Climate change and transportaion

What can be done to make Canada's transportation more climate-friendly is the topic of a public lecture to be held at the University of Waterloo on Wednesday, Nov. 28.

Guy Dauncey, co-author of Stormy Weather: 101 Solutions to Global Climate Change, will deliver his speech, "Beyond Kyoto: How Can We Resolve The Climate Change Crisis," at 9:30 a.m. in the Humanities Theatre, Hagey Hall. Free admission.

In announcing the public lecture, three UW environmental studies faculty member -- Ian Rowlands, Jean Andrey and Greg Michalenko -- said that Dauncey will offer some solutions for the transportation sector.

"With the world's scientists agreed about the reality of global warming, and concerned about the dramatic extent of the possible temperature increases during the next century, our planet's leaders face an urgent need to craft the policy and technology changes that will enable us to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by far more than that agreed to in the Kyoto Protocol," they said in a statement.

"Globally, transportation produces 21 per cent of the world's greenhouse gases. Guy Dauncey argues that a hydrogen-based transportation system is technically possible, pointing to early protoypes that are already on the roads. Iceland, for example, is planning to switch its entire economy to hydrogen by 2030.

"Without major policy initiatives to encourage the transition, however, Dauncey maintains that the change will be too small, too limited and too late. The challenge, therefore, is to combine smart technology and smart systems-based planning with smart politics. In his public lecture, Dauncey will outline how it can be done."

After the lecture, Dauncey will be available for discussion about his ideas in Environmental Studies 1, Room 221, from 10:30 a.m. to 11:20 a.m. His visit is sponsored by the Department of Geography and the Environmentalist-in-Residence program, centered in the Department of Environment and Resource Studies.