U.S. Senator Bob Casey

"National Interest Electric Corridors: What the New Federal Law for Designating and Siting Power Lines Means for Pennsylvanians"

The 2005 Energy Policy Act created a broad new authority for the federal government to take the electric transmission line siting process away from the state in certain situations. The new law is now being put into effect with 75% of the state swept into the new federal power and transmission line projects proposed in southwest and northeast Pennsylvania.

Senator Casey will discuss what it means for Pennsylvania property owners and communities, its impact on Pennsylvania’s renewable power and global warming initiatives, and what we can do about it.

In eight years as Pennsylvania Auditor General and two years as State Treasurer, Bob Casey compiled a record that focused on making government more accountable and responsive to the needs of Pennsylvanians. He has been a fiscal watchdog who made nursing homes safer, child care more affordable and government more accountable. He led the fight to reform Megan's Law to better protect Pennsylvania communities and children.
As a new U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, Bob Casey is focused on changing the direction in Washington and on Pennsylvania priorities. He is also committed to moving past the partisan bickering in Washington to find common ground and solutions to problems that face the nation and the Commonwealth.

Jeffrey Cramer -
The Walden Woods Project’s Thoreau Institute

Living Deliberately: Thinking Like Thoreau Today
What is it to live deliberately, to act with Thoreauvian resolve and purpose? Why should we, living in a world quite different form the world in which Henry David Thoreau found himself more than 150 years ago, be at all interested in the words he wrote? How can any of the remedies he offered in his somewhat provincial world be useful in the global environment in which we now live? Because Thoreau forces us to ask the questions we do not necessarily want to hear. Thoreau's words are and will remain relevant and contemporary as long as we read but fail to comprehend, study but fail to learn, and talk but fail to act.

Jeffrey S. Cramer is the editor of Walden: A Fully Annotated Edition ( Yale University Press, 2004), a winner of a 2004 NOBA (National Outdoor Book Award) and a co-winner of the Boston Authors Club's 2005 Julia Ward Howe Special Award.  Walden: A Fully Annotated Edition  has been called  a "handsome, 'all-things-Walden' edition" by the Boston Globe. USA Today said "Cramer's side notes are like short, illuminating conversations."  He is also the editor of   I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau (Yale University Press, 2007),   Thoreau on Freedom: Attending to Man: Selected Writings of Henry David Thoreau (Fulcrum Publishing, 2003), and the forthcoming The Maine Woods: A Fully Annotated Edition (Yale University Press, 2009) and The Quotable Thoreau (Princeton University Press, 2010). Cramer has appeared on public radio's "On Point with Tom Ashbrook" and on C-SPAN's Book-TV. His essays and other writings have appeared in The Massachusetts Review , The Literary Review , and The Christian Science Monitor , among others. He is the Curator of Collections at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods.

Christopher Weber
Assistant professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon Univ., author & co-author of several books.

The Average American Footprint
This talk will discuss the quantity and patterns of the average American household's climate footprint. I use mathematical and economic models to examine the total greenhouse gas emissions associated with American household consumption patterns, including transportation, home energy use, purchased goods and services, and particularly food choice. Variations between the climate impacts of different household types, such as income and household size, are discussed. I will finish by discussing the most important steps American consumers can take to lower their impact on climate change.

Patricia M. DeMarco, Ex. Director, Rachel Carson Homestead Assoc.

"Rachel Carson's Legacy"
The Rachel Carson Homestead was formed in 1975 to preserve and restore this National Register historic site and to offer education programs which advance Rachel Carson's environmental ethic. Visit and experience first-hand the surroundings that made Rachel Carson a fierce and poetic defender of the natural world.

Patricia DeMarco is Executive Director of the Rachel Carson Homestead Association in Springdale, PA. Throughout her 30-year career in energy and environmental policy development and implementation, Patty has held a variety of positions including Executive Director of the Power Facilities Evaluation Council and staff to the Governor of Connecticut. She worked as the Manager of Resource Development for the Connecticut Municipal Electric Energy Co-operative and started up a technology development firm as a loaned executive. Patty operated and sold her own business, the Energy Roundtable, prior to moving to Alaska in 1998 to become President of the Anchorage Economic Development Corporation. She served as a Commissioner of the Alaska Regulatory Commission and as Associate Dean for the College of Business and Public Policy at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
She returned to her hometown of Pittsburgh in September 2005 and, in addition to her position with the Rachel Carson Homestead, holds Adjunct Faculty positions at the University of Pittsburgh and at Carnegie Mellon University. She received a Bachelor of Science and a Doctorate in Biology from the University of Pittsburgh.