New Haven Independent

Frances Beinecke graduated from Yale College in 1971, part of the first class that included women. She went on to earn a Master’s degree from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and then to work at the Natural Resources Defense Council, where she’s been ever since. She recently became NRDC’s president.

She met with small groups of students Monday and gave an address in Dwight Chapel, talking about some of her own mentors, like Sen. Gaylord Nelson, the founder of Earth Day. She said students’ environmental concerns center around global warming and energy “” two intertwined issues. She credited Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, with pushing the issue of global climate change to the forefront, whereas in years past, despite the best efforts of scientists and activists, most people couldn’t grasp its significance because it was hard to see its impact.

Beinecke said in order to pull the earth back from fundamental climatic changes, there must be an 80 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2050. “In order to do that, we have to move quickly to promoting increased energy efficiency, increased fuel efficiency of cars, dramatically increase the amount of renewables we’re using, both wind and solar, and figure out how to capture carbon from coal emissions from power plants.”

The U.S. gets half its energy from coal, and has 100 new coal-fired power plants in the planning stages. Coal contributes the largest share of carbon emissions of all energy sources, yet she said not one of those plants includes plans to capture the carbon and prevent its release into the atmosphere. She added that, while nuclear power doesn’t release CO2 in the energy it generates, the problems associated with it “” such as nuclear waste disposal and threats to security through nuclear proliferation “” will probably limit nuclear to the 20 percent of the energy mix it currently provides.

Regarding the politics of global warming, Beinecke said she’s very happy that Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer will be replacing Republican Sen. James Inhofe as head of the Senate Environment Committee. Addressngi global warming is one of her top two priorities, whereas Inhofe has reiterated fairly recently his claim that global warming “is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”

She said the incoming Democrat-controlled Congress offers some hope for progress.

“The way I look at the next two years, because now we’re back into a system of checks and balances, we won’t be in a period of sliding back on environmental laws that we’ve been in for the last six years. This has been a very, very difficult time for environmental protection in the country, and we’ve lost a lot of ground. I’m hopeful we’ll stop that defensive position we’ve been in and look at the affirmative strategies are that we need to address the environmental issues we’re faced with.”