2006 Fall Lectures
Environment, Economics, Equity
The Center for Applied Christian Ethics is co-sponsoring this event with the Science Division
"Global Climate Change: A Faithful Response"
Panel Discussion
Monday, November 13, 7:00 pm Barrows Auditorium
Global warming demands a thoughtful and urgent response from Christians. We have convened an impressive panel for this event to contribute to that response. We will hear from our college president, Duane Litfin, atmospheric physicist, Douglas Allen from Dordt College, and three of our own professors with great expertise in the field: Drs. Kristen Page, P.J. Hill, and Noah Toly. The panel will be moderated by Dr. Greta Bryson.
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Dr. Duane Litfin Wheaton College President |
Introductory Remarks
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Dr. Douglas Allen Associate Professor of Physics, Dordt College "Is the Sky Falling? A Brief Overview of Climate Change Science" |
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Dr. Kristen Page Associate Professor of Ecology, Wheaton College "Global Climate Change: Implications for Global Health" |
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Dr. P.J. Hill George F. Bennett, Professor of Economics, Wheaton College "The Economics of Global Climate Change" |
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Dr. Noah Toly, Director of Urban Studies and Assistant Professor of Politics and International Relations at Wheaton College "Climate Change: The International Response" |
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Dr. Greta Bryson, Panel Moderator Assistant Professor of Biochemistry, Wheaton College |
Dr. Duane Litfin is now serving in his fourteenth year as Wheaton College's seventh president. He holds an undergraduate degree in biblical studies and a master's degree in theology. His two doctorates are from Purdue University (Ph.D., Communication) and Oxford University (D.Phil., New Testament).
He came to Wheaton from Memphis, Tennessee where he served the First Evangelical Church as Senior Pastor. Prior to that he spent a decade as an Associate Professor at Dallas Theological Seminary.
Dr. Litfin is the author of several books, most recently Conceiving the Christian College (Eerdmans, 2004), and his writings have appeared in numerous journals and periodicals.
Dr. Douglas Allen grew up in Wheaton, where he attended Wheaton Central High School before entering Wheaton College, graduating with a B.S. in physics in 1991. Dr. Allen went to Iowa State for his PhD and studied atmospheric physics with Prof. John Stanford. His first postdoc was at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, where he examined transport of volcanic ash clouds in the upper troposphere. His second postdoc was at the University of Chicago where helped develop models of transport processes in the stratosphere. From 2001-2005 he worked as a research physicist at the Naval Research Lab in Washington, DC, developing computer code for the Navy's global weather model and analyzing satellite data of the Earth's atmosphere. Dr. Allen is in his second year of teaching physics and astronomy at Dordt College in Sioux Center, IA. While at
University of Chicago he taught two astronomy courses as an adjunct at Wheaton College, and last summer he taught astronomy at Wheaton's Black Hills Science Station. Dr. Allen is married to Wheaton graduate Ruth (Gosling) Allen and they have three sons.
Dr. Doug Allen, Resource Recommendations:
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
US Climate Change Science Program
"Overview of the Climate Change Issue" by Sir John Houghton
Dr. Kristen Page is and Associate Professor of Biology at Wheaton College. She is a disease ecologist with particular interest in disease transmission across human-altered landscapes. Her research primarily focuses on the transmission dynamics of a zoonotic parasite of raccoons; however, due to her involvement with the Human Needs and Global Resources (HNGR) program at Wheaton, she has developed an interest in the effects of environmental degradation on the perpetuation of diseases in the global south. Dr. Page received her PhD from Purdue University's Department of Forestry and Natural Resources.
Dr. Kristen Page, Resource Recommendations:
Loving Our Neighbors: Responsibility in the Created World by Dr. Kristen Page, May 2005 (pdf)
P. J. Hill is Professor of Economics at Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois and a Senior Fellow at PERC (Property and Environment Research Center) in Bozeman, Montana. He is the co-author, with Terry L. Anderson and Douglass North of Growth and Welfare in the American Past, with Terry Anderson of The Birth of a Transfer Society, and also with Terry Anderson of The Not So Wild, Wild West: Property Rights on the Frontier. He has also authored numerous articles on the theory of property rights and institutional change and has edited six books on environmental economics. His undergraduate degree is from Montana State and his PhD from the University of Chicago. P.J. grew up in eastern Montana on a cattle ranch that he operated with his family until 1992, when he sold the ranch and bought a smaller ranch in western Montana that he continues to operate.
Dr. P.J. Hill, Resource Recommendations:
Copenhagen Consensus 2004 Study
Noah Toly is Director of Urban Studies and Assistant Professor of Politics and International Relations. Prior to joining the faculty at Wheaton, he served as Policy Fellow at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy in the University of Delaware's School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy. He has published a number of articles and book chapters on climate and environmental justice, focusing on urban vulnerability and responsibility as well as on international agreements. Two of his articles, "Changing the Climate of Christian Internationalism" (Brandywine Review of Faith and International Affairs) and "Climate Change and Climate Change Policy as Human Sacrifice: Artifice, Idolatry, and Environment in a Technological Society" (Christian Scholar's Review), engage these topics from an explicitly Christian perspective.
Dr. Noah Toly, Resource Recommendations:
Climate Change and Climate Change Policy as Human Sacrifice: Artifice, Idolatry, and Environment in a Technological Society by Dr. Noah Toly (pdf)
Changing the Climate of Christian Internationalism: Global Warming and Human Suffering By Noah J. Toly (pdf)