Nicholas Institute Takes on a Challenge

Now is the time to address climate change, and university-industry collaborations will be in the middle of any solutions, said the keynote speaker Tuesday night at the opening of the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

More than 400 top scientists and leaders from government, corporations, environmental organizations and universities gathered at Duke for the institute's three-day inaugural environmental summit.

In the summit's opening keynote address Tuesday evening, Richard Osborne, group vice president for public and regulatory policy at Duke Energy, told attendees that "addressing climate change is a business imperative."

Industry-university initiatives such as the new Climate Change Policy Partnership, a collaboration between Duke Energy and three Duke environmental units -- the Nicholas Institute, the NicholasSchool of the Environment and Earth Sciences, and the Center on Global Change -- can help fill the policy void and guide federal policymakers toward practical, effective solutions, Osborne said.

One of the summit's highlights was the presentation of results from a new national poll commissioned by the Nicholas Institute that examined how voters' environmental views affect their voting decisions.

Among other things, the poll found that although 79 percent of all voters support "stronger national standards to protect our land, water and air," only 22 percent said environmental concerns played a major role in their recent voting.

Panelists at the summit joined with pollsters in discussing the reasons for this disconnect, and how the survey's findings can serve as a roadmap for the institute in its efforts to build consensus on environmental issues.

Wednesday's keynote speakers echoed Osborne's call for more collaboration between private and public sectors. They emphasized the need for policymaking to be based on sound science, not political spin, and for governments to provide greater leadership on these issues.

Russell Train, chairman emeritus of the World Wildlife Fund and former administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said, "It will be vital to engage as many constituencies as possible in an open, collaborative process of developing environmental policy. Cooperative private action is not a replacement for firm government leadership on these issues."

Jared Diamond, professor of geography at UCLA and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies, said that finding solutions to the problems facing society today "will require detailed scientific information." The Nicholas Institute can help address this need by providing unbiased, timely analysis on key environmental issues, not only at the federal level but for individual states as well, he said.

Throughout the day Wednesday, scientists, policy analysts and corporate leaders took part in sessions in which they identified and prioritized key ecological and economic challenges facing society in six critical areas: energy, global climate change, environmental health, water quality, the health of oceans, and the health of forests and wildlife habitats.

The day's presentations concluded with a plenary panel, "The Corporate Role in Environmental Stewardship." James E. Rodgers, president and chief executive officer of Cinergy, and Linda J. Fisher, vice president and chief sustainability officer at DuPont, discussed changing attitudes toward stewardship in the corporate world, and what their companies are doing to reduce their environmental footprints.