Climate change, caused by unchecked carbon pollution and overfishing, is the most pressing environmental issue of our time. Climate change is causing rising global temperatures, rising sea levels, extreme weather patterns and increasing health risks. It is also the most politically divisive issue of our time, particularly in the U.S. Our speaker, Dr. Mike Slattery, director of the Institute for Environmental Studies and Professor in the School of Geology, Energy and the Environment at TCU, examines the science behind climate change and why it has become so politicized. 

Originally from South Africa, Dr. Slattery has written more than 80 scientific articles and published four editions of the book Contemporary Environmental Issues. His research focuses on human impacts on the environment, including the construction of dams on large-scale river systems, as well as the socio-economic and ecological impacts of utility-scale wind power development. He has led several biodiversity and conservation programs in Costa Rica and in South Africa (e.g. the TCU Rhino Initiative) and was instrumental in establishing a research station near the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve in Costa Rica in 2008.