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Iceland president returns to OSU, OARDC

Posted on | December 9, 2009 | 1,091 views |

Iceland President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson has returned to Ohio to strengthen the bonds he created with Ohio State faculty and staff when he visited campus in 2007.

Grimsson arrived Dec. 9 and will stay through Dec. 13 to continue fostering the relationship between his country and Ohio State’s College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. Grimsson’s visits focus on fostering climate change research and raising awareness of the impacts of land degradation caused by human misuse and natural activity. He also will receive an honorary degree at autumn commencement Dec. 13.

He will give a presentation at 1 p.m. Dec. 10 in Fisher Auditorium at the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center in Wooster. The lecture, “Iceland’s Lessons for World Sustainability: Soil as the New Soldier in Fighting Climate Change,” is free to the public.

“President Grimsson is a strong advocate of using soil and terrestrial biota as sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide,” said Rattan Lal, an Ohio State soil scientist with the college’s School of Environment and Natural Resources. “President Grimsson considers soil restoration integral to any strategy to mitigating climate change.”

Grimsson also will present a lecture, “Climate Change: Global Lessons for the United States. The Iceland Experience of Clean Energy and Soil Services,” at noon Dec. 11 at the Columbus Athletic Club in Columbus.

Iceland is a European island in the middle of the northern Atlantic. It’s a small nation, with roughly the same land area as Ohio and with a total population of about one-third of that of the city of Columbus, but its contributions to the environment in the way of renewable energy resources is enormous. In its short 63 years of independence, Iceland has shifted its energy dependence from coal and petroleum to renewable energy sources. Today, 70 percent of the country’s total energy needs and 100 percent of its electricity come from geothermal springs and glacier-fed lakes and rivers.

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