Student Environmental Conference to Examin Population

Student Environmental Conference to Examin Population

BY LIA UNRAU
Rice News Staff
Dec. 10, 1998

Human population and sustainability is the topic of the seventh annual Rice Environmental Conference, which will be held Feb. 6 at Rice Memorial Center on campus.

The conference, “How Many is Too Many? Human Population and the Sustainability of Our Planet,” is free and open to the Rice community and to the public.

Conference events include keynote speaker Judith Jacobsen, a U.S. delegate to the 1994 United Nations Conference on Population in Cairo, and three panel discussions debating different facets of overpopulation. Panel topics include women and population, religion and population, and population as an environmental issue. The panel on women and population is co-sponsored by the Rice Women’s Conference.

The conference will open with remarks by Nobel laureate and Rice chemist Richard Smalley. The day’s events will also feature a career fair and expo as well as the winners of a student paper competition.

The conference goal is to inform citizens and spark debate in the environmental community. The conference strives to encourage open-minded debate, and, as such, the Rice students who organize and manage the conference are committed to presenting as many diverse viewpoints on each topic to conference attendees as possible.

In years past, the student-run conference has hosted speakers such as “Ishmael” author Dan Quinn and Texas land commissioner Garry Mauro.

Conference events for students only begin on the afternoon of Feb. 5 as the culmination of “Get Trashed Week,” a weeklong function on the Rice campus to raise environmental awareness. For example, students are asked to save all the nonrecyclable waste that they generate for a contest to see which student can use the least amount of trash, with the weigh-in occurring that afternoon.

Rice Environmental Conference
Feb. 6 Schedule of Events:

10 a.m. — Opening Remarks–Richard Smalley, Nobel laureate and the Gene and Norman Hackerman Professor of Chemistry and professor of physics at Rice

10:30 a.m. — Panel: Women and Population

11:30 a.m. — Panel: Religion and Population

12:30 a.m. — Paper Contest presentations

1 p.m. — Lunch and career fair and expo

2 p.m. — Keynote Speaker&emdash;Judith Jacobsen, U.S. delegate to the 1994 United Nations Conference on Population in Cairo

3 p.m. — Panel: Population as an Environmental Issue

4 p.m. — Future Studies Presentation

4:30 p.m. — Closing Remarks

For more information or to register contact student organizers Kathleen Corr at (713) 630-8007, kcorr@rice.edu; or Alex Bain at (713) 630-8128, abain@rice.edu.