We believe that the world is involved in climate change and environmental change
that's
unprecedented due largely
or at least in part to manage impact. It's not enough to just figure out how to stop
the emissions of
greenhouse gases.
It's also important to plan for the future.
So how do we prepare now for the adaptation that we'll have to do not only
next year, ten years from now, twenty years from now, fifty years from now? It's a great challenge and one
that involves a lot of basic research. A lot of what I call solutions science;
science aimed at answering problems that we know that we're going to face.
So this is sort of like a groundbreaking moment
where we're integrating the best thinkers in the world in each of
their separate separate fields to think jointly on the same problem.
We gave this gift because we believe in UCSD's Scripps Institute of Oceanography and we
believe that Scripps and the multidisciplinary capabilities
represented by UCSD represent a resource for humanity to take on the challenges
that will come based on what we call climate change, as we live in an evolving world impacted by our own activities.
The new center that's been funded by this wonderful gift is a center for climate change
adaptation. It builds on the teriffic reputation of Scripps Oceanography in
detecting climate change and then being able to attribute that climate change to
its various causes. How much is natural variation? How much is caused by human
activities? And now that we
know how much climate is changing
we understand that we're going to adapt to some of these changes.
These problems can't be solved by physic oceanographers,
they can't be solved by engineers, they can't be solved by social scientists
or planners, alone.
They, these groups need to integrate together in order to figure out how to
solve all these problems.
And the great thing about the center is that from the beginning we have social scientists,
we have policymakers, we have engineers, and we have scientists all in the same room talking and thinking about how it
is and we're going to address these problems.
Up until now most of our work has focused how climate is changing and the beginnings of the impact.
What this allows us to do is to take a multi-disciplinary approach to that next step and how do we respond to those climate changes as a society.
These are the great challenges and it's going to take insights both academic and professional, industrial; it's going to take leadership
at the policy level and all of that has to be informed with the best possible
information and we think that Scripps Institute of Oceanography and UCSD can bring that to the table.
What can I say? We're true believers in public education and what
a fabulous job University of California does, so it's kind of a natural fit along with
Dick's science background that we would find Scripps and this part of UCSD
something so valuable and worth supporting and feel very excited about it.
We have two young grandsons and soon to be baby granddaughter
and I think having that second generation coming along,
not only do you see kind of the cycle of life and how the whole system works,
but we care tremendously that that younger generation will be able to enjoy a similar world
to the one we enjoy now.