The Panel
Aaron Strong
Nationality: US citizen Institution: Stanford, School of Earth Sciences Position: Ph.D. Student in Environment and Resources Research:
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“I have an interesting perspective because I am a scientist. I do phytoplankton ecology work and I have done that in the past and I am still doing it and I have a component of my research interests that are in the translation of scientific information, mostly on the governance based, less so on the business interests and more in how to start to write rules about things. I think your project is an interesting project because the more we can actually talk about this space that doesn’t treat science as a vacuum, --as a separate space but actually engaged and connected with many-- is important.”
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Clive Hamilton
Nationality: Australian Institution: Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, joint centre of Charles Sturt University and the University of Melbourne. Position: Professor of Public Ethics Research:
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“I became interested in the topic doing research for my last book A Requiem for a Species, because it seemed to me that the world would not respond adequately reducing GHG emissions, that we would probably face climate emergency and that there are people working on geoengineering technologies. I think there is a high probability, so emergency technological solutions are likely to become prominent: it seemed to me that the debate was being dominated by a few scientists and we needed to broaden it out and alert the public about geoengineering and what is going on.”
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Jason McNamee
Nationality: Canadian Institution: Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation Position: Director and Operations Officer Research:
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“I am not what you might expect, I come from the prairies in the middle of Canada, my degrees are in biology and geomorphology, I spent over a decade working as a professional geologist in BC. I specialized in large scale mapping and ecosystems mapping, watershed restoration projects, and I started focusing on restoration projects; I worked for over 5 years in Haida Gwaii from 1998 to 2003, we spent millions of dollars restoring salmon streams and forced watershed. After 4 years, no fish were really coming back and so I asked the obvious questions to the department of fisheries and oceans: where are the fish? They don’t know. So that’s again how I started really focusing on it, we don’t have this basic information so how can we make reasonable decisions about commercial fishing? I got really involved through this watershed restoration work and secondly, this project was drying up because ecosystems restoration work is not profitable work, it’s all tax paid by the taxpayers, there is no business model out there. A way to make a profit and not cause net negative environmental effects. I always wondered how they shouldn’t be a profitable way to restore and enhance the environment, but there isn’t any. The only path to profit that I am aware of is the carbon market.”
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Jim Thomas
Nationality: United Kingdom Institution: ETC Group Position: Programme Director Research:
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“I’ve been with the ETC Group for about 11 years now, previously I worked with Greenpeace International. I was a campaigner around issues on genetic engineering technologies. My background is on the impact of technologies on society and the environment. That’s very much what ETC Group does, we track the emerging technologies and their impact, particularly on the South, human rights and ecological issues on biodiversity and so forth.”
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Nils Markusson
Nationality: United Kingdom Institution: Lancaster Environment Centre Position: Lancaster University professor and qualitative researcher Research
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“I was trained as an engineer for my undergraduate studies, then I worked with the swedish government. I re-trained as a social scientists, being involved in innovation studies and technology. I got interested in the relationship between environment and technology though a PhD in technology investments, and how engineers and environment staff work together. I researched on different innovation processes, such as Carbon Capture and Storage during five years, and now geoengineering. Geoengineering in a broad sense, not OF specifically. I am looking into framing some discourse around Geoengineering.”
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Richard Lampitt
Nationality: United Kingdom Institution: National Oceanography Center (NOC), Natural Environment Research Council Position: Professor Research:
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"I am an ocean biogeochemist: my research is on understanding how the ocean functions from a biological, physical and chemical perspective. In the last decade, this scientific field has been linked to men’s activities from a perspective on carbon cycle. I do research on the role and process of carbon cycling, especially the carbon dynamics in the ocean: I focus on the dynamics of the upper part of the ocean, how the flocks from the upper part of the ocean fall down on the seabed. On the other hand interests I have is in the way we modify purposely the marine biogeochemical balances in order to extract more carbon from the atmosphere: thus ocean iron fertilization, and all the issues linked to it, make a significant part of my work."
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Dan Whaley
Nationality: US citizen Institution: CLIMOS Position: Founder and CEO Research:
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“My mother is an oceanographer. The back-story is that she and I talked about climate, and when she came on for geosciences, we talked about the fact that we could create a group to explore the OIF thesis by funding larger scale operations to try to get answers on these issues. Back in 2005 we had inspirations, there was a mechanism to deploy framework like the financial incentives (carbon market). It was a way to motivate carbon reduction. I am coming from the business background. From this perspective, you want to provide the mechanism to finance something you want to do, and form grants to existing scientific funding. There was gap between existing scientific research on OIF and larger scale projects at that time. Our thought was that the gap was small enough that you can fund research through venture mechanisms.”
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Dennis Delbecq
Nationality: French Position: Freelance Journalist Research:
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"I am a independent journalist, I worked at Libération as the director of the Science & Environment department. But I should say that the press in general are less and less interested in environment. Before, I used to be a physicist. Now, I carry out many different activities (photography), and most of them has nothing to do with OIF."
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