More than 200 people packed into Duke University's Love Auditorium on April 25 to hear senior environmental and energy advisors for Democratic presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton discuss the candidates' positions on the environment and energy. It marked the first time during the 2008 campaign that advisors from both Democratic camps took part in a public forum devoted solely to the environment. Republican presidential candidate John McCain was invited to send a representative, but deferred until a later date. The event, held 11 days before the North Carolina primary, was hosted by the Nicholas Institute and the Nicholas School. You can watch or download the forum at www.nicholas.duke.edu/demtalk. 

Designing a voluntary greenhouse gas offsets program that creates a tradable commodity that can be used to meet compliance obligations is one of the most complex parts of a climate change policy. A new report by Lydia Olander, senior associate director for ecosystem services, addresses this challenge. The report was the outcome of a working group process and was written with input from economists, scientists, lawyers, traders and policy analysts at more than two dozen stakeholder organizations. It proposes a practicable option for developing a legislative framework that encourages reductions in GHG emissions and increases in carbon sequestration, yet still has enough rigor and transparency to meet environmental goals without creating a process so onerous it discourages participation. A draft of the paper is online here.

The Nicholas Institute organized a daylong workshop this month in Washington, D.C., that brought together three dozen ocean policy specialists to hash out the necessities for creating a rational ocean zoning policy. Led by Morgan Gopnik, lead author of the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy Report, participants addressed topics ranging from the development of next-generation technological tools for marine spatial planning, to the pros and cons of pushing for new federal legislation on ocean zoning. Experts from the Nicholas School and Nicholas Institute helped structure and steer the conservation. A report summarizing the panel's conclusions will be available soon. For more information, contact Rafe Sagarin, associate director of ocean and coastal policy, at rafe.sagarin@duke.edu or (919) 613-8738. 

Institute research associate Sheril Kirshenbaum is helping spearhead ScienceDebate2008, a national initiative to encourage presidential candidates to take part in a public debate on science prior to November's general election. Kirshenbaum and her colleagues made the case for why the debate is needed in an article published April 11 in Science. You can learn more about it here. 

As part of the Institute's ongoing outreach to national media, Eric Roston, senior associate in the Washington, D.C. office, and Bill Chameides, dean of the Nicholas School, co-authored a guest column for Time magazine's online edition that explored the benefits and challenges of underground carbon storage and sequestration. The column ran as part of Time.com's Earth Day package. To read it, go to the Institute's home page (www.nicholas.duke.edu/institute) and click on the rotating banner titled, "CO2: They Should Bottle That Stuff," or go directly to Time.com at  http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1730759_1731383_1731989,00.html. 

The Nicholas Institute hosted a forum for Sea Grant Fellows at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration headquarters in Silver Spring, Md., on April 25. The forum brought together this year's crop of national Sea Grant Fellows - tomorrow's leaders in marine policy - with experts from academia, government and environmental NGOs to explore timely topics including ocean zoning,  ecosystem based management, communicating ocean issues and how Fellows can make an impact during their year in DC. Panelists included Steven Murawski, director of scientific programs and chief science advisor at the National Marine Fisheries Service;  Elliott Norse, president of the Marine Conservation Biology Institute; and Larry Crowder, Stephen Toth Professor of Marine Biology at the Nicholas School. For more information, contact Sheril Kirshenbaum at sheril.kirshenbaum@duke.edu or (919) 613-8733.