George Thurston writes: “I’m still busy teaching at NYU and doing research on the human health effects of air pollution, as well as a course on climate and health. I’m also active in my professional organizations, now serving as chair of the policy committee of the North American Chapter of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE), which has involved providing technical comments and testimony on EPA’s environmental policy proposals, and participating in policy webinars. In early November 2021, I traveled to Glasgow, Scotland, as a member of NYU’s delegation to the Climate Conference of the Parties (COP26), where I hosted a hybrid session on how cities can act to improve residents’ health while at the same time addressing the causes of climate change. COP26 was a bittersweet meeting: disappointing in that more definitive commitments were not made by our world’s political leaders to meet the climate crisis, but heartening to see that, more than at any past such meeting, young people came in large numbers to peacefully protest the political inaction (my first was COP5 in Bonn, Germany in 1999). It reminded me of the anti-war movement when we were at Brown. I had to stay in Edinburgh to find an available room and commute daily to Glasgow, but each day I met the most interesting people on that intercity train, from other scientists and environmental reporters to U.S. Senate staffers. I also advise nonprofit organizations on air pollution matters and traveled to rural Chatham, Virginia, to testify at a natural gas pipeline permit hearing about the human health effects of air pollution. See https://tinyurl.com/2p8ej2be. I believe that, just like everyone should have legal representation in proceedings, in today’s technical world, everyone also deserves scientific representation. As I said for the below article: “I’m just trying to give them the same level of scientific representation that the vested interests have.” See https://tinyurl.com/mcwmmvx2. Prudence is still happily working for the IT department of the Monroe-Woodbury (N.Y.) school system, where they had to revamp the school’s education system to allow remote learning online as well as cope with a cyberattack on the school system. We are renovating an old barn on our daughter’s and her husband’s property to move in next door to them (and our first granddaughter Bea) in Waccabuc, but that is another story. So lots going on right now, despite the pandemic. And I’m always happy to add more Twitter followers:
@ProfGThurston.”
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Class of 1973