The Environment and The Politics of '08 with speakers Steve Fleischli, Reverend Patricia Ackerman, and Richard Perez. Anthony Pereira moderates.
The environmental movement has received a major boost from Al Gore's Academy Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which has dramatically widened the debate about climate change and global warming.
Do citizens have a right to a safe environment? Does the government have an obligation to protect the environment? If so, where does that responsibility reside - at the national or the state level? Where is the environmental movement today, and what role will it play in the presidential election of 2008? At this event, a group of individuals who have struggled with these questions will discuss the current state of the environmental movement and the impact it will have on the election of 2008- The New School
Bio
Reverend Patricia Ackerman
Reverend Patricia Ackerman is the special projects and media liaison for the Fellowship of Reconciliation and member of the steering committee of Code Pink and of the advisory board of the Occupation Watch Center in Iraq.
Steve Fleischli
Steve Fleischli assumed the role of President of Waterkeeper Alliance from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in June 2007. Mr. Kennedy now serves as Chairman of Waterkeeper Alliance.
Mr. Fleischli held the position of Executive Director of Waterkeeper Alliance from 2003 to 2007. During that time, he led the organization through enormous growth, including the expansion of the Waterkeeper grassroots model to 162 communities across six continents. Meanwhile, he oversaw an expanded organizational focus on national and international protection of water resources, ranging from citizen suits over concentrated animal feeding operations to international petitions over transboundary mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants. He also co-founded Waterkeeper magazine.
Anthony Pereira
President & CEO, altPOWER, Inc. Anthony O. Pereira holds a BA in Economics from Fordham University. He has been involved in the construction industry since his early teens, working for his family's concrete construction company. Upon receiving his degree, he did a year of fundraising and activist work with Greenpeace Action in New York City. Later, after 5 years in the New York architecture industry, he began pursuing projects in solar electricity.
Over the years he has worked on renewable energy projects throughout the New York Metropolitan area with some of the leading architectural, engineering and construction management firms. Since 1998, Anthony has run successful renewable energy development and construction management businesses, his latest venture being altPOWER, Inc.
Richard Perez
Richard Perez is a senior research associate for Atmospheric Sciences Research Center and SUNY-Albany.
member. 
