEPA*
Eileen Tutt, who has been with the ARB and CalEPA since 1990, currently serves as Deputy Secretary External Affairs. Prior to that, she worked in the ARB’s Executive Office managing three projects: the California Hydrogen Highway Network Blueprint Plan, Motor Vehicle Climate Change regulations, and joint effort with the California Energy Commission to make recommendations to the Governor and Legislator addressing the issue of California’s petroleum dependence.

*Tutt recently announced that she’s resigning from state government to become executive director of the California Electric Transportation Coalition.

Tony Brunello, Deputy Natural Resources Secretary for Climate Change and Energy

Marcia McNutt, Director, United States Geological Survey
Marcia McNutt, the recently appointed USGS director, is a California native. She has published 90 peer-reviewed scientific articles and also chaired the President’s Panel on Ocean Exploration convened by President Clinton to examine the possibility of initiating a major US program in exploring the oceans.  She is a fellow for the American Geophysical Union, the Geological Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the International Association of Geodesy.

Nancy Skinner, State Assembly Member, California’s 14th District
Nancy Skinner is the Chair of the Assembly Natural Resources Committee and is the founder of ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability.

Fran Pavley, State Senator, California’s 23rd District
Fran Pavley chairs the Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee, and authored California’s tailpipe emissions reduction bill and, as an assemblymember, AB 32.

NGOs:

Derek Walker, Director, California Climate Initiative, Environmental Defense Fund
Derek Walker develops and coordinates legislative and communications campaigns in target states throughout the U.S. to generate support for strong global warming and clean energy policies. His primary responsibility is managing a team of policy and legal experts working on implementation of California’s Global Warming Solutions Act (AB-32).

Dan Jacobson, Legislative Director, Environment California
Dan Jacobson directs policy development, research, and legislative advocacy for Environment California. He led efforts to pass the California Clean Energy Act, the strongest renewable energy law in the country.

Louis Blumberg, Director, Climate Change at the Nature Conservancy
A self-described policy wonk, Blumberg leads the Conservancy’s climate change work in California.

Gary Gero, President, California Climate Action Registry
Gary Gero serves as president of the CCAR, which serves as a voluntary greenhouse gas registry to protect and promote early actions to reduce GHG emissions by organizations.

Academics:

Dan Kammen, Professor, UC Berkeley School of Public Policy
Dan Kammen is an expert in national and international energy policy and has testified before Congress about energy and environmental issues.

Jayant Sathaye, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Jayant Sathaye is internationally recognized for his work on climate change project-related issues in transportation, land-use change and forestry, and energy demand and supply in the developing world.

Healy Hamilton, Biologist, California Academy of Sciences
Healy Hamilton’s “interests range from researching the effects of climate change on biodiversity to the evolution and conservation of cetaceans and seahorses.”

Oran Young, Professor, UC Santa Barbara Bren School of Environmental Management
Oran Young’s scientific work encompasses both basic research focusing on collective choice and social institutions, and applied research dealing with issues pertaining to international environmental governance and the Arctic as an international region.

Stephen Schneider, Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford
Editor of the interdisciplinary journal Climatic Change, Schneider’s recent work has centered on the importance of risk management in climate-policy decision making, given the uncertainties in future projections of global climate change.

Christopher Field, Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford
The director for the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s Institution’s Department of Global Ecology, Field’s research emphasizes impacts of climate change, from the molecular to the global scale.

Terry Root, Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford
Terry Root primarily works on large-scale ecological questions with a focus on impacts of global warming.

Rob Dunbar, Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford
Rob Dunbar’s studies focus on global environmental change with an emphasis on air-sea interactions, tropical marine ecosystems, polar climate, and biogeochemistry.

Lisa Curran, Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford
Lisa Curran’s current interdisciplinary programs examine the effects of land use change, climate, drought and fire on carbon dynamics and biodiversity; and impacts of governmental policies and industrial practices on ecosystems and rural livelihoods in Asian and Latin American tropical forests.

Michael Wara, Center Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford
An expert on environmental law and policy, Wara’s research focuses on climate policy and regulation, both domestically and internationally.

Meg Caldwall, Senior Lecturer, Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford
The Director of the Environmental and Natural Resources Law and Policy Program at Stanford Law, Caldwall’s scholarship has focused on the environmental effects of local land use decisions, the use of science in environmental and marine resource policy development and implementation, and developing private and public incentives for natural resource conservation.

Michael Mastrandrea, Research Associate, Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford
Michael Mastrandrea’s research focuses on the physical, biological, and societal impacts of climate change, policy strategies for reducing climate risks, and their accurate and effective translation for the general public, policy makers, and the business community.

Business:

John R. Fielder, President, Southern California Edison
President of SCE since 2005, Fielder is going to Copenhagen with the Climate Registry, a non-profit organization working to set standards for reporting greenhouse gas emissions.

Amit Chatterjee, CEO, Hara Software
Amit Chatterjee, who runs an environmental and energy management software company backed by Al Gore, told AFP that he was attending the conference to help define a “post-carbon economy” and “articulate the view from Silicon Valley” about climate change and cap-and-trade legislation

Google contingent
CEO Eric Schmidt is not going but representatives will be presenting sessions on web technologies and outreach strategies.

Copenhagen: The California Contingent 12 December,2009Craig Miller

4 thoughts on “Copenhagen: The California Contingent”

  1. Global Warming!-IS- Human/ Industrial Waste!
    The best indisputable SCIENCE example that should be the #1 item on the Copenhagen Agenda would be the toxic waste dump, the size of Texas, 900 miles off of the United States and Canadian West Coast.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GreatPacificGarbagePatch
    That is a Big SCIENCE problem with no dedicated U.S SCIENCE and INNOVATION DEPARTMENT to address the issue. The U.S (or Canada) has not even sent out a SCIENCE research vessel to evaluate this ecological disaster; neither country wants to take the responsibility for the industrial/human pollution or even acknowledge its existence.
    No Profit-No Action!-No SCIENCE! Will the World Trade Organization and the New Industrial World Order address the issue? Where is their World Department of SCIENCE?
    Can the problem be solved with SCIENCE? Probably so, Americans are very ingenious primarily because we were raised with the compliments of Freedom and Democracy and are free thinking individuals. We could probably figure a way to clean up the mess and possibly make a profit doing so.
    We can do nothing until we have a DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE that is free to address SCIENCE and to develop the advancement of SCIENCE. (Yes, for the sake of humanity; SCIENCE FIRST.)

  2. Sorry Bro there’s no money in it, look at the list of all those people sucking # from this issue. They can’t scare anybody about that enough to provide a gazillion dollars in grants, studies and useless gov jobs sfyl

  3. SCIENCE and the advancement of SCIENCE is what the multinational corporations fear the most. Under the smokescreen of global warming today, the politicos are under pressure to sign over our sovernigity to multinational corporate wind farms. SCIENCE?-Who needs all those pest birds? In fact, your next American.
    Fact: American green energy innovation and ingenuity, science really, hasn’t been funded since 2001.
    http://www.eere.energy.gov/inventions
    New renewable energy inventors have no stimulus grant money to develop their inventions. The Department of Energy and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and in particular, Dr. Chu, has snuffed any new green energy advancements. Their agenda is to do research and development of product line for the multinational corporations and keep American innovation down.
    Old patented science advancements in green energy inventions (outmoding fossil fuels) were bought up by the multinational corporations and kept off of the market so that they would not upset their New World Manufacturing Order agenda. The last World conquer was Hitler.
    Yes, it is a win- win for Communist China and the multinational corporations and a loss- loss for Democracy and Freedom and the American people. Remember, the American manufacturing base moved to China for cheap labor; (graduate engineer $7,000 a year and most everyone else $700 a year) their allegiance is now with Communist China.
    Bush played the bad cop, Obama plays the good cop, but the fact is we are still on the same agenda. There is no change, the free press is gone. The treason of the multinational corporations and their owned and controlled congress continues. There will be no rebuilding of America’s manufacturing capabilities from the ground up with new inventions. There will only be more debt for the American people and dominance of our government by the multinational corporations New World Order agenda.
    Ask your government representatives WHY there is no funding for new inventions (advancement in science) to build a new American economy.

    By the way,only an ignorant person or even a society of ignorant people would denie science.

  4. Imagine $100 Billion a year to combat human / industrial pollution today and develop SCIENCE innovation with new inventions for tomorrow that would move humanity from the 19th. Century to the 21st. Century?
    Greed is a disease. Good enough is never good enough and the hunger for profit and power is never satisfied- the soul is never grateful.
    I am sure the poor, resource rich, countries and Europe are taking a second look at U.S and Communist China industrial relations and reexamining their own alliances. American Multinational corporations have no loyalty to any one country.
    At least at Cop 15 no one was seriously injured. I understand that the next convention will be held in the “narcotic” designated country of Mexico where mercenary drug lords and Federallies will be available for hire (contractors) to crush the “Friends of the Earth” demonstrators; that outcome could be quite different.
    I know many of the Republican, multinational corporate backed right wing hate propagandist that openly broadcast here are banned from broadcasting in Europe. Limbaugh, Savage, Beck, Hannity, Faux News and the other paid propagandist are working the multinational corporate backed subversive right wing organizations U.S Citizens Association and Freedom First (sic) in the same style Hitler used to whip up the “Brown Shirts” in Germany. (August- D.C assault) It always amazes me how people can be manipulated to act, not in their own self interest, but in the interest of the propagandist that control them. (19 year assault)
    ”Free Trade” (sic) agreements have nullified our American national Sovereignty and Constitution and we are heading for World Corporate Totalitarianism. American Freedom and Democracy- Free Enterprise and a Competitive Market (capitalism) – Free Press-are gone. The multinational corporation’s corruption of our government is near complete, now they want the World.
    The real question is: Can the Chinese Communist Party be corrupted by the multinational corporations or will the Party eventually arrest them for corruption and chop their heads off? – (Chinese penalty for corruption- like the death penalty for Treason in the United States.) That is an interesting marriage of strange bedfellows. The Chinese certainly are not blind sided; they built the Great Wall to keep the barbarians out and the structure of Communism well defines who the Devil is. As far as I know, General Motors has the only corporate delegate in the Communist Party and that delegate has only an alternate position.

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Author

Craig Miller

Craig is a former KQED Science editor, specializing in weather, climate, water & energy issues, with a little seismology thrown in just to shake things up. Prior to that, he launched and led the station's award-winning multimedia project, Climate Watch. Craig is also an accomplished writer/producer of television documentaries, with a focus on natural resource issues.

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