Environmental scientist Norman Myers says he thinks sideways.
In the 1970s, after tracking reasons that the cheetah was an endangered species in Kenya, he began to ask top wildlife scientists at what rate species were becoming extinct. One species per year was the official view of the World Wildlife Fund. He wondered if that included insects. It didnt. He wondered whether it included species not yet discovered. It didnt. Myers was among the first scientists to think about established environmental issues in a new way. And ever since, hes been turning conventional thinking every-which-way.
This independent scientist and fellow at Oxford University, who has advised the White House, the U.S. Departments of State and Defense, NASA, the World Bank, seven United Nations agencies and six prime ministers/presidents, will bring his ideas on extinction to the University of Vermont at 5 p.m., April 16 in Carpenter Auditorium, Given Medical Building. A reception will follow in the atrium.
His public lecture, Mass Extinction of Species: Why We Should Care, and What We Can Do About It, is part of the UVM Presidents Distinguished Lecture Series.
Myers has said that while all the other environmental problems can be fixed, the length of time it will take evolution to come up with replacement species to match what we have today won't be a few centuries or thousands of years, it will be at least five million years. So what we do or don't do in the next few decades will have an impact on the planetary ecosystem, upon our earth, our world, for the next five million years. That is 20 times longer than humans have been a species themselves.
April 17 at 12:30 p.m. at the same location, Myers will speak on Perverse Subsidies and Other Institutional Roadblocks on the Way to Sustainable Development, a presentation co-sponsored by the School of Natural Resources and the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics.
Myers has written that for every $1 going into solar power or wind power, $15 of government subsidy goes into fossil fuels. He suggests that because of all the problems they cause, we should be taxing them. Myers also targets subsidies in the auto industry, agriculture, fishing, logging and transportation.
If youre interested in life on earth, and why things are not working, these lectures are important to attend, said Robert Costanza, director of the Gund Institute of Ecological Economics and host of the programs. Myers and Costanza co-authored Economic Reasons for Conserving Wild Nature, published in Science last August.
Myers is a pioneer in these two areas identifying and tracking the loss of biodiversity areas and quantifying the real costs of government subsidies, Costanza says. Myers is also widely recognized for developing what he calls the biodiversity hot spots strategy. He calculated that at least one third of all species are confined to 25 regions on earth just 1.4 percent of the earths land surface. He proposed that if these hot spots were preserved, mass extinction could be greatly reduced. Conservation organizations have adopted this analysis and have raised more than $650 million to protect these regions.
A lot of my career has been, not so much supplying the right answers to established questions, but trying to raise the right questions, as Myers has aptly put it.
Myers was the first British scientist to receive the Volvo Environment Prize and the United Nations Sasakawa Environment Prize. He also was awarded a Pew Fellowship in Environment and the Blue Planet Prize. He has been visiting professor at Cape Town, Cornell, Harvard, Stanford, Yale and other universities. His work has been published widely in scholarly papers and popular articles. All together, his 17 books have sold more than a million copies.
The Presidents Distinguished Lecture Series, established last October, is intended to enhance the intellectual vitality of the university, showcase faculty, students and programs, and bring the campus community together regularly. Each visiting lecturer spends a full day speaking with students and faculty, presenting a public lecture understandable to a general audience and a smaller, more discipline-specific lecture.
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