National Conferences
Climate Change is Real: Now What?
Shaw Hall, Younts Conference Center
November 8-9, 2017
Presented by Furman University’s Riley Institute, Shi Center for Sustainability, and Institute for the Advancement of Community Health with support from the A.J. Head fund. This national conference is part of Furman’s yearlong exploration of climate change.
The scientific consensus is overwhelming that human-caused climate change is real.
Now we ask: What does that mean for people’s health and livelihoods, for cities and homes, for ecological systems and even for our nation’s security? And, what can we do?
Thanks for joining us November 8 and 9 as we explored the current and future impact of climate change and concrete ways we can work together to solve this crisis and save the planet.
Series was moderated by Mark Quinn, former longtime broadcast journalist
November 8 7:00 – 8:30 p.m.
Keynote address: A Global Perspective on Earth’s Climate
Charles Bolden (bio), former astronaut and head of NASA
“Every other breath: Hidden stories of climate change” A look at The Post and Courier’s award-nominated series
Tony Bartelme (bio), Post and Courier special projects reporter
Is Climate Change Making Us Sicker?
Allison Crimmins (bio), climate scientist and lead author of interagency study on impact of climate change on health
A Conversation with Dana Beach (bio), executive director and founder, South Carolina Coastal Conservation League, Tony Bartelme, Charles Bolden and Allison Crimmins hosted by Mark Quinn
November 9 7:00 – 8:30 p.m.
Opening address: At Risk: Our Nation’s Security
Sherri Goodman (bio), former deputy undersecretary of defense, and senior advisor, The Center for Climate and Security
What Cities Can Do: A conversation with two coastal mayors
Phil Stoddard, PhD. (bio), mayor, South Miami, and professor of biology, Florida International University
Billy Keyserling (bio), mayor, Beaufort
Closing address: Can Free Enterprise Solve Climate Change?
Bob Inglis (bio), former U.S. Congressman and founder and CEO, RepublicEn.org
Press Coverage
Keynote Speakers:
Maj. Gen. Charles Frank Bolden, Jr., (USMC-Ret.) was the 12th Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). As Administrator, Bolden led a nationwide NASA team to advance the missions and goals of the U.S. space program, overseeing the safe transition from 30 years of space shuttle missions to a new era of exploration focused on full utilization of the International Space Station and space and aeronautics technology development. The agency’s dynamic science activities under Bolden included an unprecedented landing on Mars with the Curiosity rover, launch of a spacecraft to Jupiter, enhancing the nation’s fleet of Earth-observing satellites, and continued progress toward the 2018 launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope.
Born in Columbia, S.C., Bolden graduated from C. A. Johnson High School in 1964 and received an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical science in 1968 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps. After completing flight training in 1970, he became a Naval Aviator. Bolden flew more than 100 combat missions in North and South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, while stationed in Namphong, Thailand between 1972 – 1973. Bolden earned a Master of Science degree in systems management from the University of Southern California in 1977. He was selected as an astronaut candidate in 1980 and returned to the Marine Corps after his final shuttle flight in 1994. He was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2006.
Sherri Goodman is an experienced leader and senior executive, chairman and director in the fields of national security, energy, science, oceans and environment. She has served as President & CEO of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, and as Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of CNA which operates the Center for Naval Analyses. She is the founder of the CNA Military Advisory Board, for which she organized over 30 distinguished US military leaders to become a leading voice on the national security threats of climate change and energy. She was the first Deputy Undersecretary of Defense (Environmental Security), practiced law in a major firm and served on the staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee. She serves on the boards of several private sector and non-profit organizations, including on Audit & Finance Committees, and is a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Bob Inglis was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1992 and represented Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina, from 1993 to 1998. He unsuccessfully challenged U.S. Senator Fritz Hollings in 1998, and then returned to the practice of commercial real estate law in Greenville, S.C. In 2004, he was re-elected to Congress and served until losing re-election in the South Carolina Republican primary of 2010.
In 2011, Inglis went full-time into promoting free enterprise action on climate change and launched the Energy and Enterprise Initiative (“E&EI”) at George Mason University in July 2012. E&EI focuses on the power of accountable free enterprise, believing that climate change can be solved by eliminating all subsidies, including the implicit subsidy of the lack of accountability for emissions. E&EI supports an online community of energy optimists and climate realists at republicEn.org.
For his work on climate change Inglis was given the 2015 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. Inglis was a Resident Fellow at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics in 2011, a Visiting Energy Fellow at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment in 2012, and a Resident Fellow at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics in 2014.
Speakers and Panelists
Tony Bartelme, a three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, is a special projects reporter for The Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina. His investigative reporting has exposed government corruption and explored diverse issues ranging from changes in ocean plankton to the global shortage of doctors. His work has received the highest honors in journalism, including awards from the Gerald Loeb and Scripps foundations, Sigma Delta Chi, and the top science story award for his reporting on climate change from American Geophysical Union. He is the author or co-author of several books, most recently, A Surgeon in the Village: An American Doctor Teaches Brain Surgery in Africa. He was awarded a prestigious Harvard Nieman Fellowship in 2010 and is a graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
Since founding the Coastal Conservation League in 1989, Dana Beach has received awards from many institutions, including the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the South Carolina General Assembly, and the American Institute of Architects. In 1998, Dana was named one of ten Heroes for the Planet by Time Magazine’s Time for Kids. In March of 2000, he received the Order of the Palmetto, South Carolina’s highest honor, awarded by the Office of the Governor for outstanding contributions to the state. He is the author of the Pew Oceans Commission’s publication, “Coastal Sprawl: The Impacts of Development on Aquatic Ecosystems.” He graduated magna cum laude from Davidson College and received his MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Allison Crimmins was the lead author and lead coordinator of the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s assessment on climate change and human health. She is an environmental scientist in EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, Climate Change Division, and specializes in climate change risks and impacts. In addition to her work on climate change and human health, Allison is a co-lead on EPA’s climate impacts and risk analysis project, which quantifies economic benefits of global mitigation to the United States. She is also an author on EPA’s climate change indicators project. Prior to joining EPA, she worked at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. She has a Master of Science in oceanography from San Francisco State University and Master in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School.
Billy Keyserling is a Beaufort native who graduated from Brandeis University (BS, Magna Cum Laude) and Boston University (MS). He worked in Washington, DC for almost 16 years providing administrative and legislative duties for members of the U.S. Congress, coordinating an international human rights initiative and working as a public affairs consultant.
He returned to Beaufort in 1989. Keyserling served two terms in the S.C. House of Representatives where he was Vice Chair of the Joint Legislative Committee on Energy and served as Chairman of the Beaufort County Legislative Delegation. After deciding against seeking a third term in the legislature, Keyserling was elected to Beaufort City Council in 2000 and served one term. He became Mayor in 2008 and was re-elected in 2012 and 2016. Keyserling serves on the boards of the Municipal Association of South Carolina and the South Carolina Humanities Council.
Phil Stoddard is currently serving his fourth term as mayor of South Miami. In 2015, Mayor Stoddard was appointed by the White House to the Governance Coordinating Committee of the National Ocean Council where he has developed national policy for sea level rise. In 2016, Mayor Stoddard was named by Politico Magazine to the Politico-50 for his blunt explanations of the economic consequences sea level rise, and was named the Green Municipal Official for 2016 by the Florida Green Building Coalition. Dr. Stoddard has been a professor of biology at Florida International University since 1992. A big proponent of renewable energy, his house and car are powered by the sun. Mayor Stoddard has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Time, National Geographic, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, Stern, The Bond Buyer, NPR, PRI, BBC, MSNBC, and numerous documentaries, most recently National Geographic’s “Years of Living Dangerously.”
Series moderator
Mark Quinn has had a long career as a professional journalist in South Carolina. He worked in television journalism for more than 16 years, 13 of which were spent in Columbia, South Carolina. For 11 years, he worked in various on-air capacities for one of the most successful NBC affiliates in the country, WIS-TV. In 2007, he began work with South Carolina Educational Television and is the former host of ETV and ETV Radio’s weekly news and public affairs program, The Big Picture and The Big Picture on the Radio. Among the highlights of his tenure with SCETV was his on-site coverage of both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions of 2008 and the statewide gubernatorial, congressional, and constitutional officer debates in 2010. From 2011 – 2016, he was director of Public and Member Relations at The Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina.
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