President to present in Copenhagen from Presque Isle
University of Maine at Presque Isle President Don Zillman will appear
at an international conference in Copenhagen,
Denmark at the
end of April in an environmentally friendly way.
Zillman will appear during a panel on Energy,
Environment, Resources and Infrastructure Law at the Biennial Conference of the
International Bar Associations, which takes place April 26-30 this year in Copenhagen. About 300
delegates are expected to attend. The conference gathers together lawyers,
corporate and government officials, and academics with an interest in energy
and resource law and policy.
While
Zillman won't be attending the conference in person, a digital video of him
discussing the benefits and problems in considering a return to the nuclear
power option will be played during the presentation.
"We
shot the video in Presque Isle, in front of one of the impressive piles of snow
that has accumulated during this unusually precipitous winter, and it will show
in Copenhagen
without me having to fly over there," Zillman said.
He
and the other panelists are members of the IBA's academic advisory group -
Zillman has been a member of the group for more than 20 years and was its first
U.S.
member - and they have spent the last two years taking a hard look at the
unsustainability of the present carbon economy. Their efforts resulted in several
findings and a book published this year by Oxford University Press titled
"Beyond the Carbon Economy - Energy Law in Transition." The book was co-edited
by Zillman, Catherine Redgwell, Yinka Omorogbe, and Lila Barrera-Hernandez.
"This
book, drawing on participants from all over the world, addresses multiple
aspects of the global energy situation from a legal perspective and suggests
directions in which the post-carbon world should be moving," Zillman said.
Details
from the book and the group's collected findings will be the topic of
discussion during the 90-minute panel presentation in Copenhagen, which will take on a mock TV news
show format based on BBC's show "Question Time."
"Though I won't be there live at the presentation, I
am pleased to be positively impacting the environment in two ways - first, by saving
the expenses and travel time a real visit would require, and, second, by adding
my small part to the ever-growing discussion on our reliance on carbon and how
we are going to start to address it."