Robert H. Socolow of Princeton University will present the Ronald F. Probstein Lecture in Engineering Science. Abstract: The growing prosperity of our species and the smallness of our planet are in collision. Fresh thinking is required to understand our predicament and our options, to manage geoengineering, to rethink 'fairness' across countries, and to understand how our time on Earth relates to future time. Climate change provides good points of entry into this new domain. Every 'solution' carries its own risks. Uncertainties are large and are themselves uncertain. Yet we must act. The first step is to reason on a planetary scale and to understand the numbers.

About the Speaker: Robert Socolow is a Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University and co-principal investigator (with ecologist, Stephen Pacala) of Princeton University's Carbon Mitigation Initiative (www.princeton.edu/~cmi/). Pacala and Socolow are the authors of "Stabilization wedges: Solving the climate problem for the next 50 years with current technologies" (Science, August 13, 2004). Socolow is on two current committees of the National Academies: "America's Energy Future" and "America's Climate Choices" and was a member of the Grand Challenges for Engineering Committee of the National Academy of Engineering. He was the editor of Annual Review of Energy and the Environment, 1992-2002.