Amazon.com description: Product Description: Prior to the 2000 election The Aspen Institute convened a distinguished group of science, business, and environment leaders as a hypothetical committee to advise the new President on global environmental policy. Experts prepared this set of policy memos to tell the President, concisely and in understandable language, “what he should know” and “what he should do” about climate change, biodiversity, population, oceans, water, food and agriculture, and other problems. A thematic summary of the group’s conclusions, written by Co-chairs Donald Kennedy of Stanford University and Roger Sant of the AES Corporation, communicates the urgency of the challenges, the complexity of the inter-related issues, and the optimism necessary to tackle them. Fourteen other memos deal with such issues as climate change (Sherwood Rowland, John Holdren, David Victor), food and agriculture (Per Pinstrup-Andersen), water (Peter H. Gleick), environment and health (Kirk R. Smith), biodiversity (Walter V. Reid), marine biodiversity (J.C. Ogden), coastal oceans (Andrew Solow), population and consumption (Robert W. Kates), environmental scarcities and violence (Thomas Homer-Dixon), governance (Eileen Claussen), environmental priorities (Thomas Jorling), and U.S. national interests in sustainability (William C. Clark).