Last summer, the U.S. House of Representatives narrowly passed an energy bill that included putting mandatory limits on the emissions of greenhouse gases that cause global warming. The bill, over 1,000 pages long, said that by 2020, emissions must be reduced by 17% over 2005 levels. And by 2050, emissions must be reduced by 80% or more. Staying under those caps would be done with a system of permits or allowances, better known as cap-and-trade.
But nothing much has been done on the Senate level, and its critics, emboldened by the addition of a 41st Republican in the Senate after Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts, say there won't be any cap-and-trade bill passed in that body.
With that backdrop, the USF-Tampa campus introduces its new School of Global Sustainability with its first major conference taking place on Thursday and Friday, beginning with a presentation from Ohio State University researcher Lonnie Thompson.
Thompson was named by both CNN and Time magazine a few years ago as one of America's best scientists. He'll give a presentation at 10 a.m. at the Marshall Center on the USF campus, followed by a panel discussion at 11:30 a.m. on climate change and rising sea levels.
This article appears in Feb 10-16, 2010.
