EAST LANSING, Mich. - The top environmental advisers to U.S. Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush will debate about environmental issues at the 10th national conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists, which will be held Oct. 19-22 at the Kellogg Center at Michigan State University.
Kathleen McGinty and Christopher DeMuth, the environmental advisers to Gore and Bush respectively, will face off at noon on Saturday, Oct. 21, during a debate in the Big Ten Ballrooms B and C. This will be the only debate between the environmental advisers of the major U.S. presidential candidates during the 2000 campaign.
During the conference, more than 100 speakers from around the world will discuss a wide range of current environmental issues. Details about the program are available at this Web site: http://www.sej.org/confer/index1.htm.
About 500 people are expected to attend this year's conference. In addition to the debates, a number of newsworthy events will occur during the conference:
- At 11 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 21, the World Resources Institute, the United Nations and the World Bank will release a new international report on the state of the world's freshwater ecosystems. Among the speakers at the session will be Jonathan Lash, president of the World Resources Institute; David Sandalow of the U.S. State Department; and Manuel Satorre Jr., a leading Philippine journalist who is the secretary of the International Federation of Environmental Journalists.
- Top executives from the Big Three automakers (Ford, General Motors and Daimler-Chrysler) will discuss the impact of cars on the environment with a panel of leading journalists and environmental experts at 9 a.m. on Friday, Oct. 20. Among the scheduled speakers are Robert Purcell of General Motors; John Wallace of Ford Motor Co.; Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute; Katie Kerwin of Business Week; Emilia Askari of The Detroit Free Press; and Jane Holtz Kay, author of "Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take It Back."
- The chiefs of the U.S. and Canadian Forest Services will meet for the first time at 12:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 20. Mike Dombeck, head of the U.S. Forest Service, and Yvan Hardy, head of the Canadian Forest Service, will discuss binational forestry issues.
- A Technology Exposition will be held on Level C of the Kellogg Center Parking Ramp all day on Oct. 20 and 21. Included at this exposition will be experimental environmental cars of the future that conference participants can test drive. Among the more than 60 panel sessions at the conference will be discussions about the regional effects of climate change, the impact of global trade on the environment, uncovering secrets of nuclear weapons production, the management of endangered wildlife across political borders, the coming water wars, the smart growth debate, the environmental impact of e-commerce, electric vehicles, hunters versus animal rights groups, controlling exotic species in the Great lakes, Ernest Hemingway as a nature writer and many others.
- Among the other speakers will be authors Bill McKibben, Phil Shabecoff and Eileen Welsome; environmental architect William McDonough; Canadian broadcaster and scientist David Suzuki; Pulitzer Prize winners Joby Warrick, Mike Mansur and Eileen Welsome; and many other top journalists and environmental experts.
- Among the journalists who will participate are reporters and broadcasters from CNN, ABC News, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer as well as international journalists from China, Ghana, Mexico, Canada, the Philippines and other nations.
- Individuals interested in attending should contact the SEJ national office in Philadelphia at (215) 884-8174, the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at MSU at (517) 432-1415 or call up this Web site to obtain a registration form: http://www.sej.org. Individuals can also register at the Kellogg Conference Center from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. Oct. 18 and throughout the rest of the conference.