This talk explores the major environmental issues of global warming, air pollution, and energy insecurity and outlines a plan to solve them. Mark Z. Jacobson, director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford University, considers the many facets of viable wind, water, and sunlight energy production and concludes that it could fully—and economically—power the world in the next 20 to 40 years.
Jacobson and his team at Stanford University have pioneered new atmospheric research and analysis techniques that give a picture of the current state of the atmosphere, show the effects of pollution from aerosols, ethanol, agriculture, and ultraviolet radiation, and predict how these pollutants might affect the climate.
Mark Z. Jacobson is Director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. He is a senior fellow of the Woods Institute for the Environment and of the Precourt Institute for Energy. He has written more than 120 peer-reviewed scientific journal articles including a 2009 cover article in Scientific American, co-authored with Dr. Mark DeLucchi, discussing how to power the world with renewable energy. He received the 2005 American Meteorological Society Henry G. Houghton Award for “significant contributions to modeling aerosol chemistry and to understanding the role of soot and other carbon particles on climate,” and served on the Energy Efficiency and Renewables Advisory Committee to the U.S. Secretary of Energy.
For more information on Jacobson’s research, read these papers or watch him in the 2010 TED debate Does the World Need Nuclear Energy?
This event is generously supported by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the Consulate General of Germany in New York, and the Macroeconomic Policy Institute (IMK).