For Immediate Release
Friday, November 06, 2009
President of Earth Policy Institute and Award-Winning Author to Speak at Colorado State University
FORT COLLINS - Noted author Lester Brown will give a free public lecture at Colorado State University at 7 p.m. Nov. 19. The lecture, to be held in the Lory Student Center, Main Ballroom, is presented by CSU’s Institute for Livestock and the Environment and the Monfort Professor-in-Residence program.
An open forum following Brown’s public lecture will involve a panel of noted on-campus experts covering the areas of Animal Sciences, Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sociology.
Brown has authored or co-authored over 50 books and, in 2001, founded Earth Policy Institute, an organization dedicated to developing and implementing a plan for sustainable future. He will be speaking about his new book, “Plan B 4.0”, a road map and vision for achieving an environmentally sustainable economy.
“Plan B 4.0”addresses pressing issues of rising food prices, growing numbers of hungry people, and an emerging politics of food scarcity facing our global civilization. Brown argues that food may be the issue that convinces the world of the need to cut carbon emissions 80 percent by 2020. The book’s recommendations aim to protect climate, stabilize population, eradicate poverty, and restore the economy’s natural support systems.
Brown started his career as a tomato farmer in southern New Jersey. He has a degree in agricultural science from Rutgers University, and Master’s degrees in agricultural economics from the University of Maryland and public administration from Harvard. In the 1960s Brown served as an adviser on foreign agricultural policy to the Secretary of Agriculture and the Administrator of the Department's International Agricultural Development Service. In 1969, he left government to help establish the Overseas Development Council. In 1974, with support of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Lester Brown founded the Worldwatch Institute, the first research institute devoted to the analysis of global environmental issues.
Colorado State University’s Institute for Livestock and the Environment was founded in January 2008. The Institute brings faculty members from 16 different disciplines across the CSU system together to develop win-win solutions to issues in the livestock industry that balance economic growth with our need for a sustainable environment.
Currently, 40 CSU faculty members are members of the Institute with research interests ranging from water quality, air quality, ecosystems, pathogens/disease, animal science, natural resources, and economics. Members regularly work together in interdisciplinary teams, often in conjunction with livestock producers and other stakeholders, to assess the environmental, economic and social impacts of livestock production; develop viable management practices and tools to reduce environmental impacts of livestock production; evaluate public/producer support of different management practices; test feasibility of innovative practices; and advise producers and inform policy makers about new, effective tools.
For more information, visit www.livestockandenvironment.info/ or call (970) 491-2326.
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