Annual Lecture

Annual Leopold Lecture

This event features a distinguished environmental thinker who inspires audiences to explore today's critical environmental issues. To complete the intergenerational nature of the Leopold Writing Program, the Annual Leopold Lecturer also presents the awards to the 6th-12th grade winners of the Aldo Leopold Writing Contest.

The Annual Leopold Lecturers enhance the influence of the growing network of writers and respected environmental leaders who have been touched by the Leopold Writing Program.

The 2020 Annual Leopold Lecture

The Annual Leopold Lecture scheduled for April 20, 2020, was postponed due to the COVID-19 public health emergency. We hope to reschedule the event and will keep you posted with additional information. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

WILLIAM D. NORDHAUS, Albuquerque native and recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Economics, will present the 4th Annual Leopold Lecture, "Skiing and Fishing on a Hot Planet". Dr. Nordhaus created a quantitative model to assess and apply the global costs of climate change, known as the DICE model.

WILLIAM D. NORDHAUS is Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University. He holds a B.A. and M.A. from Yale University and a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1977 to 1979, he was a member of President Carter’s Council of Economic Advisers. Dr. Nordhaus is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the Econometric Society, and is past president of the American Economic Association.

His research has encompassed environmental economics, climate change, health economics, the political business cycle, and productivity. He created the DICE Model, which attempts to use the tools of modern economics to determine an efficient strategy for coping with the threat of global warming, and was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work.

The DICE model
(Dynamic Integrated Model of Climate and the Economy)

...I have always loved the name of the DICE model. It is easy to remember and visualize. DICE also conveys a shiver of risk and danger. It alluded to the Faustian bargain that we make as we continue down the path of unchecked climate change, the Walpurgis Night of reveling without reckoning on how the devil of damages will come to drag us to a hellish future.

William Nordhaus
from "Looking Backward: Biography for Nobel Foundation," January 3, 2019