PRESQUE ISLE – University of Maine at Presque Isle President Don Zillman will appear at an international conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, at the end of April in an environmentally friendly way.
Photo courtesy of UMPIUniversity of Maine at Presque Isle President Don Zillman completes a taping that will be shown during a panel on Energy, Environment, Resources and Infrastructure Law at the Biennial Conference of the International Bar Associations, Denmark.
Zillman will appear during a panel on Energy, Environment, Resources and Infrastructure Law at the Biennial Conference of the International Bar Associations, which takes place April 26-30 this year in Copenhagen. About 300 delegates are expected to attend. The conference gathers together lawyers, corporate and government officials, and academics with an interest in energy and resource law and policy.
While Zillman won’t be attending the conference in person, a digital video of him discussing the benefits and problems in considering a return to the nuclear power option will be played during the presentation.
“We shot the video in Presque Isle, in front of one of the impressive piles of snow that has accumulated during this unusually precipitous winter, and it will show in Copenhagen without me having to fly over there,” Zillman said.
He and the other panelists are members of the IBA’s academic advisory group – Zillman has been a member of the group for more than 20 years and was its first U.S. member – and they have spent the last two years taking a hard look at the unsustainability of the present carbon economy. Their efforts resulted in several findings and a book published this year by Oxford University Press titled “Beyond the Carbon Economy – Energy Law in Transition.” The book was co-edited by Zillman, Catherine Redgwell, Yinka Omorogbe and Lila Barrera-Hernandez.
“This book, drawing on participants from all over the world, addresses multiple aspects of the global energy situation from a legal perspective and suggests directions in which the post-carbon world should be moving,” Zillman said.
Details from the book and the group’s collected findings will be the topic of discussion during the 90-minute panel presentation in Copenhagen, which will take on a mock TV news show format based on BBC’s show “Question Time.”
“Though I won’t be there live at the presentation, I am pleased to be positively impacting the environment in two ways – first, by saving the expenses and travel time a real visit would require, and, second, by adding my small part to the ever-growing discussion on our reliance on carbon and how we are going to start to address it.”
