Lecture Series History: 2009
In 2009, the Natural History Museum of Utah's annual Lecture Series presented the theme "Defining Sustainability." Read on to learn more about the theme and speakers.
About the 2009 Lecture Series
The Nature of Things, the Museum's signature lecture series, offers timely commentary on contemporary scientific discoveries and issues, while highlighting our rapidly changing relationship with the natural world.
This year, the Hinckley Institute of Politics has partnered with us to offer a lecture series themed Defining Sustainability. The speakers will offer an interdisciplinary perspective on the changes affecting our environment as well as a variety of paths to sustainability. We hope this series leads you to evaluate your individual impact on our world today. Thanks to the R. Harold Burton Foundation, and all of our generous sponsors, for making this series possible.
2009 Speakers
Mitchell Power
Challenges to Living in Prehistoric Americas: Climate Change, Fires, and the Arrival of the Europeans
Mitchell Power is the curator of the Garrett Herbarium at the Utah Museum of Natural History and assistant professor of geography at the University of Utah. He co-authored a recently published study linking climate change, humans and wildfire. His research sheds new light on the role of humans in shaping the land over the past several thousand years. Power examines how climate variability and prehistoric land use practices can inform our definition of sustainability for the future.
Thomas Friedman
Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America
Thomas Friedman, author of the bestseller The World is Flat, joined The New York Times in 1981 as a financial reporter and later served as the chief diplomatic, chief White House, and international economics correspondent. He has reported on the Middle East conflict, the end of the cold war, US. domestic politics, foreign policy, international economics, and the worldwide impact of the terrorist threat. In his latest book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, Friedman explains how America can regain its international stature by taking the lead in alternative energy and environmentalism.
Fred Wagner
Global Warming, New Ecosystems, and a "No Analog Future"
As emeritus professor in the College of Natural Resources' Department of Wildland Resources at Utah State University, Fred Wagner has been active for years in the conversation about climate change. Wagner coordinated a 1998-2003 assessment of the effects of climate change on the nine-state Intermountain region, one of 19 regional assessments ordered by Congress. He also edited Climate Warming in Western North America/Evidence and Environmental Effects. Wagner was selected for the 2008 Wildlife Society's Wildlife Publication Award for his book Yellowstone's Destabilized Ecosystem: Elk Effects, Science and Policy Conflict.
Tyrone Hayes
From Silent Spring to Silent Night: Frogs as Canaries
Frogs are ancient species that can tell us much about changes in our environment. Tyrone Hayes conducts research on developmental endocrinology of frogs, including Bufo boreas, a toad found in Northern California, as well as the African clawed frog, the Japanese Kajika, and the Pine Barrens tree frog. With fieldwork in the United States and Africa, he is synthesizing ecological and evolutionary studies to learn how changes at an animal's molecular level affect its ability to adapt to changes within its environment. Hayes is a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley.