Climate and Environment Team Attends SURF Capstone Conference
With funding from an FSI Conference Grant, I attended the Stanford U.S.-Russia Forum (SURF) Capstone Conference as one of four members of the Climate and Environment Working Group. SURF is a program that brings students together to study topics relevant to U.S.-Russia cooperation.
Our week together started at Fort Ross State Historic Park, a historic Russian fort on the California coast. There, I met up with my four teammates Ilya Stepanov (National Research University Higher School of Economics, Russia), Kirill Vlasov (Moscow State University, Russia), and Chelsea Cervantes de Blois (University of Minnesota, Twin-Cities, USA). A highlight of our time at Fort Ross was our meeting with members of the Kashia Band of Pomo Indians of the Stewarts Point Rancheria, the first inhabitants of the coastal region that includes Fort Ross.
From Fort Ross, we travelled to Stanford for the Opening Session of the Capstone Conference. This session featured California Governor Jerry Brown, the President of Stanford University Marc Tessier-Lavigne, former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry and Congresswoman Anna Eshoo.
In the following days, the SURF research groups presented our work at Stanford and heard from experts on U.S.-Russia relations including Professor Michael McFaul, the former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, and Professor Siegfried Hecker, the former Director of Los Alamos National Laboratory. A highlight of our meetings at Stanford was Professor Chris Field’s presentation on climate change. Climate change denial runs strong in both the U.S. and Russia, so it was important for our delegation to hear a crystallized scientific argument about our warming planet, as well as its political context.
After our meetings at Stanford, it was on to Washington, D.C., where we met with American and Russian political and business leaders. For the Climate and Environment team, a highlight of this portion of the trip was presenting our research to Anatoly Antonov, Russian Ambassador to the United States, at the Russian Embassy.
With U.S.-Russia relations at a low point, the Stanford U.S.-Russia Forum is facilitating an ever-rarer dialogue between students from our two countries. Thanks to FSI support I was able to participate in SURF and discover for myself the challenges, opportunities and tremendous importance of sustained U.S.-Russia dialogue.
Written by Ellen Ward, Earth System Science doctoral candidate at Stanford University. Ellen was awarded an FSI conference grant for Spring 2018.
