GLOBAL CLIMATE SUMMIT: 'Environmental capital of the world'

by Dave Jones
November 16, 2010

Gov. Schwarzenegger wasted no time Monday (Nov. 15) explaining why his third annual climate summit was being held at UC Davis.

After two years in Los Angeles, the entertainment capital of the world, he said, “we decided to bring this conference to the environmental capital of the world.” Schwarzenegger addressed an audience of about 1,200 during the opening session of the Governors’ Global Climate Summit 3, which concludes today. Click here for the live webcast.

Read other coverage of the summit's opening session.

Watch video interviews with summit participants, including tropical forest advocate Harrison Ford.

Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi also talked up UC Davis’ environmental reputation, noting how the university beats all other educational institutions in the publishing of environmental research, by nearly 20 percent.

She described UC Davis as “a top public research university that has long been a leader in clean-technology research and has become an emerging model for sustainable change up and down the state of California, across the nation and around the world.”

The chancellor listed a number of pioneering solutions in such fields as sustainable agriculture, nitrogen dynamics, food security, water management, sustainable energy and biofuels, and plug-in and hybrid electric vehicles.

Further, she noted how UC Davis had pioneered the environment as an academic field of study, in the first-in-the-nation College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

Today, Schwarzenegger said, UC Davis’ professors and scientists “are pioneering innovative and green-building energy efficiency and also clean transportation and working on so many different issues and I'm so proud of them.

“At the same time they are teaching and training our environmental leaders of tomorrow. I want to thank them for their great work.”