Land and Water Conference at Brown University
Today, I attended the Land and Water Conference at Brown University. I was particularly interested in hearing the keynote address delivered by John M. Barry, the best-selling author of Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America and The Great Influenza: the Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, among other books. His book on the flu has been updated to address the H1N1 (Swine) Flu epidemic, drawing on lessons learned from previous pandemics. Following Hurricane Katrina, John Barry chaired, at the request of the Louisiana congressional delegation, a bipartisan working group on flood protection.
In addition to the keynote address, the conference offered panel discussions. I was particularly interested in “The Anthropocene” which addressed how climate change disrupted societies in the past, such as the ice age in Europe and examined lessons learned about climate disruption on vulnerable groups. The panelists considered the implications of climate change for farming, food security, water access, mass migration and resource utilization. I found the presentations to be provocative, as they caused me to reflect on how we in the small business community can address community and global resilience by addressing environmental resource utilization. I plan to write more on these topics in the near future.