{"id":3801,"date":"2010-08-02T16:42:09","date_gmt":"2010-08-02T20:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/?p=3801"},"modified":"2010-08-02T16:42:09","modified_gmt":"2010-08-02T20:42:09","slug":"esas-95th-annual-meeting-kicks-off-in-pittsburgh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/2010\/08\/02\/esas-95th-annual-meeting-kicks-off-in-pittsburgh\/","title":{"rendered":"ESA\u2019s 95th Annual Meeting Kicks off in Pittsburgh"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last night the Ecological Society of America\u2019s 95th<\/sup> Annual Meeting was off to a rousing start as an audience of over 500 applauded Mayor John Fetterman of Braddock, Pennsylvania, this year\u2019s winner of ESA\u2019s Regional Policy Award.\u00a0 The award recognizes a regional policymaker who uses ecological science to help inform policy decisions.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Since 2005, Mayor\u00a0Fetterman has used innovative approaches\u2014including encouraging green technology\u2014to turn Braddock around, a town that is a mere shadow of what it was during the heyday of the steel industry.\u00a0 In his acceptance remarks, Fetterman noted that climate change shouldn\u2019t be a political issue but that unfortunately when a divisive figure like Al Gore becomes a spokesperson for the issue, that automatically \u201cturns off\u201d half the population.\u00a0 Fetterman said that it\u2019s hard to hear the message when the messenger is someone who is someone you may not like.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Fetterman has been advocating for alternative energy sources, such as wind power, which would also be a natural fit for Braddock, as a former steel mill town.\u00a0 Fetterman described the ESA award as a great honor and also said that he really believes that \u201cenvironmental justice is social justice.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Directly following the award presentation, panelists of the Opening Plenary explored the topic of environmental disasters and risk perception.\u00a0 David Dzombak (Carnegie Mellon) reviewed the response of the Environmental Protection Agency to contaminated sediment sampling after Hurricane Katrina, David Lodge (Notre Dame) highlighted the story of invasions in the Great Lakes, culminating in the recent advances of Asian Carp, Robert Twilley (Louisiana State University) spoke of the long history of \u201chardening the landscape\u201d along the Gulf Coast, especially in reaction to crises, and Baruch Fischoff (Carnegie Mellon) gave his perspective as an expert in risk\u00a0 perception and its effects on decisions affecting environmental and other big issues society faces.\u00a0 ESA Vice President for Public Affairs Laura Huenneke (Northern Arizona University) moderated.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>Panelists noted that the \u201creactive crisis mode\u201d is the worst time for people to devise long-term, thoughtful, collaborative plans.\u00a0 Panelists Twilley and Lodge pointed out that other interests (such as navigation or flood control) can sometimes help advance another cause such as restoration.\u00a0 Fischoff reminded the audience that people have trouble integrating information that is non-intuitive or non-linear but that \u201crunning the numbers\u201d and explaining what they mean can help clarify such issues.\u00a0 Dzombak described the various\u00a0 \u201cpublics\u201d that often have very diverse interests and come at an issue with their different perspectives and that each setting is colored by its own political dynamic.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once the audience participated in the discussion, the discourse very quickly shifted to engaging in policy.\u00a0 Advice from panelists included: \u201cBe persistent and consistent,\u201d and\u00a0 \u201cbuild trust and find ways to maintain the dialogue.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night the Ecological Society of America\u2019s 95th Annual Meeting was off to a rousing start as an audience of over 500 applauded Mayor John Fetterman of Braddock, Pennsylvania, this year\u2019s winner of ESA\u2019s Regional Policy Award.\u00a0 The award recognizes a regional policymaker who uses ecological science to help inform policy decisions.\u00a0 Since 2005, Mayor\u00a0Fetterman has used innovative approaches\u2014including encouraging…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[901,301,902,903],"class_list":["post-3801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecology-in-policy","tag-environmental-disasters","tag-esa-annual-meeting","tag-mayor-fetterman","tag-policy-engagement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3801\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}