April 30 (Friday) 1:10-2:10pm, LDC104
Deborah Salon from the Carleton Class of 1994 will talk about “Cities, Cars, and Climate Change”. The focus of climate policy – especially as portrayed in the media – has been on the big international treaty negotiations, the most recent of which took place in Copenhagen last December. But much of the real action to reduce the human carbon “footprint” happens at the individual level when people make decisions about their energy use such as how much living space they need, where to live, and both how and how much to travel. In this talk, Deborah will highlight what is known (and NOT known!) about the climate impacts of our individual decisions, and discuss how policymakers at many levels of government are struggling to craft policy to encourage us all to reduce our personal carbon footprints. Along the way, she’ll also talk about her personal journey from studying physics at Carleton (and doing her comps project on the physics of the car!) to becoming an urban and environmental economist.