EAST LANSING, Mich. - The chairman of Ford Motor Co. and the top environmental advisers to the U. S. Presidential candidates will join hundreds of journalists at Michigan State University in October to wrestle with the great environmental issues of the 21st century.
The nation's largest gathering of environmental journalists in 2000 will occur in the heart of the Great Lakes region at Michigan State University Oct. 19-22 when the 10th national Conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) is held at the Kellogg Conference Center.
The conference, which is expected to draw more than 500 people from around the United States and Canada, is being organized and hosted by the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism in the School of Journalism at MSU.
"Cars, fresh water and presidential politics will all take center stage at this year's conference," said Jim Detjen, director of the Knight Center and the conference chair. "But like all SEJ conferences there will be scores of panels on many other newsworthy topics, specialized training sessions for both beginners and veterans, and numerous chances to meet environmental experts and other journalists."
Among the speakers are: William Clay Ford Jr., chairman of the Ford Motor Co.; Canadian scientist and television producer David Suzuki; energy visionary Amory Lovins; and William McDonough, an internationally known environmental architect.
Topics include threats to the world's fresh water and its wildlife, the impact of cars on the environment, the U.S. Presidential election and trans-border environmental issues affecting Canada and the United States.
The Great Lakes are among the Earth's great natural resources. They contain one-fifth of the world's fresh surface water and 90 percent of available fresh water in the United States. Some of the great environmental battles of the 21st century will be fought in the Great Lakes region.
Other sessions will look at the environmental impact of e-commerce and genetically-modified foods. There will be opportunities to drive eco-cars of the future, watch multi-media shows about the Great Lakes and bury an environmental time capsule.
Conference highlights:
- Opening session: Cars and the Environment - Is the greening of the auto industry real or hype? featuring William Clay Ford Jr., chairman of the board, Ford Motor Co.; Harry Pearce, vice chairman, General Motors Corp.; Jane Holtz Kay, author, Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America, and How We Can Take It Back; Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute; and Firoz Rasul, CEO, Ballard Power Systems. (9-10:45 a.m., Friday, Oct. 20)
- Keynote address and film festival featuring renowned Canadian scientist, environmentalist and broadcaster David Suzuki, host of one of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.'s longest-running series The Nature of Things. (7-8 p.m., Friday, Oct. 20)
- Top environmental advisers to George W. Bush and Al Gore meet head-to-head to discuss their candidates' vision of federal environmental policy. (Noon-2 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 21)
- The World Resources Institute, in conjunction with the United Nations and the World Bank, will release final results of an unprecedented global study of the state of the world's freshwater ecosystems. (11 a.m.-noon, Saturday, Oct. 21)
The Society of Environmental Journalists is a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to improving the quality, accuracy and visibility of environmental writing. Its membership includes more than 1,200 journalists, professors and students.
For more information about the conference, contact Barb Miller at (517) 432-1415 or mille384@msu.edu, Jim Detjen at 353-9479 or detjen@msu.edu or the SEJ office in Philadelphia at (215) 884-8174. Regular updates about the conference will be featured on the Web pages of the Society of Environmental Journalists (http://www.sej.org) or the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at http://www.journalism.msu.edu/environment.