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Carbon on Steroids: The Untold Story of Methane, Climate, and Health
This page updated October 16, 2008
Chair’s Air Pollution Seminar |
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Monday, November 10, 2008
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Carbon on Steroids:
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Kirk R. Smith, Ph.D.
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In current national
and international assessments, methane is undervalued as both a driver
of climate change and as a hazard to human health and
ecosystems. This is partly due to a misunderstanding of the
physical linkages involved and partly to reliance on outdated policy
instruments that are ill-suited to the assessment of them. A more appropriate assessment of methane would shift the priorities among control options for achieving health and climate benefits. Discussed will be one such option, reducing combustion inefficiency in household solid fuel use in developing countries. Kirk R. Smith, Ph.D., is Professor of Global Environmental Health, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley and is founder and director of the campus-wide masters program of the East-West Center in Honolulu. Dr. Smith’s research and policy work focuses on environmental, health, and climate issues in developing countries, particularly those related to household air pollution and energy. Dr. Smith’ work on climate focuses on co-benefits, i.e., strategies that achieve both climate mitigation adaptation goals as well as providing immediate local benefits in the form of health protection and other improvements. Recent activities include participation in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) (WGs II & III); the National Research Council’s Advisory Committee to the US National Climate Change Science Program; senior advisory committees on Climate Change Research Strategies to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and to the Global Review of the Institute of Medicine, the Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate of the US National Academies, and organizer of the 2008 Annual Reviews Symposium on Climate Change and Health. Professor Smith has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1997. For
more information on this seminar please contact: |
