ClimateOne

Dr. Richard Alley of Penn State University received the first annual Stephen Schneider Award for Outstand Climate Science Communication at Climate One on December 6, 2011. Bestowed by Climate One and underwritten by the ClimateWorks Foundation and energy entrepreneur Michael Haas, the $10,000 annual award is “given to a natural or social scientist who made extraordinary scientific contributions and communicated that knowledge to a broad public in a clear and compelling fashion.” Alley, the Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences at Pennsylvania State University, is also host of the PBS documentary "Earth: The Operators Manual." Read more about the award and the event here.

In their first public appearance together, arch rivals Microsoft and Google found common cause at Climate One on Friday, March 11 promoting the energy efficiency of the cloud. Efficiency alone won’t solve the climate crisis, Rob Bernard of Microsoft and Google’s William Weihl said, but smart IT can reduce emissions, help green the grid, and save companies and consumers money. Watch the videos here.

In her third U.S. city appearance as Secretary of State, Hillary R. Clinton discussed multiple international concerns including international affairs in the Middle East and American innovation as an aid to further public diplomacy with over 1,500 Commonwealth Club audience members on October 21, 2010. The Secretary also discussed the Alberta Pipeline, stating that the United States would likely grant the pipeline a permit to transfer crude oil from Alberta’s tar sands to the US. She stated that the US would be dependent on either dirty oil from the Gulf or dirty oil from Canada “until we can get our act together as a country and figure out that clean, renewable energy is in both our economic interests and the interests of our planet.” Watch the videos here.

After more than a year’s negotiation by Climate One, Chevron CEO Dave O’Reilly and Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope met for the first time ever at a June 2009 Climate One public conversation. There, O’Reilly made his most direct public statement to date on the validity of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) science and agreed with Pope on the need (if not on the pace and timing) to transition away from fossil fuels. Pope and O’Reilly also agreed to go to Washington D.C. together to lobby against coal handouts in the Waxman-Markey bill. Watch the video here.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson announced plans to reform major environmental legislation in a Climate One public presentation in September 2009. The announcement was reported on page one of The San Francisco Chronicle and covered on Fox News affiliate KTVU 2. Watch the video here.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt unveiled the plan at a 2008 Climate One public discussion, saying the United States could invest $4 trillion in energy technology and infrastructure over the next 20 years and realize $5 trillion in revenue, for a net gain of $1 trillion. The plan received broad news coverage in The New York Times and other mainstream media. Watch the video here.

At the first Climate One program, on November 27, 2007, a panel discussed the simultaneous release of 2008 Human Development Report (released in Rio De Janeiro by President Luiz Ignacio Lula De Silva and in San Francisco by U.N. Undersecretary General Ad Melkert) and a comprehensive report by the United Nations Development Programme on how climate change will hurt the world’s poorest people. Undersecretary General Melkert himself served as one of the panelists, as did Nancy Pfund, Managing Director of JPMorgan; Andrea Gardner, Sustainable Solutions Manager of CH2M Hill; and Larry Brilliant, Executive Director of Google.org, whose comments about Google’s investments in wind and geothermal energy generated news coverage in The San Francisco Chronicle. Watch the video here.

At Climate One in September 2008, Governor Schwarzenegger announced his first annual Governors Global Summit on Climate Change. Those summits have produced various agreements between sub-national actors from around the world to protect forests and promote sustainable economic development at a time when the multilateral negotiations have floundered. Watch the video here.

At a private Climate One lunch in 2008, General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner and PG&E CEO Peter Darbee agreed to jump start collaboration on electric vehicles. That work continues. Watch the video here.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger; IPCC Chair Rajendra Pachauri; Vice Chair of Deutsche Bank Caio Koch-Weser; and Huang Ming, a leading solar energy entrepreneur in China engaged in a Climate One-sponsored conversation at the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit about the importance of sub-national actors continuing to move forward while the UN process was deadlocked. Their remarks were covered by BBC TV, Sky TV, Bloomberg, and other news organizations. The full program was broadcast on KQED-FM and KRCB-TV, reaching over 30,000 people statewide.