WHEN:    Tuesday, February 14th at 6:00 pm

WHERE:  Steele Hall 007 (on College Street across from Dartmouth's Baker-Berry  
Library Complex)

WHAT:    Michael Dorsey, Jim Rubens, John Topping: "The Kyoto Process after Durban"


Dr. Michael Dorsey is assistant professor in Dartmouth College's Environmental  
Studies Program and the Director of the College's Climate Justice Research Project.  
His research is focuses on the intersections of climate change policy, finance  
and social justice.  In 2010 Lisa Jackson, the US Environmental Protection Agency  
(US-EPA) Administrator, appointed Dorsey to the EPA's National Advisory Committee.



Michael has followed closely the climate change negotiations from the Rio Treaty  
through the Kyoto Protocol to the most recent negotiations in Durban, South Africa.  
  He was present in Durban for the most recent round of talks and will provide  
us with his insights on and critical analysis of the process, results from Durban,  
and prospects and alternative scenarios for the future.


BACKGROUND:

In June 1992 the Earth Summit was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  That gathering  
produced the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the  
international environmental treaty that President George Bush Sr. signed and the  
US Senate subsequently ratified.

Under that convention, the UNFCCC signatories met in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan and  
developed the Kyoto Protocol ­ signed by President Bill Clinton in 1998 but  
never ratified by the US Senate.  The Kyoto Protocol established categories of  
targets for reductions of greenhouse gas emission by the parties to the protocol;  
those targets were to be reached by the end of 2012.

The Kyoto process has seen other meetings and negotiating sessions in Montreal,  
Copenhagen, and other sites ­ most recently late last year in Durban, South  
Africa.

Professor Michael Dorsey of Dartmouth's Environmental Studies Program, has followed  
the climate change negotiations closely from the Rio Treaty through the Kyoto  
Protocol to the most recent negotiations in Durban.  He was, indeed, at the Rio  
conference in 1992, and present in Durban for this latest round of talks. This  
evening Dr. Dorsey will provide us with his insights on and critical analysis  
of the process, emphasizing results from Durban, and prospects for future alternative  
scenarios.

Dr. Dorsey has invited two distinguished individuals to join him and share their  
own views on the issues of climate change, and strategies to address same.

Jim Rubens and John Topping both have ties to Dartmouth College Jim Rubens is  
a successful businessman, a former Senator in the NH Legislature, author, and  
now a consultant with the Union of Concerned Scientists.  John Topping has been  
President and CEO of the Washington, DC-based Climate Institute since its founding  
in 1986.  John has served in the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and  
as editor of portions of the First Assessment Report of the Inter-governmental  
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).