One of the world’s leading experts on family planning and environmental sustainability, Professor John Guillebaud of University College in London will deliver the keynote address to a major conference in Canberra in March.
But the professor will still be in England.
Professor Guillebaud will be speaking from Oxford through a video link with Rydges Lakeside Hotel where the conference is being held. The several hundred delegates to the conference will see and hear Professor Guillebaud in real time, and will be able to ask questions and take part in discussion with him at the close of his address.
Professor Guillebaud says that, while he is an enthusiastic participant in the conference, he could not justify the flight to Australia. “Every long distance flight is seriously destructive of the world’s atmosphere,” he says. “As a matter of urgency, we must limit flying to essential business only – and with modern communications it’s a simple matter for a virtual ‘me’ to attend a conference anywhere in the world.”
Professor Guillebaud – who rides a bicycle as a matter of course – says that he has been a life-time campaigner for not damaging the environment. “As a doctor there can be no more appropriate medical specialty than Family Planning: to minimise the relentless increase worldwide in the number of environment-damagers (ie humans),” he says.
Professor Guillebaud was a leading contributor to the recent Inquiry by the UK Parliament into "Population Growth: its impact on the Millennium Development Goals".
He will be one of a number of local and overseas speakers at the major international conference "Population, Peak Oil, Climate Change: their impact on the Millennium Development Goals" 14-15 March 2008 at Rydges Lakeside Hotel, Canberra, organised by Sustainable Population Australia.
Anyone interested in registering for the conference can download the conference brochure at www.population.org.au/events or call conference organiser Jenny Goldie on 02 6235 5488.
