Earthstock Plenary Lecture
Professor Robert Howarth,
Cornell University
"Shale Gas: The Wrong Energy Choice for the 21st Century"
Friday, April 25, 2014
7:30 P.M.
Charles Wang Center Theater
Stony Brook University
Shale gas is widely promoted as a bridge fuel that allows society to continue to rely on fossil
fuels while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, when emissions of methane as well as
carbon dioxide are considered, shale gas has perhaps the largest greenhouse gas footprint of
any fossil fuel. Without large reductions in emissions of both methane and carbon dioxide,
the average temperature of the Earth will reach 1.5oC to 2oC above the 20th Century baseline
within the next few decades, creating a risk of runaway feedbacks in the climate system
leading to even more rapid warming and climate disruption. Given this risk, we simply must
wean ourselves of all fossil fuels – but particularly shale gas – as quickly as possible. Building
a future for the 21st Century that instead relies on wind, solar, and water power is not only
possible, but cost effective now using existing commercially available technologies.
Robert Howarth is an Earth systems scientist and ecosystem biologist. He earned a BA from
Amherst College (1974) and a Ph.D. jointly from MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution (1979). After several years as a staff scientist in Woods Hole, Howarth joined the
faculty at Cornell University in 1985 and was appointed the David R. Atkinson Professor of
Ecology & Environmental Biology in 1993. In 2011, Howarth published the first
comprehensive analysis of the greenhouse gas footprint of shale gas in Climatic Change
Letters and an invited commentary on shale gas in Nature. This work was cited in over 1,500
newspapers globally, winning Howarth an honorable mention as one of “50 People who
Matter” in the annual Time Magazine Person of the Year issue for 2011. Howarth has
published over 200 scientific papers, reports, and book chapters. His most recent book is the
4th edition of the text Essentials of Ecology (Begon, Howarth, and Townsend), scheduled for
release in early 2014.